Aneuploidy, the most common chromosomal abnormality at birth and the main ascertained cause of pregnancy loss in humans, originates primarily from chromosome segregation errors during oogenesis. Here we report that heterozygosity for a mutation in the mitotic checkpoint kinase gene, Bub1, induces aneuploidy in female germ cells of mice, and that the effect increases with advancing maternal age. Analysis of Bub1 heterozygous oocytes showed that aneuploidy occurred primarily during the first meiotic division and involved premature sister chromatid separation. Furthermore, aneuploidy was inherited in zygotes and resulted in the loss of embryos after implantation. The incidence of aneuploidy in zygotes was sufficient to explain the reduced litter size in matings with Bub1 heterozygous females. No effects were seen in germ cells from heterozygous males. These findings show that Bub1 dysfunction is linked to inherited aneuploidy in female germ cells and may contribute to the maternal age-related increase in aneuploidy and pregnancy loss.

The Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) waste management strategy revolves around specific treatment of individual or groups of separated waste streams. A goal for the separations processes is to efficiently manage the waste to be dispositioned as high level radioactive waste. The Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) baseline technology for immobilization of the lanthanide (Ln) and transition metal fission product (TM) wastes is vitrification into a borosilicate glass. A current interest is to evaluate the feasibility of vitrifying combined waste streams to most cost effectively immobilize the wastes resulting from aqueous fuel reprocessing. Studies showed that high waste loadings are achievable for the Ln only (Option 1) stream. Waste loadings in excess of 60 wt % (on a calcined oxide basis) were demonstrated via a lanthanide borosilicate (LaBS) glass. The resulting glasses had excellent relative durability as determined by the Product Consistency Test (PCT). For a combined Ln and TM waste stream glass (Option 2), noble metal solubility was found to limit waste loading. However, the measured PCT normalized elemental releases for this glass were at least an order of magnitude below that of Environmental Assessment (EA) glass. Current efforts to evaluate the feasibility of vitrifying combined Ln, TM, alkali …

Article on the excitation of atomic coherence using off-resonant strong laser pulses.