Inference of RNA decay rate from transcriptional profiling highlights the regulatory programs of Alzheimer's disease.

The abundance of mRNA is mainly determined by the rates of RNA transcription and decay. Here, we present a method for unbiased estimation of differential mRNA decay rate from RNA-sequencing data by modeling the kinetics of mRNA metabolism. We show that in all primary human tissues tested, and particularly in the central nervous system, many pathways are regulated at the mRNA stability level. We present a parsimonious regulatory model consisting of two RNA-binding proteins and four microRNAs that modulate the mRNA stability landscape of the brain, which suggests a new link between RBFOX proteins and Alzheimer's disease. We show that downregulation of RBFOX1 leads to destabilization of mRNAs encoding for synaptic transmission proteins, which may contribute to the loss of synaptic function in Alzheimer's disease. RBFOX1 downregulation is more likely to occur in older and female individuals, consistent with the association of Alzheimer's disease with age and gender."mRNA abundance is determined by the rates of transcription and decay. Here, the authors propose a method for estimating the rate of differential mRNA decay from RNA-seq data and model mRNA stability in the brain, suggesting a link between mRNA stability and Alzheimer's disease.

Fire retardant foams developed to suppress fuel fires

Heat insulating polyurethane foam retards and suppresses fuel fires. Uniformly dispersed in the foam is a halogenated polymer capable of splitting off hydrogen halide upon heating and charring of the polyurethane

Discovery of 6.035GHz Hydroxyl Maser Flares in IRAS18566+0408

We report the discovery of 6.035GHz hydroxyl (OH) maser flares toward the massive star forming region IRAS18566+0408 (G37.55+0.20), which is the only region known to show periodic formaldehyde (4.8 GHz H2CO) and methanol (6.7 GHz CH3OH) maser flares. The observations were conducted between October 2008 and January 2010 with the 305m Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. We detected two flare events, one in March 2009, and one in September to November 2009. The OH maser flares are not simultaneous with the H2CO flares, but may be correlated with CH3OH flares from a component at corresponding velocities. A possible correlated variability of OH and CH3OH masers in IRAS18566+0408 is consistent with a common excitation mechanism (IR pumping) as predicted by theory.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Severability as Conditionality

The Supreme Court currently operates under the premise that if it finds one part of a law unconstitutional, it can strike down other parts as well. But it is not clear where the Court finds this power to declare laws inseverable. And that lack of clarity has created a doctrinal muddle wherein the Court applies several inconsistent tests. Three such theories are implicit in the current judicial doctrine and academic debate about severability: (1) that it is an equitable remedial power, akin to the power to issue a civil injunction; (2) that it is a variant of intentionalist statutory interpretation, wherein courts strike down further provisions of a partially unconstitutional law so as to preserve the legislators¿ hypothetical intentions; and (3) that it is a judicial contract remedy applied to legislative deals. This Article explores these three theories, teasing out their respective logics and showing that they are implausibly broad and inconsistent with Article III of the Constitution. This Article then develops and defends a fourth, narrower theory: that a court can declare a statute inseverable only where the legislature has made one part of the statute conditional on the continued validity of another

Constitutional Avoidance as Interpretation and as Remedy

In a number of recent landmark decisions, the Supreme Court has used the canon of constitutional avoidance to essentially rewrite laws. Formally, the avoidance canon is understood as a method for resolving interpretive ambiguities: if there are two equally plausible readings of a statute, and one of them raises constitutional concerns, judges are instructed to choose the other one. Yet in challenges to the Affordable Care Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and other major statutes, the Supreme Court has used this canon to adopt interpretations that are not plausible. Jurists, scholars, and legal commentators have criticized these decisions, claiming that they amount to unaccountable judicial lawmaking. These criticisms highlight a basic contradiction in contemporary avoidance doctrine. On the one hand, the avoidance canon is described as an interpretive rule of thumb that guides courts in discerning congressional intent. Yet on the other, the Supreme Court commonly uses the avoidance canon to create statutory meanings that conflict with Congress’s intent, and does so in the name of new constitutional rules that Congress did not foresee. This is not “interpretation” in the conventional sense; it is rewriting in the service of constitutional norm enforcement. This Article mounts a new defense of such rewriting-as-interpretation. It does so by reframing the avoidance canon as two different judicial tools: (1) a canon of interpretation, and (2) a constitutional remedy. The latter of these— avoidance as a constitutional remedy—makes sense of courts’ power to effectively rewrite statutes. A court that finds a statute unconstitutional can creatively reinterpret that statute in a way that changes its meaning in order to fix the constitutional violation, just as it can invalidate statutory language, strike down applications, and impose other kinds of remedies that change the statute’s meaning. This idea is not as unusual as it may seem. Many other countries currently treat avoidance as a constitutional remedy. In the United Kingdom and New Zealand, for example, judges cannot invalidate laws, and so creative reinterpretation of statutes is the only judicial mechanism for remedying violations of constitutional rights. And in Canada, constitutional avoidance doctrine has been divided into an interpretive canon and a remedy, exactly as this Article advocates. Further, the Supreme Court of the United States has effectively treated avoidance as a remedy in two major recent decisions— United States v. Booker and National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius—though it did not acknowledge that it was doing so. Bifurcating avoidance into a canon and a remedy resolves the contradiction between avoidance as an interpretive tool and avoidance as a means of changing the law. It does so by separating out these two functions. The interpretive avoidance canon can be used to resolve true ambiguities through the presumption that Congress does not intend to pass statutes that conflict with preexisting constitutional rules. The reinterpretation remedy, in turn, can be used to change a statute’s meaning after it has been held unconstitutional, and to do so even where the court is announcing a new constitutional rule

EVLA Observations of OH Masers in ON 1

This Letter reports on initial Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) observations of the 6035 MHz masers in ON 1. The EVLA data are of good quality, lending confidence in the new receiver system. Nineteen maser features, including six Zeeman pairs, are detected. The overall distribution of 6035 MHz OH masers is similar to that of the 1665 MHz OH masers. The spatial resolution is sufficient to unambiguously determine that the magnetic field is strong (~ -10 mG) at the location of the blueshifted masers in the north, consistent with Zeeman splitting detected in 13441 MHz OH masers in the same velocity range. Left and right circularly polarized ground-state features dominate in different regions in the north of the source, which may be due to a combination of magnetic field and velocity gradients. The combined distribution of all OH masers toward the south is suggestive of a shock structure of the sort previously seen in W3(OH).Comment: 4 pages using emulateapj.cls including 2 tables and 2 color figure