RNA folding is an essential aspect underlying RNA-mediated cellular processes. Many RNAs, including large, multi-domain ribozymes, are capable of folding to the native, functional state without assistance of a protein cofactor in vitro. In the cell, trans-acting factors, such as proteins, are however known to modulate the structure and thus the fate of an RNA. DEAD-box proteins, including Mss11...

The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III instrument on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) has been making high quality solar occultation measurements of stratospheric water vapor since June 2017. Here we evaluate large-scale geophysical variability SAGE III/ISS for first 3 years observations (2017–2020) as part data validation retrieval version 5.1 (v5.1). Detailed compariso...

Over the past 25 years, enormous breakthroughs have been made in understanding protein folding mechanisms. We have now reached an exciting stage, with consensuses beginning to emerge that combine both theoretical and experimental approaches. In addition, new fields have emerged and burgeoned, including in vivo folding and the study of protein misfolding diseases. In today's post-genomic world, ...

We address the folding induced by differential growth in soft layered solids via an elementary model that consists of a soft growing neo-Hookean elastic layer adhered to a deep elastic substrate. As the layer-to-substrate modulus ratio is varied from above unity toward zero, we find a first transition from supercritical smooth folding followed by cusping of the valleys to direct subcritical cus...

The responsible mechanism for the formation of the enhanced-V infrared cloud-top feature observed above tropopause-penetrating thunderstorms is not well understood. A new method for the combination of volumetric radar reflectivity from individual radars into three-dimensional composites with high vertical resolution (1 km) is introduced and used to test various formation mechanisms proposed in ...

Diabatic processes can alter Rossby wave structure; consequently, errors arising from model processes propagate downstream. However, the chaotic spread of forecasts from initial condition uncertainty renders it difficult to trace back from root-mean-square forecast errors to model errors. Here diagnostics unaffected by phase errors are used, enabling investigation of systematic errors in Rossby...

[1] Using infrared satellite imagery, best-track data, and reanalysis data, tropical cyclones are shown to contain a disproportionate amount of the deepest convection in the tropics. Although tropical cyclones account for only 7% of the deep convection in the tropics, they account for about 15% of the deep convection with cloud-top temperatures below the monthly averaged tropopause temperature ...

The results of biological studies of a cryosampler flown with a balloon, in which air samples were collected at altitudes ranging from 20 to 41 km, well above the Tropopause over Hyderabad, are described. In the analysis carried out in Cardiff, voltage-sensitive dyes that could detect the presence of viable cells were used on these air-samples. Clumps of viable cells were found to be present in...

Earth’s extra-tropical troposphere is equilibrated by turbulent eddy fluxes of potential temperature and momentum. The equilibrated state has the remarkable characteristic that isentropic slopes leaving the surface in the sub-tropics reach the tropopause near the poles. It has been speculated that turbulent eddy fluxes maintain this state for a wide range of radiative forcing and planetary para...

We study the stochastic folding kinetics of RNA sequences into secondary structures with a new algorithm based on the formation, dissociation, and the shifting of individual base pairs. We discuss folding mechanisms and the correlation between the barrier structure of the conformational landscape and the folding kinetics for a number of examples based on artificial and natural sequences, includ...