Rocker jaw: Global context for a Polynesian characteristic

Our goal is to describe the global distribution of the ‘rocker jaw’ variant in human populations. Rocker jaw refers to mandibles that lack the antegonial notch, making them unstable on a flat surface. Data were collected by C.G. Turner II on 9207 individuals from Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and the Americas, and by J.D. Irish on 3526 individuals from North and South Africa. With a focus on Polynesia, where the trait is most common, frequencies are presented for subdivisions of Oceania, Australasia, Eurasia, the Americas, and Africa. While the rocker jaw is a Polynesian characteristic, the trait is found throughout the world. Within major geographic regions, there are interesting contrasts, e.g. (1) the similarity of Jomon and Ainu and their difference from modern Japanese; (2) Aleuts and Northwest Coast Indians are similar and both are distinct from the Inuit and other Native Americans; and (3) North and Sub-Saharan Africans show a regional difference that parallels genetic and dental distinctions. Skeletons in South America that exhibit the rocker jaw have been interpreted as Polynesian voyagers who ventured to the west coast of South America. The rarity of rocker jaw in South American natives supports this view. The rocker jaw can be attributed to the unique basicranium morphology and large upper facial height of Polynesians, which highlights the integrated growth of a functional module (i.e., mastication) of the craniofacial complex. The unusually high frequency of the trait in Polynesians is a product of both function and founder effect/genetic drift

Substantial chest-wall deformity following tissue expansion after radiotherapy

We present the case of a 54-year-old woman who underwent a two-stage breast reconstruction with a tissue expander after sustaining a lumpectomy and local radiotherapy for breast cancer. During expansion, the woman developed an abnormal concave deformity of the chest wall. Although respiratory or aesthetic consequences were expected, our patient reported only pain and was satisfied with the end result. Osteoporosis or local recurrence was excluded as predisposing factors, and radiotherapy was considered to be the causal factor in our patient. On the basis of this finding, we advise surgeons to take the risk of chest-wall deformity into consideration when planning a reconstruction with tissue expanders, especially in patients with a history of radiotherapy, and we recommend an alternative reconstructive method in this group of patients

Comb-Based Radio-Frequency Photonic Filters with Rapid Tunability and High Selectivity

Photonic technologies have received considerable attention for enhancement of radio-frequency (RF) electrical systems, including high-frequency analog signal transmission, control of phased arrays, analog-to-digital conversion, and signal processing. Although the potential of radio-frequency photonics for implementation of tunable electrical filters over broad RF bandwidths has been much discussed, realization of programmable filters with highly selective filter lineshapes and rapid reconfigurability has faced significant challenges. A new approach for RF photonic filters based on frequency combs offers a potential route to simultaneous high stopband attenuation, fast tunability, and bandwidth reconfiguration. In one configuration tuning of the RF passband frequency is demonstrated with unprecedented (~40 ns) speed by controlling the optical delay between combs. In a second, fixed filter configuration, cascaded four-wave mixing simultaneously broadens and smoothes comb spectra, resulting in Gaussian RF filter lineshapes exhibiting extremely high (>60 dB) main lobe to sidelobe suppression ratio and (>70 dB) stopband attenuation.Comment: Updated the submission with the most recent version of the pape

Infections in early life and childhood leukaemia risk: a UK case–control study of general practitioner records

We investigated infections in early life (diagnosed in general practice) and subsequent risk of childhood leukaemia in the UK General Practice Research Database (GPRD). All children born at GPRD practices and subsequently diagnosed with leukaemia were identified as cases and were individually matched (on year of birth, sex and practice) to up to 20 controls. The final analysis included 162 leukaemia cases and 2215 matched controls. Conditional logistic regression demonstrated no evidence that children with one or more recorded infection in the first year of life had a reduced risk of leukaemia (OR=1.05, 95%CI 0.69, 1.59; P=0.83) or acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL; OR=1.05, 95%CI 0.64–1.74; P=0.84). Our study provides no support for the Greaves hypothesis, which proposes that reduced or delayed exposure to infections in early life increases the risk of childhood ALL

Association of early life factors and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in childhood: historical cohort study

In a historical cohort study of all singleton live births in Northern Ireland from 1971–86 (n=434 933) associations between early life factors and childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia were investigated. Multivariable analyses showed a positive association between high paternal age (⩾35 years) and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (relative risk=1.49; 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.96–2.31) but no association with maternal age. High birth weight (⩾3500 g) was positively associated with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (relative risk=1.66; 95% CI=1.18–2.33). Children of mothers with a previous miscarriage or increased gestation (⩾40 weeks) had reduced risks of ALL (respective relative risks=0.49; 95% CI=0.29–0.80, and 0.67; 95% CI=0.48–0.94). Children born into more crowded households (⩾1 person per room) had substantially lower risks than children born into less crowded homes with also some evidence of a lower risk for children born into homes with three adults (relative risks=0.56; 95% CI=0.35–0.91 and 0.58; 95% CI=0.21–1.61 respectively). These findings indicate that several early life factors, including living conditions in childhood and maternal miscarriage history, influence risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in childhood

Probing host pathogen cross-talk by transcriptional profiling of both Mycobacterium tuberculosis and infected human dendritic cells and macrophages

This study provides the proof of principle that probing the host and the microbe transcriptomes simultaneously is a valuable means to accessing unique information on host pathogen interactions. Our results also underline the extraordinary plasticity of host cell and pathogen responses to infection, and provide a solid framework to further understand the complex mechanisms involved in immunity to M. tuberculosis and in mycobacterial adaptation to different intracellular environments

Three little pieces for computer and relativity

Numerical relativity has made big strides over the last decade. A number of problems that have plagued the field for years have now been mostly solved. This progress has transformed numerical relativity into a powerful tool to explore fundamental problems in physics and astrophysics, and I present here three representative examples. These "three little pieces" reflect a personal choice and describe work that I am particularly familiar with. However, many more examples could be made.Comment: 42 pages, 11 figures. Plenary talk at "Relativity and Gravitation: 100 Years after Einstein in Prague", June 25 - 29, 2012, Prague, Czech Republic. To appear in the Proceedings (Edition Open Access). Collects results appeared in journal articles [72,73, 122-124

A Rapid Subtractive Immunization Method to Prepare Discriminatory Monoclonal Antibodies for Food E. coli O157:H7 Contamination

To detect food E. coli O157:H7 contamination rapidly and accurately, it is essential to prepare high specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against the pathogen. Cyclophosphamide (Cy)-mediated subtractive immunization strategy was performed in mice to generate mAbs that react with E. coli O157:H7, but not with other affiliated bacteria. Specificity of 19 mAbs was evaluated by ELISA and/or dot-immunogold filtration assay (DIGFA). Immunogloubin typing, affinity and binding antigens of 5 selected mAbs were also analysed. MAbs 1D8, 4A7, 5A2 were found to have high reactivity with E. coli O157:H7 and no cross-reactivity with 80 other strains of bacteria including Salmonella sp., Shigella sp., Proteus sp., Yersinia enterocolitica, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Citrobacter freundii and other non-E. coli O157:H7 enteric bacteria. Their ascetic titers reached 1∶106 with E. coli O157:H7 and affinity constants ranged from 1.57×1010 to 2.79×1010 L/mol. The antigens recognized by them were different localized proteins. Furthermore, immune-colloidal gold probe coated with mAb 5A2 could specifically distinguish minced beef contaminated by E. coli O157:H7 from 84 other bacterial contaminations. The Cy-mediated subtractive immunization procedure coupled with hybridoma technology is a rapid and efficient approach to prepare discriminatory mAbs for detection of E. coli O157:H7 contamination in food

Biodiversity Loss and the Taxonomic Bottleneck: Emerging Biodiversity Science

Human domination of the Earth has resulted in dramatic changes to global and local patterns of biodiversity. Biodiversity is critical to human sustainability because it drives the ecosystem services that provide the core of our life-support system. As we, the human species, are the primary factor leading to the decline in biodiversity, we need detailed information about the biodiversity and species composition of specific locations in order to understand how different species contribute to ecosystem services and how humans can sustainably conserve and manage biodiversity. Taxonomy and ecology, two fundamental sciences that generate the knowledge about biodiversity, are associated with a number of limitations that prevent them from providing the information needed to fully understand the relevance of biodiversity in its entirety for human sustainability: (1) biodiversity conservation strategies that tend to be overly focused on research and policy on a global scale with little impact on local biodiversity; (2) the small knowledge base of extant global biodiversity; (3) a lack of much-needed site-specific data on the species composition of communities in human-dominated landscapes, which hinders ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation; (4) biodiversity studies with a lack of taxonomic precision; (5) a lack of taxonomic expertise and trained taxonomists; (6) a taxonomic bottleneck in biodiversity inventory and assessment; and (7) neglect of taxonomic resources and a lack of taxonomic service infrastructure for biodiversity science. These limitations are directly related to contemporary trends in research, conservation strategies, environmental stewardship, environmental education, sustainable development, and local site-specific conservation. Today’s biological knowledge is built on the known global biodiversity, which represents barely 20% of what is currently extant (commonly accepted estimate of 10 million species) on planet Earth. Much remains unexplored and unknown, particularly in hotspots regions of Africa, South Eastern Asia, and South and Central America, including many developing or underdeveloped countries, where localized biodiversity is scarcely studied or described. ‘‘Backyard biodiversity’’, defined as local biodiversity near human habitation, refers to the natural resources and capital for ecosystem services at the grassroots level, which urgently needs to be explored, documented, and conserved as it is the backbone of sustainable economic development in these countries. Beginning with early identification and documentation of local flora and fauna, taxonomy has documented global biodiversity and natural history based on the collection of ‘‘backyard biodiversity’’ specimens worldwide. However, this branch of science suffered a continuous decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, and has now reached a point of potential demise. At present there are very few professional taxonomists and trained local parataxonomists worldwide, while the need for, and demands on, taxonomic services by conservation and resource management communities are rapidly increasing. Systematic collections, the material basis of biodiversity information, have been neglected and abandoned, particularly at institutions of higher learning. Considering the rapid increase in the human population and urbanization, human sustainability requires new conceptual and practical approaches to refocusing and energizing the study of the biodiversity that is the core of natural resources for sustainable development and biotic capital for sustaining our life-support system. In this paper we aim to document and extrapolate the essence of biodiversity, discuss the state and nature of taxonomic demise, the trends of recent biodiversity studies, and suggest reasonable approaches to a biodiversity science to facilitate the expansion of global biodiversity knowledge and to create useful data on backyard biodiversity worldwide towards human sustainability

Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory

This review covers the main aspects of black hole accretion disk theory. We begin with the view that one of the main goals of the theory is to better understand the nature of black holes themselves. In this light we discuss how accretion disks might reveal some of the unique signatures of strong gravity: the event horizon, the innermost stable circular orbit, and the ergosphere. We then review, from a first-principles perspective, the physical processes at play in accretion disks. This leads us to the four primary accretion disk models that we review: Polish doughnuts (thick disks), Shakura-Sunyaev (thin) disks, slim disks, and advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs). After presenting the models we discuss issues of stability, oscillations, and jets. Following our review of the analytic work, we take a parallel approach in reviewing numerical studies of black hole accretion disks. We finish with a few select applications that highlight particular astrophysical applications: measurements of black hole mass and spin, black hole vs. neutron star accretion disks, black hole accretion disk spectral states, and quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs).Comment: 91 pages, 23 figures, final published version available at http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2013-