Interaction of a high intensity laser with matter may generate an ionizing radiation hazard. Very limited studies have been made, however, on the laser-induced radiation protection issue. This work reviews available literature on the physics and characteristics of laser-induced X-ray hazards. Important aspects include the laser-to-electron energy conversion efficiency, electron angular distribution, electron energy spectrum and effective temperature, and bremsstrahlung production of X-rays in the target. The possible X-ray dose rates for several femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser systems used at SLAC, including the short pulse laser system for the Matter in Extreme Conditions Instrument (peak power 4 TW and peak intensity 2.4 x 10{sup 18} W/cm{sup 2}) were analysed. A graded approach to mitigate the laser-induced X-ray hazard with a combination of engineered and administrative controls is also proposed.

Using four genomes: Chamydomonas reinhardtii, Agaricus bisporus, Aspergillus carbonarius, and Sporotricum thermophile with EST coverage of 2.9x, 8.9x, 29.5x, and 46.3x respectively, we identified 11 alternative splicing (AS) types that were dominated by intron retention (RI; biased toward short introns) and found 15, 35, 52, and 63percent AS of multiexon genes respectively. Genes with AS were more ancient, and number of AS correlated with number of exons, expression level, and maximum intron length of the gene. Introns with tendency to be retained had either stop codons or length of 3n+1 or 3n+2 presumably triggering nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD), but introns retained in major isoforms (0.2-6percent of all introns) were biased toward 3n length and stop codon free. Stopless introns were biased toward phase 0, but 3n introns favored phase 1 that introduced more flexible and hydrophilic amino acids on both ends of introns which would be less disruptive to protein structure. We proposed a model in which minor RI intron could evolve into major RI that could facilitate intron loss through exonization.

Using the integral field spectrograph OSIRIS, on the Keck II telescope, broad near-infrared H and K-band spectra of the young exoplanet HR8799b have been obtained. In addition, six new narrow-band photometric measurements have been taken across the H and K bands. These data are combined with previously published photometry for an analysis of the planet's atmospheric properties. Thick photospheric dust cloud opacity is invoked to explain the planet's red near-IR colors and relatively smooth near-IR spectrum. Strong water absorption is detected, indicating a Hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Only weak CH{sub 4} absorption is detected at K band, indicating efficient vertical mixing and a disequilibrium CO/CH{sub 4} ratio at photospheric depths. The H-band spectrum has a distinct triangular shape consistent with low surface gravity. New giant planet atmosphere models are compared to these data with best fitting bulk parameters, T{sub eff} = 1100K {+-} 100 and log(g) = 3.5 {+-} 0.5 (for solar composition). Given the observed luminosity (log L{sub obs}/L{sub {circle_dot}} {approx} -5.1), these values correspond to a radius of 0.75 R{sub Jup{sub 0.12}{sup +0.17}} and mass {approx} 0.72 M{sub Jup{sub -0.6}{sup +2.6}} - strikingly inconsistent with interior/evolution models. Enhanced metallicity (up to {approx} 10 x that of the Sun) along with …

A new tool, DUK, is developed to perform matching task. Matching is to find whether a query sequence partially or totally matches given reference sequences or not. Matching is similar to alignment. Indeed many traditional analysis tasks like contaminant removal use alignment tools. But for matching, there is no need to know which bases of a query sequence matches which position of a reference sequence, it only need know whether there exists a match or not. This subtle difference can make matching task much faster than alignment. DUK is accurate, versatile, fast, and has efficient memory usage. It uses Kmer hashing method to index reference sequences and Poisson model to calculate p-value. DUK is carefully implemented in C++ in object oriented design. The resulted classes can also be used to develop other tools quickly. DUK have been widely used in JGI for a wide range of applications such as contaminant removal, organelle genome separation, and assembly refinement. Many real applications and simulated dataset demonstrate its power.

Manual library construction is a limiting factor in Illumina sequencing. Constructing libraries by hand is costly, time-consuming, low-throughput, and ergonomically hazardous, and constructing multiple libraries introduces risk of library failure due to pipetting errors. The ability to construct multiple libraries simultaneously in automated fashion represents significant cost and time savings. Here we present a strategy to construct up to 96 unamplified indexed libraries using Illumina TruSeq reagents and a Biomek FX robotic platform. We also present data to indicate that this library construction method has little or no risk of cross-contamination between samples.

None

Article on yeast lipin orthologue Pah1p and its importance for biogenesis of lipid droplets.