Future changes in tropical cyclone activity in the North Indian Ocean projected by high-resolution MRI-AGCMs

Open Access at publisher's web site: http://www.springerlink.com/content/b682734237171631

Determining the neurotransmitter concentration profile at active synapses

Establishing the temporal and concentration profiles of neurotransmitters during synaptic release is an essential step towards understanding the basic properties of inter-neuronal communication in the central nervous system. A variety of ingenious attempts has been made to gain insights into this process, but the general inaccessibility of central synapses, intrinsic limitations of the techniques used, and natural variety of different synaptic environments have hindered a comprehensive description of this fundamental phenomenon. Here, we describe a number of experimental and theoretical findings that has been instrumental for advancing our knowledge of various features of neurotransmitter release, as well as newly developed tools that could overcome some limits of traditional pharmacological approaches and bring new impetus to the description of the complex mechanisms of synaptic transmission

Unpaired mesh-to-image translation for 3D fluorescent microscopy images of neurons

While Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) can now reliably produce realistic images in a multitude of imaging domains, they are ill-equipped to model thin, stochastic textures present in many large 3D fluorescent microscopy (FM) images acquired in biological research. This is especially problematic in neuroscience where the lack of ground truth data impedes the development of automated image analysis algorithms for neurons and neural populations. We therefore propose an unpaired mesh-to-image translation methodology for generating volumetric FM images of neurons from paired ground truths. We start by learning unique FM styles efficiently through a Gramian-based discriminator. Then, we stylize 3D voxelized meshes of previously reconstructed neurons by successively generating slices. As a result, we effectively create a synthetic microscope and can acquire realistic FM images of neurons with control over the image content and imaging configurations. We demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture and its superior performance compared to state-of-the-art image translation architectures through a variety of texture-based metrics, unsupervised segmentation accuracy, and an expert opinion test. In this study, we use 2 synthetic FM datasets and 2 newly acquired FM datasets of retinal neurons

Multi-parallel qPCR provides increased sensitivity and diagnostic breadth for gastrointestinal parasites of humans: field-based inferences on the impact of mass deworming

BACKGROUND: Although chronic morbidity in humans from soil transmitted helminth (STH) infections can be reduced by anthelmintic treatment, inconsistent diagnostic tools make it difficult to reliably measure the impact of deworming programs and often miss light helminth infections. METHODS: Cryopreserved stool samples from 796 people (aged 2-81 years) in four villages in Bungoma County, western Kenya, were assessed using multi-parallel qPCR for 8 parasites and compared to point-of-contact assessments of the same stools by the 2-stool 2-slide Kato-Katz (KK) method. All subjects were treated with albendazole and all Ascaris lumbricoides expelled post-treatment were collected. Three months later, samples from 633 of these people were re-assessed by both qPCR and KK, re-treated with albendazole and the expelled worms collected. RESULTS: Baseline prevalence by qPCR (n = 796) was 17 % for A. lumbricoides, 18 % for Necator americanus, 41 % for Giardia lamblia and 15% for Entamoeba histolytica. The prevalence was <1% for Trichuris trichiura, Ancylostoma duodenale, Strongyloides stercoralis and Cryptosporidium parvum. The sensitivity of qPCR was 98% for A. lumbricoides and N. americanus, whereas KK sensitivity was 70% and 32%, respectively. Furthermore, qPCR detected infections with T. trichiura and S. stercoralis that were missed by KK, and infections with G. lamblia and E. histolytica that cannot be detected by KK. Infection intensities measured by qPCR and by KK were correlated for A. lumbricoides (r = 0.83, p < 0.0001) and N. americanus (r = 0.55, p < 0.0001). The number of A. lumbricoides worms expelled was correlated (p < 0.0001) with both the KK (r = 0.63) and qPCR intensity measurements (r = 0.60). CONCLUSIONS: KK may be an inadequate tool for stool-based surveillance in areas where hookworm or Strongyloides are common or where intensity of helminth infection is low after repeated rounds of chemotherapy. Because deworming programs need to distinguish between populations where parasitic infection is controlled and those where further treatment is required, multi-parallel qPCR (or similar high throughput molecular diagnostics) may provide new and important diagnostic information

Widespread range expansions shape latitudinal variation in insect thermal limits

I thank the authors of previous studies on global variation in insect thermal tolerances who have generously provided open access use of their data sets.Peer reviewedPostprin

Signal Detection on the Battlefield: Priming Self-Protection vs. Revenge-Mindedness Differentially Modulates the Detection of Enemies and Allies

Detecting signs that someone is a member of a hostile outgroup can depend on very subtle cues. How do ecology-relevant motivational states affect such detections? This research investigated the detection of briefly-presented enemy (versus friend) insignias after participants were primed to be self-protective or revenge-minded. Despite being told to ignore the objectively nondiagnostic cues of ethnicity (Arab vs. Western/European), gender, and facial expressions of the targets, both priming manipulations enhanced biases to see Arab males as enemies. They also reduced the ability to detect ingroup enemies, even when these faces displayed angry expressions. These motivations had very different effects on accuracy, however, with self-protection enhancing overall accuracy and revenge-mindedness reducing it. These methods demonstrate the importance of considering how signal detection tasks that occur in motivationally-charged environments depart from results obtained in conventionally motivationally-inert laboratory settings.National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (Grant MH64734)U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Grant W74V8H-05-K-0003)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant BCS-0642873

Genome sequencing of the extinct Eurasian wild aurochs, Bos primigenius, illuminates the phylogeography and evolution of cattle

Background Domestication of the now-extinct wild aurochs, Bos primigenius, gave rise to the two major domestic extant cattle taxa, B. taurus and B. indicus. While previous genetic studies have shed some light on the evolutionary relationships between European aurochs and modern cattle, important questions remain unanswered, including the phylogenetic status of aurochs, whether gene flow from aurochs into early domestic populations occurred, and which genomic regions were subject to selection processes during and after domestication. Here, we address these questions using whole-genome sequencing data generated from an approximately 6,750-year-old British aurochs bone and genome sequence data from 81 additional cattle plus genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data from a diverse panel of 1,225 modern animals. Results Phylogenomic analyses place the aurochs as a distinct outgroup to the domestic B. taurus lineage, supporting the predominant Near Eastern origin of European cattle. Conversely, traditional British and Irish breeds share more genetic variants with this aurochs specimen than other European populations, supporting localized gene flow from aurochs into the ancestors of modern British and Irish cattle, perhaps through purposeful restocking by early herders in Britain. Finally, the functions of genes showing evidence for positive selection in B. taurus are enriched for neurobiology, growth, metabolism and immunobiology, suggesting that these biological processes have been important in the domestication of cattle. Conclusions This work provides important new information regarding the origins and functional evolution of modern cattle, revealing that the interface between early European domestic populations and wild aurochs was significantly more complex than previously thought

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

A shared role for RBF1 and dCAP-D3 in the regulation of transcription with consequences for innate immunity

Previously, we discovered a conserved interaction between RB proteins and the Condensin II protein CAP-D3 that is important for ensuring uniform chromatin condensation during mitotic prophase. The Drosophila melanogaster homologs RBF1 and dCAP-D3 co-localize on non-dividing polytene chromatin, suggesting the existence of a shared, non-mitotic role for these two proteins. Here, we show that the absence of RBF1 and dCAP-D3 alters the expression of many of the same genes in larvae and adult flies. Strikingly, most of the genes affected by the loss of RBF1 and dCAP-D3 are not classic cell cycle genes but are developmentally regulated genes with tissue-specific functions and these genes tend to be located in gene clusters. Our data reveal that RBF1 and dCAP-D3 are needed in fat body cells to activate transcription of clusters of antimicrobial peptide (AMP) genes. AMPs are important for innate immunity, and loss of either dCAP-D3 or RBF1 regulation results in a decrease in the ability to clear bacteria. Interestingly, in the adult fat body, RBF1 and dCAP-D3 bind to regions flanking an AMP gene cluster both prior to and following bacterial infection. These results describe a novel, non-mitotic role for the RBF1 and dCAP-D3 proteins in activation of the Drosophila immune system and suggest dCAP-D3 has an important role at specific subsets of RBF1-dependent genes

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO