U.S. Forest Service and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) scientists have found that rising levels of ozone, a greenhouse gas, may amplify the impacts of higher temperatures and reduce streamflow from forests to rivers, streams, and other water bodies. Such effects could potentially reduce water supplies available to support forest ecosystems and people in the southeastern United States.
Impacts of ozone, a global scale pollutant, on forests are not well understood at a large scale. This modeling study indicates that current and projected increases in ozone in the 21st century will likely enhance the negative effects of warming on watersheds, aggravating drought and altering stream flow. Using data on atmospheric water supply and demand and statistical models, researchers with the Forest Service and ORNL were able to show what effects ozone can have on stream flow in dry seasons. Published in the November issue of the journal Global Change Biology, the study suggests that ozone has amplified the effects of warmer temperatures in reducing streamflow in forested watersheds in the southeastern United States.
"From previous studies, we know a lot about ozone's influences on crops and leaves of young trees. However, no studies have investigated the impacts of ozone on water flow in large forested watersheds," says Ge Sun, research hydrologist with the Forest Service Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center. "Our studies show that ozone has a possible connection in the reduction of streamflow in late summer when flow is generally lowest, particularly in areas with high ozone levels such as the Appalachian Mountains in the Southeast."
Researchers developed models based on 18 to 26 years of data and observed streamflow in response to climate and atmospheric chemistry during the growing season. The research team evaluated individual and interactive effects of ozone on late season streamflow for six southeastern forested watersheds ranging in size from 38 acres to more than 3,700 square miles. Estimates of ozone's influence on streamflow ranged from 7 percent in the area of lowest ozone in West Virginia to 23 percent in the areas of highest exposure in Tennessee.
The findings from this study along with a wide range of previous field studies challenge assumptions derived from small controlled studies that ozone exposure reduces water loss from trees and forests.The present study of mature forests under moderate ozone exposure shows that those ecosystems may react in a different way than can be predicted by short-range, intensive studies.
"We're predicting that forests under high ozone conditions will use more water instead of less, as was previously assumed," says Samuel "Sandy" McLaughlin, scientist emeritus from the ORNL Environmental Sciences Division. "The concern is that ozone-induced increases in plant water loss could aggravate drought impacts on forests, and reduce the water available for people and stream life dependent on water flow during the dry seasons."
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Access the article online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02787.x/abstract
USDA Forest Service ? Southern Research Station: http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov
Thanks to USDA Forest Service ? Southern Research Station for this article.
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The "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" papyrus, which may or may not be a forgery, seems to be in limbo, as the Harvard Theological Review has pulled the scientific article describing the discovery from their January 2013 issue.
This withdrawal, however, doesn't mean the journal will never publish the scientific paper by Harvard historian Karen King on the supposed lost Gospel. "Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish Professor King's paper after testing is concluded so that the results may be incorporated," Kit Dodgson, director of communications at Harvard Divinity School, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
Even so, the announcement has garnered both anger and elation.
Hershel Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology Society writes that the withdrawal of the paper is "shameful." (Shanks is founder and editor of the society's Biblical Archaeology Review.)
Meanwhile, another scholar applauds the Harvard Theological Review for making King's study available online, if not yet published in their journal.
"My personal opinion is that Karen King and Harvard Theological Review have significantly improved the traditional peer review process by utilizing the Internet," Oxford University graduate Andrew Bernhard told LiveScience. "In fact, this could potentially be a watershed moment in the history of scholarship where the academic process becomes more open and transparent."
The business-card-size papyrus at the center of the controversy, described as "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife," by King on Sept. 18, was supposedly from the fourth century and written in Coptic, the language of a group of early Christians in Egypt. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]
King and her collaborators believed the scrap, the first ancient evidence of Jesusspeaking of a wife, was authentic. Two Coptic scholars ? AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton University and Roger Bagnall of New York University ? considered the text authentic and dating back to the fourth century, according to the Biblical Archaeology Society's Shanks. Bagnall declined to comment about the postponement of the journal article, until more information was available.
Even so, in weeks following the announcement, skeptical scholars voiced their concerns the papyrus was a fake.
For instance, Bernhard, author of the book "Other Early Christian Gospels" (T & T Clark, 2006), pointed out an eerie resemblance to another online translation of a Gospel. Bernhard, in a paper published online, found similarities such as grammatical errors and line breaks that have been found only in the online translation of the Gospel of Thomas.
The Gospel of Jesus' Wife, Bernhard found, seems to be the work of an amateur who pieced together individual words and phrases from Michael Grondin's "Interlinear Coptic-English Translation of the Gospel of Thomas."
To get to the bottom of the papyrus's authenticity, several analyses will be conducted.
"The owner of the papyrus fragment has been making arrangements for the next round of analysis of the fragment, including testing by independent laboratories with the resources and the specific expertise necessary to produce and interpret reliable results," Dodgson wrote. "This next phase is likely to take several weeks, if not months."
While Shanks says he has no issue with such scientific debate, including questions surrounding the papyrus (such as its date, authenticity and relationship with other texts), he does object to the journal's withdrawal of the paper.
"When a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, backed up by two experts from Princeton and NYU who declare the text to be authentic, presents the case?and tentatively at that?that should be enough for HTR to publish King's article, not to cowardly suspend its decision to publish. Instead, HTR has cringed because there will now be a dispute as to authenticity," Shanks writes on the society's Bible History Daily website.
A translation:
King and other Coptic experts translated the papyrus's eight lines of text, which are cut off at both ends, and read as follows:
1) ... not [to] me, my mother gave to me li[fe] ...
2) The disciples said to Jesus, "...
3) ... deny. Mary is worthy of it ... (or, alternatively, Mary is not worth of it ...)
4) ..." Jesus said to them, "My wife ...
5) ... she will be able to be my disciple ...
6) Let wicked people swell up ...
7) As for me, I dwell with her in order to ...
8) ... an image ...
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How to Promote Internet Franchise Business Be it Australia, India, Brazil, Canada, China or Germany, franchise business opportunities, including Internet franchise ventures, are growing in leaps and bounds across the world. A study by the International Franchise Association (IFA) reveals that the US franchising industry facilitates 760,000 business houses, 18 million jobs and is responsible for a payroll of $ 500 billion! The US has the worlds largest franchise industry, followed by Canada, which is said to represent more than $ 100 billion in sales per year. In the rapidly growing market competition, it is imperative for all internet business opportunities to promote themselves well. The following are some tips for promoting franchise opportunities. Tips for Promoting Internet Franchise Opportunities There are several simple methods of promoting online franchise businesses. It is usually recommended that franchise opportunities should begin their promotional endeavor by analyzing the key selling point/s one that sets the business apart from competitors. Knowing why customers would prefer a business concept to others is imperative to being successful in particular fields. Subsequent to this, internet franchise ventures can concentrate on the following: Protection of business logo: For operating a franchise, it is crucial that business houses have full trademark protection. The company logo, designs and monetary systems must be strictly guarded. Development of strong marketing strategies: Online franchise business offering internet franchise opportunities must have very strong marketing strategies. Highlighting the key strengths of the company and the potential benefits of affiliation with the business in particular is imperative to creating and increasing affiliate network. Investment on high search engine rank: Getting listed on the first few search engine result pages (SERPs) will ensure maximum exposure, thus, popularity of the internet franchise opportunity. To this end, employing search engine optimization (SEO) tactics becomes crucial. Social media promotions: With the boom in social networking sites, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have become the most favored junctions for establishing relationships, searching for referrals and carrying out competitive recognizance. Blog as well as consumer forums are increasingly becoming popular for sharing consumer experiences, and having almost unlimited audience. By posting relevant information on social networking sites, internet franchise opportunities can greatly increase their affiliate base. In addition to utilizing these methods of promoting internet franchise opportunities, business houses must remember to convince potential affiliates of their unfailing support and guidance. Lack of online guidance is the reason why most affiliates fail in franchise opportunities. Therefore, assuring affiliates that they will be provided with the necessary tools and training, crucial to their success, will make the existing ones comfortable and attract more. To learn more tips and tricks of the game, join www.yonsal.com. . More coming on Franchise Blog.
Yonsal & Sanoy an Internet Franchise pertains to a franchise that is operated online. http://blog.yonsal.com/franchise/132-internet-franchise/
A video presentation about the ins and outs of franchising and what you need to know. Video Rating: 0 / 5
No antibodies, no problemPublic release date: 18-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tim Parsons tmparson@jhsph.edu 410-955-7619 Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Researchers identify how mosquito immune system attacks specific infections
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have determined a new mechanism by which the mosquitoes' immune system can respond with specificity to infections with various pathogens, including the parasite that causes malaria in humans, using one single gene. Unlike humans and other animals, insects do not make antibodies to target specific infections. According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, mosquitoes use a mechanism known as alternative splicing to arrange different combinations of binding domains, encoded by the same AgDscam gene, into protein repertoires that are specific for different invading pathogens. The researchers' findings were published October 18 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe and could lead to new ways to prevent the spread of a variety of mosquito born illnesses.
Mosquitoes and other insects use their primitive innate immune systems to successfully fight infections with a broad spectrum of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, despite the lack of antibodies that are part of the more sophisticated human immune system. The effectiveness of the human immune system is to a large degree based on the ability to produce an enormous variety of antibodies containing different immunoglobulin domains that can specifically tag and label a pathogen for destruction. This great variety of pathogen-binding antibodies is achieved by combining different immunoglobulin gene segments and further mutate them through mechanisms called somatic recombination and hypermutation. While mosquitoes also have genes encoding immunoglobulin domains, they lack these specific mechanisms to achieve pathogen recognition diversity.
The Johns Hopkins researchers discovered a different way by which mosquitoes can combine immunoglobulin domains of a single gene called AgDscam (Anopheles gambiae Down Syndrome Cell Adhesion Molecule) to produce a variety of pathogen-binding proteins. The AgDscam gene is subjected to a mechanism called alternative splicing that combines different immunoglobulin domains into mature AgDscam proteins, depending on which pathogen has infected the mosquito. The researchers showed that this alternative splicing is guided by the immune signal transducing pathways (analogous to electrical circuits) that they previously demonstrated to activate defenses against different malaria parasites and other pathogens. While alternative splicing of the AgDscam gene does not nearly achieve the degree of pathogen recognition diversity of human antibodies, it does nevertheless vastly increase the variety of pathogen binding molecules.
"Using antibodies to fight infection is like fishing with a harpoonit's very targeted. The mosquito's innate immune system is more like fishing with a netit catches a bit of everything," explained George Dimopoulos, PhD, senior investigator of the study and professor with the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. "However, we discovered that immune pathway-guided alternative splicing of the AgDscam gene renders the mosquito's immune net, so to speak, more specific than previously suspected. The mosquito's immune system can come up with approximately 32,000 AgDscam protein combinations to target infections with greater specificity."
Dimopoulos and his group are developing a malaria control strategy based on mosquitoes that have been genetically modified to possess an enhanced immune defense against the malaria parasite Plasmodium. One obstacle to this approach is the great variety of Plasmodium strains that may interact somewhat differently with the mosquito's immune system.
"Some of these strains may not be detected by the engineered immune system proteins that mediate their killing. Our new discovery may provide the means to create genetically modified mosquitoes that can target a broader variety of parasite strains, like casting a net rather than shooting with a harpoon," said Dimopoulos.
Malaria kills more than 800,000 people worldwide each year. Many are children.
###
"Anopheles NF-kB Regulated Splicing Factors Direct Pathogen-Specific Repertoires of the Hypervariable Pattern Recognition Receptor AgDscam" was written by Yuemei Dong, Chris M. Cirimotich, Andrew Pike, Ramesh Chandra and George Dimopoulos.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the Calvin A. and Helen H. Lang Fellowship, and the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
No antibodies, no problemPublic release date: 18-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Tim Parsons tmparson@jhsph.edu 410-955-7619 Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
Researchers identify how mosquito immune system attacks specific infections
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have determined a new mechanism by which the mosquitoes' immune system can respond with specificity to infections with various pathogens, including the parasite that causes malaria in humans, using one single gene. Unlike humans and other animals, insects do not make antibodies to target specific infections. According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, mosquitoes use a mechanism known as alternative splicing to arrange different combinations of binding domains, encoded by the same AgDscam gene, into protein repertoires that are specific for different invading pathogens. The researchers' findings were published October 18 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe and could lead to new ways to prevent the spread of a variety of mosquito born illnesses.
Mosquitoes and other insects use their primitive innate immune systems to successfully fight infections with a broad spectrum of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, despite the lack of antibodies that are part of the more sophisticated human immune system. The effectiveness of the human immune system is to a large degree based on the ability to produce an enormous variety of antibodies containing different immunoglobulin domains that can specifically tag and label a pathogen for destruction. This great variety of pathogen-binding antibodies is achieved by combining different immunoglobulin gene segments and further mutate them through mechanisms called somatic recombination and hypermutation. While mosquitoes also have genes encoding immunoglobulin domains, they lack these specific mechanisms to achieve pathogen recognition diversity.
The Johns Hopkins researchers discovered a different way by which mosquitoes can combine immunoglobulin domains of a single gene called AgDscam (Anopheles gambiae Down Syndrome Cell Adhesion Molecule) to produce a variety of pathogen-binding proteins. The AgDscam gene is subjected to a mechanism called alternative splicing that combines different immunoglobulin domains into mature AgDscam proteins, depending on which pathogen has infected the mosquito. The researchers showed that this alternative splicing is guided by the immune signal transducing pathways (analogous to electrical circuits) that they previously demonstrated to activate defenses against different malaria parasites and other pathogens. While alternative splicing of the AgDscam gene does not nearly achieve the degree of pathogen recognition diversity of human antibodies, it does nevertheless vastly increase the variety of pathogen binding molecules.
"Using antibodies to fight infection is like fishing with a harpoonit's very targeted. The mosquito's innate immune system is more like fishing with a netit catches a bit of everything," explained George Dimopoulos, PhD, senior investigator of the study and professor with the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. "However, we discovered that immune pathway-guided alternative splicing of the AgDscam gene renders the mosquito's immune net, so to speak, more specific than previously suspected. The mosquito's immune system can come up with approximately 32,000 AgDscam protein combinations to target infections with greater specificity."
Dimopoulos and his group are developing a malaria control strategy based on mosquitoes that have been genetically modified to possess an enhanced immune defense against the malaria parasite Plasmodium. One obstacle to this approach is the great variety of Plasmodium strains that may interact somewhat differently with the mosquito's immune system.
"Some of these strains may not be detected by the engineered immune system proteins that mediate their killing. Our new discovery may provide the means to create genetically modified mosquitoes that can target a broader variety of parasite strains, like casting a net rather than shooting with a harpoon," said Dimopoulos.
Malaria kills more than 800,000 people worldwide each year. Many are children.
###
"Anopheles NF-kB Regulated Splicing Factors Direct Pathogen-Specific Repertoires of the Hypervariable Pattern Recognition Receptor AgDscam" was written by Yuemei Dong, Chris M. Cirimotich, Andrew Pike, Ramesh Chandra and George Dimopoulos.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the Calvin A. and Helen H. Lang Fellowship, and the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain faces large fines for breaching European Union law on water treatment after plants in northern England and London dumped raw sewage into waterways, the European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday.
The court has the power to impose fines of thousands of euros per day, but has yet to decide what the fine will be.
Under an EU law introduced in 1991, known as a directive, Britain was obliged to meet new standards for treating waste water. While other member states have respected the law, Britain has not.
"The United Kingdom has failed to fulfil its obligations under (the) directive," the Luxembourg-based court said.
It said plants in Whitburn in northern England and in London had dumped sewage in local waterways.
London's sewer system, much of which dates back to Victorian times, discharges raw waste into the River Thames when rainfall overwhelms the 19th-century tunnels.
"So far as concerns the treatment plants of the collecting system for London ... their capacity is sufficient in dry weather, but not sufficient in the slightest in the case of rainfall," the court said.
Britain said that as it had already taken steps to fix the problem and that it was complying with EU regulations.
The court rejected its argument.
"A member state may not plead practical or administrative difficulties in order to justify non-compliance with the obligations and time limits laid down by a directive. The same holds true of financial difficulties, which it is for the member states to overcome by adopting appropriate measures," it said.
London has commissioned a massive 4 billion pounds tunnel, dubbed the 'super-sewer', underneath the Thames to solve the capacity problem.
But local residents and politicians have raised objections to the cost, which would drive up water bills.
In 2010, the European Commission asked the European Court of Justice to impose a lump sum fine of 15 million euros on Belgium for water violations, and a daily fine of 62,000 euros.
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Public release date: 18-Oct-2012
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