Variation in styles of rifting in the Gulf of California

Constraints on the structure of rifted continental margins and the magmatism resulting from such rifting can help refine our understanding of the strength of the lithosphere, the state of the underlying mantle and the transition from rifting to seafloor spreading. An important structural classification of rifts is by width, with narrow rifts thought to form as necking instabilities (where extension rates outpace thermal diffusion) and wide rifts thought to require a mechanism to inhibit localization, such as lower-crustal flow in high heat-flow settings. Observations of the magmatism that results from rifting range from volcanic margins with two to three times the magmatism predicted from melting models to non-volcanic margins with almost no rift or post-rift magmatism. Such variations in magmatic activity are commonly attributed to variations in mantle temperature. Here we describe results from the PESCADOR seismic experiment in the southern Gulf of California and present crustal-scale images across three rift segments. Over short lateral distances, we observe large differences in rifting style and magmatism--from wide rifting with minor synchronous magmatism to narrow rifting in magmatically robust segments. But many of the factors believed to control structural evolution and magmatism during rifting (extension rate, mantle potential temperature and heat flow) tend to vary over larger length scales. We conclude instead that mantle depletion, rather than low mantle temperature, accounts for the observed wide, magma-poor margins, and that mantle fertility and possibly sedimentary insulation, rather than high mantle temperature, account for the observed robust rift and post-rift magmatism.     

Digenic inheritance of severe insulin resistance in a human pedigree

Impaired insulin action is a key feature of type 2 diabetes and is also found, to a more extreme degree, in familial syndromes of insulin resistance. Although inherited susceptibility to insulin resistance may involve the interplay of several genetic loci, no clear examples of interactions among genes have yet been reported. Here we describe a family in which five individuals with severe insulin resistance, but no unaffected family members, were doubly [corrected] heterozygous with respect to frameshift/premature stop mutations in two unlinked genes, PPARG and PPP1R3A these encode peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma, which is highly expressed in adipocytes, and protein phosphatase 1, regulatory subunit 3, the muscle-specific regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1, which are centrally involved in the regulation of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, respectively. That mutant molecules primarily involved in either carbohydrate or lipid metabolism can combine to produce a phenotype of extreme insulin resistance provides a model of interactions among genes that may underlie common human metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes.     

Disparolone,a novel tumor inhibitor derived from the gypsy mothPortheria dispar (L.)

Zusammenfassung Disparolon, als neue tumorhemmende Verbindung von Weibchen des Schwammspinners,Porthetria dispar L., wurde isoliert und als 7-Oxohexadec-cis-10-enol-(1) identifiziert und synthetisch dargestellt. Die Verbindung ist gegen Walker Karzinosarkom 256 in Ratten aktiv.     

Continental ice in Greenland during the Eocene and Oligocene

The Eocene and Oligocene epochs (approximately 55 to 23 million years ago) comprise a critical phase in Earth history. An array of geological records supported by climate modelling indicates a profound shift in global climate during this interval, from a state that was largely free of polar ice caps to one in which ice sheets on Antarctica approached their modern size. However, the early glaciation history of the Northern Hemisphere is a subject of controversy. Here we report stratigraphically extensive ice-rafted debris, including macroscopic dropstones, in late Eocene to early Oligocene sediments from the Norwegian-Greenland Sea that were deposited between about 38 and 30 million years ago. Our data indicate sediment rafting by glacial ice, rather than sea ice, and point to East Greenland as the likely source. Records of this type from one site alone cannot be used to determine the extent of ice involved. However, our data suggest the existence of (at least) isolated glaciers on Greenland about 20 million years earlier than previously documented, at a time when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were substantially higher.     

HRPT2, encoding parafibromin,is mutated in hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumor syndrome

We report here the identification of a gene associated with the hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumor (HPT-JT) syndrome. A single locus associated with HPT-JT (HRPT2) was previously mapped to chromosomal region 1q25-q32. We refined this region to a critical interval of 12 cM by genotyping in 26 affected kindreds. Using a positional candidate approach, we identified thirteen different heterozygous, germline, inactivating mutations in a single gene in fourteen families with HPT-JT. The proposed role of HRPT2 as a tumor suppressor was supported by mutation screening in 48 parathyroid adenomas with cystic features, which identified three somatic inactivating mutations, all located in exon 1. None of these mutations were detected in normal controls, and all were predicted to cause deficient or impaired protein function. HRPT2 is a ubiquitously expressed, evolutionarily conserved gene encoding a predicted protein of 531 amino acids, for which we propose the name parafibromin. Our findings suggest that HRPT2 is a tumor-suppressor gene, the inactivation of which is directly involved in predisposition to HPT-JT and in development of some sporadic parathyroid tumors.     

Electrostatic trapping of ammonia molecules

The ability to cool and slow atoms with light for subsequent trapping allows investigations of the properties and interactions of the trapped atoms in unprecedented detail. By contrast, the complex structure of molecules prohibits this type of manipulation, but magnetic trapping of calcium hydride molecules thermalized in ultra-cold buffer gas and optical trapping of caesium dimers generated from ultra-cold caesium atoms have been reported. However, these methods depend on the target molecules being paramagnetic or able to form through the association of atoms amenable to laser cooling, respectively, thus restricting the range of species that can be studied. Here we describe the slowing of an adiabatically cooled beam of deuterated ammonia molecules by time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields and subsequent loading into an electrostatic trap. We are able to trap state-selected ammonia molecules with a density of 10(6) cm(-3) in a volume of 0.25 cm3 at temperatures below 0.35 K. We observe pronounced density oscillations caused by the rapid switching of the electric fields during loading of the trap. Our findings illustrate that polar molecules can be efficiently cooled and trapped, thus providing an opportunity to study collisions and collective quantum effects in a wide range of ultra-cold molecular systems.