Abstract
Understanding the sources of lunar water is crucial for studying the history of lunar evolution, as well as the interaction of solar wind with the Moon and other airless bodies. Recent ...orbital spectral observations revealed that the solar wind is a significant exogenous driver of lunar surficial hydration. However, the solar wind is shielded over a period of 3–5 days per month as the Moon passes through the Earth’s magnetosphere, during which a significant loss of hydration is expected. Here we report the temporal and spatial distribution of polar surficial OH/H
2
O abundance, using Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (
M
3
) data, which covers the regions inside/outside the Earth’s magnetosphere. The data shows that polar surficial OH/H
2
O abundance increases with latitude, and that the probability of polar surficial OH/H
2
O abundance remains at the same level when in the solar wind and in the magnetosphere by controlling latitude, composition, and lunar local time. This indicates that the OH/H
2
O abundance in the polar regions may be saturated, or supplemented from other possible sources, such as Earth wind (particles from the magnetosphere, distinct from the solar wind), which may compensate for thermal diffusion losses while the Moon lies within the Earth’s magnetosphere. This work provides some clues for studies of planet–moon systems, whereby the planetary wind serves as a bridge connecting the planet with its moons.
Ferric sulfates were observed on Mars during orbital remote sensing and surface explorations. These observations have stimulated our systematic experimental investigation on the formative conditions, ...stability fields, phase boundaries, and phase transition pathways of these important minerals. We report here the results from the first step of this project: eight synthesized anhydrous and hydrous crystalline ferric sulfates and their structural characters reflected through spectroscopic studies. A few phenomena observed during the 150 sets of on-going experiments for stability field study are also reported, which reveal the structural distortions that can happen under environmental conditions relevant to Mars.
Gender segregation is ubiquitous and may lead to increased bias against other-gender peers. In this study, we examined whether individual differences in friendships with other-gender children reduce ...gender bias, and whether these patterns vary by gender or ethnicity. Using a 1-year longitudinal design (N = 408 second graders Mage = 7.56 years and fourth graders Mage = 9.48 years), we found that, across groups, gaining more other-gender friendships over the year led to (a) increased positive cognitive-based attitudes toward the other gender and (b) increased positive and decreased negative affect when with the other gender. We also tested the reverse pattern and found support for a bidirectional link. Girls and Latinx children often showed more gender bias than did boys and European American children. Implications for promoting positive relationships between girls and boys are discussed.
Biological cells deform on a nanometer scale when their transmembrane voltage changes, an effect that has been visualized during the action potential using quantitative phase imaging. Similar changes ...in the optical path length have been observed in photoreceptor outer segments after a flash stimulus via phase-resolved optical coherence tomography. These optoretinograms reveal a fast, millisecond-scale contraction of the outer segments by tens of nanometers, followed by a slow (hundreds of milliseconds) elongation reaching hundreds of nanometers. Ultrafast measurements of the contractile response using line-field phase-resolved optical coherence tomography show a logarithmic increase in amplitude and a decreasing time to peak with increasing stimulus intensity. We present a model that relates the early receptor potential to these deformations based on the voltage-dependent membrane tension—the mechanism observed earlier in neurons and other electrogenic cells. The early receptor potential is caused by conformational changes in opsins after photoisomerization, resulting in the fractional shift of the charge across the disk membrane. Lateral repulsion of the ions on both sides of the membrane affects its surface tension and leads to its lateral expansion. Because the volume of the disks does not change on a millisecond timescale, their lateral expansion leads to an axial contraction of the outer segment. With increasing stimulus intensity and the resulting tension, the area expansion coefficient of the disk membrane also increases as thermally induced fluctuations are pulled flat, resisting further expansion. This leads to the logarithmic saturation observed in measurements as well as the peak shift in time. This imaging technique therefore relates the structural changes in the photoreceptor to the underlying neurological function of transducing light into electrical signals. Such label-free optical monitoring of neural activity using fast interferometry may be applicable not only to optoretinography but also to neuroscience in general.
Laser Raman spectroscopy is used to investigate four lunar soils, focusing on mineralogy of grains of <45
μm size. Apollo samples 14163, 15271, 67511, and 71501 were selected as endmembers to study, ...based on their soil chemistry, maturity, and sample locations. Typical Raman spectral features for major and minor lunar minerals are discussed on the basis of major vibrational modes. We used the Raman peak shift to calculate Mg/(Mg
+
Fe
+
Ca) and Ca/(Mg
+
Fe
+
Ca) for pyroxene and Mg/(Mg
+
Fe) for olivine, and thus obtained the compositional distributions of these two minerals in each of the four lunar soils. Classification of feldspar grains was made based on recognition of their Raman patterns. A Raman point-counting procedure was applied to derive mineral modes of the soils, and these are found to be consistent with published modal analysis of these soils. The compositional distributions of pyroxene and olivine grains in each soil sample, as well as the mineral modes, reflect characteristics of the main source materials for these soils. Raman patterns and peak positions also reflect shock effects on plagioclase and quartz, found in 14163.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of ~22-nucleotide regulatory RNAs found in plants and animals. Some miRNAs of plants, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Drosophila play important gene-regulatory ...roles during development by pairing to target mRNAs to specify posttranscriptional repression of these messages. We identify three miRNAs that are specifically expressed in hematopoietic cells and show that their expression is dynamically regulated during early hematopoiesis and lineage commitment. One of these miRNAs, miR-181, was preferentially expressed in the B-lymphoid cells of mouse bone marrow, and its ectopic expression in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells led to an increased fraction of B-lineage cells in both tissue-culture differentiation assays and adult mice. Our results indicate that microRNAs are components of the molecular circuitry that controls mouse hematopoiesis and suggest that other microRNAs have similar regulatory roles during other facets of vertebrate development.
A temporal visible near‐infrared (VIS‐NIR) spectral variation was observed from Tyrone yellowish salty soils based on seven periodic Pancam 13 filter observations made by the Spirit rover. The major ...change was the reduction of spectral slope from 434 nm to 753 nm. Based on the results from a set of systematic laboratory experiments on the stability field and phase transition pathway of typical ferric sulfates, we suggest that the strong dehydration processes of ferricopiapite, either through amorphization or chemical alteration, could be the reasons for the spectral changes of Tyrone yellowish salty soils, excavated from a deep trench. The change of soil property suggests that they were originally not in equilibrium with the surface atmospheric conditions, that there is a relative humidity (RH) gradient existing in the upper few tens of centimeters depth below the surface. A layer of salt‐rich regolith beneath the surface will change the underground temperature profile, especially to keep a low‐temperature zone with a small temperature oscillation (than diurnal cycle at surface) in a salt‐enriched regolith layer. This temperature profile will provide a relatively high RH and small RH variation and thus will facilitate the preservation of hydrous sulfates with high degree of hydration during the moderate obliquity period on Mars. Additionally, the sulfates with high degrees of hydration are excellent RH buffers in a local environment. The subsurface hydrous sulfates can be the sources for high level of water‐equivalent hydrogen found at two large equatorial regions on Mars by Neutron Spectrometer on Mars Odyssey Orbiter.
Natural wood is a widely used structural building material because of its light weight and high strength, yet it is limited by the ignitability. Traditional top-down strategies can delay the burning ...time of wood-derived materials but hardly reach incombustible performance. Here, we develop a bottom-up external force-induced assembly strategy to fabricate nonburning nacre-mimetic structural materials based on the shear-thinning behavior of cellulose nanofibers, the main component of wood. The highly ordered brick-and-mortar structure endows the structural material with excellent comprehensive mechanical properties and oxygen insulation, giving it better specific flexural strength 143 MPa/(Mg m−3) and limit oxygen index (100%) than various natural woods. Furthermore, the house model, made of bioinspired structural materials, does not burn or collapse even in a butane blowtorch flame (more than 1100 °C), demonstrating its great potential as a sustainable, lightweight, strong, and safe structural building material.
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The current state-of-the-art technology employed to assess anti-human leukocyte antigen antibodies (Anti-HLA Ab) for donor-recipient matching and patient risk stratification in renal transplantation ...is the single antigen bead (SAB) assay. However, there are limitations to the SAB assay as it is not quantitative and due to variations in techniques and reagents, there is no standardization across laboratories. In this study, a structurally-defined human monoclonal alloantibody was employed to provide a mechanistic explanation for how fundamental alloantibody biology influences the readout from the SAB assay. Performance of the clinical SAB assay was evaluated by altering Anti-HLA Ab concentration, subclass, and detection reagents. Tests were conducted in parallel by two internationally accredited laboratories using standardized protocols and reagents. We show that alloantibody concentration, subclass, laboratory-specific detection devices, subclass-specific detection reagents all contribute to a significant degree of variation in the readout. We report a significant prozone effect affecting HLA alleles that are bound strongly by the test alloantibody as opposed to those bound weakly and this phenomenon is independent of complement. These data highlight the importance for establishing international standards for SAB assay calibration and have significant implications for our understanding of discordance in previous studies that have analyzed its clinical relevance.
Amplification and overexpression of erbB2/neu proto-oncogene is observed in 20-30% human breast cancer and is inversely correlated with the survival of the patient. Despite this, somatic activating ...mutations within erbB2 in human breast cancers are rare. However, we have previously reported that a splice isoform of erbB2, containing an in-frame deletion of exon 16 (herein referred to as ErbB2ΔEx16), results in oncogenic activation of erbB2 because of constitutive dimerization of the ErbB2 receptor. Here, we demonstrate that the ErbB2ΔEx16 is a major oncogenic driver in breast cancer that constitutively signals from the cell surface. We further show that inducible expression of the ErbB2ΔEx16 variant in mammary gland of transgenic mice results in the rapid development of metastatic multifocal mammary tumors. Genetic and biochemical characterization of the ErbB2ΔEx16-derived mammary tumors exhibit several unique features that distinguish this model from the conventional ErbB2 ones expressing the erbB2 proto-oncogene in mammary epithelium. Unlike the wild-type ErbB2-derived tumors that express luminal keratins, ErbB2ΔEx16-derived tumors exhibit high degree of intratumoral heterogeneity co-expressing both basal and luminal keratins. Consistent with these distinct pathological features, the ErbB2ΔEx16 tumors exhibit distinct signaling and gene expression profiles that correlate with activation of number of key transcription factors implicated in breast cancer metastasis and cancer stem cell renewal.
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