Radboud University Nijmegen

About: Radboud University Nijmegen is a education organization based out in Nijmegen, Gelderland, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 35417 authors who have published 83035 publications receiving 3285064 citations. The organization is also known as: Catholic University of Nijmegen & Radboud University.

ReCiPe2016: a harmonised life cycle impact assessment method at midpoint and endpoint level

Abstract: Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) translates emissions and resource extractions into a limited number of environmental impact scores by means of so-called characterisation factors. There are two mainstream ways to derive characterisation factors, i.e. at midpoint level and at endpoint level. To further progress LCIA method development, we updated the ReCiPe2008 method to its version of 2016. This paper provides an overview of the key elements of the ReCiPe2016 method. We implemented human health, ecosystem quality and resource scarcity as three areas of protection. Endpoint characterisation factors, directly related to the areas of protection, were derived from midpoint characterisation factors with a constant mid-to-endpoint factor per impact category. We included 17 midpoint impact categories. The update of ReCiPe provides characterisation factors that are representative for the global scale instead of the European scale, while maintaining the possibility for a number of impact categories to implement characterisation factors at a country and continental scale. We also expanded the number of environmental interventions and added impacts of water use on human health, impacts of water use and climate change on freshwater ecosystems and impacts of water use and tropospheric ozone formation on terrestrial ecosystems as novel damage pathways. Although significant effort has been put into the update of ReCiPe, there is still major improvement potential in the way impact pathways are modelled. Further improvements relate to a regionalisation of more impact categories, moving from local to global species extinction and adding more impact pathways. Life cycle impact assessment is a fast evolving field of research. ReCiPe2016 provides a state-of-the-art method to convert life cycle inventories to a limited number of life cycle impact scores on midpoint and endpoint level.

Energy gaps and a zero-field quantum Hall effect in graphene by strain engineering

Abstract: Owing to the fact that graphene is just one atom thick, it has been suggested that it might be possible to control its properties by subjecting it to mechanical strain. New analysis indicates not only this, but that pseudomagnetic behaviour and even zero-field quantum Hall effects could be induced in graphene under realistic amounts of strain. Among many remarkable qualities of graphene, its electronic properties attract particular interest owing to the chiral character of the charge carriers, which leads to such unusual phenomena as metallic conductivity in the limit of no carriers and the half-integer quantum Hall effect observable even at room temperature1,2,3. Because graphene is only one atom thick, it is also amenable to external influences, including mechanical deformation. The latter offers a tempting prospect of controlling graphene’s properties by strain and, recently, several reports have examined graphene under uniaxial deformation4,5,6,7,8. Although the strain can induce additional Raman features7,8, no significant changes in graphene’s band structure have been either observed or expected for realistic strains of up to ∼15% (refs 9, 10, 11). Here we show that a designed strain aligned along three main crystallographic directions induces strong gauge fields12,13,14 that effectively act as a uniform magnetic field exceeding 10 T. For a finite doping, the quantizing field results in an insulating bulk and a pair of countercirculating edge states, similar to the case of a topological insulator15,16,17,18,19,20. We suggest realistic ways of creating this quantum state and observing the pseudomagnetic quantum Hall effect. We also show that strained superlattices can be used to open significant energy gaps in graphene’s electronic spectrum.

Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies

Abstract: Despite a century of research on complex traits in humans, the relative importance and specific nature of the influences of genes and environment on human traits remain controversial. We report a meta-analysis of twin correlations and reported variance components for 17,804 traits from 2,748 publications including 14,558,903 partly dependent twin pairs, virtually all published twin studies of complex traits. Estimates of heritability cluster strongly within functional domains, and across all traits the reported heritability is 49%. For a majority (69%) of traits, the observed twin correlations are consistent with a simple and parsimonious model where twin resemblance is solely due to additive genetic variation. The data are inconsistent with substantial influences from shared environment or non-additive genetic variation. This study provides the most comprehensive analysis of the causes of individual differences in human traits thus far and will guide future gene-mapping efforts. All the results can be visualized using the MaTCH webtool.

An oestrogen-receptor-α-bound human chromatin interactome

Abstract: Genomes are organized into high-level three-dimensional structures, and DNA elements separated by long genomic distances can in principle interact functionally Many transcription factors bind to regulatory DNA elements distant from gene promoters Although distal binding sites have been shown to regulate transcription by long-range chromatin interactions at a few loci, chromatin interactions and their impact on transcription regulation have not been investigated in a genome-wide manner Here we describe the development of a new strategy, chromatin interaction analysis by paired-end tag sequencing (ChIA-PET) for the de novo detection of global chromatin interactions, with which we have comprehensively mapped the chromatin interaction network bound by oestrogen receptor α (ER-α) in the human genome We found that most high-confidence remote ER-α-binding sites are anchored at gene promoters through long-range chromatin interactions, suggesting that ER-α functions by extensive chromatin looping to bring genes together for coordinated transcriptional regulation We propose that chromatin interactions constitute a primary mechanism for regulating transcription in mammalian genomes © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved