The first occurrence of the Ponto-Caspian invader, Hemimysis anomala G.O. sars, 1907 (Mysidacea) in the UK

An invasive Ponto-Caspian mysid, Hemimysis anomala G.O. Sars, 1907, was recorded in England for the first time in 2004. Usually a deep water species, in England H. anomala has been observed in shallow waters, in which it shelters under or within anthropogenic structures during daylight. This behaviour renders traditional, net-based survey methods ineffective. Therefore, a distribution survey of the English East Midlands was conducted by searching for individuals by torchlight after dark. H. anomala was found to be widespread within the study area, occurring at 24 out of 51 sites surveyed. However, the geographical limits of its distribution were not determined. The species occurred at low densities in canals and in backwaters of the River Trent, whilst dense swarms were observed in September 2005 in a regatta lake connected to the River Trent. H. anomala has the potential to spread through England's canal network and could colonize the lower reaches and estuaries of rivers including the River Thames and River Severn. Habitat preference analysis indicated that flowing water and absence of shelter prevented population establishment, although the species' U.K. distribution suggests that it can migrate through such areas of unsuitable habitat

Roll convection of binary fluid mixtures in porous media

We investigate theoretically the nonlinear state of ideal straight rolls in the Rayleigh-B\'enard system of a fluid layer heated from below with a porous medium using a Galerkin method. Applying the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation, binary mixtures with positive separation ratio are studied and compared to one-component fluids. Our results for the structural properties of roll convection resemble qualitatively the situation in the Rayleigh--B\'enard system without porous medium except for the fact that the streamlines of binary mixtures are deformed in the so-called Soret regime. The deformation of the streamlines is explained by means of the Darcy equation which is used to describe the transport of momentum. In addition to the properties of the rolls, their stability against arbitrary infinitesimal perturbations is investigated. We compute stability balloons for the pure fluid case as well as for a wide parameter range of Lewis numbers and separation ratios which are typical for binary gas and fluid mixtures. The stability regions of rolls are found to be restricted by a crossroll, a zigzag and a new type of oscillatory instability mechanism, which can be related to the crossroll mechanism

Incompressible flow in porous media with fractional diffusion

In this paper we study the heat transfer with a general fractional diffusion term of an incompressible fluid in a porous medium governed by Darcy's law. We show formation of singularities with infinite energy and for finite energy we obtain existence and uniqueness results of strong solutions for the sub-critical and critical cases. We prove global existence of weak solutions for different cases. Moreover, we obtain the decay of the solution in $L^p$, for any $p\geq2$, and the asymptotic behavior is shown. Finally, we prove the existence of an attractor in a weak sense and, for the sub-critical dissipative case with $\alpha\in (1,2]$, we obtain the existence of the global attractor for the solutions in the space $H^s$ for any $s > (N/2)+1-\alpha$

The N-terminal sequence of the extrinsic PsbP protein modulates the redox potential of Cyt b(559) in photosystem II

This work was supported in part by JST PRESTO (K.I.), by JSPS KAKENHI (grant no. 26660087 to K.I.; 26840091 to R.N.; 24000018 and 25291033 to T.No.), and MEXT KAKENHI (grant no. 24107003 to T.No.). The JST CREST also contributed to this work (part to J.N.). T.Ni. is supported as a JSPS research fellow (grant no. 15J08254)

Onset of Surface-Tension-Driven Benard Convection

Experiments with shadowgraph visualization reveal a subcritical transition to a hexagonal convection pattern in thin liquid layers that have a free upper surface and are heated from below. The measured critical Marangoni number (84) and observation of hysteresis (3%) agree with theory. In some experiments, imperfect bifurcation is observed and is attributed to deterministic forcing caused in part by the lateral boundaries in the experiment.Comment: 4 pages. The RevTeX file has a macro allowing various styles. The appropriate style is "mypprint" which is the defaul

Plants lacking the main light-harvesting complex retain photosystem II macro-organization

Photosystem II (PSII) is a key component of photosynthesis, the process of converting sunlight into the chemical energy of life. In plant cells, it forms a unique oligomeric macrostructure in membranes of the chloroplasts. Several light-harvesting antenna complexes are organized precisely in the PSII macrostructure—the major trimeric complexes (LHCII) that bind 70% of PSII chlorophyll and three minor monomeric complexes—which together form PSII supercomplexes. The antenna complexes are essential for collecting sunlight and regulating photosynthesis, but the relationship between these functions and their molecular architecture is unresolved. Here we report that antisense Arabidopsis plants lacking the proteins that form LHCII trimers have PSII supercomplexes with almost identical abundance and structure to those found in wild-type plants. The place of LHCII is taken by a normally minor and monomeric complex, CP26, which is synthesized in large amounts and organized into trimers. Trimerization is clearly not a specific attribute of LHCII. Our results highlight the importance of the PSII macrostructure: in the absence of one of its main components, another protein is recruited to allow it to assemble and function

Relative amounts of antagonistic splicing factors, hnRNP A1 and ASF/SF2, change during neoplastic lung growth: implications for pre-mRNA processing

Pre-mRNA processing is an important mechanism for globally modifying cellular protein composition during tumorigenesis. To understand this process during lung cancer, expression of two key pre-mRNA alternative splicing factors was compared in a mouse model of early lung carcinogenesis and during regenerative growth following reversible lung injury. Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) A1 and alternative splicing factor/splicing factor 2 (ASF/SF2) act antagonistically to modulate splice site selection. Both hnRNP A1 and ASF/SF2 contents rose in adenomas and during injury-induced hyperplasia compared to control lungs, as measured by immunoblotting. While both proteins increased similarly during compensatory hyperplasia, hnRNP A1 increased to a much greater extent than ASF/SF2 in tumors, resulting in a 6-fold increase of the hnRNP A1 to ASF/SF2 ratio. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that hnRNP A1 localized exclusively within tumor nuclei, while ASF/SF2 appeared in cytoplasm and/or nuclei, depending on the growth pattern of the tumor cells. We also demonstrated cancer-associated changes in the pre-mRNA alternative splicing of CD44, a membrane glycoprotein involved in cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions. hnRNP A1 and ASF/SF2 expression is thus differentially altered in neoplastic lung cells by mechanisms that do not strictly arise from increased cell division. These changes are influenced by tumor histology and may be associated with production of variant CD44 mRNA isoforms

Isolation of novel PSII-LHCII megacomplexes from pea plants characterized by a combination of proteomics and electron microscopy

This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, “Futuro in Ricerca 2013” program RBFR1334SB to CP

Staging women in prisons: Clean Break Theatre Company’s dramaturgy of the cage

The article explores the limitations of the dramaturgies of the cell through a close reading of several key play texts commissioned by the UK’s leading arts in criminal justice organisation working with women, Clean Break. The apparently humanist positioning of women in prison as just like everyone else erases the specificity of women’s backstories. Conversely, by adhering to the constructions of female prisoners as holding binary positions of either ‘monsters’ or ‘victims’ of the system, plays can re-inscribe morally unitary approaches to women’s deviance and resistance. Many plays about women in prison hold a claim for resisting stereotypes and are in opposition to the injustice of criminal justice processes, and yet, in the realist mode, the monster/ victim position seems to be an inescapable binary