258 research outputs found
Curated genome annotation of Oryza sativa ssp. japonica and comparative genome analysis with Arabidopsis thaliana
We present here the annotation of the complete genome of rice Oryza sativa L. ssp. japonica cultivar Nipponbare. All functional annotations for proteins and non-protein-coding RNA (npRNA) candidates were manually curated. Functions were identified or inferred in 19,969 (70%) of the proteins, and 131 possible npRNAs (including 58 antisense transcripts) were found. Almost 5000 annotated protein-coding genes were found to be disrupted in insertional mutant lines, which will accelerate future experimental validation of the annotations. The rice loci were determined by using cDNA sequences obtained from rice and other representative cereals. Our conservative estimate based on these loci and an extrapolation suggested that the gene number of rice is ~32,000, which is smaller than previous estimates. We conducted comparative analyses between rice and Arabidopsis thaliana and found that both genomes possessed several lineage-specific genes, which might account for the observed differences between these species, while they had similar sets of predicted functional domains among the protein sequences. A system to control translational efficiency seems to be conserved across large evolutionary distances. Moreover, the evolutionary process of protein-coding genes was examined. Our results suggest that natural selection may have played a role for duplicated genes in both species, so that duplication was suppressed or favored in a manner that depended on the function of a gene
LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint
magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science
opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field
of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over
20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with
fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a
total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic
parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book
discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a
broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and
outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies,
the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local
Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the
properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then
turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to
z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and
baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to
constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at
http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo
Working in the Public Interest Law Conference
The two-day conference included a variety of panel discussions and roundtables on such topics as: civil liberties; race and the criminal justice system; decriminalizing mental illness; funding public defender systems; the media\u27s role in the law; immigration; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth in state sponsored institutions; environmental justice; and women\u27s reproductive rights
Dipeptidyl peptidase-1 inhibition in patients hospitalised with COVID-19: a multicentre, double-blind, randomised, parallel-group, placebo-controlled trial
Background
Neutrophil serine proteases are involved in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 and increased serine protease activity has been reported in severe and fatal infection. We investigated whether brensocatib, an inhibitor of dipeptidyl peptidase-1 (DPP-1; an enzyme responsible for the activation of neutrophil serine proteases), would improve outcomes in patients hospitalised with COVID-19.
Methods
In a multicentre, double-blind, randomised, parallel-group, placebo-controlled trial, across 14 hospitals in the UK, patients aged 16 years and older who were hospitalised with COVID-19 and had at least one risk factor for severe disease were randomly assigned 1:1, within 96 h of hospital admission, to once-daily brensocatib 25 mg or placebo orally for 28 days. Patients were randomly assigned via a central web-based randomisation system (TruST). Randomisation was stratified by site and age (65 years or ≥65 years), and within each stratum, blocks were of random sizes of two, four, or six patients. Participants in both groups continued to receive other therapies required to manage their condition. Participants, study staff, and investigators were masked to the study assignment. The primary outcome was the 7-point WHO ordinal scale for clinical status at day 29 after random assignment. The intention-to-treat population included all patients who were randomly assigned and met the enrolment criteria. The safety population included all participants who received at least one dose of study medication. This study was registered with the ISRCTN registry, ISRCTN30564012.
Findings
Between June 5, 2020, and Jan 25, 2021, 406 patients were randomly assigned to brensocatib or placebo; 192 (47·3%) to the brensocatib group and 214 (52·7%) to the placebo group. Two participants were excluded after being randomly assigned in the brensocatib group (214 patients included in the placebo group and 190 included in the brensocatib group in the intention-to-treat population). Primary outcome data was unavailable for six patients (three in the brensocatib group and three in the placebo group). Patients in the brensocatib group had worse clinical status at day 29 after being randomly assigned than those in the placebo group (adjusted odds ratio 0·72 [95% CI 0·57–0·92]). Prespecified subgroup analyses of the primary outcome supported the primary results. 185 participants reported at least one adverse event; 99 (46%) in the placebo group and 86 (45%) in the brensocatib group. The most common adverse events were gastrointestinal disorders and infections. One death in the placebo group was judged as possibly related to study drug.
Interpretation
Brensocatib treatment did not improve clinical status at day 29 in patients hospitalised with COVID-19
'A Divided Soul'? the Cold War odyssey of O. John Rogge
In 1948 O. John Rogge, a prominent American liberal, was a contender for the Progressive Party's vice-presidential nomination. He was then a man of the Left: an activist in the international peace movement, a champion of radical causes and a defender of organizations deemed subversive by the Department of Justice. In 1951 he persuaded his\ud
client to turn government witness in the Rosenberg espionage trial and was converted into 'Rogge the Rat' by his former allies. In tracing this transformation, this paper will argue that Rogge was neither a typical Cold War apostate nor a typical anti-Stalinist intellectual. Instead, his political trajectory was the outcome of a failed attempt to steer global politics away from Cold War dichotomies. The paper will therefore throw new light\ud
both on the movement to find a 'third way' between East and West, and on the phenomenon of non-communist Left activism during the early Cold War
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