Activation of sperm motility in the euryhaline tilapia Sarotherodon melanotheron heudelotii (Dumeril, 1859) acclimatized to fresh, sea and hypersaline waters

The effects of osmolality and ions were examined on motility of sperm from males of Sarotherodon melanotheron heudelotii acclimatized in tanks at salinities set at 0, 35 and 70 g L-1. The range of osmolality that enabled sperm activation, shifted and broadened as the maintenance salinity of broodfish increased. The requirement of extracellular Ca2+ for activation of sperm motility increased when the maintenance salinity of broodfish was higher

Загадки Велесової книги

Дана публікація розкриває помилки попередніх досліджень «Велесової книги» та надає пояснення важкодоступних висловів тексту.Данная публикация раскрывает ошибки предыдущих исследований «Велесовой книги» и дает объяснение труднодоступных выражений в тексте.This publication reveals the mistakes of the former researches on the «Veles-book» and gives the meanings of some hard-to-understand terms of the text

Slow equivariant lump dynamics on the two sphere

The low-energy, rotationally equivariant dynamics of n CP^1 lumps on S^2 is studied within the approximation of geodesic motion in the moduli space of static solutions. The volume and curvature properties of this moduli space are computed. By lifting the geodesic flow to the completion of an n-fold cover of the moduli space, a good understanding of nearly singular lump dynamics within this approximation is obtained.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Application of pharmacogenomics and bioinformatics to exemplify the utility of human <i>ex vivo</i> organoculture models in the field of precision medicine

Here we describe a collaboration between industry, the National Health Service (NHS) and academia that sought to demonstrate how early understanding of both pharmacology and genomics can improve strategies for the development of precision medicines. Diseased tissue ethically acquired from patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), was used to investigate inter-patient variability in drug efficacy using ex vivo organocultures of fresh lung tissue as the test system. The reduction in inflammatory cytokines in the presence of various test drugs was used as the measure of drug efficacy and the individual patient responses were then matched against genotype and microRNA profiles in an attempt to identify unique predictors of drug responsiveness. Our findings suggest that genetic variation in CYP2E1 and SMAD3 genes may partly explain the observed variation in drug response

FREE ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 2: ALCOHOL AND LIVER—CLINICAL RESEARCHO2.1RAPID DECLINE OF LIVER STIFFNESS WITH ALCOHOL WITHDRAWAL IN HEAVY DRINKERS

Background and aims. Measurement of liver stiffness using real-time elastography appears as a promising tool to evaluate the severity of chronic liver diseases. Previous studies in patients with alcoholic liver disease have suggested that fibrosis was the only histological parameter to influence liver stiffness. To challenge this hypothesis, we have prospectively tested the short-term impact of alcohol withdrawal on liver stiffness value. Methods. All patients hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal in our Liver Unit between September 2008 and December 2010 had a liver stiffness determination (using a FibroScan® device) at entry (D0) and 7 days after alcohol withdrawal (D7). Stiffness values were compared using non-parametric test for paired-values. We compared (i) the 10 measures performed at D0 and at D7 for each patient; (ii) the variation of the median result of all patients (using Wilcoxon test in both cases). Results. A total of 138 patients were included in the study [median alcohol consumption: 150g/day (range: 40-400); hepatitis C: n=22 (15.9%); cirrhosis: n=29 (21.0%)]. From D0 to D7, the liver stiffness decreased significantly in 61 patients (44.2%) and increased significantly in 18 (13.0%). Considering all patients, median liver stiffness value decreased from 7.25 to kPa (P<0.001). The stage of fibrosis indicated by liver stiffness changed in 47 patients between D0 and D7 (decrease in 33 and increase in 14). Conclusion. Liver stiffness decreases significantly in nearly half of alcoholic patients after only 7 days of abstinence. This result strongly suggests that non-fibrotic lesions (such as inflammatory ones) may influence liver stiffness. From a practical point of view, it also shows that variation in alcohol consumption must be taken into account for the interpretation of liver stiffness valu

Diamond Detectors for the TOTEM Timing Upgrade

This paper describes the design and the performance of the timing detector developed by the TOTEM Collaboration for the Roman Pots (RPs) to measure the Time-Of-Flight (TOF) of the protons produced in central diffractive interactions at the LHC. The measurement of the TOF of the protons allows the determination of the longitudinal position of the proton interaction vertex and its association with one of the vertices reconstructed by the CMS detectors. The TOF detector is based on single crystal Chemical Vapor Deposition (scCVD) diamond plates and is designed to measure the protons TOF with about 50 ps time precision. This upgrade to the TOTEM apparatus will be used in the LHC run 2 and will tag the central diffractive events up to an interaction pileup of about 1. A dedicated fast and low noise electronics for the signal amplification has been developed. The digitization of the diamond signal is performed by sampling the waveform. After introducing the physics studies that will most profit from the addition of these new detectors, we discuss in detail the optimization and the performance of the first TOF detector installed in the LHC in November 2015.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables, submitted for publication to JINS

Mirror Symmetry Breaking and Lateral Stacking Shifts in Twisted Trilayer Graphene

We construct a continuum model of twisted trilayer graphene using {\it ab initio} density-functional-theory calculations, and apply it to address twisted trilayer electronic structure. Our model accounts for moir\'e variation in site energies, hopping between outside layers and within layers. We focus on the role of a mirror symmetry present in ABA graphene trilayers with a middle layer twist. The mirror symmetry is lost intentionally when a displacement field is applied between layers, and unintentionally when the top layer is shifted laterally relative to the bottom layer. We use two band structure characteristics that are directly relevant to transport measurements, the Drude weight and the weak-field Hall conductivity, and relate them via the Hall density to assess the influence of the accidental lateral stacking shifts currently present in all experimental devices on electronic properties, and comment on the role of the possible importance of accidental lateral stacking shifts for superconductivity in twisted trilayers.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figure

Disturbance, Pollinator Predictability, and Pollination Success Among Costa Rican Cloud Forest Plants

Cloud forest at Monteverde, Costa Rica experiences frequent natural disturbance. To determine whether species interactions vary spatially due to physical heterogeneity produced by disturbance, we examined relationships between 22 plant species and 11 nectar—feeding bird species in 14 study plots distributed among three patch types: larger landslide—like gaps (hand—cleared areas along a trail), small gaps (formed by recent treefalls), and understory of closed—canopy forest. Species we describe here flowered in two or three patch types. The aspects of pollination we examined varied little with patch type. Mean frequency of pollinator visits varied with patch type in a few plant species but not in most, and there was no significant trend across species. Pollen loads carried by 314 mist—netted hummingbirds did not vary significantly with patch type, either in total number of grains or number of species represented. Cumulative pollen loads that hummingbirds deposited on stigmas of two species of Acanthaceae (Razisea spicata and Hansteinia blepharorachis) did not vary consistently with patch type, except that Hansteinia flowers in treefall gaps received fewer heterospecific pollen grains than flowers in the other two patch types. Frequency of fruit set varied significantly with patch type in three of the four species examined, but the direction of variation in one of these was opposite to the direction of the other two. The absolute frequency with which flowers were pierced by nectar—robbing hummingbirds did not vary significantly with patch type, although the frequency of piercing relative to legitimate pollinator visits did increase in the large gaps. We attribute the latter result to aggregation of the hummingbird Eupherusa eximia, a chronic nectar robber, at dense clumps of long—flowered plant species that occurred in large gaps. Only one feature we examined suggested that patch type might directly affect the nature of species interactions: in two different analyses, the level of variation in frequency of hummingbird visits to flowers declined from large gaps to small gaps to forest. Results suggest that, unless the disturbance initiating a patch is unusually severe or widespread, interactions between the plants and hummingbirds examined are insensitive to patch type. Such species, existing in naturally dynamic forests throughout their recent evolutionary histories, presumably have become accommodated to frequent small—scale disturbance. Results also suggest that those habitat—related contrasts in plant reproductive traits and plant—pollinator interactions documented in other studies, which compare habitats initiated by anthropogenic disturbances with undisturbed patches, may be artifacts to some extent. Anthropogenically generated disturbance mosaics may promote the spread of species whose reproductive traits evolved under very different circumstances from mosaics generated by natural disturbances

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN