Description: Mutations in gene RASA1 have been historically associated with capillary malformation–arteriovenous malformation, but sporadic reports of lymphatic involvement have yet to be investigated in detail. To investigate the impact of RASA1 mutations in the lymphatic system, we performed investigational near-infrared fluorescence lymphatic imaging and confirmatory radiographic lymphangiography in a Parkes–Weber...

Description: Dynamics of Baltic ecosystems and causes of their variability are discussed and special attention is paid to the use of ecological models as a tool for research and management. - The causes of the observed changes in salinity, temperature, and oxygen of the deep water of the Baltic Sea are reviewed and discussed. - The work has led to the formulation of a hypothesis by which it appears possible to explain the oxygen development and the long-term development of other hydrographic components. The analyses indicate that the change of the level of the interface from - 80 m at the beginning of the century to about - 60 m today has increased the quantity of dead organic matter sinking down through the halocline as a consequence of the increased area of contact between the surface water and the deep water. The increased contact area has led to a corresponding increase in all fluxes through the halocline driven by turbulent gradient diffusion including an increase in the upward flux of nutrients. This has led to a fertilization of the surface water which has increased organic production in the surface zone. This in turn increases the amount of dead organic matter supplied to the deep water. At the same time the temperature increase has increased the rate of oxygen consumption. The net result is that oxygen in the deep water is being consumed at a much higher rate today than previously. lt is estimated that the rate of consumption has increased about 110% since the end of the last century. This implies an increase in the primary production of about 40%. - The supply of oxygen to the deep water has increased primarily as a consequence of the increase in the area of contact between the surface water and the deep water, and secondly as a consequence of an increase in the vertical oxygen concentration gradient. However, the rate of increase of supply has been smaller than the rate of increase of the consumption. The relative difference between the consumption and the supply has increased from 0 at equilibrium conditions at the end of the last century to about 10% today. Although this change in the balance between supply and consumption appears to be marginal, it is nevertheless sufficient to bring about the dramatic decrease of the oxygen concentration in the deep water from about 3 ml/l at the end of the last century to close to O ml/l today. - The model introduced represents a preliminary step towards a Baltic model, which necessarily must take the changing position of the halocline and related effects into account.

Description: Background: We wanted to evaluate the impact of nonblinded outcome assessors on estimated treatment effects in time-to-event trials. Methods: Systematic review of randomized clinical trials with both blinded and nonblinded assessors of the same time-to-event outcome. Two authors agreed on inclusion of trials and outcomes. We compared hazard ratios based on nonblinded and blinded assessments. A ratio of hazard ratios (RHR) 〈1 indicated that nonblinded assessors generated more optimistic effect estimates. We pooled RHRs with inverse variance random-effects meta-analysis. Results: We included 18 trials. Eleven trials (1969 patients) with subjective outcomes provided hazard ratios, RHR 0.88 (0.69 to 1.12), ( I 2 = 44%, P = 0.06), but unconditional pooling was problematic because of qualitative heterogeneity. Four atypical cytomegalovirus retinitis trials compared experimental oral administration with control intravenous administration of the same drug, resulting in bias favouring the control intervention, RHR 1.33 (0.98 to 1.82). Seven trials of cytomegalovirus retinitis, tibial fracture and multiple sclerosis compared experimental interventions with standard control interventions, e.g. placebo, no-treatment or active control, resulting in bias favouring the experimental intervention, RHR 0.73 (0.57 to 0.93), indicating an average exaggeration of nonblinded hazard ratios by 27% (7% to 43%). Conclusions: Lack of blinded outcome assessors in randomized trials with subjective time-to-event outcomes causes high risk of observer bias. Nonblinded outcome assessors typically favour the experimental intervention, exaggerating the hazard ratio by an average of approximately 27%; but in special situations, nonblinded outcome assessors favour control interventions, inducing a comparable degree of observer bias in the reversed direction.

Description: We investigate the total and baryonic mass distributions in deflector number 31 (CSWA 31) of the Cambridge And Sloan Survey Of Wide ARcs in the skY (CASSOWARY). We confirm spectroscopically a four-image lensing system at redshift 1.4870 with Very Large Telescope/X-shooter observations. The lensed images are distributed around a bright early-type galaxy at redshift 0.683, surrounded by several smaller galaxies at similar photometric redshifts. We use available optical and X-ray data to constrain the deflector total, stellar and hot gas mass through, respectively, strong lensing, stellar population analysis and plasma modelling. We derive a total mass projected within the Einstein radius R Ein  = 70 kpc of (40 ± 1)  x 10 12  M , and a central logarithmic slope of –1.7 ± 0.2 for the total mass density. Despite a very high stellar mass and velocity dispersion of the central galaxy of (3 ± 1)  x 10 12  M and (450 ± 80) km s –1 , respectively, the cumulative stellar-to-total mass profile of the deflector implies a remarkably low stellar mass fraction of 20 per cent (3–6 per cent) in projection within the central galaxy effective radius R e = 25 kpc ( R  = 100 kpc). We also find that the CSWA 31 deflector has properties suggesting it to be among the most distant and massive fossil systems studied so far. The unusually strong central dark matter dominance and the possible fossil nature of this system render it an interesting target for detailed tests of cosmological models and structure formation scenarios.

Description: The Q gene encodes an AP2-like transcription factor that played an important role in domestication of polyploid wheat. The chromosome 5A Q alleles (5AQ and 5Aq) have been well studied, but much less is known about the q alleles on wheat homoeologous chromosomes 5B (5Bq) and 5D (5Dq). We investigated the organization, evolution, and function of the Q/q homoeoalleles in hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Q/q gene sequences are highly conserved within and among the A, B, and D genomes of hexaploid wheat, the A and B genomes of tetraploid wheat, and the A, S, and D genomes of the diploid progenitors, but the intergenic regions of the Q/q locus are highly divergent among homoeologous genomes. Duplication of the q gene 5.8 Mya was likely followed by selective loss of one of the copies from the A genome progenitor and the other copy from the B, D, and S genomes. A recent V329-to-I mutation in the A lineage is correlated with the Q phenotype. The 5Bq homoeoalleles became a pseudogene after allotetraploidization. Expression analysis indicated that the homoeoalleles are coregulated in a complex manner. Combined phenotypic and expression analysis indicated that, whereas 5AQ plays a major role in conferring domestication-related traits, 5Dq contributes directly and 5Bq indirectly to suppression of the speltoid phenotype. The evolution of the Q/q loci in polyploid wheat resulted in the hyperfunctionalization of 5AQ, pseudogenization of 5Bq, and subfunctionalization of 5Dq, all contributing to the domestication traits.

Description: Late Holocene climate in western North America was punctuated by periods of extended aridity called megadroughts. These droughts have been linked to cool eastern tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Here, we show both short-term and long-term climate variability over the last 1,500 y from annual band thickness and stable...

Description: The O-antigen polysaccharide (O-PS) component of lipopolysaccharides on the surface of gram-negative bacteria is both a virulence factor and a B-cell antigen. Antibodies elicited by O-PS often confer protection against infection; therefore, O-PS glycoconjugate vaccines have proven useful against a number of different pathogenic bacteria. However, conventional methods for natural...

Description: Plant roots serve as conduits for water flow not only from soil to leaves but also from wetter to drier soil. This hydraulic redistribution through root systems occurs in soils worldwide and can enhance stomatal opening, transpiration, and plant carbon gain. For decades, upward hydraulic lift (HL) of deep water...

Description: We present sígame (SImulator of GAlaxy Millimetre/submillimetre Emission), a new numerical code designed to simulate the 12 CO rotational line spectrum of galaxies. Using sub-grid physics recipes to post-process the outputs of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations, a molecular gas phase is condensed out of the hot and partly ionized SPH gas. The gas is subjected to far-UV radiation fields and cosmic ray ionization rates which are set to scale with the local star formation rate volume density. Level populations and radiative transport of the CO lines are solved with the 3D radiative transfer code lime . We have applied sígame to cosmological SPH simulations of three disc galaxies at z  = 2 with stellar masses in the range ~0.5–2  x  10 11  M and star formation rates ~40–140 M  yr –1 . Global CO luminosities and line ratios are in agreement with observations of disc galaxies at z  ~ 2 up to and including J = 3–2 but falling short of the few existing J =5–4 observations. The central 5 kpc regions of our galaxies have CO 3 – 2/1 – 0 and 7 – 6/1 – 0 brightness temperature ratios of ~0.55–0.65 and ~0.02–0.08, respectively, while further out in the disc the ratios drop to more quiescent values of ~0.5 and 〈0.01. Global CO-to-H 2 conversion (α CO ) factors are ${\simeq } 1.5\,{\rm {\rm {M}_{\odot }} \,pc^{-2}\,(K\,km\,s^{-1})^{-1}}$ , i.e. ~2–3 times below the typically adopted values for disc galaxies, and α CO increases with radius, in agreement with observations of nearby galaxies. Adopting a top-heavy Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) mass spectrum does not significantly change the results. Steepening the GMC density profiles leads to higher global line ratios for J up ≥ 3 and CO-to-H 2 conversion factors [ ${\simeq } 3.6\,{\rm {\rm {M}_{\odot }} \,pc^{-2}\,(K\,km\,s^{-1})^{-1}}$ ].

Description: We report on the X-ray and optical observations of galaxy groups selected from the 2dfGRS group catalogue to explore the possibility that galaxy groups hosting a giant elliptical galaxy and a large optical luminosity gap present between the two brightest group galaxies can be associated with an extended X-ray emission, similar to that observed in fossil galaxy groups. The X-ray observations of four galaxy groups were carried out with Chandra telescope with 10–20 ksec exposure time. Combining the X-ray and the optical observations we find evidence for the presence of a diffuse extended X-ray emission beyond the optical size of the brightest group galaxy. Taking both the X-ray and the optical criteria, one of the groups is identified as a fossil group and one is ruled out because of the contamination in the earlier optical selection. For the two remaining systems, the X-ray luminosity threshold is close to the convention known for fossil groups. In all cases the X-ray luminosity is below the expected value from the X-ray selected fossils for a given optical luminosity of the group. A rough estimation for the comoving number density of fossil groups is obtained to be 4 to 8 10 –6  Mpc –3 , in broad agreement with the estimations from observations of X-ray selected fossils and predictions of cosmological simulations.