We present Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) data and source catalogs from the Spitzer Space Telescope Extragalactic First Look Survey. The data were taken in four broad bands centered at nominal ...wavelengths of 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 km. A set of mosaics and catalogs have been produced that are -80% complete and -99% reliable to their chosen flux density limits. The main field survey covers 3.8 deg super(2) and has flux density limits of 20, 25, 100, and 100 kJy at wavelengths of 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 km, respectively. The deeper "verification" survey covers 0.25 deg super(2) with limits of 10, 10, 30, and 30 kJy, respectively. We also include deep data in the ELAIS-N1 field, which covers 0.041 deg super(2) with limits of 4, 3, 10, and 10 kJy, respectively, but with only two wavelength coverages at a given sky position. The final bandmerged catalogs contain 103,193 objects in the main field, 12,224 in the verification field, and 5239 in ELAIS-N1. Flux densities of high signal-to-noise objects are accurate to about 10%, and the residual systematic error in the absolute flux density scale is 62%-3%. We have successfully extracted sources at source densities as high as 100,000 deg super(-2) in our deepest 3.6 and 4.5 km data. The mosaics and source catalogs will be made available through the Spitzer Science Center archive and the Infrared Science Archive.
The single-stranded DNA-binding protein (SSB) of Escherichia coli is involved in all aspects of DNA metabolism: replication, repair, and recombination. In solution, the protein exists as a ...homotetramer of 18,843-kilodalton subunits. As it binds tightly and cooperatively to single-stranded DNA, it has become a prototypic model protein for studying protein-nucleic acid interactions. The sequences of the gene and protein are known, and the functional domains of subunit interaction, DNA binding, and protein-protein interactions have been probed by structure-function analyses of various mutations. The ssb gene has three promoters, one of which is inducible because it lies only two nucleotides from the LexA-binding site of the adjacent uvrA gene. Induction of the SOS response, however, does not lead to significant increases in SSB levels. The binding protein has several functions in DNA replication, including enhancement of helix destabilization by DNA helicases, prevention of reannealing of the single strands and protection from nuclease digestion, organization and stabilization of replication origins, primosome assembly, priming specificity, enhancement of replication fidelity, enhancement of polymerase processivity, and promotion of polymerase binding to the template. E. coli SSB is required for methyl-directed mismatch repair, induction of the SOS response, and recombinational repair. During recombination, SSB interacts with the RecBCD enzyme to find Chi sites, promotes binding of RecA protein, and promotes strand uptake.
The adverse outcomes of laparoscopic fundoplication are more likely during the initial 20 cases performed by each individual surgeon. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of substantial surgical ...experience versus experience beyond the learning curve on the early and late objective and subjective results.
The patients were divided into two groups according to the surgeon. In group 1 (n = 230), all the patients underwent surgery by a surgeon with substantial experience in laparoscopic fundoplication. In group 2 (n = 118), the patients were treated by a total of seven surgeons whose personal experience exceeded the individual learning curve, but was distinctively less than that of the group 1 surgeon.
The conversion rate was 2.2% in group 1 and 4.4% in group 2. The median operating time was 65 min in group 1 and 70 min in group 2 (p = 0.0020). The occurrence of immediate complications was 3.5% in group 1 and 7.6% in group 2 (p = 0.0892). At 6 months after surgery, 7.4% of the patients in group 1 and 16.1% of the patients in group 2 reported that dysphagia disturbed their daily lives (p = 0.0115). The late subjective results, including postoperative symptoms and evaluation of the surgical result, were similar in the two groups.
Substantial experience with the procedure is associated with a shorter operating time and somewhat fewer complications, conversions, and early dysphagia episodes. This supports the provision of expert supervision even after the initial learning phase of 20 individual procedures. The patients' long-term subjective symptomatic outcome was similar in the two groups. Substantial experience does not provide better late results than surgical experience beyond the learning curve.
Between 10% and 30% of commercial cast silicon ingots is discarded due to contamination caused by the casting process. A significant contaminant in the scrap volume is metal precipitates, which are ...difficult to getter effectively and degrade minority charge carrier lifetime, hence limiting solar cell efficiency potential. We show here that the unusable red zone can be restored in high-performance multicrystalline silicon wafers. Adding a high temperature dissolution anneal prior to phosphorus diffusion dissolves the metal precipitates within the wafer bulk, and leaves the metal point defects in a mobile state to be readily gettered by phosphorus diffusion gettering during the solar cell process. The efficiency of the dissolution gettering treatment increases with increasing temperature, with a temperature of 1150°C eliminating the very low lifetime region of the wafers completely. Additionally, we find that the red zone does not re-emerge after a 60min oxidation anneal at 900°C, confirming that the achieved benefit is tolerant to any high temperature processing following the phosphorus diffusion gettering process.
•A high temperature anneal before PDG eliminates the heavily contaminated red zone.•At best, the lifetime in the red zone increases from below 5µs to over 80µs.•Higher anneal temperature is more efficient in recovering the red zone.•The benefit is tolerant to post-PDG high temperature processing.
Efficient Sparse Voxel Octrees Laine, S; Karras, T
IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics,
08/2011, Letnik:
17, Številka:
8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this paper, we examine the possibilities of using voxel representations as a generic way for expressing complex and feature-rich geometry on current and future GPUs. We present in detail a compact ...data structure for storing voxels and an efficient algorithm for performing ray casts using this structure. We augment the voxel data with novel contour information that increases geometric resolution, allows more compact encoding of smooth surfaces, and accelerates ray casts. We also employ a novel normal compression format for storing high-precision object-space normals. Finally, we present a variable-radius postprocess filtering technique for smoothing out blockiness caused by discrete sampling of shading attributes. Based on benchmark results, we show that our voxel representation is competitive with triangle-based representations in terms of ray casting performance, while allowing tremendously greater geometric detail and unique shading information for every voxel. Our voxel codebase is open sourced and available at http://code.google.com/p/efficient-sparse-voxel-octrees/.
OBJECTIVE—Monocyte/macrophage inflammation is an important contributor to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Studies have suggested saturated fatty acids (SFA) induce monocyte inflammation in a ...Toll-like receptor-4–dependent manner, but recent data suggest SFA do not directly interact with Toll-like receptor-4. The present study tests the novel hypothesis that metabolism of SFA cooperatively amplifies Toll-like receptor-4–mediated inflammation.
METHODS AND RESULTS—THP-1 monocytes exposed to 100 μmol/L SFA in vitro for 16 hours followed by 1 ng/mL lipopolysaccharide demonstrated enhanced IL-6 and IL-8 mRNA and protein expression (≈3-fold higher than the sum of individual responses to SFA and lipopolysaccharide). SFA had similar effects on THP-1 macrophages and primary human monocytes. This amplified lipopolysaccharide response could be blocked by inhibition of SFA metabolism to ceramide and restored by cell-permeable ceramide. Both SFA and ceramide activated PKC-ζ and the mitogen-activated protein kinases Erk, JNK, and p38. Inhibition of these pathways prevented the SFA-induced increase in cytokine expression.
CONCLUSION—These results provide evidence for potent amplification of monocyte/macrophage innate immune responses by a novel pathway requiring metabolism of SFA to ceramide and activation of PKC-ζ/mitogen-activated protein kinases. These findings demonstrate how nutrient excess may modulate innate immune system activation and possibly contribute to development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
A magnon Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in superfluid ^{3}He is a fine instrument for studying the surrounding macroscopic quantum system. At zero temperature, the BEC is subject to a few distinct ...forms of decay into other collective excitations, owing to momentum and energy conservation in a quantum vacuum. We study the vortex-Higgs mechanism: The vortices relax the requirement for momentum conservation, allowing the optical magnons of the BEC to transform into light Higgs quasiparticles. This facilitates a direct measurement of the dimensions of the B-phase double-core vortex, providing experimental access to elusive phenomena, such as the Kelvin wave cascade and core-bound Majorana fermions. Our paper expands the spectrum of possible interactions between magnetic quasiparticles in ^{3}He-B and lays the groundwork for building magnon-based quantum devices.
Key Message
A novel non-steady-state kinematic analysis shows differences in cell division and expansion determining a better recovery from a 3-day cold spell in emerged compared to non-emerged maize ...leaves.
Zea mays
is highly sensitive to chilling which frequently occurs during its seedling stage. Although the direct effect of chilling is well studied, the mechanisms determining the subsequent recovery are still unknown. Our goal is to determine the cellular basis of the leaf growth response to chilling and during recovery of leaves exposed before or after their emergence. We first studied the effect of a 3-day cold spell on leaf growth at the plant level. Then, we performed a kinematic analysis to analyse the dynamics of cell division and elongation during recovery of the 4th leaf after exposure to cold before or after emergence. Our results demonstrated cold more strongly reduced the final length of non-emerged than emerged leaves (− 13 vs. − 18%). This was not related to growth differences during cold, but a faster and more complete recovery of the growth of emerged leaves. This difference was due to a higher cell division rate on the 1st and a higher cell elongation rate on the 2nd day of recovery, respectively. The dynamics of cell division and expansion during recovery determines developmental stage-specific differences in cold tolerance of maize leaves.
Infection preventionists at Minnesota hospitals were surveyed to determine whether they had Legionella water management plans. Of 137 hospitals, 84 (61%) responded. Among them, 27% hospitals had a ...water management plan, 21% regularly sampled for Legionella, and 51% had knowledge of ASHRAE Legionella prevention standards. Significant changes are needed to protect patients from nosocomial infection. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2018;39:336-338.
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