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INFLUENCE OF PLUMES FROM BIOMASS BURNING ON ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY OVER THE EQUATORIAL AND TROPICAL SOUTH-ATLANTIC DURING CITE-3
The ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-Ray (REFLEX) Galaxy Cluster Survey III: The Power Spectrum
We present a measure of the power spectrum on scales from 15 to 800 Mpc/h
using the ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-Ray(REFLEX) galaxy cluster catalogue. The
REFLEX survey provides a sample of the 452 X-ray brightest southern clusters of
galaxies with the nominal flux limit S=3.0 10^{-12}erg/s/cm2 for the ROSAT
energy band (0.1-2.4)keV. Several tests are performed showing no significant
incompletenesses of the REFLEX clusters with X-ray luminosities brighter than
10^{43}erg/s up to scales of about 800 Mpc/h. They also indicate that cosmic
variance might be more important than previous studies suggest. We regard this
as a warning not to draw general cosmological conclusions from cluster samples
with a size smaller than REFLEX. Power spectra, P(k), of comoving cluster
number densities are estimated for flux- and volume-limited subsamples. The
most important result is the detection of a broad maximum within the comoving
wavenumber range 0.022<k<0.030 h/Mpc. The data suggest an increase of the power
spectral amplitude with X-ray luminosity. Compared to optically selected
cluster samples the REFLEX P(k)is flatter for wavenumbers k<0.05 h/Mpc thus
shifting the maximum of P(k) to larger scales. The smooth maximum is not
consistent with the narrow peak detected at k=0.05 h/Mpc using the Abell/ACO
richness data. In the range 0.02<k<0.4 h/Mpc general agreement is found
between the slope of the REFLEX P(k) and those obtained with optically selected
galaxies. A semi-analytic description of the biased nonlinear power spectrum in
redshift space gives the best agreement for low-density Cold Dark Matter models
with or without a cosmological constant.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figures, (A&A accepted), also available at
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/theorie/REFLEX
The proteomes of neurotransmitter receptor complexes form modular networks with distributed functionality underlying plasticity and behaviour
Neuronal synapses play fundamental roles in information processing, behaviour and disease. Neurotransmitter receptor complexes, such as the mammalian N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor complex (NRC/MASC) comprising 186 proteins, are major components of the synapse proteome. Here we investigate the organisation and function of NRC/MASC using a systems biology approach. Systematic annotation showed that the complex contained proteins implicated in a wide range of cognitive processes, synaptic plasticity and psychiatric diseases. Protein domains were evolutionarily conserved from yeast, but enriched with signalling domains associated with the emergence of multicellularity. Mapping of proteinâprotein interactions to create a network representation of the complex revealed that simple principles underlie the functional organisation of both proteins and their clusters, with modularity reflecting functional specialisation. The known functional roles of NRC/MASC proteins suggest the complex co-ordinates signalling to diverse effector pathways underlying neuronal plasticity. Importantly, using quantitative data from synaptic plasticity experiments, our model correctly predicts robustness to mutations and drug interference. These studies of synapse proteome organisation suggest that molecular networks with simple design principles underpin synaptic signalling properties with important roles in physiology, behaviour and disease
Signal Propagation in Feedforward Neuronal Networks with Unreliable Synapses
In this paper, we systematically investigate both the synfire propagation and
firing rate propagation in feedforward neuronal network coupled in an
all-to-all fashion. In contrast to most earlier work, where only reliable
synaptic connections are considered, we mainly examine the effects of
unreliable synapses on both types of neural activity propagation in this work.
We first study networks composed of purely excitatory neurons. Our results show
that both the successful transmission probability and excitatory synaptic
strength largely influence the propagation of these two types of neural
activities, and better tuning of these synaptic parameters makes the considered
network support stable signal propagation. It is also found that noise has
significant but different impacts on these two types of propagation. The
additive Gaussian white noise has the tendency to reduce the precision of the
synfire activity, whereas noise with appropriate intensity can enhance the
performance of firing rate propagation. Further simulations indicate that the
propagation dynamics of the considered neuronal network is not simply
determined by the average amount of received neurotransmitter for each neuron
in a time instant, but also largely influenced by the stochastic effect of
neurotransmitter release. Second, we compare our results with those obtained in
corresponding feedforward neuronal networks connected with reliable synapses
but in a random coupling fashion. We confirm that some differences can be
observed in these two different feedforward neuronal network models. Finally,
we study the signal propagation in feedforward neuronal networks consisting of
both excitatory and inhibitory neurons, and demonstrate that inhibition also
plays an important role in signal propagation in the considered networks.Comment: 33pages, 16 figures; Journal of Computational Neuroscience
(published
An enhanced CRISPR repressor for targeted mammalian gene regulation.
The RNA-guided endonuclease Cas9 can be converted into a programmable transcriptional repressor, but inefficiencies in target-gene silencing have limited its utility. Here we describe an improved Cas9 repressor based on the C-terminal fusion of a rationally designed bipartite repressor domain, KRAB-MeCP2, to nuclease-dead Cas9. We demonstrate the system's superiority in silencing coding and noncoding genes, simultaneously repressing a series of target genes, improving the results of single and dual guide RNA library screens, and enabling new architectures of synthetic genetic circuits
Noise-Corrected, Exponentially Weighted, Diffusion-Weighted MRI (niceDWI) Improves Image Signal Uniformity in Whole-Body Imaging of Metastatic Prostate Cancer.
Purpose: To characterize the voxel-wise uncertainties of Apparent Diffusion Coefficient (ADC) estimation from whole-body diffusion-weighted imaging (WBDWI). This enables the calculation of a new parametric map based on estimates of ADC and ADC uncertainty to improve WBDWI imaging standardization and interpretation: NoIse-Corrected Exponentially-weighted diffusion-weighted MRI (niceDWI). Methods: Three approaches to the joint modeling of voxel-wise ADC and ADC uncertainty (ÏADC) are evaluated: (i) direct weighted least squares (DWLS), (ii) iterative linear-weighted least-squares (IWLS), and (iii) smoothed IWLS (SIWLS). The statistical properties of these approaches in terms of ADC/ÏADC accuracy and precision is compared using Monte Carlo simulations. Our proposed post-processing methodology (niceDWI) is evaluated using an ice-water phantom, by comparing the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) with conventional exponentially-weighted DWI. We present the clinical feasibility of niceDWI in a pilot cohort of 16 patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Results: The statistical properties of ADC and ÏADC conformed closely to the theoretical predictions for DWLS, IWLS, and SIWLS fitting routines (a minor bias in parameter estimation is observed with DWLS). Ice-water phantom experiments demonstrated that a range of CNR could be generated using the niceDWI approach, and could improve CNR compared to conventional methods. We successfully implemented the niceDWI technique in our patient cohort, which visually improved the in-plane bias field compared with conventional WBDWI. Conclusions: Measurement of the statistical uncertainty in ADC estimation provides a practical way to standardize WBDWI across different scanners, by providing quantitative image signals that improve its reliability. Our proposed method can overcome inter-scanner and intra-scanner WBDWI signal variations that can confound image interpretation
Correlation function of quasars in real and redshift space from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7
We analyze the quasar two-point correlation function (2pCF) within the
redshift interval using a sample of 52303 quasars selected from the
recent 7th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our approach to 2pCF
uses a concept of locally Lorentz (Fermi) frame for determination of the
distance between objects and permutation method of the random catalogue
generation. Assuming the spatially flat cosmological model with given
, we found that the real-space 2pCF is fitted well with
the power-low model within the distance range Mpc with
the correlation length Mpc and the slope
. The redshift-space 2pCF is approximated with
Mpc and for
Mpc, and Mpc and for
Mpc the parameter
describing the large-scale infall to density inhomogeneities is
with the linear bias that marginally
(within 2) agrees with the linear theory of cosmological perturbations.
We discuss possibilities to obtain a statistical estimate of the random
component of quasars velocities (different from the large-scale infall). We
note rather slight dependence of quasars velocity dispersion upon the 2pCF
parameters in the region Mpc.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figures, online published in MNRAS; final version to
match the published versio
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