Feeding the ‘aneursym’: Orogen-parallel mass transport into Nanga Parbat and the western Himalayan syntaxis

Abstract HKT-ISTP 2013 A

Atlantic salmon Salmo salar in the chalk streams of England are genetically unique.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordRecent research has identified genetic groups of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar that show association with geological and environmental boundaries. This study focuses on one particular subgroup of the species inhabiting the chalk streams of southern England, U.K. These fish are genetically distinct from other British and European S. salar populations and have previously demonstrated markedly low admixture with populations in neighbouring regions. The genetic population structure of S. salar occupying five chalk streams was explored using 16 microsatellite loci. The analysis provides evidence of the genetic distinctiveness of chalk-stream S. salar in southern England, in comparison with populations from non-chalk regions elsewhere in western Europe. Little genetic differentiation exists between the chalk-stream populations and a pattern of isolation by distance was evident. Furthermore, evidence of temporal stability of S. salar populations across the five chalk streams was found. This work provides new insights into the temporal stability and lack of genetic population sub-structuring within a unique component of the species' range of S. salar.This research was funded by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Atlantic Salmon Trust, with additional support from the Salmon and Trout Association, the Westcountry Rivers Trust and the University of Exeter

General hardware multicasting for fine-grained message-passing architectures

Manycore architectures are increasingly favouring message-passing or partitioned global address spaces (PGAS) over cache coherency for reasons of power efficiency and scalability. However, in the absence of cache coherency, there can be a lack of hardware support for one-to-many communication patterns, which are prevalent in some application domains. To address this, we present new hardware primitives for multicast communication in rack-scale manycore systems. These primitives guarantee delivery to both colocated and distributed destinations, and can capture large unstructured communication patterns precisely. As a result, reliable multicast transfers among any number of software tasks, connected in any topology, can be fully offloaded to hardware. We implement the new primitives in a research platform consisting of 50K RISC-V threads distributed over 48 FPGAs, and demonstrate significant performance benefits on a range of applications expressed using a high-level vertex-centric programming model

Genetic evidence that higher central adiposity causes gastro-oesophageal reflux disease: a Mendelian-randomization study

Background: Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) is associated with multiple risk factors but determining causality is difficult. We used a genetic approach [Mendelian randomization (MR)] to identify potential causal modifiable risk factors for GORD. Methods: We used data from 451 097 European participants in the UK Biobank and defined GORD using hospital-defined ICD10 and OPCS4 codes and self-report data (N = 41 024 GORD cases). We tested observational and MR-based associations between GORD and four adiposity measures [body mass index (BMI), waist-hip ratio (WHR), a metabolically favourable higher body-fat percentage and waist circumference], smoking status, smoking frequency and caffeine consumption. Results: Observationally, all adiposity measures were associated with higher odds of GORD. Ever and current smoking were associated with higher odds of GORD. Coffee consumption was associated with lower odds of GORD but, among coffee drinkers, more caffeinated-coffee consumption was associated with higher odds of GORD. Using MR, we provide strong evidence that higher WHR and higher WHR adjusted for BMI lead to GORD. There was weak evidence that higher BMI, body-fat percentage, coffee drinking or smoking caused GORD, but only the observational effects for BMI and body-fat percentage could be excluded. This MR estimated effect for WHR equates to a 1.23-fold higher odds of GORD per 5-cm increase in waist circumference. Conclusions: These results provide strong evidence that a higher waist-hip ratio leads to GORD. Our study suggests that central fat distribution is crucial in causing GORD rather than overall weight.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the Publisher URL to access it via the publisher's site.S.E.J. is funded by the Medical Research Council (grant: MR/M005070/1). A.R.W., T.M.F and H.Y. are supported by the European Research Council grants: SZ-245 50371-GLUCOSEGENES-FP7-IDEAS-ERC and 323195. H.Y. is also funded by the Diabetes UK RD Lawrence fellowship (grant: 17/0005594). R.N.B. is funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society, grant 104150/Z/14/Z. J.T. is supported by an Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) Springboard award, which is supported by the AMS, the Wellcome Trust, GCRF, the Government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial strategy, the British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK (SBF004\1079). N.A.K. declares personal fees from Falk, Takeda and Pharmacosmos; other fees from Janssen; and non-financial support from Janssen, AbbVie and Celltrion outside the submitted work. J.R.G. received honoraria from Falk, AbbVie and Shield therapeutics, outside the submitted work for unrelated topics. T.A. reports grants from AbbVie, MSD, Napp Pharmaceuticals, Celltrion, Pfizer, Janssen and Celgene during this study; personal fees and non-financial support from Immunodiagnostik; personal fees and non-financial support from Napp Pharmaceuticals, AbbVie and MSD; personal fees from Celltrion and Pfizer; grants and personal fees from Takeda; and grants and non-financial support from Tillotts, outside the submitted work.published version, accepted version (12 month embargo), submitted versio

Anaerobic Carbon Monoxide Dehydrogenase Diversity in the Homoacetogenic Hindgut Microbial Communities of Lower Termites and the Wood Roach

Anaerobic carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) is a key enzyme in the Wood-Ljungdahl (acetyl-CoA) pathway for acetogenesis performed by homoacetogenic bacteria. Acetate generated by gut bacteria via the acetyl-CoA pathway provides considerable nutrition to wood-feeding dictyopteran insects making CODH important to the obligate mutualism occurring between termites and their hindgut microbiota. To investigate CODH diversity in insect gut communities, we developed the first degenerate primers designed to amplify cooS genes, which encode the catalytic (β) subunit of anaerobic CODH enzyme complexes. These primers target over 68 million combinations of potential forward and reverse cooS primer-binding sequences. We used the primers to identify cooS genes in bacterial isolates from the hindgut of a phylogenetically lower termite and to sample cooS diversity present in a variety of insect hindgut microbial communities including those of three phylogenetically-lower termites, Zootermopsis nevadensis, Reticulitermes hesperus, and Incisitermes minor, a wood-feeding cockroach, Cryptocercus punctulatus, and an omnivorous cockroach, Periplaneta americana. In total, we sequenced and analyzed 151 different cooS genes. These genes encode proteins that group within one of three highly divergent CODH phylogenetic clades. Each insect gut community contained CODH variants from all three of these clades. The patterns of CODH diversity in these communities likely reflect differences in enzyme or physiological function, and suggest that a diversity of microbial species participate in homoacetogenesis in these communities

A generative inference framework for analysing patterns of cultural change in sparse population data with evidence for fashion trends in LBK culture

Cultural change can be quantified by temporal changes in frequency of different cultural artefacts and it is a central question to identify what underlying cultural transmission processes could have caused the observed frequency changes. Observed changes, however, often describe the dynamics in samples of the population of artefacts, whereas transmission processes act on the whole population. Here we develop a modelling framework aimed at addressing this inference problem. To do so, we firstly generate population structures from which the observed sample could have been drawn randomly and then determine theoretical samples at a later time t2 produced under the assumption that changes in frequencies are caused by a specific transmission process. Thereby we also account for the potential effect of time-averaging processes in the generation of the observed sample. Subsequent statistical comparisons (e.g. using Bayesian inference) of the theoretical and observed samples at t2 can establish which processes could have produced the observed frequency data. In this way, we infer underlying transmission processes directly from available data without any equilibrium assumption. We apply this framework to a dataset describing pottery from settlements of some of the first farmers in Europe (the LBK culture) and conclude that the observed frequency dynamic of different types of decorated pottery is consistent with age-dependent selection, a preference for 'young' pottery types which is potentially indicative of fashion trends

Target, audit and risk assessment cultures in the probation service

This article traces the rise of managerialism in the probation service in England and Wales before exploring the impact of these changes through reference to in-depth observation and interviews in probation. The article considers how national standards affect practice; how audits feature and their impact on accountability; and how the use of risk assessment tools are perceived and resisted in two probation teams in England Wales. The article then turns to changes implemented by the Coalition Government and highlights some tensions between managerialist occupational cultures in probation and what might occur in the near future

Geo-environmental mapping using physiographic analysis: constraints on the evaluation of land instability and groundwater pollution hazards in the Metropolitan District of Campinas, Brazil

Geo-environmental terrain assessments and territorial zoning are useful tools for the formulation and implementation of environmental management instruments (including policy-making, planning, and enforcement of statutory regulations). They usually involve a set of procedures and techniques for delimitation, characterisation and classification of terrain units. However, terrain assessments and zoning exercises are often costly and time-consuming, particularly when encompassing large areas, which in many cases prevent local agencies in developing countries from properly benefiting from such assessments. In the present paper, a low-cost technique based on the analysis of texture of satellite imagery was used for delimitation of terrain units. The delimited units were further analysed in two test areas situated in Southeast Brazil to provide estimates of land instability and the vulnerability of groundwater to pollution hazards. The implementation incorporated procedures for inferring the influences and potential implications of tectonic fractures and other discontinuities on ground behaviour and local groundwater flow. Terrain attributes such as degree of fracturing, bedrock lithology and weathered materials were explored as indicators of ground properties. The paper also discusses constraints on- and limitations of- the approaches taken

Global ecological, social and economic impacts of marine plastic

This research takes a holistic approach to considering the consequences of marine plastic pollution. A semi-systematic literature review of 1191 data points provides the basis to determine the global ecological, social and economic impacts. An ecosystem impact analysis demonstrates that there is global evidence of impact with medium to high frequency on all subjects, with a medium to high degree of irreversibility. A novel translation of these ecological impacts into ecosystem service impacts provides evidence that all ecosystem services are impacted to some extent by the presence of marine plastic, with a reduction in provision predicted for all except one. This reduction in ecosystem service provision is evidenced to have implications for human health and wellbeing, linked particularly to fisheries, heritage and charismatic species, and recreation