Biodegradation of the Alkaline Cellulose Degradation Products Generated during Radioactive Waste Disposal.

The anoxic, alkaline hydrolysis of cellulosic materials generates a range of cellulose degradation products (CDP) including α and β forms of isosaccharinic acid (ISA) and is expected to occur in radioactive waste disposal sites receiving intermediate level radioactive wastes. The generation of ISA's is of particular relevance to the disposal of these wastes since they are able to form complexes with radioelements such as Pu enhancing their migration. This study demonstrates that microbial communities present in near-surface anoxic sediments are able to degrade CDP including both forms of ISA via iron reduction, sulphate reduction and methanogenesis, without any prior exposure to these substrates. No significant difference (n = 6, p = 0.118) in α and β ISA degradation rates were seen under either iron reducing, sulphate reducing or methanogenic conditions, giving an overall mean degradation rate of 4.7×10−2 hr−1 (SE±2.9×10−3). These results suggest that a radioactive waste disposal site is likely to be colonised by organisms able to degrade CDP and associated ISA's during the construction and operational phase of the facility

On a Generalized Kepler-Coulomb System: Interbasis Expansions

This paper deals with a dynamical system that generalizes the Kepler-Coulomb system and the Hartmann system. It is shown that the Schr\"odinger equation for this generalized Kepler-Coulomb system can be separated in prolate spheroidal coordinates. The coefficients of the interbasis expansions between three bases (spherical, parabolic and spheroidal) are studied in detail. It is found that the coefficients for the expansion of the parabolic basis in terms of the spherical basis, and vice-versa, can be expressed through the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for the group SU(2) analytically continued to real values of their arguments. The coefficients for the expansions of the spheroidal basis in terms of the spherical and parabolic bases are proved to satisfy three-term recursion relations.Comment: 24 pages, Latex, LYCEN 941

Unsown Seeds: Eugenics, Immigration, Civil Rights in Twentieth-Century America

During this panel, we will discuss the intersection of Progressive Era reforms and the pseudo-science of eugenics, looking at their impact on civil rights and immigration in American history and theories of Nazi Germany. This will include a full lesson plan run-through, with a set of primary sources, a PowerPoint slide deck, and extension assignments available for class use

A single sub-km Kuiper Belt object from a stellar Occultation in archival data

The Kuiper belt is a remnant of the primordial Solar System. Measurements of its size distribution constrain its accretion and collisional history, and the importance of material strength of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Small, sub-km sized, KBOs elude direct detection, but the signature of their occultations of background stars should be detectable. Observations at both optical and X-ray wavelengths claim to have detected such occultations, but their implied KBO abundances are inconsistent with each other and far exceed theoretical expectations. Here, we report an analysis of archival data that reveals an occultation by a body with a 500 m radius at a distance of 45 AU. The probability of this event to occur due to random statistical fluctuations within our data set is about 2%. Our survey yields a surface density of KBOs with radii larger than 250 m of 2.1^{+4.8}_{-1.7} x 10^7 deg^{-2}, ruling out inferred surface densities from previous claimed detections by more than 5 sigma. The fact that we detected only one event, firmly shows a deficit of sub-km sized KBOs compared to a population extrapolated from objects with r>50 km. This implies that sub-km sized KBOs are undergoing collisional erosion, just like debris disks observed around other stars.Comment: To appear in Nature on December 17, 2009. Under press embargo until 1800 hours London time on 16 December. 19 pages; 7 figure

Simultaneous quantification of 12 different nucleotides and nucleosides released from renal epithelium and in human urine samples using ion-pair reversed-phase HPLC

Nucleotides and nucleosides are not only involved in cellular metabolism but also act extracellularly via P1 and P2 receptors, to elicit a wide variety of physiological and pathophysiological responses through paracrine and autocrine signalling pathways. For the first time, we have used an ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography ultraviolet (UV)-coupled method to rapidly and simultaneously quantify 12 different nucleotides and nucleosides (adenosine triphosphate, adenosine diphosphate, adenosine monophosphate, adenosine, uridine triphosphate, uridine diphosphate, uridine monophosphate, uridine, guanosine triphosphate, guanosine diphosphate, guanosine monophosphate, guanosine): (1) released from a mouse renal cell line (M1 cortical collecting duct) and (2) in human biological samples (i.e., urine). To facilitate analysis of urine samples, a solid-phase extraction step was incorporated (overall recovery rate ? 98 %). All samples were analyzed following injection (100 ?l) into a Synergi Polar-RP 80 Å (250 × 4.6 mm) reversed-phase column with a particle size of 10 ?m, protected with a guard column. A gradient elution profile was run with a mobile phase (phosphate buffer plus ion-pairing agent tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate; pH 6) in 2-30 % acetonitrile (v/v) for 35 min (including equilibration time) at 1 ml min(-1) flow rate. Eluted compounds were detected by UV absorbance at 254 nm and quantified using standard curves for nucleotide and nucleoside mixtures of known concentration. Following validation (specificity, linearity, limits of detection and quantitation, system precision, accuracy, and intermediate precision parameters), this protocol was successfully and reproducibly used to quantify picomolar to nanomolar concentrations of nucleosides and nucleotides in isotonic and hypotonic cell buffers that transiently bathed M1 cells, and urine samples from normal subjects and overactive bladder patients

Pilgrimage During Covid-19: Impacts, Adaptations, and Recovery

Towards the end of 2020, this journal published an issue devoted to the impact of COVID-19. The novel coronavirus was having a devastating effect not only on public health but also on the global religious tourism industry. Places of worship closed, pilgrimage events and activities were cancelled, and travel restrictions limited mobility. A viable vaccination was predicted to be eighteen months away. One contributor even asked, ‘Is this the end of pilgrimage?’ This article re-examines and re-evaluates the impact of COVID-19, taking up some of the themes introduced in the 2020 issue. Focusing on western pilgrimage, with evidence from online English-language articles and social media commentaries, I examine how the global pandemic impacted pilgrimage destinations and their visitors between March 2020 and November 2021. Online media sources documented the different ways pilgrim destinations and pilgrims adapted to the pandemic, revealing how restrictions imposed on religious sites and events led to alternative ways of experiencing pilgrimage. In highlighting four ‘pandemic trends’ which particularly caught the attention of the media, I show that these seemingly new pilgrimage modes are, in fact, not new at all, but reassert medieval precedents or promote trends already emerging in post-secular culture. After considering two case studies – Lough Derg in Ireland and the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France – I offer some tentative conclusions about the relevance of these pandemic pilgrimage trends in a post-pandemic world

Predicting language diversity with complex network

Evolution and propagation of the world's languages is a complex phenomenon, driven, to a large extent, by social interactions. Multilingual society can be seen as a system of interacting agents, where the interaction leads to a modification of the language spoken by the individuals. Two people can reach the state of full linguistic compatibility due to the positive interactions, like transfer of loanwords. But, on the other hand, if they speak entirely different languages, they will separate from each other. These simple observations make the network science the most suitable framework to describe and analyze dynamics of language change. Although many mechanisms have been explained, we lack a qualitative description of the scaling behavior for different sizes of a population. Here we address the issue of the language diversity in societies of different sizes, and we show that local interactions are crucial to capture characteristics of the empirical data. We propose a model of social interactions, extending the idea from, that explains the growth of the language diversity with the size of a population of country or society. We argue that high clustering and network disintegration are the most important characteristics of models properly describing empirical data. Furthermore, we cancel the contradiction between previous models and the Solomon Islands case. Our results demonstrate the importance of the topology of the network, and the rewiring mechanism in the process of language change

SerpinB2 regulates stromal remodelling and local invasion in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer has a devastating prognosis, with an overall 5-year survival rate of ~8%, restricted treatment options and characteristic molecular heterogeneity. SerpinB2 expression, particularly in the stromal compartment, is associated with reduced metastasis and prolonged survival in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and our genomic analysis revealed that SERPINB2 is frequently deleted in PDAC. We show that SerpinB2 is required by stromal cells for normal collagen remodelling in vitro, regulating fibroblast interaction and engagement with collagen in the contracting matrix. In a pancreatic cancer allograft model, co-injection of PDAC cancer cells and SerpinB2(-/-) mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) resulted in increased tumour growth, aberrant remodelling of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and increased local invasion from the primary tumour. These tumours also displayed elevated proteolytic activity of the primary biochemical target of SerpinB2-urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA). In a large cohort of patients with resected PDAC, we show that increasing uPA mRNA expression was significantly associated with poorer survival following pancreatectomy. This study establishes a novel role for SerpinB2 in the stromal compartment in PDAC invasion through regulation of stromal remodelling and highlights the SerpinB2/uPA axis for further investigation as a potential therapeutic target in pancreatic cancer

Dynamics of multi-stage infections on networks

This paper investigates the dynamics of infectious diseases with a nonexponentially distributed infectious period. This is achieved by considering a multistage infection model on networks. Using pairwise approximation with a standard closure, a number of important characteristics of disease dynamics are derived analytically, including the final size of an epidemic and a threshold for epidemic outbreaks, and it is shown how these quantities depend on disease characteristics, as well as the number of disease stages. Stochastic simulations of dynamics on networks are performed and compared to output of pairwise models for several realistic examples of infectious diseases to illustrate the role played by the number of stages in the disease dynamics. These results show that a higher number of disease stages results in faster epidemic outbreaks with a higher peak prevalence and a larger final size of the epidemic. The agreement between the pairwise and simulation models is excellent in the cases we consider

Terrestrial implications for the maritime geoarchaeological resource: A view from the Lower Palaeolithic

Stone tools and faunal remains have been recovered from the English Channel and the North Sea through trawling, dredging for aggregates, channel clearance, and coring. These finds highlight the potential for a maritime Lower Palaeolithic archaeological resource. It is proposed here that any Lower Palaeolithic artefacts, faunal remains, and sediments deposited in the maritime zone during dry, low-stand phases were once (and may still be) contextually similar to their counterparts in the terrestrial Lower Palaeolithic records of north-western Europe. Given these similarities, can interpretive models and analytical frameworks developed for terrestrial archaeology be profitably applied to an assessment of the potential value of any maritime resource? The terrestrial geoarchaeological resource for the Lower Palaeolithic is dominated by artefacts and ecofacts that have been fluvially reworked. The spatio-temporal resolution of these data varies from entire river valleys and marine isotope stages to river channel gravel bar surfaces and decadal timescales, thus supporting a variety of questions and approaches. However, the structure of the terrestrial resource also highlights two fundamental limitations in current maritime knowledge that can restrict the application of terrestrial approaches to any potential maritime resource: (i) how have the repetitive transgressions and regressions of the Middle and Late Pleistocene modified the terrace landforms and sediments associated with the river systems of the English Channel and southern North Sea basins?; and (ii) do the surviving submerged terrace landforms and fluvial sedimentary deposits support robust geochronological models, as is the case with the classical terrestrial terrace sequences? This paper highlights potential approaches to these questions, and concludes that the fluvial palaeogeography, Pleistocene fossils, and potential Lower Palaeolithic artefacts of the maritime geoarchaeological resource can be profitably investigated in future as derived, low-resolution data sets, facilitating questions of colonisation, occupation, demography, and material culture