Design, construction and evaluation of a 12.2 GHz, 4.0 kW-CW high efficiency klystron amplifier

An analytical and experimental program is described, for studying design techniques for optimizing the conversion efficiency of klystron amplifiers, and to utilize these techniques in the development and fabrication of an X-band 4 kW cw klystron, for use in satellite-borne television broadcast transmitters. The design is based on a technique for increasing the RF beam current by using the second harmonic space charge forces in the bunched beam. Experimental analysis was also made of a method to enhance circuit efficiency in the klystron cavities. The design incorporates a collector which is demountable from the tube to facilitate multistage depressed collector experiments employing an axisymmetric, electrostatic collector for linear beam microwave tubes

Trends in physical activity and sedentary behaviour in adolescence: ethnic and socioeconomic differences

Objective: To assess developmental trends in physical activity and sedentary behaviour in British adolescents in relation to sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES).Design: A 5-year longitudinal study of a diverse cohort of students aged 11 - 12 years at baseline in 1999.Setting: 36 London schools sampled using a stratified random sampling procedure.Participants: A total of 5863 students categorised as white, black or Asian, and stratified for SES using the Townsend Index.Main outcome measures: Number of days per week of vigorous activity leading to sweating and breathing hard. Hours of sedentary behaviour, including watching television and playing video games. Data were analysed using multilevel, linear, mixed models.Results: Marked reductions in physical activity and increases in sedentary behaviour were noticed between ages 11 - 12 and 15 - 16 years. Boys were more active than girls, and the decline in physical activity was greater in girls (46% reduction) than in boys (23%). Asian students were less active than whites, and this was also true of black girls but not boys. Black students were more sedentary than white students. Levels of sedentary behaviour were greater in respondents from lower SES. Most differences between ethnic and SES groups were present at age 11 years, and did not evolve over the teenage years.Conclusions: Physical activity declines and sedentary behaviour becomes more common during adolescence. Ethnic and SES differences are observed in physical activity and sedentary behaviour in British youth that anticipate adult variations in adiposity and cardiovascular disease risk. These are largely established by age 11 - 12 years, so reversing these patterns requires earlier intervention

Active cortical networks promote shunting fast synaptic inhibition in vivo

Fast synaptic inhibition determines neuronal response properties in the mammalian brain and is mediated by chloride-permeable ionotropic GABA-A receptors (GABAARs). Despite their fundamental role, it is still not known how GABAARs signal in the intact brain. Here, we use in vivo gramicidin recordings to investigate synaptic GABAAR signaling in mouse cortical pyramidal neurons under conditions that preserve native transmembrane chloride gradients. In anesthetized cortex, synaptic GABAARs exert classic hyperpolarizing effects. In contrast, GABAAR-mediated synaptic signaling in awake cortex is found to be predominantly shunting. This is due to more depolarized GABAAR equilibrium potentials (EGABAAR), which are shown to result from the high levels of synaptic activity that characterize awake cortical networks. Synaptic EGABAAR observed in awake cortex facilitates the desynchronizing effects of inhibitory inputs upon local networks, which increases the flexibility of spiking responses to external inputs. Our findings therefore suggest that GABAAR signaling adapts to optimize cortical functions

Quantification of harms in cancer screening trials: literature review

Objectives To assess how often harm is quantified in randomised trials of cancer screening. Design Two authors independently extracted data on harms from randomised cancer screening trials. Binary outcomes were described as proportions and continuous outcomes with medians and interquartile ranges. Data sources For cancer screening previously assessed in a Cochrane review, we identified trials from their reference lists and updated the search in CENTRAL. For cancer screening not assessed in a Cochrane review, we searched CENTRAL, Medline, and Embase. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Randomised trials that assessed the efficacy of cancer screening for reducing incidence of cancer, cancer specific mortality, and/or all cause mortality. Data extraction Two reviewers independently assessed articles for eligibility. Two reviewers, who were blinded to the identity of the study's authors, assessed whether absolute numbers or incidence rates of outcomes related to harm were provided separately for the screening and control groups. The outcomes were false positive findings, overdiagnosis, negative psychosocial consequences, somatic complications, invasive follow-up procedures, all cause mortality, and withdrawals because of adverse events. Results Out of 4590 articles assessed, 198 (57 trials, 10 screening technologies) matched the inclusion criteria. False positive findings were quantified in two of 57 trials (4\%, 95\% confidence interval 0\% to 12\%), overdiagnosis in four (7\%, 2\% to 18\%), negative psychosocial consequences in five (9\%, 3\% to 20\%), somatic complications in 11 (19\%, 10\% to 32\%), use of invasive follow-up procedures in 27 (47\%, 34\% to 61\%), all cause mortality in 34 (60\%, 46\% to 72\%), and withdrawals because of adverse effects in one trial (2\%, 0\% to 11\%). The median percentage of space in the results section that reported harms was 12\% (interquartile range 2-19\%). Conclusions Cancer screening trials seldom quantify the harms of screening. Of the 57 cancer screening trials examined, the most important harms of screening-overdiagnosis and false positive findings-were quantified in only 7\% and 4\%, respectively.publishersversionpublishe

Seagrass rhizosphere microenvironment alters plant-associated microbial community composition

© 2018 Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd The seagrass rhizosphere harbors dynamic microenvironments, where plant-driven gradients of O2 and dissolved organic carbon form microhabitats that select for distinct microbial communities. To examine how seagrass-mediated alterations of rhizosphere geochemistry affect microbial communities at the microscale level, we applied 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of artificial sediments surrounding the meristematic tissues of the seagrass Zostera muelleri together with microsensor measurements of the chemical conditions at the basal leaf meristem (BLM). Radial O2 loss (ROL) from the BLM led to ∼ 300 µm thick oxic microzones, wherein pronounced decreases in H2S and pH occurred. Significantly higher relative abundances of sulphate-reducing bacteria were observed around the meristematic tissues compared to the bulk sediment, especially around the root apical meristems (RAM; ∼ 57% of sequences). Within oxic microniches, elevated abundances of sulphide-oxidizing bacteria were observed compared to the bulk sediment and around the RAM. However, sulphide oxidisers within the oxic microzone did not enhance sediment detoxification, as rates of H2S re-oxidation here were similar to those observed in a pre-sterilized root/rhizome environment. Our results provide novel insights into how chemical and microbiological processes in the seagrass rhizosphere modulate plant-microbe interactions potentially affecting seagrass health

Spatially Confined Redox Chemistry in Periodic Mesoporous Hydridosilica-Nanosilver Grown in Reducing Nanopores

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Periodic mesoporous hydridosilica, PMHS, is shown for the first time to function as both a host and a mild reducing agent toward noble metal ions. In this archetypical study, PMHS microspheres react with aqueous Ag(I) solutions to form Ag(0) nanopartides housed in different pore locations of the mesostructure. The dominant reductive nucleation and growth process involves groups located within the pore walls and yields molecular scale Ag(0) nanoclusters trapped and stabilized in the pore walls of the PMHS microspheres that emit orange-red photoluminescence. Lesser processes initiated with pore surface SiH groups produce some larger spherical and worm-shaped Ag(0) nanoparticles within the pore voids and on the outer surfaces of the PMHS microspheres. The intrinsic reducing power demonstrated in this work for the pore walls of PMHS speaks well for a new genre of chemistry that benefits from the mesoscopic confinement of Si-H groups

Bayesian mixed-effects inference on classification performance in hierarchical data sets

Classification algorithms are frequently used on data with a natural hierarchical structure. For instance, classifiers are often trained and tested on trial-wise measurements, separately for each subject within a group. One important question is how classification outcomes observed in individual subjects can be generalized to the population from which the group was sampled. To address this question, this paper introduces novel statistical models that are guided by three desiderata. First, all models explicitly respect the hierarchical nature of the data, that is, they are mixed-effects models that simultaneously account for within-subjects (fixed-effects) and across-subjects (random-effects) variance components. Second, maximum-likelihood estimation is replaced by full Bayesian inference in order to enable natural regularization of the estimation problem and to afford conclusions in terms of posterior probability statements. Third, inference on classification accuracy is complemented by inference on the balanced accuracy, which avoids inflated accuracy estimates for imbalanced data sets. We introduce hierarchical models that satisfy these criteria and demonstrate their advantages over conventional methods usingMCMC implementations for model inversion and model selection on both synthetic and empirical data. We envisage that our approach will improve the sensitivity and validity of statistical inference in future hierarchical classification studies. © 2012

Fixed and flexible: coexistence of obligate and facultative migratory strategies in a freshwater fish

Migration is an important event in many animal life histories, but the degree to which individual animals participate in seasonal migrations often varies within populations. The powerful ecological and evolutionary consequences of such partial migration are now well documented, but the underlying mechanisms are still heavily debated. One potential mechanism of partial migration is between-individual variation in body condition, where animals in poor condition cannot pay the costs of migration and hence adopt a resident strategy. However, underlying intrinsic traits may overrule such environmental influence, dictating individual consistency in migratory patterns. Unfortunately, field tests of individual consistency compared to the importance of individual condition on migratory propensity are rare. Here we analyse 6 years of field data on roach migration, gathered by tagging almost 3000 individual fish and monitoring their seasonal migrations over extended periods of time. Our aims were to provide a field test of the role of condition in wild fish for migratory decisions, and also to assess individual consistency in migratory tendency. Our analyses reveal that (1) migratory strategy, in terms of migration/residency, is highly consistent within individuals over time and (2) there is a positive relationship between condition and the probability of migration, but only in individuals that adopt a migratory strategy at some point during their lives. However, life-long residents do not differ in condition to migrants, hence body condition is only a good predictor of migratory tendency in fish with migratory phenotypes and not a more general determinant of migratory tendency for the population. As resident individuals can achieve very high body condition and still remain resident, we suggest that our data provides some of the first field evidence to show that both facultative and obligate strategies can co-exist within populations of migratory animals

Functional insights from the structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit and its interactions with antibiotics

The 30S ribosomal subunit has two primary functions in protein synthesis. It discriminates against aminoacyl transfer RNAs that do not match the codon of messenger RNA, thereby ensuring accuracy in translation of the genetic message in a process called decoding. Also, it works with the 50S subunit to move the tRNAs and associated mRNA by precisely one codon, in a process called translocation. Here we describe the functional implications of the high-resolution 30S crystal structure presented in the accompanying paper, and infer details of the interactions between the 30S subunit and its tRNA and mRNA ligands. We also describe the crystal structure of the 30S subunit complexed with the antibiotics paromomycin, streptomycin and spectinomycin, which interfere with decoding and translocation. This work reveals the structural basis for the action of these antibiotics, and leads to a model for the role of the universally conserved 16S RNA residues A1492 and A1493 in the decoding process

Periodic Mesoporous Hydridosilica-Synthesis of an "Impossible" Material and its Thermal Transformation into Brightly Photoluminescent Periodic Mesoporous Nanocrystal Silicon-Silica Composite

Cataloged from PDF version of article.There has always been a fascination with "impossible" compounds, ones that do not break any rules of chemical bonding or valence but whose structures are unstable and do not exist. This instability can usually be rationalized in terms of chemical or physical restrictions associated with valence electron shells, multiple bonding, oxidation states, catenation, and the inert pair effect. In the pursuit of these "impossible" materials, appropriate conditions have sometimes been found to overcome these instabilities and synthesize missing compounds, yet for others these tricks have yet to be uncovered and the materials remain elusive. In the scientifically and technologically important field of periodic mesoporous silicas (PMS), one such "impossible" material is periodic mesoporous hydridosilica (meso-HSiO1.5). It is the archetype of a completely interrupted silica open framework material: its pore walls are comprised of a three-connected three-dimensional network that should be so thermodynamically unstable that any mesopores present would immediately collapse upon removal of the mesopore template. In this study we show that meso-HSiO1.5 can be synthesized by template-directed self-assembly of HSi(OEt)3 under aqueous acid-catalyzed conditions and after template extraction remains stable to 300 °C. Above this temperature, bond redistribution reactions initiate a metamorphic transformation which eventually yields periodic mesoporous nanocrystalline silicon-silica, meso-ncSi/SiO2, a nanocomposite material in which brightly photoluminescent silicon nanocrystallites are embedded within a silica matrix throughout the mesostructure. The integration of the properties of silicon nanocrystallinity with silica mesoporosity provides a wealth of new opportunities for emerging nanotechnologies. © 2011 American Chemical Society