Are there lasting impacts of aid to poor areas ? Evidence from rural China

The paper revisits the siteof a large, World Bank-financed, rural development program in China 10 years after it began and four years after disbursements ended. The program emphasized community participation in multi-sectoral interventions (including farming, animal husbandry, infrastructure and social services). Data were collected on 2,000 households in project and nonproject areas, spanning 10 years. A double-difference estimator of the program's impact (on top of pre-existing governmental programs) reveals sizeable short-term income gains that were mostly saved. Only modest gains to mean consumption emerged in the longer term-in rough accord with the gain to permanent income. Certain types of households gained more than others. The educated poor were under-covered by the community-based selection process-greatly reducing overall impact. The main results are robust to corrections for various sources of selection bias, including village targeting and interference due to spillover effects generated by the response of local governments to the external aid.Rural Poverty Reduction,Access to Finance,,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Economic Theory&Research

Signals of Unparticles in Low Energy Parity Violation and NuTeV Experiment

We have studied the possible signals of unparticle in atomic parity violation(APV) along an isotope chain and in the NuTeV experiment. The effects of unparticle physics could be observed in APV, if the uncertainty in relative neutron/proton radius shift $\delta(\Delta\frac{R_N}{R_P})$ is less than a few times $10^{-4}$ by measuring the parity violating electron scattering. The constraints imposed by NuTeV experiment on unparticle physics are discussed in detail. If the NuTeV results are confirmed by future experiments, we suggest that unparticle could account for a part of NuTeV anomaly. There exist certain regions for the unparticle parameters ($\Lambda_{\cal U}$, $d_{\cal U}$, $c_{V{\cal U}}$ and $c_{A{\cal U}}$), where the NuTeV discrepancy could be completely explained by unparticle effects and the strange quark asymmetry, even with or without the contributions from the isoscalarity violation etc. It is remarkable that these parameter regions are consistent with the constraints from $b\to s\gamma$Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Земля і праця його імення та життя

A crystallization-induced asymmetric transformation (CIAT) involving a radical-mediated racemization provides access to enantiopure secondary phosphine oxides. A consecutive CIAT is used to prepare enantio-and diastereo-pure tert-butyl(hydroxyalkyl)phenylphosphine oxides

Myanmar and Asia united, Australia left behind long ago

It is well known that western Myanmar is underlain by a continental fragment, the West Burma Block, but there are arguments about its origin and the time of its arrival in SE Asia. This study presents the first petrological, XRD diffraction, heavy mineral and detrital zircon U-Pb age data from turbidite sandstones in the Chin Hills that were deposited on West Burma crust in the Triassic. These sandstones contain detritus derived from areas surrounding West Burma and thus help resolve arguments about its location in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. West Burma, Sibumasu and Western Australia have similar populations of Archean zircons derived from Western Australian cratons. Until the Devonian all formed part of the Gondwana supercontinent. The abundance of Archean zircons decreases from Western Australia to West Burma and then to Sibumasu. This is consistent with their relative positions in the Gondwana margin, with Sibumasu furthest outboard from Western Australia. Differences in zircon populations indicate that Indochina was not close to West Burma or Sibumasu in Gondwana. West Burma contains abundant Permian and Triassic zircons. These are unknown in Western Australia and different from those of the Carnarvon Basin; they were probably derived from SE Asian tin belt granitoids. Cr spinel is present in most West Burma sandstones; it is common in SE Asia but rare in Western Australia. These new data show that West Burma was part of SE Asia before the Mesozoic and support suggestions that the Argo block that rifted in the Jurassic is not West Burma

Efficient non-degenerate two-photon excitation for fluorescence microscopy

Non-degenerate two-photon excitation (ND-TPE) has been explored in two-photon excitation microscopy. However, a systematic study of the efficiency of ND-TPE to guide the selection of fluorophore excitation wavelengths is missing. We measured the relative non-degenerate two-photon absorption cross-section (ND-TPACS) of several commonly used fluorophores (two fluorescent proteins and three small-molecule dyes) and generated 2-dimensional ND-TPACS spectra. We observed that the shape of a ND-TPACS spectrum follows that of the corresponding degenerate two-photon absorption cross-section (D-TPACS) spectrum, but is higher in magnitude. We found that the observed enhancements are higher than theoretical predictions.Published versio

Anisotropic Structure of the Order Parameter in FeSe0.45Te0.55 Revealed by Angle Resolved Specific Heat

The symmetry and structure of the superconducting gap in the Fe-based superconductors are the central issue for understanding these novel materials. So far the experimental data and theoretical models have been highly controversial. Some experiments favor two or more constant or nearly-constant gaps, others indicate strong anisotropy and yet others suggest gap zeros ("nodes"). Theoretical models also vary, suggesting that the absence or presence of the nodes depends quantitatively on the model parameters. An opinion that has gained substantial currency is that the gap structure, unlike all other known superconductors, including cuprates, may be different in different compounds within the same family. A unique method for addressing this issue, one of the very few methods that are bulk and angle-resolved, calls for measuring the electronic specific heat in a rotating magnetic field, as a function of field orientation with respect to the crystallographic axes. In this Communication we present the first such measurement for an Fe-based high-Tc superconductor (FeBSC). We observed a fourfold oscillation of the specific heat as a function of the in-plane magnetic field direction, which allowed us to identify the locations of the gap minima (or nodes) on the Fermi surface. Our results are consistent with the expectations of an extended s-wave model with a significant gap anisotropy on the electron pockets and the gap minima along the \Gamma M (or Fe-Fe bond) direction.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figure

Probing sporadic and familial Alzheimer's disease using induced pluripotent stem cells.

Our understanding of Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis is currently limited by difficulties in obtaining live neurons from patients and the inability to model the sporadic form of the disease. It may be possible to overcome these challenges by reprogramming primary cells from patients into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Here we reprogrammed primary fibroblasts from two patients with familial Alzheimer's disease, both caused by a duplication of the amyloid-β precursor protein gene (APP; termed APP(Dp)), two with sporadic Alzheimer's disease (termed sAD1, sAD2) and two non-demented control individuals into iPSC lines. Neurons from differentiated cultures were purified with fluorescence-activated cell sorting and characterized. Purified cultures contained more than 90% neurons, clustered with fetal brain messenger RNA samples by microarray criteria, and could form functional synaptic contacts. Virtually all cells exhibited normal electrophysiological activity. Relative to controls, iPSC-derived, purified neurons from the two APP(Dp) patients and patient sAD2 exhibited significantly higher levels of the pathological markers amyloid-β(1-40), phospho-tau(Thr 231) and active glycogen synthase kinase-3β (aGSK-3β). Neurons from APP(Dp) and sAD2 patients also accumulated large RAB5-positive early endosomes compared to controls. Treatment of purified neurons with β-secretase inhibitors, but not γ-secretase inhibitors, caused significant reductions in phospho-Tau(Thr 231) and aGSK-3β levels. These results suggest a direct relationship between APP proteolytic processing, but not amyloid-β, in GSK-3β activation and tau phosphorylation in human neurons. Additionally, we observed that neurons with the genome of one sAD patient exhibited the phenotypes seen in familial Alzheimer's disease samples. More generally, we demonstrate that iPSC technology can be used to observe phenotypes relevant to Alzheimer's disease, even though it can take decades for overt disease to manifest in patients

Unusual T_c variation with hole concentration in Bi_2Sr_{2-x}La_xCuO_{6+\delta}

We have investigated the $T_c$ variation with the hole concentration $p$ in the La-doped Bi 2201 system, Bi$_2$Sr$_{2-x}$La$_x$CuO$_{6+\delta}$. It is found that the Bi 2201 system does not follow the systematics in $T_c$ and $p$ observed in other high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors (HTSC's). The $T_c$ vs $p$ characteristics are quite similar to what observed in Zn-doped HTSC's. An exceptionally large residual resistivity component in the inplane resistivity indicates that strong potential scatterers of charge carriers reside in CuO$_2$ planes and are responsible for the unusual $T_c$ variation with $p$, as in the Zn-doped systems. However, contrary to the Zn-doped HTSC's, the strong scatter in the Bi 2201 system is possibly a vacancy in the Cu site.Comment: RevTeX, 3 figures, to be published in the Physical Review

Developmental transcriptome of resting cell formation in Mycobacterium smegmatis

Functional classification of gene numbers up- and down-regulated during shock starvation in PBS. (PDF 1796 kb

SUMO chain-induced dimerization activates RNF4

Dimeric RING E3 ligases interact with protein substrates and conformationally restrain the ubiquitin-E2-conjugating enzyme thioester complex such that it is primed for catalysis. RNF4 is an E3 ligase containing an N-terminal domain that binds its polySUMO substrates and a C-terminal RING domain responsible for dimerization. To investigate how RNF4 activity is controlled, we increased polySUMO substrate concentration by ablating expression of SUMO protease SENP6. Accumulation of SUMO chains in vivo leads to ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis of RNF4. In vitro we demonstrate that at concentrations equivalent to those found in vivo RNF4 is predominantly monomeric and inactive as an ubiquitin E3 ligase. However, in the presence of SUMO chains, RNF4 is activated by dimerization, leading to both substrate ubiquitylation and autoubiquitylation, responsible for degradation of RNF4. Thus the ubiquitin E3 ligase activity of RNF4 is directly linked to the availability of its polySUMO substrates