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The Eagle has landed : 50 years of lunar science fiction
\"In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, the endlessly-mysterious moon is explored in this reprint short science fiction anthology from award-winning editor and anthologist Neil Clarke ... On July 20, 1969, mankind made what had only years earlier seemed like an impossible leap forward: when Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the moon, and Neil Armstrong the first person to step foot on the lunar surface. While there have only been a handful of new missions since, the fascination with our planet's satellite continues, and generations of writers and artists have imagined the endless possibilities of lunar life. From adventures in the vast gulf of space between the earth and the moon, to journeys across the light face to the dark side, to the establishment of permanent residences on its surface, science fiction has for decades given readers bold and forward-thinking ideas about our nearest interstellar neighbor and what it might mean to humankind, both now and in our future. [This book] collects the best stories written in the fifty years since mankind first stepped foot on the lunar surface, serving as a shining reminder that the moon is and always has been our most visible and constant example of all the infinite possibility of the wider universe\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
The Athlete Biological Passport
In elite sports, the growing availability of doping substances identical to those naturally produced by the human body seriously limits the ability of drug-testing regimes to ensure fairness and protection of health.
The Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), the new paradigm in testing based on the personalized monitoring of biomarkers of doping, offers the enormous advantage of being independent of this endless pharmaceutical race. Doping triggers physiological changes that provide physiological enhancements. In the same way that disease-related biomarkers are invaluable tools that assist physicians in the diagnosis of pathology, specifically selected biomarkers can be used to detect doping.
The ABP is a new testing paradigm with immense potential value in the current climate of rapid advancement in biomarker discovery. In addition to its original aim of providing proof of a doping offense, the ABP can also serve as a platform for a Rule of Sport, with the presentation before competition of the ABP to objectively demonstrate that the athlete will participate in a healthy physiological condition that is unaltered by performance-enhancing drugs. Finally, the decision-support system used today for the biological monitoring of world top-level athletes can also be advantageously transferred to other areas of clinical practice to reach the goal of personalized medicine.
Journal Article
Laser-induced transient magnons in Sr₃Ir₂O₇ throughout the Brillouin zone
Although ultrafast manipulation of magnetism holds great promise for new physical phenomena and applications, targeting specific states is held back by our limited understanding of how magnetic correlations evolve on ultrafast timescales. Using ultrafast resonant inelastic X-ray scattering we demonstrate that femtosecond laser pulses can excite transient magnons at large wavevectors in gapped antiferromagnets and that they persist for several picoseconds, which is opposite to what is observed in nearly gapless magnets. Our work suggests that materials with isotropic magnetic interactions are preferred to achieve rapid manipulation of magnetism.
Journal Article
Safety, Tolerability, and Pharmacokinetics of SMT C1100, a 2-Arylbenzoxazole Utrophin Modulator, following Single- and Multiple-Dose Administration to Pediatric Patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
SMT C1100 is a utrophin modulator being evaluated as a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). This study, the first in pediatric DMD patients, reports the safety, tolerability and PK parameters of single and multiple doses of SMT C1100, as well as analyze potential biomarkers of muscle damage.
This multicenter, Phase 1 study enrolled 12 patients, divided equally into three groups (A-C). Group A were given 50 mg/kg on Days 1 and 11, and 50 mg/kg bid on Days 2 to 10. Group B and C received 100 mg/kg on Days 1 and 11; Group B and Group C were given 100 mg/kg bid and 100 mg/kg tid, respectively, on Days 2 to 10. A safety review was performed on all patients following the single dose and there was at least 2 weeks between each dose escalation, for safety and PK review. Adverse events (AEs) were monitored throughout the study.
Most patients experienced mild AEs and there were no serious AEs. Two patients required analgesia for pain (headache, ear pain and toothache). One patient experienced moderate psychiatric AEs (abnormal behaviour and mood swings). Plasma concentrations of SMT C1100 at Days 1 and 11 indicated a high degree of patient variability regardless of dose. Unexpectedly the SMT C1100 levels were significantly lower than similar doses administered to healthy volunteers in an earlier clinical study. In general, individual baseline changes of creatine phosphokinase, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase levels fell with SMT C1100 dosing.
SMT C1100 was well tolerated in pediatric DMD patients.
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02383511.
Journal Article
Magnetism in iridate heterostructures leveraged by structural distortions
Fundamental control of magnetic coupling through heterostructure morphology is a prerequisite for rational engineering of magnetic ground states. We report the tuning of magnetic interactions in superlattices composed of single and bilayers of SrIrO
3
inter-spaced with SrTiO
3
in analogy to the Ruddlesden-Popper series iridates. Magnetic scattering shows predominately
c
-axis antiferromagnetic orientation of the magnetic moments for the bilayer, as in Sr
3
Ir
2
O
7
. However, the magnetic excitation gap, measured by resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, is quite different between the two structures, evidencing a significant change in the stability of the competing magnetic phases. In contrast, the single layer iridate hosts a more bulk-like gap. We find these changes are driven by bending of the
c
-axis Ir-O-Ir bond, which is much weaker in the single layer, and subsequent local environment changes, evidenced through x-ray diffraction and magnetic excitation modeling. Our findings demonstrate how large changes in the magnetic interactions can be tailored and probed in spin-orbit coupled heterostructures by engineering subtle structural modulations.
Journal Article
Comparison of Visual and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) Assessments to Predict the Yield Tolerance of Wheat Genotypes to Root-Lesion Nematode Pratylenchus thornei
Wheat breeding programs have selected genotypes that are tolerant to the root-lesion nematode Pratylenchus thornei by measuring grain yield in field plots on infested sites. However, quicker methods are desirable to increase the capacity to assess more breeding lines for tolerance without harvesting grain. Two field experiments, time of sowing 1 (TOS1) and time of sowing 2 (TOS2), were conducted in the subtropical grain region of eastern Australia each year for eight years (sixteen experiments total) to characterize 396 wheat genotypes for tolerance when grown on high population densities of P. thornei. For each experiment, up to two visual tolerance ratings (TRs) and two normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) readings were recorded using a Greenseeker™ during crop growth, and grain yield was obtained at crop maturity. The results showed that both TR and NDVI were predictive of tolerance based on the grain yield of the wheat genotypes. Generally, higher genetic correlations between grain yield and each vegetative assessment method were obtained with TOS2 than with TOS1 each year. The vegetative methods for assessing P. thornei tolerance proved to be valuable surrogates when grain yield was unreliable for germplasms that were agronomically unadapted to the regional environment. Our study established that at high population densities of P. thornei only, NDVI is a high-throughput phenotypic measurement of tolerance that can be used to screen a range of genetically diverse genotypes.
Journal Article
Tolerance of wheat (Triticum aestivum) genotypes to root-lesion nematode (Pratylenchus thornei) in the subtropical grain region of eastern Australia
Practical and statistically sound methods are required to provide reliable assessments of the tolerance to P. thornei of large numbers of wheat genotypes for plant breeders’ selections and growers’ choice of cultivars to sow in the subtropical grain region of eastern Australia. We showed from six experiments that tolerance indices for wheat genotypes as ratios of grain yield from paired high and low P. thornei treatments were highly significantly related to grain yield on P. thornei infested field sites. We then applied factor analytic multi-environment trial (MET) analysis to 29 field experiments that tested 784 unique wheat genotypes for tolerance to P. thornei based on grain yield on infested sites. Tolerance to P. thornei was effectively modelled with three factors rotated to a principal components solution, which accounted for 84.0, 4.7 and 3.6% respectively of the genotype x experiment variance and covariance. We then validated the estimated best linear unbiased predictions based on these three components (PA(1 + 2 + 3)-eBLUPs) as a quantitative tolerance index to predict relative grain yield of wheat genotypes in independent experiments on P. thornei infested sites. The range of PA(1 + 2 + 3)-eBLUPS was subdivided into nine arithmetically equal subranges to provide nine ordinal alpha ratings from very intolerant to tolerant for growers’ sowing guides and to select nine genotypes as P. thornei tolerance checks in future experiments. There was a 60% loss of grain yield between genotypes in the very intolerant category compared with the tolerant category emphasising the need for continued characterisation of wheat for tolerance to P. thornei.
Journal Article
A spatially orthogonal hierarchically porous acid–base catalyst for cascade and antagonistic reactions
Complex organic molecules are of great importance to research and industrial chemistry and typically synthesized from smaller building blocks by multistep reactions. The ability to perform multiple (distinct) transformations in a single reactor would greatly reduce the number of manipulations required for chemical manufacturing, and hence the development of multifunctional catalysts for such one-pot reactions is highly desirable. Here we report the synthesis of a hierarchically porous framework, in which the macropores are selectively functionalized with a sulfated zirconia solid acid coating, while the mesopores are selectively functionalized with MgO solid base nanoparticles. Active site compartmentalization and substrate channelling protects base-catalysed triacylglyceride transesterification from poisoning by free fatty acid impurities (even at 50 mol%), and promotes the efficient two-step cascade deacetalization-Knoevenagel condensation of dimethyl acetals to cyanoates.
The spatial segregation of distinct catalytic functionalities within the same material holds great promise for cascade or antagonistic reactions, but it remains challenging. Here, the authors report the successful realization of this approach for an efficient hierarchical porous silica catalyst featuring spatially separated sulfated zirconia and magnesium oxide.
Journal Article
Circulating microRNA-122 as Potential Biomarker for Detection of Testosterone Abuse
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression and thus influence many cellular and physiological processes. miRNAs are also present in cell-free body fluids such as plasma or serum, and these circulating miRNAs are very stable, sensitive, and specific biomarkers of pathophysiological states. In this study, we investigated whether circulating miRNAs could serve as biomarkers of exogenous testosterone administration. Misuse of testosterone as a performance-enhancing drug is thought to be widespread in sports. Detection of testosterone through the urinary steroid profile of the Athlete Biological Passport faces several obstacles, indicating that new biomarkers are required. To this end, we analyzed plasma miRNA levels by high-throughput quantitative real-time PCR. Plasma samples were obtained before and at several time points after transdermal and oral testosterone administration. Screening identified three potential candidate miRNAs that were altered by both routes of testosterone administration. Longitudinal monitoring of these candidates revealed that variation in two of them (miR-150 and miR-342), relative to the corresponding levels in control samples, was testosterone-independent. However, levels of the liver-specific miR-122 increased 3.5-fold 1 day after drug intake. Given that testosterone is metabolized by the liver, this observation suggests that miR-122 in cell-free fluids may be used as a sensitive biomarker of testosterone misuse via multiple dosing routes and could therefore be integrated into a blood-based multiparametric follow-up.
Journal Article
Russian Neo-patrimonialism and Putin's 'Cultural Turn'
Russian politics has been characterised by increasing cultural and political conservatism since Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This article argues that Putin's turn to cultural conservatism is a reaction to a crisis in Russia's neo-patrimonial system. The article presents a model of neo-patrimonialism and argues that the turn to cultural conservatism under Putin is only a partial solution to the problems of neo-patrimonialism in Russia. This is because the turn towards cultural conservatism does not define any internal transformational tasks for Putin to fulfil.
Journal Article