Despite a developing literature on urban streams, few studies have addressed the timing and mechanisms of urban-induced stream hydrogeomorphic adjustment on biotic assemblages. Here, we investigated ...the relationships between urbanization-driven annual changes in fluvial geomorphic characteristics and fish assemblages in 12 headwater streams in the Columbus Metropolitan Area (CMA), Ohio (USA) over 3-5 years. Multiple stream hydrogeomorphic characteristics changed over time including slope (0.1% decrease on average), discharge (39% decrease), and shear stress (29% decrease), some in concert with one another (e.g., slope and shear stress). Species-specific fish associations with hydrogeomorphic associations varied in nature and strength by year and thus were somewhat equivocal. At the assemblage level, we observed a negative relationship between D.sub.50 (median sediment particle size) and % tolerant individuals as well as a positive trend between incision ratio and % generalists over study years. Study reaches with higher total catchment imperviousness were associated with both finer median sediment size (R.sup.2 = 0.19) and lower assemblage diversity (R.sup.2 = 0.55). These results contribute to current understanding of the drivers of fish assemblages in urbanizing catchments, and point to urban-induced hydrogeomorphic alterations as one mechanism through which land-use changes influence in-channel characteristics important to aquatic biota.
Headwater streams and wetlands are integral components of watersheds that are critical for biodiversity, fisheries, ecosystem functions, natural resource‐based economies, and human society and ...culture. These and other ecosystem services provided by intact and clean headwater streams and wetlands are critical for a sustainable future. Loss of legal protections for these vulnerable ecosystems would create a cascade of consequences, including reduced water quality, impaired ecosystem functioning, and loss of fish habitat for commercial and recreational fish species. Many fish species currently listed as threatened or endangered would face increased risks, and other taxa would become more vulnerable. In most regions of the USA, increased pollution and other impacts to headwaters would have negative economic consequences. Headwaters and the fishes they sustain have major cultural importance for many segments of U.S. society. Native peoples, in particular, have intimate relationships with fish and the streams that support them. Headwaters ecosystems and the natural, socio‐cultural, and economic services they provide are already severely threatened, and would face even more loss under the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule recently proposed by the Trump administration.
We present the detection of 68 sources from the most sensitive radio survey in circular polarisation conducted to date. We used the second data release of the 144 MHz LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey to ...produce circularly polarised maps with a median noise of 140 µJy beam
−1
and resolution of 20″ for ≈27% of the northern sky (5634 deg
2
). The leakage of total intensity into circular polarisation is measured to be ≈0.06%, and our survey is complete at flux densities ≥1 mJy. A detection is considered reliable when the circularly polarised fraction exceeds 1%. We find the population of circularly polarised sources is composed of four distinct classes: stellar systems, pulsars, active galactic nuclei, and sources unidentified in the literature. The stellar systems can be further separated into chromospherically active stars, M dwarfs, and brown dwarfs. Based on the circularly polarised fraction and lack of an optical counterpart, we show it is possible to infer whether the unidentified sources are likely unknown pulsars or brown dwarfs. By the completion of this survey of the northern sky, we expect to detect 300±100 circularly polarised sources.
Galaxy Zoo Supernovae Smith, A. M.; Lynn, S.; Sullivan, M. ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
April 2011, Volume:
412, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This paper presents the first results from a new citizen science project: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae. This proof-of-concept project uses members of the public to identify supernova candidates from the ...latest generation of wide-field imaging transient surveys. We describe the Galaxy Zoo Supernovae operations and scoring model, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel method using imaging data and transients from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We examine the results collected over the period 2010 April-July, during which nearly 14 000 supernova candidates from the PTF were classified by more than 2500 individuals within a few hours of data collection. We compare the transients selected by the citizen scientists to those identified by experienced PTF scanners and find the agreement to be remarkable - Galaxy Zoo Supernovae performs comparably to the PTF scanners and identified as transients 93 per cent of the ∼130 spectroscopically confirmed supernovae (SNe) that the PTF located during the trial period (with no false positive identifications). Further analysis shows that only a small fraction of the lowest signal-to-noise ratio detections (r > 19.5) are given low scores: Galaxy Zoo Supernovae correctly identifies all SNe with ≥8σ detections in the PTF imaging data. The Galaxy Zoo Supernovae project has direct applicability to future transient searches, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, by both rapidly identifying candidate transient events and via the training and improvement of existing machine classifier algorithms.
Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and insulin-like growth factor-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) are involved in cell replication, proliferation, differentiation, protein synthesis, carbohydrate ...homeostasis and bone metabolism. Circulating IGF-I and IGFBP-3 concentrations predict anthropometric traits and risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. In a genome-wide association study of 10 280 middle-aged and older men and women from four community-based cohort studies, we confirmed a known association of single nucleotide polymorphisms in the IGFBP3 gene region on chromosome 7p12.3 with IGFBP-3 concentrations using a significance threshold of P < 5 × 10(-8) (P = 3.3 × 10(-101)). Furthermore, the same IGFBP3 gene locus (e.g. rs11977526) that was associated with IGFBP-3 concentrations was also associated with the opposite direction of effect, with IGF-I concentration after adjustment for IGFBP-3 concentration (P = 1.9 × 10(-26)). A novel and independent locus on chromosome 7p12.3 (rs700752) had genome-wide significant associations with higher IGFBP-3 (P = 4.4 × 10(-21)) and higher IGF-I (P = 4.9 × 10(-9)) concentrations; when the two measurements were adjusted for one another, the IGF-I association was attenuated but the IGFBP-3 association was not. Two additional loci demonstrated genome-wide significant associations with IGFBP-3 concentration (rs1065656, chromosome 16p13.3, P = 1.2 × 10(-11), IGFALS, a confirmatory finding; and rs4234798, chromosome 4p16.1, P = 4.5 × 10(-10), SORCS2, a novel finding). Together, the four genome-wide significant loci explained 6.5% of the population variation in IGFBP-3 concentration. Furthermore, we observed a borderline statistically significant association between IGF-I concentration and FOXO3 (rs2153960, chromosome 6q21, P = 5.1 × 10(-7)), a locus associated with longevity. These genetic loci deserve further investigation to elucidate the biological basis for the observed associations and clarify their possible role in IGF-mediated regulation of cell growth and metabolism.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common, complex psychiatric disorder and a leading cause of disability worldwide. Despite twin studies indicating its modest heritability (~30-40%), extensive ...heterogeneity and a complex genetic architecture have complicated efforts to detect associated genetic risk variants. We combined single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) summary statistics from the CONVERGE and PGC studies of MDD, representing 10 502 Chinese (5282 cases and 5220 controls) and 18 663 European (9447 cases and 9215 controls) subjects. We determined the fraction of SNPs displaying consistent directions of effect, assessed the significance of polygenic risk scores and estimated the genetic correlation of MDD across ancestries. Subsequent trans-ancestry meta-analyses combined SNP-level evidence of association. Sign tests and polygenic score profiling weakly support an overlap of SNP effects between East Asian and European populations. We estimated the trans-ancestry genetic correlation of lifetime MDD as 0.33; female-only and recurrent MDD yielded estimates of 0.40 and 0.41, respectively. Common variants downstream of GPHN achieved genome-wide significance by Bayesian trans-ancestry meta-analysis (rs9323497; log
Bayes Factor=8.08) but failed to replicate in an independent European sample (P=0.911). Gene-set enrichment analyses indicate enrichment of genes involved in neuronal development and axonal trafficking. We successfully demonstrate a partially shared polygenic basis of MDD in East Asian and European populations. Taken together, these findings support a complex etiology for MDD and possible population differences in predisposing genetic factors, with important implications for future genetic studies.
Positional cloning of hereditary deafness genes is a direct approach to identify molecules and mechanisms underlying auditory function. Here we report a locus for dominant deafness, DFNA36, which ...maps to human chromosome 9q13-21 in a region overlapping the DFNB7/B11 locus for recessive deafness. We identified eight mutations in a new gene, transmembrane cochlear-expressed gene 1 (TMC1), in a DFNA36 family and eleven DFNB7/B11 families. We detected a 1.6-kb genomic deletion encompassing exon 14 of Tmc1 in the recessive deafness (dn) mouse mutant, which lacks auditory responses and has hair-cell degeneration. TMC1 and TMC2 on chromosome 20p13 are members of a gene family predicted to encode transmembrane proteins. Tmc1 mRNA is expressed in hair cells of the postnatal mouse cochlea and vestibular end organs and is required for normal function of cochlear hair cells.
The primary advantage of moderately superheated bubble chamber detectors is their simultaneous sensitivity to nuclear recoils from weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter and ...insensitivity to electron recoil backgrounds. A comprehensive analysis of PICO gamma calibration data demonstrates for the first time that electron recoils in C3F8 scale in accordance with a new nucleation mechanism, rather than one driven by a hot spike as previously supposed. Using this semiempirical model, bubble chamber nucleation thresholds may be tuned to be sensitive to lower energy nuclear recoils while maintaining excellent electron recoil rejection. The PICO-40L detector will exploit this model to achieve thermodynamic thresholds as low as 2.8 keV while being dominated by single-scatter events from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering of solar neutrinos. In one year of operation, PICO-40L can improve existing leading limits from PICO on spin-dependent WIMP-proton coupling by nearly an order of magnitude for WIMP masses greater than 3GeVc-2 and will have the ability to surpass all existing non-xenon bounds on spin-independent WIMP-nucleon coupling for WIMP masses from 3 to 40GeVc-2.
Bipolar disorder is a heritable mental illness with complex etiology. We performed a genome-wide association study of 41,917 bipolar disorder cases and 371,549 controls of European ancestry, which ...identified 64 associated genomic loci. Bipolar disorder risk alleles were enriched in genes in synaptic signaling pathways and brain-expressed genes, particularly those with high specificity of expression in neurons of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Significant signal enrichment was found in genes encoding targets of antipsychotics, calcium channel blockers, antiepileptics and anesthetics. Integrating expression quantitative trait locus data implicated 15 genes robustly linked to bipolar disorder via gene expression, encoding druggable targets such as HTR6, MCHR1, DCLK3 and FURIN. Analyses of bipolar disorder subtypes indicated high but imperfect genetic correlation between bipolar disorder type I and II and identified additional associated loci. Together, these results advance our understanding of the biological etiology of bipolar disorder, identify novel therapeutic leads and prioritize genes for functional follow-up studies.
Final results are reported from operation of the PICO-60 C3F8 dark matter detector, a bubble chamber filled with 52 kg of C3F8 located in the SNOLAB underground laboratory. The chamber was operated ...at thermodynamic thresholds as low as 1.2 keV without loss of stability. A new blind 1404-kg-day exposure at 2.45 keV threshold was acquired with approximately the same expected total background rate as the previous 1167-kg-day exposure at 3.3 keV. This increased exposure is enabled in part by a new optical tracking analysis to better identify events near detector walls, permitting a larger fiducial volume. These results set the most stringent direct-detection constraint to date on the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP)-proton spin-dependent cross section at $3.2×10^{-41}$ cm2 for a 25 GeV WIMP, improving on previous PICO results for 3–5 GeV WIMPs by an order of magnitude.
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