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According to Dooge (1986) intermediate-scale catchments are systems of organized complexity, being too organized and yet too small to be characterized on a statistical/conceptual basis, but too large and too heterogeneous to be characterized in a deterministic manner. A key requirement for building structurally adequate models precisely for this intermediate scale is a better understanding of how different forms of spatial organization affect storage and release of water and energy. Here, we propose that a combination of the concept of hydrological response units (HRUs) and thermodynamics offers several helpful and partly novel perspectives for gaining this improved understanding. Our key idea is to define functional similarity based on similarity of the terrestrial controls of gradients and resistance terms controlling the land surface energy balance, rainfall runoff transformation, and groundwater storage and release. This might imply that functional similarity with respect to these specific forms of water release emerges at different scales, namely the small field scale, the hillslope, and the catchment scale. We thus propose three different types of "functional units" - specialized HRUs, so to speak - which behave similarly with respect to one specific form of water release and with a characteristic extent equal to one of those three scale levels. We furthermore discuss an experimental strategy based on exemplary learning and replicate experiments to identify and delineate these functional units, and as a promising strategy for characterizing the interplay and organization of water and energy fluxes across scales. We believe the thermodynamic perspective to be well suited to unmask equifinality as inherent in the equations governing water, momentum, and energy fluxes: this is because several combinations of gradients and resistance terms yield the same mass or energy flux and the terrestrial controls of gradients and resistance terms are largely independent. We propose that structurally adequate models at this scale should consequently disentangle driving gradients and resistance terms, because this optionally allow sequifinality to be partly reduced by including available observations, e. g., on driving gradients. Most importantly, the thermodynamic perspective yields an energy-centered perspective on rainfall-runoff transformation and evapotranspiration, including fundamental limits for energy fluxes associated with these processes. This might additionally reduce equifinality and opens up opportunities for testing thermodynamic optimality principles within independent predictions of rainfall-runoff or land surface energy exchange. This is pivotal to finding out whether or not spatial organization in catchments is in accordance with a fundamental organizing principle.
Background and objective Whether treatment with vitamin D receptor activators contributes to cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease is a matter of debate. We studied mechanisms involved in vitamin D-related vascular calcifications in vivo and in vitro.
Methods Aortic calcifications were induced in subtotally nephrectomized (SNX) rats by treatment with a high dose (0.25 mu g/kg per day) of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D-3 (calcitriol) given for 6 weeks. Likewise, primary rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) were incubated with calcitriol at concentrations ranging from 10(-11) to 10(-7) mol/l. Immunohistochemistry revealed that the aortic expression of osteopontin, osteocalcin and bone sialoprotein was significantly increased in calcitriol-treated SNX rats compared to untreated SNX controls. In addition, aortic expression of the transient receptor potential vanilloid calcium channel 6 (TRPV6) and calbindin D9k was significantly up-regulated by treatment with calcitriol. Furthermore, calcitriol significantly increased expression of the osteogenic transcription factor osterix. In-vitro studies showed similar results, confirming that these effects could be attributed to treatment with calcitriol.
Conclusions High-dose calcitriol treatment induces an osteoblastic phenotype in VSMC both in SNX rats and in vitro, associated with up-regulation of proteins regulating mineralization and calcium transport, and of the osteogenic transcription factor osterix.
A statistical model describing the propensity for protein aggregation is presented. Only amino-acid hydrophobicity values and calculated net charge are used for the model. The combined effects of hydrophobic patterns as computed by the signal analysis technique, recurrence quantification, plus calculated net charge were included in a function emphasizing the effect of singular hydrophobic patches which were found to be statistically significant for predicting aggregation propensity as quantified by fluorescence studies obtained from the literature. These results suggest preliminary evidence for a mesoscopic principle for protein folding/aggregation. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The presence of partially folded intermediates along the folding funnel of proteins has been suggested to be a signature of potentially aggregating systems. Many studies have concluded that metastable, highly flexible intermediates are the basic elements of the aggregation process. In a previous paper, we demonstrated how the choice between aggregation and folding behavior was influenced by hydrophobicity distribution patterning along the sequence, as quantified by recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) of the Myiazawa-Jernigan coded primary structures. In the present paper, we tried to unify the "partially folded intermediate" and "hydrophobicity/charge" models of protein aggregation verifying the ability of an empirical relation, developed for rationalizing the effect of different mutations on aggregation propensity of acyl-phosphatase and based on the combination of hydrophobicity RQA and charge descriptors, to discriminate in a statistically significant way two different protein populations: (a) proteins that fold by a process passing by partially folded intermediates and (b) proteins that do not present partially folded intermediates
We combine data from the Spitzer Survey for Stellar Structure in Galaxies, a recently calibrated empirical stellar mass estimator from Eskew et al., and an extensive database of Hi spectral line profiles to examine the baryonic Tully-Fisher (BTF) relation. We find (1) that the BTF has lower scatter than the classic Tully-Fisher (TF) relation and is better described as a linear relationship, confirming similar previous results, (2) that the inclusion of a radial scale in the BTF decreases the scatter but only modestly, as seen previously for the TF relation, and (3) that the slope of the BTF, which we find to be 3.5 +/- 0.2 (Delta log M-baryon/Delta log v(c)), implies that on average a nearly constant fraction (similar to 0.4) of all baryons expected to be in a halo are "condensed" onto the central region of rotationally supported galaxies. The condensed baryon fraction, M-baryon/M-total, is, to our measurement precision, nearly independent of galaxy circular velocity (our sample spans circular velocities, vc, between 60 and 250 km s(-1), but is extended to v(c) similar to 10 km s(-1) using data from the literature). The observed galaxy-to-galaxy scatter in this fraction is generally <= a factor of 2 despite fairly liberal selection criteria. These results imply that cooling and heating processes, such as cold versus hot accretion, mass loss due to stellar winds, and active galactic nucleus driven feedback, to the degree that they affect the global galactic properties involved in the BTF, are independent of halo mass for galaxies with 10 < v(c) < 250 km s(-1) and typically introduce no more than a factor of two range in the resulting M-baryon/M-total. Recent simulations by Aumer et al. of a small sample of disk galaxies are in excellent agreement with our data, suggesting that current simulations are capable of reproducing the global properties of individual disk galaxies. More detailed comparison to models using the BTF holds great promise, but awaits improved determinations of the stellar masses.
Venomous snakes often display extensive variation in venom composition both between and within species. However, the mechanisms underlying the distribution of different toxins and venom types among populations and taxa remain insufficiently known. Rattlesnakes (Crotalus, Sistrurus) display extreme inter-and intraspecific variation in venom composition, centered particularly on the presence or absence of presynaptically neurotoxic phospholipases A2 such as Mojave toxin (MTX). Interspecific hybridization has been invoked as a mechanism to explain the distribution of these toxins across rattlesnakes, with the implicit assumption that they are adaptively advantageous. Here, we test the potential of adaptive hybridization as a mechanism for venom evolution by assessing the distribution of genes encoding the acidic and basic subunits of Mojave toxin across a hybrid zone between MTX-positive Crotalus scutulatus and MTX-negative C. viridis in southwestern New Mexico, USA. Analyses of morphology, mitochondrial and single copy-nuclear genes document extensive admixture within a narrow hybrid zone. The genes encoding the two MTX subunits are strictly linked, and found in most hybrids and backcrossed individuals, but not in C. viridis away from the hybrid zone. Presence of the genes is invariably associated with presence of the corresponding toxin in the venom. We conclude that introgression of highly lethal neurotoxins through hybridization is not necessarily favored by natural selection in rattlesnakes, and that even extensive hybridization may not lead to introgression of these genes into another species.
Venomous snakes often display extensive variation in venom composition both between and within species. However, the mechanisms underlying the distribution of different toxins and venom types among populations and taxa remain insufficiently known. Rattlesnakes (Crotalus, Sistrurus) display extreme inter-and intraspecific variation in venom composition, centered particularly on the presence or absence of presynaptically neurotoxic phospholipases A2 such as Mojave toxin (MTX). Interspecific hybridization has been invoked as a mechanism to explain the distribution of these toxins across rattlesnakes, with the implicit assumption that they are adaptively advantageous. Here, we test the potential of adaptive hybridization as a mechanism for venom evolution by assessing the distribution of genes encoding the acidic and basic subunits of Mojave toxin across a hybrid zone between MTX-positive Crotalus scutulatus and MTX-negative C. viridis in southwestern New Mexico, USA. Analyses of morphology, mitochondrial and single copy-nuclear genes document extensive admixture within a narrow hybrid zone. The genes encoding the two MTX subunits are strictly linked, and found in most hybrids and backcrossed individuals, but not in C. viridis away from the hybrid zone. Presence of the genes is invariably associated with presence of the corresponding toxin in the venom. We conclude that introgression of highly lethal neurotoxins through hybridization is not necessarily favored by natural selection in rattlesnakes, and that even extensive hybridization may not lead to introgression of these genes into another species.
A unified model for quantitative description of harmonic spectra of gases obtained by wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) technique is presented. In the model, both intensity modulation (IM) and frequency modulation (FM) of the laser emission are taken into account using minimum number of parameters. For the first time, the static behavior of a laser is described as a limiting case of its dynamic response. Laser and its driver are considered as a single device converting applied bias to laser emission. This allows application of the model to any type of laser and the introduced parameters can be assigned to the corresponding laser and/or driver properties. The approach was tested using a distributed feedback (DFB) laser spectrometer. Correctness of the proposed model is justified by very good agreement between the measured and modeled/fitted spectra, which allowed evaluation of the setup performance and assessment of modulation parameters of the DFB laser. An algorithm to minimize the time of numerical calculation of harmonic spectra using numerically approximated Voigt lineshape function was developed. Absolute values of the absorption line parameters (line strength and line width) were obtained from a single calibration- and reference-free spectrum scan with accuracy better than 0.1%.