| Leslie
Gonzalez |
Carbohydrate
content and export rate in Glycine max (soybean) grown in the field at elevated
partial pressures of carbon dioxide and ozone. Leslie
Gonzalez and Alistair Rogers, Department of Environmental Sciences, Brookhaven
National Laboratory. The
partial pressure of atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2) has increased 31% since
1750 and is predicted to double by 2100. In the same time period the partial pressure
of ozone (pO3) has also risen by approximately 36%. Net CO2 uptake rate (A) increases
in elevated pCO2 , but with continued exposure the degree of stimulation is reduced,
growth in ozone also reduces A. A build up foliar carbohydrates is implicated
in the down-regulation of A in plants grown in elevated pCO2. Using Free Air gas
Concentration Enrichment technology we measured carbohydrate content and export
rate in soybeans grown in the field at the elevated partial pressures of CO2 (55Pa)
and ozone (ambient x 1.5) predicted for 2050 and compared them with plants grown
under current (pCO2, 37Pa) conditions. Measurements of carbohydrate content taken
in parallel with measurements of A were used to calculate export rate by mass
balance. These data are from three time points during the early to mid-season
(pre-flowering) development of soybean. Throughout this period of development,
growth in elevated pCO2 significantly increased the content of ethanol soluble
carbohydrates (23.8% increase, P = 0.06) and starch (82.4%increase, P = 0.015)
relative to soybeans grown in air or elevated pO3. There was no significant difference
between carbohydrate content in soybeans grown in air and ozone enriched air (4.3
% increase, P = 0.52). The increase in total non-structural carbohydrate (TNC)
content (ethanol soluble + starch) due to growth in elevated pCO2 was maintained
throughout the period of study (45% increase ± 9% SE, P = 0.041). Despite
significantly higher foliar carbohydrate contents in elevated pCO2, the daytime
export rate was significantly higher (32%, P = 0.01) in all three stages studied
in the soybeans grown in elevated pCO2 . During this early period of crop development
there was no evidence of a significant effect of ozone on either carbohydrate
content or export rate. This study was supported by a Battelle fellowship and
the National Institutes of Health MARC program, grant #T34- GMO8655..
|
| Alicia
Handy | Observations
of the Impacts of Forest Fire-Generated Aerosols on Incoming Solar Radiation.
Alicia Handy and Mark
A. Miller, Earth Systems Science Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory.
In recent
years, there has been an apparent increase in the frequency and size of forest
fires in Canada. There may be multiple causes for this increase, including weather
patterns, global change, and funding for fire control activities. These forest
fires contribute aerosols, which are small, suspended particles, to the atmosphere.
With this summer being both hot and dry in Canada, there have been widespread
outbreaks of forest fires. Forest fires have a major impact on the aerosol concentration
and solar radiation transfer in the atmosphere both locally and regionally. One
such fire began burning on July 2, 2002 in Quebec, Canada and produced a smoke
plume that traveled south over Long Island, New York. The radiative impacts of
this particular plume were measured using sunphotometers, which are instruments
that measure the aerosol optical thickness (AOT). The AOT is a coefficient that
quantifies how much solar radiation was either scattered or absorbed by the particles
as incoming photons interacted with the turbid atmosphere. Now
how much different
was the AOT in the plume than on other days? In recent years, the need to control
greenhouse gas emissions has greatly increased. The amount of greenhouse gasses
that are emitted directly effects global climate patterns. The main objective
of this research is to improve climate prediction models, which determine such
future patterns as rainfall and temperature. Measurements of the aerosol optical
thickness (AOT) are taken daily. Low AOT's are associated with clear days, where
high AOT's (generally values close to 1 and above) represent polluted or cloudy
days. Sunphotometers are one type of instrument used to calculate aot. The calculations
are based on Beer's Law and the Langley Principle. Beer's Law states that I=(Io)e^(-tm),
where I is the radiation received at the surface, Io is the radiation emitted
by the sun, t is the total molecular thickness, and m is the inverse of the cosine
of the solar zenith angle. The Langley Technique allows you to find the value
of Io by extrapolating the line to 0 of the graph of m vs. ln(I). By measuring
the incoming solar radiation, and knowing the radiation being emitted from the
sun, one is able to calculate how much is being scattered by clouds, aerosols,
and atmospheric molecules (t). Tau (t) is than broken into its components: Rayleigh
scattering (molecular scattering), aerosols (AOT at various wavelengths), ozone
(only effects 660nm), and clouds (dominant). This summer internship was supported
by the WISE-Battelle Summer Fellowship Grant. |
| Peter
Hallock | Development
of the Raster imaging procedure in correlation with ion imaging spectroscopy.
Peter Hallock, Arthur
Suits, Department of Chemistry, Brookhaven National Laboratories and State University
of New York at Stony Brook. Our
development of a novel variant on ion imaging shows much promise to the scientific
community. The process fundamentally relies upon two lasers: one to dissociate
a molecule, and another to probe for the atomic fragments using a (2 + 1) Resonance
Enhanced Multi-Photon Ionization (REMPI) scheme. Our laser light is passed through
a high vacuum chamber, where it intercepts a molecular beam, which contains the
molecule we wish to observe, in our case chlorine gas (Cl2) seeded in argon. The
Cl2 molecule was chosen on account of its large absorption cross-section at a
chosen dissociation wavelength of 355 nm. The dissociated neutral Cl atom is then
probed for using 235 nm UV radiation generated by a dye laser. The now ionized
Cl+ fragment is accelerated down a flight tube where it collides with our detector.
These collisions are interpreted by computer software and generate a visual image
of the photon dissociation event. From these images, we are able to theorize about
what is happening on a molecular level, such as the angular momentum alignments
of the chlorine atom's p orbitals. Figure 1 shows Cl+ ions produced from the Raster
procedure. What appears to be a single ring, upon closer inspection, is actually
two. The outer/horizontal ring correlates to the Cl+ which results from the photodissociation
of Cl2 into Cl + Cl. The faint inner/vertical ring is the Cl+ ion that resulted
from the photodissociation of Cl2 into Cl + Cl*; such an ion was unable to be
resolved in conventional ion velocity imaging techniques. Hence, Raster imaging
has enabled us to produce high-resolution images with experiments involving crossed
polarization geometries. The old method required us to project the recoil onto
the detector then reconstruct it by computer software. With Raster, the "slicing"
actually allows us to see the recoil distribution directly without compromising
resolution. I would like to thank the people at Battelle for funding this
summer research opportunity and also Professor Arthur Suits for giving me the
opportunity to work with him and his group at the frontier of chemical dynamics.
|
| Yana
Kleyner | TRAIL/Apo2
as a candidate soluble factor mediating bystander effect in irradiated endothelial
co-cultures. Yana Kleyner, WISE
Program, SUNY Stony Brook, NY; Xinhua Lin,
Y. Medical
Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY; Hong
Lau, Dept.
of Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine, SUNY Stony Brook, NY;
Louis A. Peña, Medical Department, Brookhaven National
Laboratory, NY. The
Bystander Effect is a phenomenon in which cells affected by an agent, such as
ionizing radiation, convey manifestation of damage to other cells not directly
targeted by the agent, mediated by communication directly between cells, such
as gap junctions, or indirectly by soluble factors in a paracrine manner. This
study was conducted to investigate the role of soluble factors in the Bystander
Effect. Co?cultures of physically isolated cells were prepared by seeding normal
human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) in the upper chamber of Transwell®
24-well inserts; glioma cells (CNS-1, C6, U87, U343) or HUVECs were seeded in
the lower chamber. HUVEC inserts were subjected to 10 Gy of ionizing radiation,
and returned to the co-culture dish. After 30 hrs, the unirradiated cells in the
lower chamber were fixed and stained with DNA stain Hoechst 33258. Apoptotic changes
in nuclear morphology was quantified. CNS?1, U343 and C6 cell lines were unaffected,
but U87 and HUVEC showed significant increases in the amount apoptosis due to
the Bystander Effect. Separately, a DNA Microarray experiment was conducted with
sublethally irradiated endothelial cells (HAEC). The resulting gene induction
data was analyzed using SAM (Significant Analysis of Microarrays) software (Tusher
et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci, 98:5116, 2001). By measuring the strength of statistical
relationship between gene expression and response variable (e.g. radiation dose)
SAM identifies significant genes, e.g., TRAIL/Apo2, a cytokine that serves as
an extracellular signaling triggering apoptosis. To test whether TRAIL/Apo2 might
mediate the Bystander Effect in HUVEC-glioma or HUVEC-HUVEC co?cultures; a polyclonal
anti-TRAIL antibody (Chemicon, 10 ug/ml) was used in neutralization experiments.
The amount of bystander apoptosis was reduced by 48% in HUVEC-HUVEC co-cultures.
HUVECs are primary cell cultures, thus another aim was to characterize these phenomenon
in an immortalized endothelial cell line, RMEC (rat microvascular endothelial
cells), transformed by SV40 Large T-antigen. RMECs irradiated with increasing
doses of ionizing radiation, showed linear increases of apoptosis. The apoptotic
response was approximately equivalent to HUVEC. Thus this cell line may be employed
for future studies. This work was supported by NIH grant K01?CA76483 and BNL/DOE
LDRD 00?32 (L.A.P.), by SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine TRO grant SBF296110
(Y.H.L.), and a Battelle/WISE summer fellowship. |