Characterization of endonuclease activities in Moloney murine leukemia virus and its replication-defective mutants

To study Moloney murine leukemia virus (M-MulV) proteins associated with the integration of proviral DNA into the host chromosome, we isolated endonuclease activities from purified virion preparations of the wild type and two of its replication mutants. A major endonuclease activity was identified in virions of M-MuLV; the enzyme catalyzed nicks in double-stranded DNA in the presence of either Mn2+ or Mg2+ and was stimulated by ATP. The endonuclease nicked DNA adjacent to all four nucleotides with some preference for G and C. The same enzyme, and in comparable amounts, was isolated from two virus replication mutants: dl2905, deficient in the processing of Pr65gag and Pr200gag-pol, and dl50401, deficient for the virus integration function. In the process of these experiments, the residual reverse transcriptase in mutant dl2905 was shown to be the mature size, implying that the uncleaved precursor lacks enzymatic activity. It appears that the major endonuclease activity found in virions of M-MuLV is not encoded by either the gag or pol genes

Estimating the Creation and Removal Date of Fracking Ponds Using Trend Analysis of Landsat Imagery

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process of introducing liquid at high pressure to create fractures in shale rock formations, thus releasing natural gas. Flowback and produced water from fracking operations is typically stored in temporary open-air earthen impoundments, or frack ponds. Unfortunately, in the United States there is no public record of the location of impoundments, or the dates that impoundments are created or removed. In this study we use a dataset of drilling-related impoundments in Pennsylvania identified through the FrackFinder project led by SkyTruth, an environmental non-profit. For each impoundment location, we compiled all low cloud Landsat imagery from 2000 to 2016 and created a monthly time series for three bands: red, near-infrared (NIR), and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). We identified the approximate date of creation and removal of impoundments from sudden breaks in the time series. To verify our method, we compared the results to date ranges derived from photointerpretation of all available historical imagery on Google Earth for a subset of impoundments. Based on our analysis, we found that the number of impoundments built annually increased rapidly from 2006 to 2010, and then slowed from 2010 to 2013. Since newer impoundments tend to be larger, however, the total impoundment area has continued to increase. The methods described in this study would be appropriate for finding the creation and removal date of a variety of industrial land use changes at known locations

Upper bounds on the k-forcing number of a graph

Given a simple undirected graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$, the $k$-forcing number of $G$, denoted $F_k(G)$, is the minimum number of vertices that need to be initially colored so that all vertices eventually become colored during the discrete dynamical process described by the following rule. Starting from an initial set of colored vertices and stopping when all vertices are colored: if a colored vertex has at most $k$ non-colored neighbors, then each of its non-colored neighbors becomes colored. When $k=1$, this is equivalent to the zero forcing number, usually denoted with $Z(G)$, a recently introduced invariant that gives an upper bound on the maximum nullity of a graph. In this paper, we give several upper bounds on the $k$-forcing number. Notable among these, we show that if $G$ is a graph with order $n \ge 2$ and maximum degree $\Delta \ge k$, then $F_k(G) \le \frac{(\Delta-k+1)n}{\Delta - k + 1 +\min{\{\delta,k\}}}$. This simplifies to, for the zero forcing number case of $k=1$, $Z(G)=F_1(G) \le \frac{\Delta n}{\Delta+1}$. Moreover, when $\Delta \ge 2$ and the graph is $k$-connected, we prove that $F_k(G) \leq \frac{(\Delta-2)n+2}{\Delta+k-2}$, which is an improvement when $k\leq 2$, and specializes to, for the zero forcing number case, $Z(G)= F_1(G) \le \frac{(\Delta -2)n+2}{\Delta -1}$. These results resolve a problem posed by Meyer about regular bipartite circulant graphs. Finally, we present a relationship between the $k$-forcing number and the connected $k$-domination number. As a corollary, we find that the sum of the zero forcing number and connected domination number is at most the order for connected graphs.Comment: 15 pages, 0 figure

IRRIGATION PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS WITH WATER-CAPITAL SUBSTITUTION

The dynamics of biomass growth implies that the yield of irrigated crops depends, in addition to the total amount of water applied, on irrigation scheduling during the growing period. Advanced irrigation technologies relax constraints on irrigation rates and timing, allowing to better adjust irrigation scheduling to the varying needs of the plants along the growing period. Irrigation production functions, then, should include capital (or expenditures on irrigation equipment) in addition to aggregate water. We derive such functions and study their water-capital substitution properties. Implications for water demand and adoption of irrigation technologies are investigated. An empirical application confirms these properties.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The IRAS 1.2 Jy Survey: Redshift Data

We present the redshift data for a survey of galaxies selected from the data base of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). This survey extends the 1.936 Jy sample of Strauss et al. (1992) from a flux limit of 1.936 Jy at 60 microns to 1.2 Jy. The survey extension consists of 3920 sources in the flux interval 1.2 - 1.936 Jy, of which 2663 are galaxies with measured redshifts. Fourteen objects (0.52%) do not have redshifts. The survey covers 87.6% of the sky. The data for the complete 1.2 Jy survey (the data presented here in addition to that of Strauss \etal 1992) may be obtained in a machine-readable form from the National Space Science Data Center and from the anonymous ftp site given above.Comment: uuencoded postscript file. Figures, data tables, and machine readable data files can be obtained via anonymous ftp to (192.16.204.30) ftp://eku.ias.edu/pub/fisher/12jy/12jy.tar.Z (a compressed tar file)