In a recent publication, Kettner et. al. [1] have suggested that one could speed up alpha decay of transuranic nuclear waste material by embedding it in metals at low temperature. This would have a huge impact on waste disposal management and quite likely initiate a completely renewed public debate on the subject of nuclear energy. The proposed idea is that the electron screening provided by th...

Nuclear RNA exosomes catalyze a range of RNA processing and decay activities that are coordinated in part by cofactors, including Mpp6, Rrp47, and the Mtr4 RNA helicase. Mpp6 interacts with the nine-subunit exosome core, while Rrp47 stabilizes the exoribonuclease Rrp6 and recruits Mtr4, but it is less clear if these cofactors work together. Using biochemistry with Saccharomyces cerevisiae prote...

Neutrinoless double beta decay, if observed, could distinguish whether the neutrino is a Dirac or a Majorana particle, and it could be used to determine the absolute scale of the neutrino masses. 136Xe is one of the most promising candidates for observing this rare event. However, until recently there were no positive results for the allowed and less rare two-neutrino double beta decay mode. Th...

Recent developments in the nuclear data libraries used by the ORIGEN-S isotope generation and depletion code have enabled the extension of the code to accurately predict the delayed energy release rates from nuclear decay (decay heat) at very short cooling times of interest to reactor accident analysis. Historically this time domain has required integral methods, such as the ANS5.1 decay heat s...

Study of the neutrinoless ββ decay allows us to put a stringent limit on the effective neutrino Majorana mass, a quantity of fundamental importance. To test our ability to evaluate the nuclear matrix elements that govern the decay rate, it is desirable to be able to describe the allowed two-neutrino decay. It is argued that only low-lying virtual intermediate states are important for that proce...

The present Special Issue is dedicated to the long-sought-after nuclear process known as Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (NDBD), a transition characterized by simultaneous decay of two neutrons into protons and electrons, without emission neutrinos [...]

An unexpected link has been discovered between pre-mRNA splicing in the nucleus and mRNA localisation in the cytoplasm. The new findings suggest that recruitment of the Mago Nashi and Y14 proteins upon splicing of oskar mRNA is an essential step in the localisation of the RNA to the posterior pole of the Drosophila oocyte.

The theoretical and experimental issues relevant to neutrinoless double-beta decay are reviewed. The impact that a direct observation of this exotic process would have on elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics and cosmology is profound. Now that neutrinos are known to have mass and experiments are becoming more sensitive, even the non-observation of neutrinoless double-beta ...

A protein complex deposited upstream of exon-exon junctions after pre-mRNA splicing may serve a dual role in mRNA quality control by directing mRNA nuclear export and, possibly, serving as a downstream 'mark' for nonsense-mediated decay.