The snail-killing flies of Alaska (Diptera: Sciomyzidae)

Information is given on the geographic distribution, habitat preferences, larval foods, and immature stages for 57 species of 9 genera of Sciomyzidae known to occur in Alaska. An illustrated key to adults is included. Alaska as a habitat for sciomyzid flies is discussed, and information on feeding habits of the larvae is summarized

Resolving Inner Cultural Conflicts toward Education in Pastoral East Africa: A Grounded Theory Study

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explain the perceptions of semi - nomadic pastoralists in East Africa, who self - identified as having the characteristics of the most vulnerable, and who were educationally successful. This study identified motivating factors that contributed to resiliency while in the pursuit of an education. Findings suggest that even though students from this background utilize these motivating factors they are still faced with inner cultural tensions that can be insurmountable. Emergent theory suggests that inner cultural conflicts toward education are resolved when push/pull factors were combined with a sense of something beyond themselves, allowing for transcultural migratio

Regularity and h-polynomials of toric ideals of graphs

For all integers 4 ≤ r ≤ d, we show that there exists a finite simple graph G = Gr,d with toric ideal IG ⊂ R such that R/IG has (Castelnuovo-Mumford) regularity r and h-polynomial of degree d. To achieve this goal, we identify a family of graphs such that the graded Betti numbers of the associated toric ideal agree with its initial ideal, and, furthermore, that this initial ideal has linear quotients. As a corollary, we can recover a result of Hibi, Higashitani, Kimura, and O'Keefe that compares the depth and dimension of toric ideals of graphs

Sharpenings of Li's criterion for the Riemann Hypothesis

Exact and asymptotic formulae are displayed for the coefficients $\lambda_n$ used in Li's criterion for the Riemann Hypothesis. For $n \to \infty$ we obtain that if (and only if) the Hypothesis is true, $\lambda_n \sim n(A \log n +B)$ (with $A>0$ and $B$ explicitly given, also for the case of more general zeta or $L$-functions); whereas in the opposite case, $\lambda_n$ has a non-tempered oscillatory form.Comment: 10 pages, Math. Phys. Anal. Geom (2006, at press). V2: minor text corrections and updated reference

Characterization of adjacent breast tumors using oligonucleotide microarrays

BACKGROUND: Current methodology often cannot distinguish second primary breast cancers from multifocal disease, a potentially important distinction for clinical management. In the present study we evaluated the use of oligonucleotide-based microarray analysis in determining the clonality of tumors by comparing gene expression profiles. METHOD: Total RNA was extracted from two tumors with no apparent physical connection that were located in the right breast of an 87-year-old woman diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). The RNA was hybridized to the Affymetrix Human Genome U95A Gene Chip(®) (12,500 known human genes) and analyzed using the Gene Chip Analysis Suite(®) 3.3 (Affymetrix, Inc, Santa Clara, CA, USA) and JMPIN(®) 3.2.6 (SAS Institute, Inc, Cary, NC, USA). Gene expression profiles of tumors from five additional patients were compared in order to evaluate the heterogeneity in gene expression between tumors with similar clinical characteristics. RESULTS: The adjacent breast tumors had a pairwise correlation coefficient of 0.987, and were essentially indistinguishable by microarray analysis. Analysis of gene expression profiles from different individuals, however, generated a pairwise correlation coefficient of 0.710. CONCLUSION: Transcriptional profiling may be a useful diagnostic tool for determining tumor clonality and heterogeneity, and may ultimately impact on therapeutic decision making

A first genome assembly of the barley fungal pathogen Pyrenophora teres f. teres

Background: Pyrenophora teres f. teres is a necrotrophic fungal pathogen and the cause of one of barley’s most important diseases, net form of net blotch. Here we report the first genome assembly for this species based solely on short Solexa sequencing reads of isolate 0-1. The assembly was validated by comparison to BAC sequences, ESTs, orthologous genes and by PCR, and complemented by cytogenetic karyotyping and the first genome-wide genetic map for P. teres f. teres. Results: The total assembly was 41.95 Mbp and contains 11,799 gene models of 50 amino acids or more. Comparison against two sequenced BACs showed that complex regions with a high GC content assembled effectively. Electrophoretic karyotyping showed distinct chromosomal polymorphisms between isolates 0-1 and 15A, and cytological karyotyping confirmed the presence of at least nine chromosomes. The genetic map spans 2477.7 cM and is composed of 243 markers in 25 linkage groups, and incorporates SSR markers developed from the assembly. Among predicted genes, non-ribosomal peptide synthetases and efflux pumps in particular appear to have undergone a P. teres f. teres-specific expansion of non-orthologous gene families. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that paired-end Solexa sequencing can successfully capture coding regions of a filamentous fungal genome. The assembly contains a plethora of predicted genes that have been implicated in a necrotrophic lifestyle and pathogenicity and presents a significant resource for examining the bases for P. teres f. teres pathogenicity

Self-assembly of phosphate fluorosurfactants in carbon dioxide

Anionic phosphodiester surfactants, possessing either two fluorinated chains (F/F) or one hydrocarbon chain and one fluorinated chain (H/F), were synthesized and evaluated for solubility and self-assembly in liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide. Several surfactants, of both F/F and EUF types and having varied counterions, were found to be capable of solubilizing water-in-CO2 (W/C), via the formation of microemulsions, expanding upon the family of phosphate fluorosurfactants already found to stabilize W/C microemulsions. Small-angle neutron scattering was used to directly characterize the microemulsion particles at varied temperatures, pressures, and water loadings, revealing behavior consistent with previous results on W/C microemulsions

Осаждение покрытий из хрома и никеля с помощью магнетронного диода с «горячей» мишенью

В настоящей работе представлены результаты исследования свойств покрытий из хрома и никеля от режимов распыления "горячей" металлической мишени в плазме магнетронной распылительной системы.This work reports on the dependence of properties of Cr and Ni coatings on operation parameters of magnetron sputtering system with hot target

Base editing repairs an SGCA mutation in human primary muscle stem cells

Skeletal muscle can regenerate from muscle stem cells and their myogenic precursor cell progeny, myoblasts. However, precise gene editing in human muscle stem cells for autologous cell replacement therapies of untreatable genetic muscle diseases has not yet been reported. Loss-of-function mutations in SGCA, encoding α-sarcoglycan, cause limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2D/R3, an early onset, severe and rapidly progressive form of muscular dystrophy affecting equally girls and boys. Patients suffer from muscle degeneration and atrophy affecting the limbs, respiratory muscles, and the heart. We isolated human muscle stem cells from two donors with the common SGCA c.157G>A mutation affecting the last coding nucleotide of exon 2. We found that c.157G>A is an exonic splicing mutation that induces skipping of two co-regulated exons. Using adenine base editing, we corrected the mutation in the cells from both donors with >90% efficiency, thereby rescuing the splicing defect and α-sarcoglycan expression. Base edited patient cells regenerated muscle and contributed to the Pax7 positive satellite cell compartment in vivo in mouse xenografts. We hereby provide the first evidence that autologous gene repaired human muscle stem cells can be harnessed for cell replacement therapies of muscular dystrophies. ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY: Patient primary muscle stems cells gene repaired with >90% efficiency by base editing maintain their regenerative properties for autologous cell replacement therapies of muscular dystrophy