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Birth weight variation is influenced by fetal and maternal genetic and non-genetic factors, and has been reproducibly associated with future cardio-metabolic health outcomes. In expanded genome-wide association analyses of own birth weight (n = 321,223) and offspring birth weight (n = 230,069 mothers), we identified 190 independent association signals (129 of which are novel). We used structural equation modeling to decompose the contributions of direct fetal and indirect maternal genetic effects, then applied Mendelian randomization to illuminate causal pathways. For example, both indirect maternal and direct fetal genetic effects drive the observational relationship between lower birth weight and higher later blood pressure: maternal blood pressure-raising alleles reduce offspring birth weight, but only direct fetal effects of these alleles, once inherited, increase later offspring blood pressure. Using maternal birth weight-lowering genotypes to proxy for an adverse intrauterine environment provided no evidence that it causally raises offspring blood pressure, indicating that the inverse birth weight-blood pressure association is attributable to genetic effects, and not to intrauterine programming.
Metal nanoparticles are the most frequently used nanostructures in plasmonics. However, besides nanoparticles, metal nanowires feature several advantages for applications. Their elongation offers a larger interaction volume, their resonances can reach higher quality factors, and their mode structure provides better coupling into integrated hybrid dielectric-plasmonic circuits. It is crucial though, to control the distance of the wire to a supporting substrate, to another metal layer or to active materials with sub-nanometer precision. A dielectric coating can be utilized for distance control, but it must not degrade the plasmonic properties. In this paper, we introduce a controlled synthesis and coating approach for silver nanowires to fulfill these demands. We synthesize and characterize silver nanowires of around 70 nm in diameter. These nanowires are coated with nm-sized silica shells using a modified Stober method to achieve a homogeneous and smooth surface quality. We use transmission electron microscopy, dark-field microscopy and electron-energy loss spectroscopy to study morphology and plasmonic resonances of individual nanowires and quantify the influence of the silica coating. Thorough numerical simulations support the experimental findings showing that the coating does not deteriorate the plasmonic properties and thus introduce silver nanowires as usable building blocks for integrated hybrid plasmonic systems.
The progress of science is tied to the standardization of measurements, instruments, and data. This is especially true in the Big Data age, where analyzing large data volumes critically hinges on the data being standardized. Accordingly, the lack of community-sanctioned data standards in paleoclimatology has largely precluded the benefits of Big Data advances in the field. Building upon recent efforts to standardize the format and terminology of paleoclimate data, this article describes the Paleoclimate Community reporTing Standard (PaCTS), a crowdsourced reporting standard for such data. PaCTS captures which information should be included when reporting paleoclimate data, with the goal of maximizing the reuse value of paleoclimate data sets, particularly for synthesis work and comparison to climate model simulations. Initiated by the LinkedEarth project, the process to elicit a reporting standard involved an international workshop in 2016, various forms of digital community engagement over the next few years, and grassroots working groups. Participants in this process identified important properties across paleoclimate archives, in addition to the reporting of uncertainties and chronologies; they also identified archive-specific properties and distinguished reporting standards for new versus legacy data sets. This work shows that at least 135 respondents overwhelmingly support a drastic increase in the amount of metadata accompanying paleoclimate data sets. Since such goals are at odds with present practices, we discuss a transparent path toward implementing or revising these recommendations in the near future, using both bottom-up and top-down approaches.