Saxon and Medieval Settlement on the Northern Edge of Wimborne Minster, Dorset

An excavation on the northern edge of Wimborne Minster revealed elements of a middle to late Saxon and medieval rural settlement fronting onto the west side of the road that leads north out of the town. The Saxon phase comprised a number of rectangular enclosures flanking the road, within and to the west of which were numerous pits and postholes as well as a number of features probably related to industrial activity, including iron smelting. Although no clear structures were identified, the material recovered from the features include Saxon pottery, animal bone, and charred crop remains indicative of settlement within a mixed agricultural economy. Radiocarbon dating of cereal grain from four features gave date ranges in the early/middle and middle/late Saxon periods. The enclosures were subsequently extended during the late Saxon/medieval period, with pottery indicating occupation possibly continuing into the 13th–14th centuries. The site also produced very limited evidence of prehistoric and Romano-British activity

Protocol for a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of grass allergen immunotherapy tablet for seasonal allergic rhinitis: time course of nasal, cutaneous and immunological outcomes

BACKGROUND: Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis is characterised by inflammation of the nasal mucosa upon exposure to common aeroallergens, affecting up to 20-25 % of the population. For those patients whose symptoms are not controlled by standard medical treatment, allergen specific immunotherapy is a therapeutic alternative. Although several studies have shown changes in immunologic responses as well as long term tolerance following treatment with a sublingual allergy immunotherapy tablet, a detailed time course of the early mechanistic changes of local and systemic T and B cell responses and the effects on B cell repertoire in the nasal mucosa have not been fully examined. METHODS/DESIGN: This is a randomized, double-blind, single-centre, placebo controlled, two arm time course study based in the United Kingdom comparing sublingual allergy immunotherapy tablet (GRAZAX(®), ALK-Abello Horsholm, Denmark) plus standard treatment with placebo plus standard treatment. Up to 50 moderate to severe grass pollen allergic participants will be enrolled to ensure randomisation of at least 44. Further, we shall enrol 20 non-atopic volunteers. Screening will be completed before eligible atopic participants are randomised to one of the two treatment arms in a 1 to 1 ratio. The primary endpoint will be the total nasal symptom score assessed over 60 min following grass pollen nasal allergen challenge after 12 months of treatment. Clinical assessments and/or mechanistic analyses on blood, nasal fluid, brushing and biopsies will be performed at baseline at 1, 2, 3, 4 (coinciding with the peak pollen season), 6 and 12 months of treatment. After 12 months of treatment, unblinding will take place. Those atopic participants receiving active treatment will continue therapy for another 12 months followed by a post treatment phase of 12 months. Assessments and collection of biologic samples from these participants will take place again at 24 and at 36 months from the start of treatment. The 20 healthy, non-atopic controls will undergo screening and one visit only coinciding with the 12 month visit for the atopic participants. DISCUSSION: The trial will end in April 2017. The trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov and the trial identifying number is NCT02005627. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Primary Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov, Trial Identifying number: NCT02005627, Secondary identifying numbers: EudraCT number: 2013-003732-72 REC: 13/EM/0351, Imperial College London (Sponsor): 13IC0847, Protocol Version 6.0, Date: 16.05.2014

Australian Sphingidae – DNA Barcodes Challenge Current Species Boundaries and Distributions

© 2014 Rougerie et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article

Cell Cycle-Related Cyclin B1 Quantification

To obtain non-relative measures of cell proteins, purified preparations of the same proteins are used as standards in Western blots. We have previously quantified SV40 large T antigen expressed over a several fold range in different cell lines and correlated the average number of molecules to average fluorescence obtained by cytometry and determined cell cycle phase related expression by calculation from multi-parametric cytometry data. Using a modified approach, we report quantification of endogenous cyclin B1 and generation of the cell cycle time related expression profile.Recombinant cyclin B1 was purified from a baculovirus lysate using an antibody affinity column and concentrated. We created fixed cell preparations from nocodazole-treated (high cyclin B1) and serum starved (low cyclin B1) PC3 cells that were either lyophilized (for preservation) or solubilized. The lysates and purified cyclin B1 were subjected to Western blotting; the cell preparations were subjected to cytometry, and fluorescence was correlated to molecules. Three untreated cell lines (K562, HeLa, and RKO) were prepared for cytometry without lyophilization and also prepared for Western blotting. These were quantified by Western blotting and by cytometry using the standard cell preparations.The standard cell preparations had 1.5 x 10(5) to 2.5 x 10(6) molecules of cyclin B1 per cell on average (i.e., 16-fold range). The average coefficient of variation was 24%. Fluorescence varied 12-fold. The relationship between molecules/cell (Western blot) and immunofluorescence (cytometry) was linear (r(2) = 0.87). Average cyclin B1 levels for the three untreated cell lines determined by Western blotting and cytometry agreed within a factor of 2. The non-linear rise in cyclin B1 in S phase was quantified from correlated plots of cyclin B1 and DNA content. The peak levels achieved in G2 were similar despite differences in lineage, growth conditions, and rates of increase through the cell cycle (range: 1.6-2.2 x 10(6) molecules per cell).Net cyclin B1 expression begins in G1 in human somatic cells lines; increases non-linearly with variation in rates of accumulation, but peaks at similar peak values in different cell lines growing under different conditions. This suggests tight quantitative end point control

Genotype-by-Environment Interactions and Adaptation to Local Temperature Affect Immunity and Fecundity in Drosophila melanogaster

Natural populations of most organisms harbor substantial genetic variation for resistance to infection. The continued existence of such variation is unexpected under simple evolutionary models that either posit direct and continuous natural selection on the immune system or an evolved life history “balance” between immunity and other fitness traits in a constant environment. However, both local adaptation to heterogeneous environments and genotype-by-environment interactions can maintain genetic variation in a species. In this study, we test Drosophila melanogaster genotypes sampled from tropical Africa, temperate northeastern North America, and semi-tropical southeastern North America for resistance to bacterial infection and fecundity at three different environmental temperatures. Environmental temperature had absolute effects on all traits, but there were also marked genotype-by-environment interactions that may limit the global efficiency of natural selection on both traits. African flies performed more poorly than North American flies in both immunity and fecundity at the lowest temperature, but not at the higher temperatures, suggesting that the African population is maladapted to low temperature. In contrast, there was no evidence for clinal variation driven by thermal adaptation within North America for either trait. Resistance to infection and reproductive success were generally uncorrelated across genotypes, so this study finds no evidence for a fitness tradeoff between immunity and fecundity under the conditions tested. Both local adaptation to geographically heterogeneous environments and genotype-by-environment interactions may explain the persistence of genetic variation for resistance to infection in natural populations

Dynamic Epitope Expression from Static Cytometry Data: Principles and Reproducibility

Background: An imprecise quantitative sense for the oscillating levels of proteins and their modifications, interactions, and translocations as a function of the cell cycle is fundamentally important for a cartoon/narrative understanding for how the cell cycle works. Mathematical modeling of the same cartoon/narrative models would be greatly enhanced by an openended methodology providing precise quantification of many proteins and their modifications, etc. Here we present methodology that fulfills these features. Methodology: Multiparametric flow cytometry was performed on Molt4 cells to measure cyclins A2 and B1, phospho-S10histone H3, DNA content, and light scatter (cell size). The resulting 5 dimensional data were analyzed as a series of bivariate plots to isolate the data as segments of an N-dimensional ‘‘worm’ ’ through the data space. Sequential, unidirectional regions of the data were used to assemble expression profiles for each parameter as a function of cell frequency. Results: Analysis of synthesized data in which the true values where known validated the approach. Triplicate experiments demonstrated exceptional reproducibility. Comparison of three triplicate experiments stained by two methods (single cyclin or dual cyclin measurements with common DNA and phospho-histone H3 measurements) supported the feasibility of combining an unlimited number of epitopes through this methodology. The sequential degradations of cyclin A2 followed by cyclin B1 followed by de-phosphorylation of histone H3 were precisely mapped. Finally, a two phase expression rat

Quantifying measures to limit wind driven resuspension of sediments for improvement of the ecological quality in some shallow Dutch lakes

Although phosphorus loadings are considered the main pressure for most shallow lakes, wind-driven resuspension can cause additional problems for these aquatic ecosystems. We quantified the potential effectiveness of measures to reduce the contribution of resuspended sediments, resulting from wind action, to the overall light attenuation for three comparable shallow peat lakes with poor ecological status in the Netherlands: Loosdrecht, Nieuwkoop, and Reeuwijk (1.8–2.7 m depth, 1.6–2.5 km fetch). These measures are: 1. wave reducing barriers, 2. water level fluctuations, 3. capping of the sediment with sand, and 4. combinations of above. Critical shear stress of the sediments for resuspension (Vcrit), size distribution, and optical properties of the suspended material were quantified in the field (June 2009) and laboratory. Water quality monitoring data (2002–2009) showed that light attenuation by organic suspended matter in all lakes is high. Spatial modeling of the impact of these measures showed that in Lake Loosdrecht limiting wave action can have significant effects (reductions from 6% exceedance to 2% exceedance of Vcrit), whereas in Lake Nieuwkoop and Lake Reeuwijk this is less effective. The depth distribution and shape of Lake Nieuwkoop and Lake Reeuwijk limit the role of wind-driven resuspension in the total suspended matter concentration. Although the lakes are similar in general appearance (origin, size, and depth range) measures suitable to improve their ecological status differ. This calls for care when defining the programme of measures to improve the ecological status of a specific lake based on experience from other lakes.

The Worldvolume Action of Kink Solitons in AdS Spacetime

A formalism is presented for computing the higher-order corrections to the worldvolume action of co-dimension one solitons. By modifying its potential, an explicit "kink" solution of a real scalar field in AdS spacetime is found. The formalism is then applied to explicitly compute the kink worldvolume action to quadratic order in two expansion parameters--associated with the hypersurface fluctuation length and the radius of AdS spacetime respectively. Two alternative methods are given for doing this. The results are expressed in terms of the trace of the extrinsic curvature and the intrinsic scalar curvature. In addition to conformal Galileon interactions, we find a non-Galileon term which is never sub-dominant. This method can be extended to any conformally flat bulk spacetime.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected and additional comments adde

Collective emotions online and their influence on community life

E-communities, social groups interacting online, have recently become an object of interdisciplinary research. As with face-to-face meetings, Internet exchanges may not only include factual information but also emotional information - how participants feel about the subject discussed or other group members. Emotions are known to be important in affecting interaction partners in offline communication in many ways. Could emotions in Internet exchanges affect others and systematically influence quantitative and qualitative aspects of the trajectory of e-communities? The development of automatic sentiment analysis has made large scale emotion detection and analysis possible using text messages collected from the web. It is not clear if emotions in e-communities primarily derive from individual group members' personalities or if they result from intra-group interactions, and whether they influence group activities. We show the collective character of affective phenomena on a large scale as observed in 4 million posts downloaded from Blogs, Digg and BBC forums. To test whether the emotions of a community member may influence the emotions of others, posts were grouped into clusters of messages with similar emotional valences. The frequency of long clusters was much higher than it would be if emotions occurred at random. Distributions for cluster lengths can be explained by preferential processes because conditional probabilities for consecutive messages grow as a power law with cluster length. For BBC forum threads, average discussion lengths were higher for larger values of absolute average emotional valence in the first ten comments and the average amount of emotion in messages fell during discussions. Our results prove that collective emotional states can be created and modulated via Internet communication and that emotional expressiveness is the fuel that sustains some e-communities.Comment: 23 pages including Supporting Information, accepted to PLoS ON

Health Effects of Airborne Exposures from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations

Toxic gases, vapors, and particles are emitted from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) into the general environment. These include ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, malodorous vapors, and particles contaminated with a wide range of microorganisms. Little is known about the health risks of exposure to these agents for people living in the surrounding areas. Malodor is one of the predominant concerns, and there is evidence that psychophysiologic changes may occur as a result of exposure to malodorous compounds. There is a paucity of data regarding community adverse health effects related to low-level gas and particulate emissions. Most information comes from studies among workers in CAFO installations. Research over the last decades has shown that microbial exposures, especially endotoxin exposure, are related to deleterious respiratory health effects, of which cross-shift lung function decline and accelerated decline over time are the most pronounced effects. Studies in naïve subjects and workers have shown respiratory inflammatory responses related to the microbial load. This working group, which was part of the Conference on Environmental Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: Anticipating Hazards—Searching for Solutions, concluded that there is a great need to evaluate health effects from exposures to the toxic gases, vapors, and particles emitted into the general environment by CAFOs. Research should focus not only on nuisance and odors but also on potential health effects from microbial exposures, concentrating on susceptible subgroups, especially asthmatic children and the elderly, since these exposures have been shown to be related to respiratory health effects among workers in CAFOs