Docking mechanism for spacecraft

A system is presented for docking a space vehicle to a space station where a connecting tunnel for in-flight transfer of personnel is required. Cooperable coupling mechanisms include docking rings on the space vehicle and space station. The space station is provided with a tunnel structure, a retraction mechanism, and a docking ring. The vehicle coupling mechanism is designed to capture the station coupling mechanism, arrest relative spacecraft motions while limiting loads to acceptable levels, and then realign the spacecraft for final docking and tunnel interconnection. The docking ring of the space vehicle coupling mechanism is supported by linear attentuator actuator devices, each of which is controlled by a control system which receives loading information signals and attenuator stroke information signals from each device and supplies output signals for controlling its linear actuation to attenuate impact loading or to realign the spacecraft for final docking and tunnel interconnection. The retraction mechanism is used to draw the spacecraft together after initial contact and coupling. Tunnel trunnions, cooperative with the latches on the space vehicle constitute the primary structural tie between the spacecraft in final docked configuration

The structure of the Sumatran Fault revealed by local seismicity

[1] The combination of the Sunda megathrust and the (strike-slip) Sumatran Fault (SF) represents a type example of slip-partitioning. However, superimposed on the SF are geometrical irregularities that disrupt the local strain field. The largest such feature is in central Sumatra where the SF splits into two fault strands up to 35 km apart. A dense local network was installed along a 350 km section around this bifurcation, registering 1016 crustal events between April 2008 and February 2009. 528 of these events, with magnitudes between 1.1 and 6.0, were located using the double-difference relative location method. These relative hypocentre locations reveal several new features about the crustal structure of the SF. Northwest and southeast of the bifurcation, where the SF has only one fault strand, seismicity is strongly focused below the surface trace, indicating a vertical fault that is seismogenic to ∼15 km depth. By contrast intense seismicity is observed within the bifurcation, displaying streaks in plan and cross-section that indicate a complex system of faults bisecting the bifurcation. In combination with analysis of topography and focal mechanisms, we propose that the bifurcation is a strike-slip duplex system with complex faulting between the two main fault branches

Inflammatory Myofibroblastic Tumor of the Right Atrium

Cardiac inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is a rare entity and is associated with distinct clinical, pathological and molecular features. The clinical behavior, natural history, biological potential, management and prognosis of such tumors are unclear. We present herewith an adolescent girl who presented with similar entity involving the junction of the right atrium and the inferior vena cava (IVC) in association with thrombocytosis and IVC thrombosis leading to obstruction of blood flow. Diagnostic tools included imaging and immuno-histopathology studies. Surgical management included resection of the tumor and thrombo-embolectomy of the IVC under cardiopulmonary bypass. This case is unique due to association of complete obstruction of IVC caused by the strategic location of the tumor, thrombosis of vena cava and association of thrombocytosis. These features have not been reported yet in relation to the cardiac IMT. This report will help in better understanding and management of similar cases in terms of planning cannulation of femoral veins or application of total hypothermic circulatory arrest during cardiopulmonary bypass and prompt us to look for recurrence or metastasis during follow up using echocardiography and laboratory investigations. The possibility of IMT should be kept in the differential diagnosis of cardiac tumors especially in children and adolescents

SN1A data and the CMB of Modified Curvature at short and long distances

The SN1a data, although inconclusive, when combined with other observations makes a strong case that our universe is presently dominated by dark energy. We investigate the possibility that large distance modifications of the curvature of the universe would perhaps offer an alternative explanation of the observation. Our calculations indicate that a universe made up of no dark energy but instead, with a modified curvature at large scales, is not scale-invariant, therefore quite likely it is ruled out by the CMB observations. The sensitivity of the CMB spectrum is checked for the whole range of mode modifications of large or short distance physics. The spectrum is robust against modifications of short-distance physics and the UV cutoff when: the initial state is the adiabatic vacuum, and the inflationary background space is de Sitter.Comment: 13 pages, 2 eps figures, typos corrected, references added; to appear in Phys. Rev.

Assessing the Cumulative Contribution of New and Established Common Genetic Risk Factors to Early-Onset Prostate Cancer

We assessed the evidence for association between 23 recently reported prostate cancer (PCa) variants and early-onset PCa and the aggregate value of 63 PCa variants for predicting early-onset disease using 931 unrelated men diagnosed with PCa prior to age 56 years and 1126 male controls

Common Variation in the BRCA1 Gene and Prostate Cancer Risk

Rare, inactivating mutations in the BRCA1 gene appear to play a limited role in prostate cancer. To our knowledge, however, no study has comprehensively assessed the role of other BRCA1 sequence variations, e.g., missense mutations, in prostate cancer. In a study of 817 men with and without prostate cancer from 323 familial and early-onset prostate cancer families, we used family-based association tests and conditional logistic regression to investigate the association between prostate cancer and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) tagging common haplotype variation in a 200 kb-region surrounding (and including) the BRCA1 gene. We also used the Genotype-IBD Sharing Test (GIST) to determine whether our most strongly associated SNP could account for prostate cancer linkage to chromosome 17q21 in a sample of 154 families from our previous genome-wide linkage study. The strongest evidence for prostate cancer association was for a glutamine-to-arginine substitution at codon 356 (Gln356Arg) in exon 11 of the BRCA1 gene. The minor (Arg) allele was preferentially transmitted to affected men (p=0.005 for a dominant model), with an estimated odds ratio of 2.25 (95% confidence interval = 1.21 to 4.20). Notably, BRCA1 Gln356Arg is not in strong linkage disequilibrium with other BRCA1 coding SNPs or any known HapMap SNP on chromosome 17. In addition, GIST results suggest that Gln356Arg accounts (in part) for our prior evidence of prostate cancer linkage to chromosome 17q21 (p=0.022). Thus, we have identified a common, non-synonymous substitution in the BRCA1 gene that is associated with and linked to prostate cancer

A data compression and optimal galaxy weights scheme for Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and weak lensing data sets

Combining different observational probes, such as galaxy clustering and weak lensing, is a promising technique for unveiling the physics of the Universe with upcoming dark energy experiments. The galaxy redshift sample from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will have a significant overlap with major ongoing imaging surveys specifically designed for weak lensing measurements: The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. In this work, we analyse simulated redshift and lensing catalogues to establish a new strategy for combining high-quality cosmological imaging and spectroscopic data, in view of the first-year data assembly analysis of DESI. In a test case fitting for a reduced parameter set, we employ an optimal data compression scheme able to identify those aspects of the data that are most sensitive to cosmological information and amplify them with respect to other aspects of the data. We find this optimal compression approach is able to preserve all the information related to the growth of structures

Drug-gene interactions of antihypertensive medications and risk of incident cardiovascular disease: a pharmacogenomics study from the CHARGE consortium

Background Hypertension is a major risk factor for a spectrum of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including myocardial infarction, sudden death, and stroke. In the US, over 65 million people have high blood pressure and a large proportion of these individuals are prescribed antihypertensive medications. Although large long-term clinical trials conducted in the last several decades have identified a number of effective antihypertensive treatments that reduce the risk of future clinical complications, responses to therapy and protection from cardiovascular events vary among individuals. Methods Using a genome-wide association study among 21,267 participants with pharmaceutically treated hypertension, we explored the hypothesis that genetic variants might influence or modify the effectiveness of common antihypertensive therapies on the risk of major cardiovascular outcomes. The classes of drug treatments included angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, and diuretics. In the setting of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, each study performed array-based genome-wide genotyping, imputed to HapMap Phase II reference panels, and used additive genetic models in proportional hazards or logistic regression models to evaluate drug-gene interactions for each of four therapeutic drug classes. We used meta-analysis to combine study-specific interaction estimates for approximately 2 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a discovery analysis among 15,375 European Ancestry participants (3,527 CVD cases) with targeted follow-up in a case-only study of 1,751 European Ancestry GenHAT participants as well as among 4,141 African-Americans (1,267 CVD cases). Results Although drug-SNP interactions were biologically plausible, exposures and outcomes were well measured, and power was sufficient to detect modest interactions, we did not identify any statistically significant interactions from the four antihypertensive therapy meta-analyses (Pinteraction > 5.0×10−8). Similarly, findings were null for meta-analyses restricted to 66 SNPs with significant main effects on coronary artery disease or blood pressure from large published genome-wide association studies (Pinteraction ≥ 0.01). Our results suggest that there are no major pharmacogenetic influences of common SNPs on the relationship between blood pressure medications and the risk of incident CVD

A data compression and optimal galaxy weights scheme for Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and weak lensing datasets

Combining different observational probes, such as galaxy clustering and weak lensing, is a promising technique for unveiling the physics of the Universe with upcoming dark energy experiments. The galaxy redshift sample from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will have a significant overlap with major ongoing imaging surveys specifically designed for weak lensing measurements: the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey. In this work we analyse simulated redshift and lensing catalogues to establish a new strategy for combining high-quality cosmological imaging and spectroscopic data, in view of the first-year data assembly analysis of DESI. In a test case fitting for a reduced parameter set, we employ an optimal data compression scheme able to identify those aspects of the data that are most sensitive to the cosmological information, and amplify them with respect to other aspects of the data. We find this optimal compression approach is able to preserve all the information related to the growth of structure; we also extend this scheme to derive weights to be applied to individual galaxies, and show that these produce near-optimal results.Comment: 14 pages, 12 Figures, DESI collaboration articl

Telomere disruption results in non-random formation of de novo dicentric chromosomes involving acrocentric human chromosomes

Copyright: © 2010 Stimpson et al.Genome rearrangement often produces chromosomes with two centromeres (dicentrics) that are inherently unstable because of bridge formation and breakage during cell division. However, mammalian dicentrics, and particularly those in humans, can be quite stable, usually because one centromere is functionally silenced. Molecular mechanisms of centromere inactivation are poorly understood since there are few systems to experimentally create dicentric human chromosomes. Here, we describe a human cell culture model that enriches for de novo dicentrics. We demonstrate that transient disruption of human telomere structure non-randomly produces dicentric fusions involving acrocentric chromosomes. The induced dicentrics vary in structure near fusion breakpoints and like naturally-occurring dicentrics, exhibit various inter-centromeric distances. Many functional dicentrics persist for months after formation. Even those with distantly spaced centromeres remain functionally dicentric for 20 cell generations. Other dicentrics within the population reflect centromere inactivation. In some cases, centromere inactivation occurs by an apparently epigenetic mechanism. In other dicentrics, the size of the alpha-satellite DNA array associated with CENP-A is reduced compared to the same array before dicentric formation. Extrachromosomal fragments that contained CENP-A often appear in the same cells as dicentrics. Some of these fragments are derived from the same alpha-satellite DNA array as inactivated centromeres. Our results indicate that dicentric human chromosomes undergo alternative fates after formation. Many retain two active centromeres and are stable through multiple cell divisions. Others undergo centromere inactivation. This event occurs within a broad temporal window and can involve deletion of chromatin that marks the locus as a site for CENP-A maintenance/replenishment.This work was supported by the Tumorzentrum Heidelberg/Mannheim grant (D.10026941)and by March of Dimes Research Foundation grant #1-FY06-377 and NIH R01 GM069514