Glass-Like Phonon Dynamics and Thermal Transport in a GeTe Nano-Composite at Low Temperature.

In this work, the experimental evidence of glass-like phonon dynamics and thermal conductivity in a nanocomposite made of GeTe and amorphous carbon is reported, which is of interest for microelectronics, and specifically phase change memories. It is shown that, the total thermal conductivity is reduced by a factor of three at room temperature with respect to pure GeTe, due to the reduction of both electronic and phononic contributions. This latter, similarly to glasses, is small and weakly increasing with temperature between 100 and 300 K, indicating a mostly diffusive thermal transport and reaching a value of 0.

The genome sequence of the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa.

Neurospora crassa is a central organism in the history of twentieth-century genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology. Here, we report a high-quality draft sequence of the N. crassa genome.

Human alpha-synuclein-harboring familial Parkinson's disease-linked Ala-53 --> Thr mutation causes neurodegenerative disease with alpha-synuclein aggregation in transgenic mice.

Mutations in alpha-synuclein (alpha-Syn) cause Parkinson's disease (PD) in a small number of pedigrees with familial PD. Moreover, alpha-Syn accumulates as a major component of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, intraneuronal inclusions that are neuropathological hallmarks of PD. To better understand the pathogenic relationship between alterations in the biology of alpha-Syn and PD-associated neurodegeneration, we generated multiple lines of transgenic mice expressing high levels of either wild-type or familial PD-linked Ala-30 --> Pro (A30P) or Ala-53 --> Thr (A53T) human alpha-Syns.

Molecular phylogenetic position of Schistosoma sinensium in the genus Schistosoma.

The status of Schistosoma sinensium (samples from Thailand and from Sichuan, China) relative to other species of the genus Schistosoma was investigated using DNA sequences from the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) gene (partial) and the nuclear ribosomal DNA second internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2). Trees inferred from these sequences place S. sinensium as sister to the S.

Cytokines involved in the systemic inflammatory response induced by exposure to particulate matter air pollutants (PM(10)).

Elevated levels of ambient particulate matter (PM(10)) have been associated with increased cardiopulmonary morbidity and mortality. We previously showed that the deposition of particles in the lung induces a systemic inflammatory response that includes stimulation of the bone marrow. This marrow response is related to mediators released by alveolar macrophages (AM) and in this study we measured cytokines produced by human AM exposed to ambient particles of different composition and size.