Local and regional movements of the Australian white ibis threskiornis molucca in eastern Australia

Little is known about the movements of Australian birds. Information is particularly scarce on large, aquatic birds, which are usually difficult to access and handle. Their movements are also often complex, and therefore difficult to Identify. Here we present data on the local and long distance movements of the Australian White Ibis Threskiornis molucca, a highly mobile bird, which as many other waterbirds, continues to decline In its traditional ranges in inland Australia. At the same time it has invaded coastal urban environments, where its high abundances cause many problems and require management. Our analysis of past and present banding studies reveals that Australian White Ibis travel throughout the urban environment and visit landfills, where they forage in large numbers. They also conduct long distance movements, which lead birds from breeding sites In south-eastern Australia along the eastern coast to regions further north (Queensland and Papua New Guinea). Young birds return to their hatching site, when sexually mature. Their preferences for landfills, high mobility, complex movements and current decline in inland Australia need to be considered, when developing and implementing management strategies for Australian White Ibis and ecologically similar birds

The longest-lived metazoan, Arctica islandica, exhibits high mitochondrial H2O2 removal capacities

A greater capacity of endogenous matrix antioxidants has recently been hypothesized to characterize mitochondria of long-lived species, curbing bursts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated in this organelle. Evidence for this has been obtained from studies comparing the long-lived naked mole rat to laboratory mice. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the longest-lived metazoan, the marine bivalve Arctica islandica (MLSP=507 y), with shorter-lived and evolutionarily related species. We used a recently developed fluorescent technique to assess mantle and gill tissue mitochondria’s capacity to consume hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in multiple physiological states ex vivo. Depending on the type of respiratory substrate provided, mitochondria of Arctica islandica could consume between 3-14 times more H2O2 than shorter-lived species. These findings support the contention that a greater capacity for the elimination of ROS characterizes long-lived species, a novel property of mitochondria thus far demonstrated in two key biogerontological models from distant evolutionary lineages

Fusion of Sendai virus with the target cell membrane is required for T cell cytotoxicity

INFECTION of mice with viruses can generate cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) which show restricted specificity for target cell lysis. Specific lysis requires that the virus used to prime the target cells must be of the same type as that used to sensitise the CTL, and that both target and CTL cells must express the same major histocompatability complex (MHC) gene product(s). The nature of the viral gene product(s) and their interaction with the MHC gene product(s) have been the subject of recent stud1−5. Previously we used Sendai virus to show that lysable target cells can be obtained using membrane vesicles which contain only the viral glycoproteins, indicating that these may be the specific viral gene products involved in target formation5. Sendai virus contains two glycoproteins—the haemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HANA) which promotes attachment of virus to cells and the fusion protein (F) which is involved in subsequent virus cell fusion7−9. Both activities are necessary for insertion of these viral glycoproteins into the plasma membrane of the cell10. In this letter we suggest that the insertion of the viral glycoproteins into the cell membrane is an essential step in target cell formation since we can show that virus containing an inactive fusion protein precursor (F0) cannot elicit T cell cytotoxicity unless the fusion activity is generated by proteolytic cleavage of the precursor. Sugamura et al. 6 have suggested that it is primarily the F glycoprotein of the Sendai virus envelope which is essential for the formation of the target antigen, as virus lacking the functional activities of F following trypsin digestion was inactive in priming target cells for T cell killing. However, we show that proteolytic inactivation of either of the two glycoproteins (F or HANA) of virus used to prime target cells will abolish the cytotoxic response

T-cell cytotoxicity in the absence of viral protein synthesis in target cells

CYTOTOXIC T cells lyse only those virus infected target cells in vitro which express, in addition to the viral antigen(s), those K or D region products of the major histocompati-bility complex (MHC) which were present during anti-viral sensitisation in vivo. This 'associative recogniton' by cytotoxic T cells could reflect the interaction of two T-cell receptors with specificity for target K or D gene products and independently for the viral antigen, or one receptor with specificity for virally altered K or D region products (see ref. 1 and refs therein). There are various ways that the MHC antigens could be altered, including 'modification from within', where the virus modifies host protein synthesis by interfering with transcription2, translation or post-translational glycosylation; or 'modification from without' where enzymic or chemical alteration of cell membrane proteins are induced by virus activity at the cell surface. In this report we show that inactivated Sendai virus or isolated Sendai virus envelopes can serve to modify a cell and make it a specific target for Sendai-immune T-cell killing, thus excluding the possibility of 'modification from within' in this system

Entanglement, Mixedness, and Spin-Flip Symmetry in Multiple-Qubit Systems

A relationship between a recently introduced multipartite entanglement measure, state mixedness, and spin-flip symmetry is established for any finite number of qubits. It is also shown that, within those classes of states invariant under the spin-flip transformation, there is a complementarity relation between multipartite entanglement and mixedness. A number of example classes of multiple-qubit systems are studied in light of this relationship.Comment: To appear in Physical Review A; submitted 14 May 200

Structural and Magnetic Properties of Trigonal Iron

First principles calculations of the electronic structure of trigonal iron were performed using density function theory. The results are used to predict lattice spacings, magnetic moments and elastic properties; these are in good agreement with experiment for both the bcc and fcc structures. We find however, that in extracting these quantities great care must be taken in interpreting numerical fits to the calculated total energies. In addition, the results for bulk iron give insight into the properties of thin iron films. Thin films grown on substrates with mismatched lattice constants often have non-cubic symmetry. If they are thicker than a few monolayers their electronic structure is similar to a bulk material with an appropriately distorted geometry, as in our trigonal calculations. We recast our bulk results in terms of an iron film grown on the (111) surface of an fcc substrate, and find the predicted strain energies and moments accurately reflect the trends for iron growth on a variety of substrates.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX,4 tar'd,compressed, uuencoded Postscript figure

Sign Rules for Anisotropic Quantum Spin Systems

We present new and exact ``sign rules'' for various spin-s anisotropic spin-lattice models. It is shown that, after a simple transformation which utilizes these sign rules, the ground-state wave function of the transformed Hamiltonian is positive-definite. Using these results exact statements for various expectation values of off-diagonal operators are presented, and transitions in the behavior of these expectation values are observed at particular values of the anisotropy. Furthermore, the effects of sign rules in variational calculations and quantum Monte Carlo calculations are considered. They are illustrated by a simple variational treatment of a one-dimensional anisotropic spin model.Comment: 4 pages, 1 ps-figur

Experimentally realizable characterizations of continuous variable Gaussian states

Measures of entanglement, fidelity and purity are basic yardsticks in quantum information processing. We propose how to implement these measures using linear devices and homodyne detectors for continuous variable Gaussian states. In particular, the test of entanglement becomes simple with some prior knowledge which is relevant to current experiments.Comment: 4 pages, This paper supersedes quant-ph/020315