The role of meta-empirical theory assessment in the acceptance of atomism

The universal acceptance of atomism in physics and chemistry in the early 20th century went along with an altered view on the epistemic status of microphysical conjectures. Contrary to the prevalent understanding during the 19th century, on the new view unobservable objects could be ‘discovered’. It is argued in the present paper that this shift can be connected to the implicit integration of elements of meta-empirical theory assessment into the concept of theory confirmation.     

Error propagation determined iterative channel estimation with ICI mitigation for fast time-varying OFDM channels

The intersubcarrier interference （ICI） degrades the performance of the pilot-aided channel estimation in fast time-varying orthogonal frequency division multiplexing （OFDM） systems.To solve the error propagation in joint channel estimation and data detection due to this ICI,a scheme of error propagation determined iterative estimation is proposed,where in the first iteration,Kalman filter based on signal to interference and noise is designed with ICI transformed to be part of the noise,and for the later iterations,a determined iterative estimation algorithm obtains an optimal output from all iterations using the iterative updating strategy.Simulation results present the significant improvement in the performance of the proposed scheme in high-mobility situation in comparison with the existing ones.     

Erratum to: Hesperomyces virescens (Fungi,Ascomycota, Laboulbeniales) attacking Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera,Coccinellidae) in its native range

正Published online:14 March 2014óScience China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014Erratum to:Chin.Sci.Bull.(2014)59(5–6):528–532DOI 10.1007/s11434-013-0060-1In the original publication of this paper,the first name and the last name of the first author has been documented     

Beating the VAR: Improving Swedish GDP Forecasts Using Error and Intercept Corrections

This paper examines the forecast accuracy of an unrestricted vector autoregressive (VAR) model for GDP, relative to a comparable vector error correction model (VECM) that recognizes that the data are characterized by co‐integration. In addition, an alternative forecast method, intercept correction, is considered for further comparison. Recursive out‐of‐sample forecasts are generated for both models and forecast techniques. The generated forecasts for each model are objectively evaluated by a selection of evaluation measures and equal accuracy tests. The result shows that the VECM consistently outperforms the VAR models. Further, intercept correction enhances the forecast accuracy when applied to the VECM, whereas there is no such indication when applied to the VAR model. For certain forecast horizons there is a significant difference in forecast ability between the intercept corrected VECM compared to the VAR model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of Mount Kilimanjaro: Nymphalidae subfamilies Libytheinae,Danainae, Satyrinae and Charaxinae

This paper, which presents an annotated checklist of the ‘lower Nymphalidae’ (Libytheinae, Danainae, Satyrinae, Charaxinae), is the fourth in a series on the butterfly fauna of Mount Kilimanjaro. Four genera of lower Nymphalidae (Danaus, Amauris, Bicyclus, Charaxes), with a total of 11 included species, are known or believed to occur within the main forest zone, from c. 1800 to 2800 m. Of these, only three species of Charaxes (Charaxes berkeleyi, Charaxes ansorgei, Charaxes xiphares) may be restricted locally to this primary forest. The lower slopes fauna, below 1800 m, is considerably richer, with a total of 11 genera and 41 species listed (8 species of which extend into the forest zone). Possible additional species, dubious earlier records, problems with African subspecies of Danaus chrysippus, a need for more work on certain Satyrinae, and classification of the genus Charaxes are discussed. An identification key to the subfamilies of Nymphalidae, and the 19 genera of Libytheinae, Danainae, Satyrinae, Charaxinae that occur in Tanzania, together with a key to the adults of all the species of these four subfamilies considered to occur or have occurred on Kilimanjaro, with 206 colour images, are included as online Supplementary Information.     

Somatic histone H3 alterations in pediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas and non-brainstem glioblastomas

To identify somatic mutations in pediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), we performed whole-genome sequencing of DNA from seven DIPGs and matched germline tissue and targeted sequencing of an additional 43 DIPGs and 36 non-brainstem pediatric glioblastomas (non-BS-PGs). We found that 78% of DIPGs and 22% of non-BS-PGs contained a mutation in H3F3A, encoding histone H3.3, or in the related HIST1H3B, encoding histone H3.1, that caused a p.Lys27Met amino acid substitution in each protein. An additional 14% of non-BS-PGs had somatic mutations in H3F3A causing a p.Gly34Arg alteration.     

CCDC103 mutations cause primary ciliary dyskinesia by disrupting assembly of ciliary dynein arms

Cilia are essential for fertilization, respiratory clearance, cerebrospinal fluid circulation and establishing laterality. Cilia motility defects cause primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD, MIM244400), a disorder affecting 1:15,000-30,000 births. Cilia motility requires the assembly of multisubunit dynein arms that drive ciliary bending. Despite progress in understanding the genetic basis of PCD, mutations remain to be identified for several PCD-linked loci. Here we show that the zebrafish cilia paralysis mutant schmalhans (smh(tn222)) encodes the coiled-coil domain containing 103 protein (Ccdc103), a foxj1a-regulated gene product. Screening 146 unrelated PCD families identified individuals in six families with reduced outer dynein arms who carried mutations in CCDC103. Dynein arm assembly in smh mutant zebrafish was rescued by wild-type but not mutant human CCDC103. Chlamydomonas Ccdc103/Pr46b functions as a tightly bound, axoneme-associated protein. These results identify Ccdc103 as a dynein arm attachment factor that causes primary ciliary dyskinesia when mutated.