Engineering Hybrid Guided Modes in Subwavelength Uniaxial Metamaterial Waveguides

We report anomalous dispersion properties of hybrid guided modes (HGMs) and their group velocity in a subwavelength uniaxial metamaterial waveguide with metal cladding. We derive exact dispersion relations and modal fields of HGMs by solving eigenvalue equation based on basic electromagnetic field theory in detail. Numerical results show that two fundamental HGMs and two types of high-order HGMs can be excited, and their exciting conditions are clarified. In addition, such HGMs can be engineered to belong to normal dispersion or anomalous dispersion. Importantly, the HGMs may be controlled to be forward or backward, and their group velocities may be very small in a certain frequency band. These properties make such metamaterial waveguides have many potential applications in integrated optics, information storage and biosensing.     

Increased Specific Labeling of INS-1 Pancreatic Beta-Cell by Using RIP-Driven Cre Mutants with Reduced Activity

Ectopically expressed Cre recombinase in extrapancreatic tissues in RIP-Cre mice has been well documented. The objective of this study was to find a simple solution that allows for improved beta-cell specific targeting. To this end, the RIP-Cre and reporter CMV-loxP-DsRed-loxP-EGFP expression cassettes were configurated into a one-plasmid and two-plasmid systems, which labeled approximately 80% insulin-positive INS-1 cells after 48 h transfection. However, off-target labeling was robustly found in more than 15% insulin-negative Ad293 cells. When an IRES element was inserted in front of Cre to reduce the translation efficiency, the ratio of recombination between INS-1 and Ad293 cells increased 3-4-fold. Further, a series of Cre mutants were generated by site-directed mutagenesis. When one of the mutants, Cre(H289P) in both configurations, was used in the experiment, the percentage of recombination dropped to background levels in a number of insulin-negative cell lines, but decreased only slightly in INS-1 cells. Consistently, DNA substrate digestion assay showed that the enzymatic activity of Cre(H289P) was reduced by 30-fold as compared to that of wild-type. In this study, we reported the generation of constructs containing RIP and Cre mutants, which enabled enhanced beta-cell specific labeling in vitro. These tools could be invaluable for beta-cell targeting and to the study of islet development.     

Interactions Among Fuel Management,Species Composition,Bark Beetles,and Climate Change and the Potential Effects on Forests of the Lake Tahoe Basin

Climate-driven increases in wildfires, drought conditions, and insect outbreaks are critical threats to forest carbon stores. In particular, bark beetles are important disturbance agents although their long-term interactions with future climate change are poorly understood. Droughts and the associated moisture deficit contribute to the onset of bark beetle outbreaks although outbreak extent and severity is dependent upon the density of host trees, wildfire, and forest management. Our objective was to estimate the effects of climate change and bark beetle outbreaks on ecosystem carbon dynamics over the next century in a western US forest. Specifically, we hypothesized that (a) bark beetle outbreaks under climate change would reduce net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) and increase uncertainty and (b) these effects could be ameliorated by fuels management. We also examined the specific tree species dynamics—competition and release—that determined NECB response to bark beetle outbreaks. Our study area was the Lake Tahoe Basin (LTB), CA and NV, USA, an area of diverse forest types encompassing steep elevation and climatic gradients and representative of mixed-conifer forests throughout the western United States. We simulated climate change, bark beetles, wildfire, and fuels management using a landscape-scale stochastic model of disturbance and succession. We simulated the period 2010–2100 using downscaled climate projections. Recurring droughts generated conditions conducive to large-scale outbreaks; the resulting large and sustained outbreaks significantly increased the probability of LTB forests becoming C sources over decadal time scales, with slower-than-anticipated landscape-scale recovery. Tree species composition was substantially altered with a reduction in functional redundancy and productivity. Results indicate heightened uncertainty due to the synergistic influences of climate change and interacting disturbances. Our results further indicate that current fuel management practices will not be effective at reducing landscape-scale outbreak mortality. Our results provide critical insights into the interaction of drivers (bark beetles, wildfire, fuel management) that increase the risk of C loss and shifting community composition if bark beetle outbreaks become more frequent.     

Decomposition Patterns of Foliar Litter and Deadwood in Managed and Unmanaged Stands: A 13-Year Experiment in Boreal Mixedwoods

Litter decomposition is a major driver of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles in forest ecosystems and has major implications for C sequestration and nutrient availability. However, empirical information regarding long-term decomposition rates of foliage and wood remains rare. In this study, we assessed long-term C and N dynamics (12–13 years) during decomposition of foliage and wood for three boreal tree species, under a range of harvesting intensities and slash treatments. We used model selection based on the second-order Akaike’s Information Criterion to determine which decomposition model had the most support. The double-exponential model provided a good fit to C mass loss for foliage of trembling aspen, white spruce, and balsam fir, as well as aspen wood. These litters underwent a rapid initial phase of leaching and mineralisation, followed by a slow decomposition. In contrast, for spruce and fir wood, the single-exponential model had the most support. The long-term average decay rate of wood was faster than that of foliage for aspen, but not of conifers. However, we found no evidence that fir and spruce wood decomposed at slower rates than the recalcitrant fraction of their foliage. The critical C:N ratios, at which net N mineralisation began, were higher for wood than for foliage. Long-term decay rates following clear-cutting were either similar or faster than those observed in control stands, depending on litter material, tree species, and slash treatment. The critical C:N ratios were reached later and decreased for all conifer litters following stem-only clear-cutting, indicating increased N retention in harvested sites with high slash loads. Partial harvesting had weak effects on C and N dynamics of decaying litters. A comprehensive understanding of the long-term patterns and controls of C and N dynamics following forest disturbance would improve our ability to forecast the implications of forest harvesting for C sequestration and nutrient availability.     

Site,trigger, quenching mechanism and recovery of non-photochemical quenching in cyanobacteria: recent updates

Femtosecond transient absorption was used to study excitation decay in monomeric and trimeric cyanobacterial Photosystem I (PSI) being prepared in three states: (1) in aqueous solution, (2) deposited and dried on glass surface (either conducting or non-conducting), and (3) deposited on glass (conducting) surface but being in contact with aqueous solvent. The main goal of this contribution was to determine the reason of the acceleration of the excitation decay in dried PSI deposited on the conducting surface relative to PSI in solution observed previously using time-resolved fluorescence (Szewczyk et al., Photysnth Res 132(2):111–126, 2017). We formulated two alternative working hypotheses: (1) the acceleration results from electron injection from PSI to the conducting surface; (2) the acceleration is caused by dehydration and/or crowding of PSI proteins deposited on the glass substrate. Excitation dynamics of PSI in all three types of samples can be described by three main components of subpicosecond, 3–5, and 20–26 ps lifetimes of different relative contributions in solution than in PSI-substrate systems. The presence of similar kinetic components for all the samples indicates intactness of PSI proteins after their deposition onto the substrates. The kinetic traces for all systems with PSI deposited on substrates are almost identical and they decay significantly faster than the kinetic traces of PSI in solution. We conclude that the accelerated excitation decay in PSI-substrate systems is caused mostly by dense packing of proteins.     

Upf proteins: highly conserved factors involved in nonsense mRNA mediated decay

Over 10% of genetic diseases are caused by mutations that introduce a premature termination codon in protein-coding mRNA. Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is an essential cellular pathway that degrades these mRNAs to prevent the accumulation of harmful partial protein products. NMD machinery is also increasingly appreciated to play a role in other essential cellular functions, including telomere homeostasis and the regulation of normal mRNA turnover, and is misregulated in numerous cancers. Hence, understanding and designing therapeutics targeting NMD is an important goal in biomedical science. The central regulator of NMD, the Upf1 protein, interacts with translation termination factors and contextual factors to initiate NMD specifically on mRNAs containing PTCs. The molecular details of how these contextual factors affect Upf1 function remain poorly understood. Here, we review plausible models for the NMD pathway and the evidence for the variety of roles NMD machinery may play in different cellular processes.     

Fast algorithms for computing sequence distances by exhaustive substring composition

The increasing throughput of sequencing raises growing needs for methods of sequence analysis and comparison on a genomic scale, notably, in connection with phylogenetic tree reconstruction. Such needs are hardly fulfilled by the more traditional measures of sequence similarity and distance, like string edit and gene rearrangement, due to a mixture of epistemological and computational problems. Alternative measures, based on the subword composition of sequences, have emerged in recent years and proved to be both fast and effective in a variety of tested cases. The common denominator of such measures is an underlying information theoretic notion of relative compressibility. Their viability depends critically on computational cost. The present paper describes as a paradigm the extension and efficient implementation of one of the methods in this class. The method is based on the comparison of the frequencies of all subwords in the two input sequences, where frequencies are suitably adjusted to take into account the statistical background.