Dipolar Order Parameters in Large Systems With Fast Spinning

Order parameters are a useful tool for quantifying amplitudes of molecular motions. Here we measure dipolar order parameters by recoupling heteronuclear dipole-dipole couplings under fast spinning. We apply symmetry based recoupling methods to samples spinning under magic angle at 60 kHz by employing a variable flip angle compound inversion pulse. We validate the methods by measuring site-specific 15N-1H order parameters of a microcrystalline protein over a small temperature range and the same protein in a large, precipitated complex with antibody. The measurements of the order parameters in the complex are consistent with the observed protein undergoing overall motion within the assembly.

Ankle joint rotation and exerted moment during plantarflexion dependents on measuring- and fixation method

We examined the effect of ankle joint fixation vs increased foot pressure (aiming to reduce dynamometer-subject elasticity (DSE)) on the exerted moment during plantarflexion contraction. We also examined the joint rotation in dependence of the measuring site (forefoot, rearfoot) and the foot condition (fixed, free). We hypothesized higher exerted moments due to reduced DSE compared to fixed condition and an effect of fixation on the joint rotation in dependence of the measuring site. Fourteen healthy individuals (28.7±6.9y) completed in randomized order maximal isometric plantarflexions in four different positions (0-3-6-9 cm) and two ankle joint conditions (fixed-free). Kinematics of the rear- and forefoot were obtained synchronously. We found higher moment in the fixed compared to the free condition at all positions. The maximum moment in the fixed condition did not differ at any position. At the fixed condition, the forefoot rotation did not differ at any position (~5°) while at free condition we observed a significant rotation reduction (form ~12 to ~5°). The rearfoot rotation did not differ between conditions at any position while a significant joint angle reduction was observed (~10 to ~6° and ~12 to ~6°; fixed-free respectively). The results indicate that with appropriate foot fixation the maximum moment can be achieved irrespective of the position. With the foot secured, the measuring site influences the rotational outcome. We suggest that for a minimization of the joint rotation a fixation and the forefoot-measuring site should be preferred. Additionally, for unconstrained foot kinematic observations both measuring sites can be obtained.

Bedload Transport Monitoring in Alpine Rivers: Variability in Swiss Plate Geophone Response

Acoustic sensors are increasingly used to measure bedload transport in Alpine streams, notably the Swiss plate geophone (SPG) system. An impact experiment using artificial weights is developed in this paper to assess the variability in individual plate response and to evaluate the extent to which calibration coefficients can be transferred from calibrated plates to non-calibrated plates at a given measuring site and/or to other measuring sites. Results of the experiment over 43 plates at four measuring sites have notably shown (a) that the maximum amplitude (V) recorded by individual plates tends to evolve as a power law function of the impact energy (J), with an exponent slightly larger than 1, for all the plates at all measuring sites; (b) that there is a substantial propagation of energy across plates that should be taken into account for a better understanding of the signal response; (c) that the response of individual plates is in most cases consistent, which suggests that calibration coefficients are comparable within and in between measuring sites, but site-specific and plate-specific variabilities in signal response have to be considered for a detailed comparison.

Measuring Site-specific Glycosylation Similarity between Influenza a Virus Variants with Statistical Certainty

Influenza A virus (IAV) mutates rapidly, resulting in antigenic drift and poor year-to-year vaccine effectiveness. One challenge in designing effective vaccines is that genetic mutations frequently cause amino acid variations in IAV envelope protein hemagglutinin (HA) that create new N-glycosylation sequons; resulting N-glycans cause antigenic shielding, allowing viral escape from adaptive immune responses. Vaccine candidate strain selection currently involves correlating antigenicity with HA protein sequence among circulating strains, but quantitative comparison of site-specific glycosylation information may likely improve the ability to design vaccines with broader effectiveness against evolving strains. However, there is poor understanding of the influence of glycosylation on immunodominance, antigenicity, and immunogenicity of HA, and there are no well-tested methods for comparing glycosylation similarity among virus samples. Here, we present a method for statistically rigorous quantification of similarity between two related virus strains that considers the presence and abundance of glycopeptide glycoforms. We demonstrate the strength of our approach by determining that there was a quantifiable difference in glycosylation at the protein level between WT IAV HA from A/Switzerland/9715293/2013 (SWZ13) and a mutant strain of SWZ13, even though no N-glycosylation sequons were changed. We determined site-specifically that WT and mutant HA have varying similarity at the glycosylation sites of the head domain, reflecting competing pressures to evade host immune response while retaining viral fitness. To our knowledge, our results are the first to quantify changes in glycosylation state that occur in related proteins of considerable glycan heterogeneity. Our results provide a method for understanding how changes in glycosylation state are correlated with variations in protein sequence, which is necessary for improving IAV vaccine strain selection. Understanding glycosylation will be especially important as we find new expression vectors for vaccine production, as glycosylation state depends greatly on the host species.

Long-term monitoring of self-potential and resistivity in Kyungju area where the largest earthquake occurred in Korea.

<p>Long-term monitoring of self-potential (SP) and electrical resistivity was conducted to examine the correlation between seismic activity and changes of these geo-electrical components in the Kyeongju area where the largest earthquake occurred in Korea. Resistivity monitoring was carried out in 2018 and 2019 but the data was not continuos occasionally because of some accidents in the field. The longest monitoring of resistivity was about 120 days and the resistivity data were acquired in 5 minutes interval. The transmitted electrical source current has 1 Hz square periodic pattern and the received voltage for the source signal was obtained in the sampling rate 10 Hz. SP data were measured in 2019 in the sampling rate of 1 kHz. The monitored resistivity and SP data are being analyzed by some graphic charts which show the variations of resistivity and SP with earthquakes of which magnitude higher than 1.0 that occurred within 4 km of the measuring site. Unfortunately, no clear correlation between the monitored geo-electrical data and seismic activity has yet been confirmed.</p>

A Seasonally Varying Phenology for High Resolution Simulations with the COSMO-CLM Model

<p>The energy and water cycle of the regional climate is influenced by the phenological development of the vegetation through albedo, sensible and latent heat flux changes. This influences near surface temperature, precipitation and ultimately the boundary layer structure. The phenological stages in turn depend on temperature, day length, water availability and net primary productivity variations. Therefore, vegetation should play an important role in climate simulations. The current implementation of the seasonal vegetation development in the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM, COSMO 5.0 clm15), represented in the model by the leaf area index (LAI), the root depth or plant coverage, assumes a static, annually recurring cycle. In reality, it varies from year to year depending on the environmental conditions. In particular, the phenology will change with climate change modifying the environment. In this study, we implement the approach of Knorr et al. (2010) to improve the representation of the phenology in CCLM with 3 km horizontal resolution by temperature, day length and water availability. Here, the tuning parameters of the growth rate for grass is adapted from Schulz et al. (2015). Convection-permitting single column simulations are performed over the Lindenberg Meteorological Observatory, the FACE measuring site at Linden close to Gießen, and the TR32 measuring site at Selhausen close to Jülich in Germany. Comparisons of LAI results with observations show significantly improved correlations compared to simulations with the standard phenology over the period from 1999 to 2015. The reaction of the LAI due to years with extreme warm winter and spring or years with extreme dry summer is improved as well. A warmer beginning of the year causes an earlier start of the growing season, whereas a drier summer reduces the LAI due to water limitation. It is also shown, that lower LAI values lead to decreases of latent heat fluxes in the model. The mean amount of strong precipitation events (> 20 mm) is closer to the observations with the new phenology compared to the standard phenology. Further seasonally varying phenology for different plant functional types and its net primary productivity will be implemented in future work.</p><p> </p><p>Ackowledgement:</p><p>Computational resources were made available by the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) through support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (BMBF). We acknowledge the funding of the German Research Foundation (DFG) through grant nr. 401857120.</p><p>Literature:</p><p>Knorr, W. et al., 2010. Carbon cycle data assimilation with a generic phenology model. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 115(G4).</p><p>Schulz, J.-P., Vogel, G. & Ahrens, B., 2015. A new leaf phenology for the land surface scheme TERRA of the COSMO atmospheric model. COSMO Newsletter No. 15, p.21-29.</p>

Measuring site-specific glycosylation similarity between influenza A virus variants with statistical certainty

Influenza A virus (IAV) mutates rapidly, resulting in antigenic drift and poor year-to-year vaccine effectiveness. One challenge in designing effective vaccines is that genetic mutations frequently cause amino acid variations in IAV envelope protein hemagglutinin (HA) that create new N-glycosylation sequons; resulting N-glycans cause antigenic shielding, allowing viral escape from adaptive immune responses. Vaccine candidate strain selection currently involves correlating antigenicity with HA protein sequence among circulating strains, but quantitative comparison of site-specific glycosylation information may likely improve the ability to design vaccines with broader effectiveness against evolving strains. However, there is poor understanding of the influence of glycosylation on immunodominance, antigenicity, and immunogenicity of HA, and there are no well-tested methods for comparing glycosylation similarity among virus samples. Here, we present a method for statistically rigorous quantification of similarity between two related virus strains that considers the presence and abundance of glycopeptide glycoforms. We demonstrate the strength of our approach by determining that there was a quantifiable difference in glycosylation at the protein level between wild-type IAV HA from A/Switzerland/9715293/2013 (SWZ13) and a mutant strain of SWZ13, even though no N-glycosylation sequons were changed. We determined site-specifically that WT and mutant HA have varying similarity at the glycosylation sites of the head domain, reflecting competing pressures to evade host immune response while retaining viral fitness. To our knowledge, our results are the first to quantify changes in glycosylation state that occur in related proteins of considerable glycan heterogeneity. Our results provide a method for understanding how changes in glycosylation state are correlated with variations in protein sequence, which is necessary for improving IAV vaccine strain selection. Understanding glycosylation will be especially important as we find new expression vectors for vaccine production, as glycosylation state depends greatly on the host species.

Wintertime Variations of Gaseous Atmospheric Constituents in Bucharest Peri-Urban Area

An intensive winter campaign was organized for measuring the surface air pollutants in southeastern Europe. For a three months period, the gas concentrations of NO x , SO 2 , CO, O 3 , and CH 4 as well as meteorological parameters were simultaneously sampled to evaluate the variations and characteristic reactions between the gases during winter at the measuring site. The photochemical production of the ozone was observed through the diurnal variation of ozone and the solar radiation, the maximum concentration for ozone being reached one hour after the maximum value for solar radiation. A non-parametric wind regression method was used to highlight the sources of the air pollutants. The long-range transport of SO 2 and two hotspots for CO from traffic and from residential heating emissions were emphasized. The traffic hotspot situated north of the measuring site, close to the city ring road, is also a hotspot for NO x . The air quality during the cold season was evaluated by comparing the measured gas concentration with the European limits. During the measuring period, the values for NO 2 , CO, and SO 2 concentration were at least two times lower than the European Union pollution limits. Only twice during the study period was the concentration of O 3 higher than the established limits.

THE RESULTS ANALYSIS OF AIR QUALITY MONITORING IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF TRSTENIK

Economic and social development of cities, as well as the development of transport, yield great benefits to the inhabitants, but also have rather negative impact on the environment. The paper analyzes the results of environmental monitoring of air quality in the municipality of Trstenik for 2017, based on the assessment report done by the Public Health Institute Kruševac (an accredited testing laboratory of the municipal administration of Trstenik). Sampling was performed at a measuring site in Trstenik over a 24-hour period. Afterwards, an analysis of the obtained measurement results was carried out, followed by a conclusion on air pollution values, and a proposal for improvement measures.