ALBERT

Description: Genetic differentiation among human populations is greatly influenced by geography due to the accumulation of local allele frequency differences. However, little is known about the possibly different increment of genetic differentiation along the different geographical axes (north–south, east–west, etc.). Here, we provide new methods to examine the asymmetrical patterns of genetic differentiation. We analyzed genome-wide polymorphism data from populations in Africa ( n = 29), Asia ( n = 26), America ( n = 9), and Europe ( n = 38), and we found that the major orientations of genetic differentiation are north–south in Europe and Africa, and east–west in Asia, but no preferential orientation was found in the Americas. Additionally, we showed that the localization of the individual geographic origins based on single nucleotide polymorphism data was not equally precise along all orientations. Confirming our findings, we obtained that, in each continent, the orientation along which the precision is maximal corresponds to the orientation of maximum differentiation. Our results have implications for interpreting human genetic variation in terms of isolation by distance and spatial range expansion processes. In Europe, for instance, the precise northnorthwest–southsoutheast axis of main European differentiation cannot be explained by a simple Neolithic demic diffusion model without admixture with the local populations because in that case the orientation of greatest differentiation should be perpendicular to the direction of expansion. In addition to humans, anisotropic analyses can guide the description of genetic differentiation for other organisms and provide information on expansions of invasive species or the processes of plant dispersal.

Description: Based on the accumulation of genetic, climatic, and fossil evidence, a central theory in paleoanthropology stipulates that a demographic bottleneck coincided with the origin of our species Homo Sapiens . This theory proposes that anatomically modern humans—which were only present in Africa at the time—experienced a drastic bottleneck during the penultimate glacial age (130–190 kya) when a cold and dry climate prevailed. Two scenarios have been proposed to describe the bottleneck, which involve either a fragmentation of the range occupied by humans or the survival of one small group of humans. Here, we analyze DNA sequence data from 61 nuclear loci sequenced in three African populations using Approximate Bayesian Computation and numerical simulations. In contrast to the bottleneck theory, we show that a simple model without any bottleneck during the penultimate ice age has the greatest statistical support compared with bottleneck models. Although the proposed bottleneck is ancient, occurring at least 130 kya, we can discard the possibility that it did not leave detectable footprints in the DNA sequence data except if the bottleneck involves a less than a 3-fold reduction in population size. Finally, we confirm that a simple model without a bottleneck is able to reproduce the main features of the observed patterns of genetic variation. We conclude that models of Pleistocene refugium for modern human origins now require substantial revision.

Description: To enable an understanding and optimization of the optoelectronic behavior of CdTe-ZnO nanocomposites, the morphological and chemical properties of annealed CdTe/ZnO interface structures were studied. For that purpose, CdTe layers of varying thickness (4–24 nm) were sputter-deposited on 100 nm-thick ZnO films on surface-oxidized Si(100) substrates. The morphological and chemical effects of annealing at 525 °C were investigated using X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray-excited Auger electron spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. We find a decrease of the Cd and Te surface concentration after annealing, parallel to an increase in Zn and O signals. While the as-deposited film surfaces show small grains (100 nm diameter) of CdTe on the ZnO surface, annealing induces a significant growth of these grains and separation into islands (with diameters as large as 1  μ m). The compositional change at the surface is more pronounced for Cd than for Te, as evidenced using component peak fitting of the Cd and Te 3d XPS peaks. The modified Auger parameters of Cd and Te are also calculated to further elucidate the local chemical environment before and after annealing. Together, these results suggest the formation of tellurium and cadmium oxide species at the CdTe/ZnO interface upon annealing, which can create a barrier for charge carrier transport, and might allow for a deliberate modification of interface properties with suitably chosen thermal treatment parameters.

Description: The Journal of Physical Chemistry B DOI: 10.1021/jp302958j