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Active galactic nuclei vary in a manner similar to Galactic black hole systems when appropriately scaled up by mass, meaning it is possible to determine how active galactic nuclei should behave on cosmological timescales by studying the brighter and much faster varying Galactic systems.
In laser-plasma based particle accelerators, a second laser pulse colliding with the first is used to obtain better control over the injection and subsequent acceleration of electrons. In this scheme, the electron beams are highly collimated, monoenergetic (with energy spread < 10%), tuneable (between 15 and 250 MeV) and most importantly, stable.
Reconstruction of the amount of oxygen in the ocean during the Ediacaran period using carbon- and sulphur-isotope records identifies three distinct stages of oxidation over this interval. Complex animals may have evolved during the second stage, indicating that this event may have played a key role in the evolution of eukaryotic organisms.
The structure of the influenza virus A nucleoprotein is visualized, revealing connected head and body regions with a groove in between for the viral RNA to sit.
Study of nerve cells in a bird's auditory system shows that those where spikes initiate closer to the cell body (or soma) are tuned to sounds with lower frequencies. Computer modelling suggests that spike initiation sites may also be key to coincidence detection by other neurons.
The crystal structure of CPSF-73, part of a complex involved in mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation is solved. CPSF-73 was purified and shown to endonucleolytically cleave mRNA, in a reaction mediated by two zinc ligands.
A theory to predict quantitatively the damage to reef coral assemblages during hydrodynamic disturbances has been developed and tested. The work provides a mechanistic basis for projecting how effects of hydrodynamic disturbances vary with disturbance magnitude, as well as with the size and shape of coral colonies.
Using a technique called gas immersion laser doping, silicon can be doped such that it has a boron concentration of several per cent, and becomes superconducting below 0.35 Kelvin.
The application of small bursts of an oscillating magnetic field can be used to reverse controllably the gyration direction of a vortex core structure, and hence switch the direction of the out-of-plane vortex core polarization. This raises the possibility of using this core switching scheme as a means of magnetic data storage.