07.05.2013 | Klaus M. Stiefel; Bernhard Englitz; Terrence J. Sejnowski, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Cortical spike trains are highly irregular both during ongoing, spontaneous activity and when driven at high firing rates. There is uncertainty about the source of this irregularity, ranging from intrinsic noise sources in neurons to collective effects in large-scale cortical networks. ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Thomas P. Howard; Sabine Middelhaufe; Karen Moore; Christoph Edner; Dagmara M. Kolak; George N. Taylor; David A. Par ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Biofuels are the most immediate, practical solution for mitigating dependence on fossil hydrocarbons, but current biofuels (alcohols and biodiesels) require significant downstream processing and are not fully compatible with modern, mass-market internal combustion engines. Rather, the ideal ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Juan Liu; Shuxun Liu; Meng Xia; Sheng Xu; Chunmei Wang; Yan Bao; Minghong Jiang; Yue Wu; Tian Xu; Xuetao Cao, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Rhomboid domain-containing protein 3 (Rhbdd3), which belongs to a family of proteins with rhomboid domain, is widely expressed in immune cells; however, the roles of the Rhbdd members, including Rhbdd3, in immunity remain unknown. Natural killer (NK) cells are critical for host immune defense ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Bo Wu; Jacopo Novelli; Daojun Jiang; Harry A. Dailey; Frédéric Landmann; Louise Ford; Mark J. Taylor; Clotilde K. S. ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Lateral gene transfer events between bacteria and animals highlight an avenue for evolutionary genomic loss/gain of function. Herein, we report functional lateral gene transfer in animal parasitic nematodes. Members of the Nematoda are heme auxotrophs, lacking the ability to synthesize heme; ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | José María Gómez; Charles L. Nunn; Miguel Verdú, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Most emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in humans have arisen from animals. Identifying high-risk hosts is therefore vital for the control and surveillance of these diseases. Viewing hosts as connected through the parasites they share, we use network tools to investigate predictors of ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Motti Gerlic; Benjamin Faustin; Antonio Postigo; Eric Chi-Wang Yu; Martina Proell; Naran Gombosuren; Maryla Krajewsk ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Host innate immune responses to DNA viruses involve members of the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich repeat and pyrin domain containing protein (NLRP) family, which form “inflammasomes” that activate caspase-1, resulting in proteolytic activation of cytokines interleukin (IL)-1β and ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Tsung-Pin Pai; Chun-Chao Chen; Hui-Hao Lin; An-Lun Chin; Jason Sih-Yu Lai; Pei-Tseng Lee; Tim Tully; Ann-Shyn Chiang, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Memory is initially labile and gradually consolidated over time through new protein synthesis into a long-lasting stable form. Studies of odor-shock associative learning in Drosophila have established the mushroom body (MB) as a key brain structure involved in olfactory long-term memory (LTM) ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Yoko Tsushima; Syukuro Manabe, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

In the climate system, two types of radiative feedback are in operation. The feedback of the first kind involves the radiative damping of the vertically uniform temperature perturbation of the troposphere and Earth’s surface that approximately follows the Stefan–Boltzmann law of blackbody ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Yasuharu Takaku; Hiroshi Suzuki; Isao Ohta; Daisuke Ishii; Yoshinori Muranaka; Masatsugu Shimomura; Takahiko Hariyama, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Most multicellular organisms can only survive under atmospheric pressure. The reduced pressure of a high vacuum usually leads to rapid dehydration and death. Here we show that a simple surface modification can render multicellular organisms strongly tolerant to high vacuum. Animals that ...

mehr

07.05.2013 | Wangko Lundström; Steven Highfill; Scott T. R. Walsh; Stephanie Beq; Elizabeth Morse; Ingrid Kockum; Lars Alfredsson ..., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue, 2013

Human soluble interleukin-7 receptor (sIL7R)α circulates in high molar excess compared with IL-7, but its biology remains unclear. We demonstrate that sIL7Rα has moderate affinity for IL-7 but does not bind thymic stromal lymphopoietin. Functionally, sIL7Rα competes with cell-associated IL-7 ...

mehr