Showing 2001 - 2010 of 4695 Items
Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and tradeoffs at landscape scales
Date: 2009-02-01
Creator: Erik Nelson
Guillermo Mendoza
James Regetz
Stephen Polasky
Heather, Tallis
D. Richard Cameron
Kai M.A. Chan
Gretchen C. Daily
Joshua Goldstein
Access: Open access
- Nature provides a wide range of benefits to people. There is increasing consensus about the importance of incorporating these "ecosystem services" into resource management decisions, but quantifying the levels and values of these services has proven difficult. We use a spatially explicit modeling tool, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to predict changes in ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and commodity production levels. We apply InVEST to stakeholder-defined scenarios of land-use/land-cover change in the Willamette Basin, Oregon. We found that scenarios that received high scores for a variety of ecosystem services also had high scores for biodiversity, suggesting there is little tradeoff between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Scenarios involving more development had higher commodity production values, but lower levels of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. However, including payments for carbon sequestration alleviates this tradeoff. Quantifying ecosystem services in a spatially explicit manner, and analyzing tradeoffs between them, can help to make natural resource decisions more effective, efficient, and defensible. © The Ecological Society of America.
A tale of two exponentiations in N = 8 supergravity at subleading level
Date: 2020-03-01
Creator: Paolo Di Vecchia
Stephen G. Naculich
Rodolfo Russo
Gabriele Veneziano
Chris D., White
Access: Open access
- High-energy massless gravitational scattering in N = 8 supergravity was recently analyzed at leading level in the deflection angle, uncovering an interesting connection between exponentiation of infrared divergences in momentum space and the eikonal exponentiation in impact parameter space. Here we extend that analysis to the first non trivial sub-leading level in the deflection angle which, for massless external particles, implies going to two loops, i.e. to third post-Minkowskian (3PM) order. As in the case of the leading eikonal, we see that the factorisation of the momentum space amplitude into the exponential of the one-loop result times a finite remainder hides some basic simplicity of the impact parameter formulation. For the conservative part of the process, the explicit outcome is infrared (IR) finite, shows no logarithmic enhancement, and agrees with an old claim in pure Einstein gravity, while the dissipative part is IR divergent and should be regularized, as usual, by including soft gravitational bremsstrahlung. Finally, using recent three-loop results, we test the expectation that eikonal formulation accounts for the exponentiation of the lower-loop results in the momentum space amplitude. This passes a number of highly non-trivial tests, but appears to fail for the dissipative part of the process at all loop orders and sufficiently subleading order in ϵ, hinting at some lack of commutativity of the relevant infrared limits for each exponentiation.
Stress alters rates and types of loss of heterozygosity in candida albicans
Date: 2011-01-01
Creator: A. Forche
D. Abbey
T. Pisithkul
M. A. Weinzierl
T., Ringstrom
D. Bruck
K. Petersen
J. Berman
Access: Open access
- Genetic diversity is often generated during adaptation to stress, and in eukaryotes some of this diversity is thought to arise via recombination and reassortment of alleles during meiosis. Candida albicans, the most prevalent pathogen of humans, has no known meiotic cycle, and yet it is a heterozygous diploid that undergoes mitotic recombination during somatic growth. It has been shown that clinical isolates as well as strains passaged once through a mammalian host undergo increased levels of recombination. Here, we tested the hypothesis that stress conditions increase rates of mitotic recombination in C. albicans, which is measured as loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at specific loci. We show that LOH rates are elevated during in vitro exposure to oxidative stress, heat stress, and antifungal drugs. In addition, an increase in stress severity correlated well with increased LOH rates. LOH events can arise through local recombination, through homozygosis of longer tracts of chromosome arms, or by whole-chromosome homozygosis. Chromosome arm homozygosis was most prevalent in cultures grown under conventional lab conditions. Importantly, exposure to different stress conditions affected the levels of different types of LOH events, with oxidative stress causing increased recombination, while fluconazole and high temperature caused increases in events involving whole chromosomes. Thus, C. albicans generates increased amounts and different types of genetic diversity in response to a range of stress conditions, a process that we term "stress-induced LOH" that arises either by elevating rates of recombination and/or by increasing rates of chromosome missegregation. IMPORTANCE Stress-induced mutagenesis fuels the evolution of bacterial pathogens and is mainly driven by genetic changes via mitotic recombination. Little is known about this process in other organisms. Candida albicans, an opportunistic fungal pathogen, causes infections that require adaptation to different host environmental niches. We measured the rates of LOH and the types of LOH events that appeared in the absence and in the presence of physiologically relevant stresses and found that stress causes a significant increase in the rates of LOH and that this increase is proportional to the degree of stress. Furthermore, the types of LOH events that arose differed in a stress-dependent manner, indicating that eukaryotic cells generate increased genetic diversity in response to a range of stress conditions. We propose that this "stress-induced LOH" facilitates the rapid adaptation of C. albicans, which does not undergo meiosis, to changing environments within the host. © 2011 Forche et al.
Cross-cultural temperamental differences in infants, children, and adults in the United States of America and Finland
Date: 2012-04-01
Creator: Larissa M. Gaias
Katri Räikkönen
Niina Komsi
Maria A. Gartstein
Philip A., Fisher
Samuel P. Putnam
Access: Open access
- Cross-cultural differences in temperament were investigated between infants (n=131, 84 Finns), children (n=653, 427 Finns), and adults (n=759, 538 Finns) from the United States of America and Finland. Participants from both cultures completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, Childhood Behavior Questionnaire and the Adult Temperament Questionnaire. Across all ages, Americans received higher ratings on temperamental fearfulness than Finnish individuals, and also demonstrated higher levels of other negative affects at several time points. During infancy and adulthood, Finns tended to score higher on positive affect and elements of temperamental effortful control. Gender differences consistent with prior studies emerged cross-culturally, and were found to be more pronounced in the US during childhood and in Finland during adulthood. © 2012 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.
Private forest governance, public policy impacts: The Forest Stewardship Council in Russia and Brazil
Date: 2017-11-16
Creator: Lisa Mc Intosh Sundstrom
Laura A. Henry
Access: Open access
- Under what conditions do private forest governance standards influence state policy and behavior to become more oriented toward sustainability? We argue that governance schemes targeting firms may indirectly shape state behavior, even when designed to bypass state regulation. Through an examination of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in Russia and Brazil, we find that the FSC has influenced domestic rhetoric, laws, and enforcement practices. FSC has had a more disruptive and consequential impact on Russia's domestic forest governance; in Brazil, earlier transnational environmental campaigns had already begun to shift domestic institutions toward sustainability. Based on interview data and textual analysis of FSC and government documents, we identify the mechanisms of indirect FSC influence on states-professionalization, civil society mobilization, firm lobbying, and international market pressure, and argue that they are likely to be activated under conditions of poor and decentralized governance, overlapping and competing regulations and high foreign market demand for exports.
Destabilization of cortical dendrites and spines by BDNF
Date: 1999-01-01
Creator: Hadley Wilson Horch
Alex Krüttgen
Stuart D. Portbury
Lawrence C. Katz
Access: Open access
- Particle-mediated gene transfer and two-photon microscopy were used to monitor the behavior of dendrites of individual cortical pyramidal neurons coexpressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). While the dendrites and spines of neurons expressing GFP alone grew modestly over 24-48 hr, coexpressing BDNF elicited dramatic sprouting of basal dendrites, accompanied by a regression of dendritic spines. Compared to GFP-transfected controls, the newly formed dendrites and spines were highly unstable. Experiments utilizing Trk receptor bodies, K252a, and overexpression of nerve growth factor (NGF) demonstrated that these effects were mediated by secreted BDNF interacting with extracellular TrkB receptors. Thus, BDNF induces structural instability in dendrites and spines, which, when restricted to particular portions of a dendritic arbor, may help translate activity patterns into specific morphological changes.
Deciphering the bacterial glycocode: Recent advances in bacterial glycoproteomics
Date: 2013-02-01
Creator: Scott A. Longwell
Danielle H. Dube
Access: Open access
- Bacterial glycoproteins represent an attractive target for new antibacterial treatments, as they are frequently linked to pathogenesis and contain distinctive glycans that are absent in humans. Despite their potential therapeutic importance, many bacterial glycoproteins remain uncharacterized. This review focuses on recent advances in deciphering the bacterial glycocode, including metabolic glycan labeling to discover and characterize bacterial glycoproteins, lectin-based microarrays to monitor bacterial glycoprotein dynamics, crosslinking sugars to assess the roles of bacterial glycoproteins, and harnessing bacterial glycosylation systems for the efficient production of industrially important glycoproteins. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
Non-intrusive load identification for smart outlets
Date: 2015-01-12
Creator: Sean Barker
Mohamed Musthag
David Irwin
Prashant Shenoy
Access: Open access
- An increasing interest in energy-efficiency combined with the decreasing cost of embedded networked sensors is lowering the cost of outlet-level metering. If these trends continue, new buildings in the near future will be able to install 'smart' outlets, which monitor and transmit an outlets power usage in real time, for nearly the same cost as conventional outlets. One problem with the pervasive deployment of smart outlets is that users must currently identify the specific device plugged into each meter, and then manually update the outlets meta-data in software whenever a new device is plugged into the outlet. Correct meta-data is important in both interpreting historical outlet energy data and using the data for building management. To address this problem, we propose Non-Intrusive Load Identification (NILI), which automatically identifies the device attached to a smart outlet without any human intervention. In particular, in our approach to NILI, we identify an intuitive and simple-to-compute set of features from time-series energy data and then employ well-known classifiers. Our results achieve accuracy of over 90% across 15 device types on outlet-level energy traces collected from multiple real homes.
A strategy for the selective imaging of glycans using caged metabolic precursors
Date: 2010-07-21
Creator: Pamela V. Chang
Danielle H. Dube
Ellen M. Sletten
Carolyn R. Bertozzi
Access: Open access
- Glycans can be imaged by metabolic labeling with azidosugars followed by chemical reaction with imaging probes; however, tissue-specific labeling is difficult to achieve. Here we describe a strategy for the use of a caged metabolic precursor that is activated for cellular metabolism by enzymatic cleavage. An N-azidoacetylmannosamine derivative caged with a peptide substrate for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) protease was converted to cell-surface azido sialic acids in a PSA-dependent manner. The approach has applications in tissue-selective imaging of glycans for clinical and basic research purposes. © 2010 American Chemical Society.
Arginine methylation of yeast mRNA-binding protein Npl3 directly affects its function, nuclear export, and intranuclear protein interactions
Date: 2005-09-02
Creator: Anne E. McBride
Jeffrey T. Cook
Elizabeth A. Stemmler
Kate L. Rutledge
Kelly A., McGrath
Jeffrey A. Rubens
Access: Open access
- Arginine methylation can affect both nucleocytoplasmic transport and protein-protein interactions of RNA-binding proteins. These effects are seen in cells that lack the yeast hnRNP methyltransferase (HMT1), raising the question of whether effects on specific proteins are direct or indirect. The presence of multiple arginines in individual methylated proteins also raises the question of whether overall methylation or methylation of a subset of arginines affects protein function. We have used the yeast mRNA-binding protein Npl3 to address these questions in vivo. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry was used to identify 17 methylated arginines in Npl3 purified from yeast: whereas 10 Arg-Gly-Gly (RGG) tripeptides were exclusively dimethylated, variable levels off methylation were found for 5 RGG and 2 RG motif arginines. We constructed a set of Npl3 proteins in which subsets of the RGG arginines were mutated to lysine. Expression of these mutant proteins as the sole form of Npl3 specifically affected growth of a strain that requires Hmtl. Although decreased growth generally correlated with increased numbers of Arg-to-Lys mutations, lysine substitutions in the N terminus of the RGG domain showed more severe effects. Npl3 with all 15 RGG arginines mutated to lysine exited the nucleus independent of Hmtl, indicating a direct effect of methylation on Npl3 transport. These mutations also resulted in a decreased, methylation-independent interaction of Npl3 with transcription elongation factor Tho2 and inhibited Npl3 self-association. These results support a model in which arginine methylation facilitates Npl3 export directly by weakening contacts with nuclear proteins. © 2005 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.