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US 2007/0003019 W | DUAL END GEAR FLUID DRIVE STARTER | A compressor starting torque converter method and apparatus for high power rotating equipment strings includes a compressor starting torque converter (CSTC) and gearing to make the input and output speed conform to the speed and power requirements of the at least one compressor at the end of the string. The string also includes a prime mover, either a motor or a gas turbine with a starter motor. The CSTC is driven by a prime mover that has been geared down to an appropriate speed for efficient power transfer, followed by a gear increasing unit to allow the output of the CSTC to be increased in speed to conform to the necessary requirements of a high speed compressor. The gearing can be two separate units with their own housings, or incorporated in a single housing with the CSTC. The CSTC may be a CSTC used in pressurized starts of high compressor load strings for LNG refrigeration service. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1002/cphc.201900533 | In-Situ Infrared Spectroscopy Applied to the Study of the Electrocatalytic Reduction of CO<inf>2</inf>: Theory, Practice and Challenges | The field of electrochemical CO2 conversion is undergoing significant growth in terms of the number of publications and worldwide research groups involved. Despite improvements of the catalytic performance, the complex reaction mechanisms and solution chemistry of CO2 have resulted in a considerable amount of discrepancies between theoretical and experimental studies. A clear identification of the reaction mechanism and the catalytic sites are of key importance in order to allow for a qualitative breakthrough and, from an experimental perspective, calls for the use of in-situ or operando spectroscopic techniques. In-situ infrared spectroscopy can provide information on the nature of intermediate species and products in real time and, in some cases, with relatively high time resolution. In this contribution, we review key theoretical aspects of infrared reflection spectroscopy, followed by considerations of practical implementation. Finally, recent applications to the electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 are reviewed, including challenges associated with the detection of reaction intermediates. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
SE 9900532 W | A METHOD AND A DEVICE FOR EPITAXIAL GROWTH OF OBJECTS BY CHEMICAL VAPOUR DEPOSITION | A device for epitaxial growth of objects by Chemical Vapour Deposition on a substrate (3) comprises a susceptor (5) adapted to receive said substrate and means for heating walls of the susceptor surrounding the substrate and by that the substrate and a gas mixture fed to the substrate for the growth. The device comprises also means (7, 10) for holding the substrate in the path (8) of said gas mixture through the susceptor at a distance (a) from internal walls thereof. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1088/0264-9381/29/18/184009 | Exploring The Wep With A Pulsed Cold Beam Of Antihydrogen | The AEGIS experiment, currently being set up at the Antiproton Decelerator at CERN, has the objective of studying the free fall of antimatter in the Earth?s gravitational field by means of a pulsed cold atomic beam of antihydrogen atoms. Both duration of free fall and vertical displacement of the horizontally emitted atoms will be measured, allowing a first test of the WEP with antimatter. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Universe Sciences"
]
|
W289639451 | Corrosion Identification of Gas Pipe Risers in Buildings Using Advanced Ultrasonic Guided Waves | In modern cities, natural gas is a major source of fuel that is needed in each resident’s daily life. Gas pipe risers are used to distribute natural gas to each household unit. They penetrate into each unit through concrete walls to connect the main outdoor gas pipe to the indoor residential gas pipes. After long periods of operation, part of the pipe riser embedded in concrete is prone to corrosion due to the combined effect of corrosive materials in concrete and humid environment. If the deterioration caused by the riser corrosion is ignored, pipe rupture and poisonous gas leaks are possible. In the worst-case scenario, catastrophic gas explosions can lead to human fatalities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for effective and reliable non-destructing testing methods that could enable the identification of corrosion in in-service through-wall riser so that the safety and proper maintenance of pipeline system in building can be guaranteed. This paper presents the application of advanced ultrasonic guided waves for this purpose. The problems and difficulties involved in the inspection including construction of transduction system and signal analysis of complex reflection wave signals will be identified and discussed. The experiments will be conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of developed techniques. With the help of all of the achievements, the building is expected to become safer to live and hundreds of million dollars per year will be saved by avoiding potential gas explosions. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Materials Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
219763 | Our galaxy at full hd | Some astrophysical mechanisms that are crucial for the evolution of our Galaxy, and of galaxies in general, like the assemblage of the Galactic halo, the spiral arms dynamics, and the star formation processes, are poorly understood. But this research field is on the verge of an important breakthrough thanks to the ESA Gaia mission that is gathering an unprecedented census of positions, distances, velocities and stellar properties for a billion stars. Now it is time that the European scientists exploit their output data. Our Galaxy at full High Definition (Gal-HD) is a project that will use the Gaia data releases and follow-up surveys to investigate key galaxy evolution processes. We will do this by detecting the signatures that they produce in the stellar phase-space of the Galaxy. Gal-HD will pioneer in: 1) the detection of Ultra Faint Dwarf Galaxies in the halo as probes for cosmological models, 2) the investigation of the large-scale kinematics of the disk and the nature of the spiral arms, 3) the study of the nearby kinematics as tracer of the local star formation. The project combines observational and theoretical astrophysics with data mining. The Experienced Researcher (ER) has deep expertise in Galactic dynamics, analysis of kinematic data and substructure detection tools. The Host Group is expert in Galactic astronomy, coordinates the development of the novel Gaia Archive and will train the ER on the Archive mining tools required. The strong preparation for the Gaia exploitation of the ER and the Host Group puts them in clear advantage to make a substantial contribution to the field and to be in the front lead of the Gaia science. This research will bring the ER closer to her long-term career goals of being a consolidated leading researcher. Gal-HD will also participate in preserving the European leadership in Galactic astronomy and space astrometry, and contribute to the Gaia scientific harvest that Europe has planned and invested for. | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110512-135813 | The evolution of animal domestication | The domestication of plants and animals over the past 11,500 years has had a significant effect not just on the domesticated taxa but also on human evolution and on the biosphere as a whole. Decades of research into the geographical and chronological origins of domestic animals have led to a general understanding of the pattern and process of domestication, though a number of significant questions remain unresolved. Here, building upon recent theoretical advances regarding the different pathways animals followed to become domesticated, we present a large-scale synthesis that addresses the global pattern of animal domestication alongside a discussion of the differential evolutionary processes that have shaped domestic animal populations. More specifically, we present a framework for understanding how unconscious selection characterized the earliest steps of animal domestication and the role of introgression and the importance of relaxed and positive selection in shaping modern domestic phenotypes and genomes. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"The Study of the Human Past"
]
|
10.3847/0004-637X/822/1/12 | Chemical And Physical Characterization Of Collapsing Low Mass Prestellar Dense Cores | The first hydrostatic core, also called the first Larson core, is one of the first steps in low-mass star formation, as predicted by theory. With recent and future high performance telescopes, details of these first phases become accessible, and observations may confirm theory and even bring new challenges for theoreticians. In this context, we study from a theoretical point of view the chemical and physical evolution of the collapse of prestellar cores until the formation of the first Larson core, in order to better characterize this early phase in the star formation process. We couple a state-of-the-art hydrodynamical model with full gas-grain chemistry, using different assumptions on the magnetic field strength and orientation. We extract the different components of each collapsing core (i. e. , the central core, the outflow, the disk, the pseudodisk, and the envelope) to highlight their specific physical and chemical characteristics. Each component often presents a specific physical history, as well as a specific chemical evolution. From some species, the components can clearly be differentiated. The different core models can also be chemically differentiated. Our simulation suggests some chemical species as tracers of the different components of a collapsing prestellar dense core, and as tracers of the magnetic field characteristics of the core. From this result, we pinpoint promising key chemical species to be observed. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Universe Sciences"
]
|
W2786402457 | Optimizing software rejuvenation policy based on CDM for cloud system | The ever-increasing cloud-based systems are suffering progressive performance degradation due to internal accumulated errors and external security attacks. Software rejuvenation is a preventive maintenance policy to solve this problem. However, an ineffective rejuvenation policy usually causes high resource consumption and system cost loss. To guarantee the high availability and minimize the maintenance cost in the cloud-based system, a cost-effective rejuvenation policy is proposed based on cumulative damage model (CDM) in this paper. With our proposal, prior to system failure diagnosis, the system is managed to be rejuvenated either at a predetermined time or at a damage threshold level, whichever occurs first. Further, the system cost rate function is deduced, and an optimal rejuvenation period is derived aiming to minimize the maintenance cost. Experimental results show that the proposed rejuvenation policy is highly effective in term of great reduction on system cost rate. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1007/s10683-019-09605-2 | Experiments in high-frequency trading: comparing two market institutions | We implement a laboratory financial market where traders can access costly technology that reduces communication latency with a remote exchange. In this environment, we conduct a market design study on high-frequency trading: we contrast the performance of the newly proposed frequent batch auction (FBA) against the continuous double auction (CDA), which organizes trades in most exchanges worldwide. Our evidence suggests that, relative to the CDA, the FBA exhibits (1) less predatory trading behavior, (2) lower investments in low-latency communication technology, (3) lower transaction costs, and (4) lower volatility in market spreads and liquidity. We also find that transitory shocks in the environment have substantially greater impact on market dynamics in the CDA than in the FBA. | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
215880 | Novel processing of colloidal nanocrystals for optoelectronic applications | NANOPTO aims at developing novel physicochemical routes to obtain a semiconductor matrix embedding dispersed quantum-dots (dots-in-matrix) starting from colloidal nanocrystals.
In recent years, a multitude of different semiconductor materials have been synthesized and studied to increase the performance of current technologies or to develop new and attractive applications. As a first-order approximation, materials boosting high photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (PLQY) possess low or hindered charge mobility, as pristine colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs). To overcome this limitation, many different NCs processing techniques have been developed, but all of them either cause the formation of charge trap-states on the NCs surface (thus quenching the PL) or do not significantly enhance the charge mobility. For this reason, NANOPTO will tackle this fundamental limitation of NCs by developing novel general methods to enhance their charge mobility without creating surface trap-states, thus leading the way to the development of more efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells that can be processed in solution. In particular, NANOPTO aims at exploiting both chemical and physical routes to prepare colloidal core-shell NCs and solder their shells in solid-state thus creating a bulk semiconductor matrix (granting enhance charge mobility) embedding quantum-dots (granting the desired optical properties). | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
W4226186563 | RUXOLITINIB AS A TREATMENT STRATEGY FOR SARS-CoV-2 PNEUMONIA: CLINICAL EXPERIENCE IN A REAL-WORLD SETTING | Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection is characterised by a viral phase and a severe pro-inflammatory phase. The inhibition of the JAK/STAT pathway limits the pro-inflammatory state in moderate to severe COVID-19 cases. Methods: We analysed the data obtained for an observational cohort of patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia treated with ruxolitinib in 22 hospitals of Mexico. The dose used was determined based on physician’s criteria. The benefit of ruxolitinib was evaluated using the 8-points ordinal scale developed by the NIH in the ACTT1 trial. Duration of hospital stay, changes in pro-inflammatory laboratory values, mortality, and toxicity were also measured. Results: A total of 287 patients administered ruxolitinib were reported at 22 sites in Mexico from March to June 2020; 80.8% received 5 mg BID and 19.16% received 10 mg BID ruxolitinib. At the beginning of treatment, 223 patients were on oxygen support, 59 on invasive ventilation. The percentage of patients on invasive ventilation was 53% in the 10 mg and 13% in the 5 mg cohort. There was a statistically significant improvement measured as a reduction by 2 points (initial 5.39 ± 0.93, final 3.67± 2.98, P value = 0.0001) on the 8-point ordinal scale. There were a total of 74 deaths. Serious adverse events were presented in 6.9% of the patients. Conclusion: Ruxolitinib appears to be safe in COVID-19 patients, with clinical benefits observed in terms of decrease in the 8-point ordinal scale and pro-inflammatory state. Further studies must be done to ensure efficacy against mortality. | [
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
10.1371/journal.ppat.1002925 | Relacin, a Novel Antibacterial Agent Targeting the Stringent Response | Finding bacterial cellular targets for developing novel antibiotics has become a major challenge in fighting resistant pathogenic bacteria. We present a novel compound, Relacin, designed to inhibit (p)ppGpp production by the ubiquitous bacterial enzyme RelA that triggers the Stringent Response. Relacin inhibits RelA in vitro and reduces (p)ppGpp production in vivo. Moreover, Relacin affects entry into stationary phase in Gram positive bacteria, leading to a dramatic reduction in cell viability. When Relacin is added to sporulating Bacillus subtilis cells, it strongly perturbs spore formation regardless of the time of addition. Spore formation is also impeded in the pathogenic bacterium Bacillus anthracis that causes the acute anthrax disease. Finally, the formation of multicellular biofilms is markedly disrupted by Relacin. Thus, we establish that Relacin, a novel ppGpp analogue, interferes with bacterial long term survival strategies, placing it as an attractive new antibacterial agent. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy"
]
|
757480 | Unveiling the dark universe with gravitational waves: Black holes and compact stars as laboratories for fundamental physics | In recent years, our theoretical understanding of the strong-field regime of gravity has grown in parallel with the observational confirmations that culminated in the landmark detection of gravitational waves (GWs). This synergy of breakthroughs at the observational, technical, and conceptual level offers the unprecedented opportunity to merge traditionally disjoint areas, and to make strong gravity a precision tool to probe fundamental physics.
The aim of the DarkGRA project is to investigate novel effects related to strong gravitational sources -such as black holes (BHs) and compact stars- that can be used to turn these objects into cosmic labs, where matter in extreme conditions, particle physics, and the very foundations of Einstein's theory of gravity can be put to the test. In this context, we propose to explore some outstanding, cross-cutting problems in fundamental physics: the existence of extra light fields, the limits of classical gravity, the nature of BHs and of spacetime singularities, and the effects of dark matter near compact objects. Our ultimate goal is to probe fundamental physics in the most extreme gravitational settings and to devise new approaches for detection, complementary to laboratory searches. This groundbreaking research program -located at the interface between particle physics, astrophysics and gravitation- is now made possible by novel techniques to scrutinize astrophysical compact objects, by current and future GW and X-ray detectors, and by the astonishing precision of pulsar timing. If supported by a solid theoretical framework, these new observations can potentially lead to surprising discoveries and paradigm shifts in our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature at all scales. | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter"
]
|
10.1002/9781119085126.ch11 | Probing Channel, Pump, and Transporter Function Using Single-Molecule Fluorescence | Single-molecule fluorescence (SMF) spectroscopy has emerged as a powerful biophysical tool capable of resolving the dynamics of conformational changes within individual proteins. This chapter is intended as a brief guide to introduce researchers to SMF and how these techniques have been applied to ion channels, transporters, and pumps. The main focus is on techniques that relate structure to function. The chapter outlines some practical considerations for imaging channels, transporters, and pumps using SMF. It then explores the types of experiments enabled by wide-field imaging of singly labeled proteins and the conclusions that can be drawn by observing the intensity or position of fluorescent spots over time. It talks about essential SMF techniques. Photobleaching is the abrupt irreversible decrease in a fluorophore's emission due to photoinduced chemical damage or covalent modification. Single-molecule methods have really just begun to provide serious mechanistic insight into the behavior of ion channels. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.3354/meps11635 | Long-distance electron transport by cable bacteria in mangrove sediments | Cable bacteria are long, filamentous sulphur-oxidizing bacteria that induce long-distance electron transport in aquatic sediments. They turn the seafloor into an electro-active environment, characterized by currents and electrical fields, and when present, they exert a strong impact on the geochemical cycling in the seafloor. However, cable bacteria have only recently been discovered, and so their geographical distribution and habitat distribution remain largely unknown. Here we report field evidence that cable bacteria are present and active in mangrove sediments. Combining microsensor profiling and fluorescence in situ hybridization, we recorded high filament densities (77 m cm?2) and the signature of electrogenic sulphur oxidation in sediments of grey mangroves near Melbourne, Australia. Our findings suggest that cable bacteria could be a keystone microbial species in the geochemical cycling of mangroves. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1038/s41467-020-17773-6 | Independent phase modulation for quadruplex polarization channels enabled by chirality-assisted geometric-phase metasurfaces | AbstractGeometric-phase metasurfaces, recently utilized for controlling wavefronts of circular polarized (CP) electromagnetic waves, are drastically limited to the cross-polarization modality. Combining geometric with propagation phase allows to further control the co-polarized output channel, nevertheless addressing only similar functionality on both co-polarized outputs for the two different CP incident beams. Here we introduce the concept of chirality-assisted phase as a degree of freedom, which could decouple the two co-polarized outputs, and thus be an alternative solution for designing arbitrary modulated-phase metasurfaces with distinct wavefront manipulation in all four CP output channels. Two metasurfaces are demonstrated with four arbitrary refraction wavefronts, and orbital angular momentum modes with four independent topological charge, showcasing complete and independent manipulation of all possible CP channels in transmission. This additional phase addressing mechanism will lead to new components, ranging from broadband achromatic devices to the multiplexing of wavefronts for application in reconfigurable-beam antenna and wireless communication systems. | [
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Systems and Communication Engineering",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
GB 0413559 A | A shrink fit chuck means for holding a drill bit | A unitary drill bit using components comprising a drill bit 46, and a chuck 30, such that the chuck 30 is heat shrunk onto the drill bit 46, the chuck 30 also includes a threaded portion 38 for attachment to a drilling device 54. Other embodiments include where said drilling device is a hand drill driven by an air motor. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
EP 03254710 A | Drain plug structure for bath tub | A protrusion of the plug lid out of the bath tub bottom part is restricted to reduce a possibility in which the plug lid becomes a hindrance and a water-tightness at the plug is improved. The plug lid is dropped into the notch formed in such a way that the circumferential edge of the plug lid becomes lower than the bottom surface of the bath tub. The packing is closely contacted with the packing close-contact surface narrowed from the bottom surface of the notch in a downward direction. The bottom part of the notch is formed into the horizontal plane and the plug lid is supported while it is not inclined under application of weight (a hydraulic pressure or an artificial pressure applied by a user) and a non-required crushing force is prevented from being acted on the packing. The anti-vibrating member sliding on the outer circumferential surface of the supporting member for supporting the supporting shaft in such a way it can be moved up and down is mounted vertically at the plug lid to prevent the plug lid from being vibrated, and the foreign material mixing preventive cover having a length extending along an outer circumferential surface of the supporting member prevents the foreign material mixed in the drain water from being entered the supporting member for both cases of opening and closing of the drain port. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1145/2837614.2837671 | Learning Programs From Noisy Data | We present a new approach for learning programs from noisy datasets. Our approach is based on two new concepts: a regularized program generator which produces a candidate program based on a small sample of the entire dataset while avoiding overfitting, and a dataset sampler which carefully samples the dataset by leveraging the candidate program's score on that dataset. The two components are connected in a continuous feedback-directed loop. We show how to apply this approach to two settings: one where the dataset has a bound on the noise, and another without a noise bound. The second setting leads to a new way of performing approximate empirical risk minimization on hypotheses classes formed by a discrete search space. We then present two new kinds of program synthesizers which target the two noise settings. First, we introduce a novel regularized bitstream synthesizer that successfully generates programs even in the presence of incorrect examples. We show that the synthesizer can detect errors in the examples while combating overfitting -- a major problem in existing synthesis techniques. We also show how the approach can be used in a setting where the dataset grows dynamically via new examples (e. g. , provided by a human). Second, we present a novel technique for constructing statistical code completion systems. These are systems trained on massive datasets of open source programs, also known as ``Big Code''. The key idea is to introduce a domain specific language (DSL) over trees and to learn functions in that DSL directly from the dataset. These learned functions then condition the predictions made by the system. This is a flexible and powerful technique which generalizes several existing works as we no longer need to decide a priori on what the prediction should be conditioned (another benefit is that the learned functions are a natural mechanism for explaining the prediction). As a result, our code completion system surpasses the prediction capabilities of existing, hard-wired systems. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1016/j.psychres.2019.02.028 | Mapping cortical surface features in treatment resistant schizophrenia with in vivo structural MRI | Decreases in cortical volume (CV), thickness (CT) and surface area (SA) have been reported in individuals with schizophrenia by in vivo MRI studies. However, there are few studies that examine these cortical measures as potential biomarkers of treatment resistance (TR) and treatment response (NTR) in schizophrenia. This study used structural MRI to examine differences in CV, CT, and SA in 42 adults with schizophrenia (TR = 21, NTR = 21) and 23 healthy controls (HC) to test the hypothesis that individuals with TR schizophrenia have significantly greater reductions in these cortical measures compared to individuals with NTR schizophrenia. We found that individuals with TR schizophrenia showed significant reductions in CV and CT compared to individuals with NTR schizophrenia in right frontal and precentral regions, right parietal and occipital cortex, left temporal cortex and bilateral cingulate cortex. In line with previous literature, the temporal lobe and cingulate gyrus in both patient groups showed significant reductions of all three measures when compared to healthy controls. Taken together these results suggest that regional changes in CV and CT may index mechanisms specific to TR schizophrenia and potentially identify patients with TR schizophrenia for earlier treatment. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
716216 | Bombs, Banks and Sanctions: A Sociology of the Transnational Legal Field of Nuclear Nonproliferation | As the critical sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program demonstrate, the implementation of sanctions (SANCT) against nuclear proliferators (PRO) has lead to the creation of a global system of surveillance of the financial dealings of all states, banks and individuals, fostered by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. This is a new and unprecedented development in transnational governance. This research will apply a sociological perspective to the study of this new “transnational legal order” by analyzing how new actors, institutions and legal technologies shape the processes of norm-creation and rules-implementation in the field of nuclear nonproliferation. PROSANCT asks: How have the social characteristics of the actors in charge of designing and implementing sanctions influenced the creation of new norms in the field of nonproliferation? Which legal technologies and which discursive practices have these new actors developed to impose their authority and their legitimacy on the regulation of global financial transactions? Answering these questions will generate a better understanding of key processes in global governance: 1) the increasing role of the UNSC as a global legislator through top-down processes of norms diffusion; 2) the “financialization” of global regulation, with the increasing role played by international financial institutions, which were historically foreign to the field of nuclear nonproliferation; and 3) the “judicialization” of the enforcement of sanctions, and the associated reconfiguration of relations between executive and judicial authorities in charge of punishing nuclear proliferators and sanctions-evaders at the domestic level. To study these legal processes in various contexts (the United States and Europe), PROSANCT applies a multi-methods approach that combines interview-based methods with politicians, high-level bureaucrats and diplomats, and experts, and archival research. | [
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems"
]
|
10.21468/SciPostPhys.5.6.061 | Unruh effect for interacting particles with ultracold atoms | The Unruh effect is a quantum relativistic effect where the accelerated observer perceives the vacuum as a thermal state. Here we propose the experimental realization of the Unruh effect for interacting ultracold fermions in optical lattices by a sudden quench resulting in vacuum acceleration with varying interactions strengths in the real temperature background. We observe the inversion of statistics for the low lying excitations in the Wightman function as a result of competition between the spacetime and BCS Bogoliubov transformations. This paper opens up new perspectives for simulators of quantum gravity. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter"
]
|
10.1242/jcs.157560 | Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor substrate 8 (Eps8) controls Src/FAK-dependent phenotypes in squamous carcinoma cells | Eps8 is an actin regulatory scaffold protein increased in Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) cells. It forms a complex with both Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) and c-Src in SCC cells derived from the DMBA/TPA model of skin carcinogenesis. Here, we describe two new roles for Eps8. Firstly, it controls the spatial distribution of active c-Src in a FAK-dependent manner. Specifically, Eps8 participates in, and regulates, a biochemical complex with c-Src and drives c-Src's trafficking to autophagic structures that SCC cells use to cope with high levels of active c-Src when FAK is absent. Secondly, when FAK is expressed in SCC cells, so tethering active c-Src at focal adhesion complexes, Eps8 is also recruited to focal adhesions and is required for FAK-dependent polarization and invasion. Therefore, Eps8 is a critical mediator of Src/FAK-regulated processes; it participates in specific biochemical complexes and promotes actin re-arrangements that determine c-Src's spatial localization and Src/FAK functions in invasive migration. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration"
]
|
10.1016/j.celrep.2018.04.061 | The RNA Exosome Adaptor ZFC3H1 Functionally Competes with Nuclear Export Activity to Retain Target Transcripts | Mammalian genomes are promiscuously transcribed, yielding protein-coding and non-coding products. Many transcripts are short lived due to their nuclear degradation by the ribonucleolytic RNA exosome. Here, we show that abolished nuclear exosome function causes the formation of distinct nuclear foci, containing polyadenylated (pA+) RNA secluded from nucleocytoplasmic export. We asked whether exosome co-factors could serve such nuclear retention. Co-localization studies revealed the enrichment of pA+ RNA foci with “pA-tail exosome targeting (PAXT) connection” components MTR4, ZFC3H1, and PABPN1 but no overlap with known nuclear structures such as Cajal bodies, speckles, paraspeckles, or nucleoli. Interestingly, ZFC3H1 is required for foci formation, and in its absence, selected pA+ RNAs, including coding and non-coding transcripts, are exported to the cytoplasm in a process dependent on the mRNA export factor AlyREF. Our results establish ZFC3H1 as a central nuclear pA+ RNA retention factor, counteracting nuclear export activity. Silla et al. report that the RNA exosome adaptor protein ZFC3H1 acts as a nuclear RNA retention factor. In the absence of ZFC3H1, exosome targets are exported to the cytoplasm in a AlyREF-dependent manner. The discovery establishes ZFC3H1 as a central factor in the retention and degradation of polyadenylated RNA. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration"
]
|
10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2018.02.007 | Integrable Floquet dynamics, generalized exclusion processes and “fused” matrix ansatz | We present a general method for constructing integrable stochastic processes, with two-step discrete time Floquet dynamics, from the transfer matrix formalism. The models can be interpreted as a discrete time parallel update. The method can be applied for both periodic and open boundary conditions. We also show how the stationary distribution can be built as a matrix product state. As an illustration we construct parallel discrete time dynamics associated with the R-matrix of the SSEP and of the ASEP, and provide the associated stationary distributions in a matrix product form. We use this general framework to introduce new integrable generalized exclusion processes, where a fixed number of particles is allowed on each lattice site in opposition to the (single particle) exclusion process models. They are constructed using the fusion procedure of R-matrices (and K-matrices for open boundary conditions) for the SSEP and ASEP. We develop a new method, that we named “fused” matrix ansatz, to build explicitly the stationary distribution in a matrix product form. We use this algebraic structure to compute physical observables such as the correlation functions and the mean particle current. | [
"Mathematics",
"Condensed Matter Physics"
]
|
W2111459860 | K-theoretic Aspects of String Theory Dualities | Title of dissertation: K-THEORETIC ASPECTS OF STRING THEORY DUALITIES Stefan Mendez-Diez, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Dissertation directed by: Professor Jonathan Rosenberg Department of Mathematics String theory is a a physical field theory in which point particles are replaced by 1-manifolds propagating in time, called strings. The 2-manifold representing the time evolution of a string is called the string worldsheet. Strings can be either closed (meaning their worldsheets are closed surfaces) or open (meaning their worldsheets have boundary). A D-brane is a submanifold of the spacetime manifold on which string endpoints are constrained to lie. There are five different string theories that have supersymmetry, and they are all related by various dualities. This dissertation will review how D-branes are classified by K-theory. We will then explore the K-theoretic aspects of a hypothesized duality between the type I theory compactified on a 4-torus and the type IIA theory compactified on a K3 surface, by looking at a certain blow down of the singular limit of K3. This dissertation concludes by classifying D-branes on the type II orientifold T/Z2 when the Z2 action is multiplication by −1 and the H-flux is trivial. We find that classifying D-branes on the singular limit of K3, T/Z2 by equivariant K-theory agrees with the classification of D-branes on a smooth K3 surface by | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Mathematics"
]
|
10.1261/rna.068627.118 | Chemical enhancers of posttranscriptional gene silencing in Arabidopsis | RNAi mediated by small-interfering RNAs (siRNAs) operates via transcriptional (TGS) and posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS). In Arabidopsis thaliana, TGS relies on DICER-LIKE-3 (DCL3)-dependent 24-nt siRNAs loaded into AGO4-clade ARGONAUTE effector proteins. PTGS operates via DCL4-dependent 21-nt siRNAs loaded into AGO1-clade proteins. We set up and validated a medium-throughput, semi-automatized procedure enabling chemical screening, in a 96-well in vitro format, of Arabidopsis transgenic seedlings expressing an inverted-repeat construct from the phloem companion cells. The ensuing quantitative PTGS phenotype was exploited to identify molecules, which, upon topical application, either inhibit or enhance siRNA biogenesis/activities. The vast majority of identified modifiers were enhancers, among which Sortin1, Isoxazolone, and [5-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)furan-2-yl]-piperidine-1-ylmethanethione (DFPM) provided the most robust and consistent results, including upon their application onto soil-grown plants in which their effect was nonautonomous and long lasting. The three molecules increased the RNAi potency of the inverted-repeat construct, in large part by enhancing 21-nt siRNA accumulation and loading into AGO1, and concomitantly reducing AGO4 and DCL3 levels in planta. A similar, albeit not identical effect, was observed on 22-nt siRNAs produced from a naturally occurring inverted-repeat locus, demonstrating that the molecules also enhance endogenous PTGS. In standardized assays conducted in seedling extracts, the three enhancers selectively increased DCL4-mediated processing of in vitro-synthesized double-stranded RNAs, indicating the targeting of a hitherto unknown PTGS component probably independent of the DCL4-cofactor DOUBLE-STRANDED RNA-BINDING 4 (DRB4). This study establishes the proof-of-concept that RNAi efficacy can be modulated by chemicals in a whole organism. Their potential applications and the associated future research are discussed. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
10.1093/bioinformatics/btz626 | CROSSMAPPER: estimating cross-mapping rates and optimizing experimental design in multi-species sequencing studies | Abstract
Motivation
Numerous sequencing studies, including transcriptomics of host-pathogen systems, sequencing of hybrid genomes, xenografts, mixed species systems, metagenomics and meta-transcriptomics, involve samples containing genetic material from divergent organisms. A crucial step in these studies is identifying from which organism each sequencing read originated, and the experimental design should be directed to minimize biases caused by cross-mapping of reads to incorrect source genomes. Additionally, pooling of sufficiently different genetic material into a single sequencing library could significantly reduce experimental costs but requires careful planning and assessment of the impact of cross-mapping. Having these applications in mind we designed Crossmapper, the first to our knowledge tool able to assess cross-mapping prior to sequencing, therefore allowing optimization of experimental design. Results
Using any combination of reference genomes, Crossmapper performs read simulation and back-mapping of those reads to the pool of references, quantifies and reports the cross-mapping rates for each organism. Crossmapper performs these analyses with numerous user-specified parameters, including, among others, read length, read layout, coverage, mapping parameters, genomic or transcriptomic data. Additionally, it outputs the results in highly interactive and publication-ready reports. This allows the user to perform multiple comparisons at once and choose the experimental setup minimizing cross-mapping rates. Moreover, Crossmapper can be used for resource optimization in sequencing facilities by pooling different samples into one sequencing library. Availability and implementation
Crossmapper is a command line tool implemented in Python 3. 6 and available as a conda package, allowing effortless installation. The source code, detailed information and a step-by-step tutorial is available at our GitHub page https://github. com/Gabaldonlab/crossmapper. Supplementary information
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
10.1016/j.quaint.2020.02.023 | In search of a Paleolithic Silk Road in Kazakhstan | Paleoanthropological data suggest that the Late Pleistocene was a time of population contact and possibly dispersal in Central Asia. Geographic and paleoclimatic data suggest that a natural corridor through Kazakhstan linked areas to the north and east (Siberia, China) to those further to the west and south (Uzbekistan), much like a Paleolithic Silk Road. We review the known Pleistocene archaeology and paleoclimatic setting of this region and provide a geoarchaeological framework for contextualizing preliminary survey results of the PALAEOSILKROAD project's first three seasons of fieldwork. We discuss some systematic biases in three geomorphic and sedimentary archives: karst, loess, and spring deposits, specifying ways in which these biases might determine the kinds of data that are extractable by systematic survey. In particular, we caution about the possibility of future systematic biases in chronology that could come about as a result of the type of geomorphic context in which the sites are recovered. We conclude with recommendations for future work in the area. | [
"The Study of the Human Past",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
310747 | Investigating the therapeutic potential of manipulating the IGF-IGFBP1 axis in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity | More than 30 million people are living with diabetes in the EU, with a prevalence expected to grow to over 10% of the adult population by the year 2030. Type 2 diabetes is a major cause of cardiovascular disease related death and disability, substantially increasing the risk of myocardial infarction, stroke and peripheral arterial disease. Recent landmark trials, showing that intensive glucose control does not improve cardiovascular outcomes and may increase mortality in some circumstances, provide a compelling rationale for intense research aimed at developing novel therapeutic strategies. Type 2 diabetes is underpinned by resistance to the effects of insulin, which I have shown in endothelial cells causes reduced bioavailability of the anti-atherosclerotic molecule nitric oxide and leads to accelerated atherosclerosis. The cellular effects of insulin are mirrored by insulin-like growth factor factor-1, the bioavailability of which at its receptor is in turn is regulated by a family of high affinity binding proteins (IGFBP). Epidemiological studies demonstrate and inverse association between one of these binding proteins, IGFBP1, and diabetes-related cardiovascular risk. I have recently demonstrated that IGFBP1 when expressed in mice can ameliorate insulin resistance, obesity and atherosclerosis. In endothelial cells, I showed that IGFBP1 upregulates the production of nitric oxide indepenedently of IGF. These findings suggest that IGFBP1 may be a ‘protective’ endogenous protein and that increasing circulating levels may be a therapeutic strategy to prevent development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In this proposal I will address this hypothesis by employing state of the art studies in cells and novel gene modified mice to unravel the molecular basis of the protective effects of IGFBP1 and to investigate the possibility of exploiting the IGF-IGFBP axis to prevent cardiovascular disease in the setting of diabetes and obesity. | [
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1063/1.4962366 | Kinetics Of Fragmentation And Dissociation Of Two Strand Protein Filaments Coarse Grained Simulations And Experiments | While a significant body of investigations have been focused on the process of protein self-assembly, much less is understood about the reverse process of a filament breaking due to thermal motion into smaller fragments, or depolymerization of subunits from the filament ends. Indirect evidence for actin and amyloid filament fragmentation has been reported, although the phenomenon has never been directly observed either experimentally or in simulations. Here we report the direct observation of filament depolymerization and breakup in a minimal, calibrated model of coarse-grained molecular simulation. We quantify the orders of magnitude by which the depolymerization rate from the filament ends $k_\mathrm{off}$ is larger than fragmentation rate $k_{-}$ and establish the law $k_\mathrm{off}/k_- = \exp [( \varepsilon_\| - \varepsilon_\bot) / k_\mathrm{B}T ] = \exp [0. 5 \varepsilon / k_\mathrm{B}T ]$, which accounts for the topology and energy of bonds holding the filament together. This mechanism and the order-of-magnitude predictions are well supported by direct experimental measurements of depolymerization of insulin amyloid filaments. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
224104 | Stimulated brillouin scattering based rf to optical signal transduction and amplification | While the detection of weak signals (down to the single photon level) in the optical frequency range is routine on account of the high photon energy (compared to thermal excitation energy kBT) and the availability of efficient detectors, this is not the case in the radio frequency (RF) and microwave frequency regimes wherein thermal (Johnson) noise in detectors swamps out the faint RF signals (in applications from radio astronomy, MRI to radar) and requires the use of cryogenic amplifiers. The ability to map signals efficiently from the microwave to optical regime becomes paramount for distant systems to communicate with each other using low loss telecom fibers. Both classical (radio over fiber systems) and quantum (linking two superconducting qubit processors in two dilution fridges) information processing systems will benefit greatly from the development of an efficient RF to optical signal transducer.
I have been developing efficient RF to optical transduction schemes in GaAs cavity optomechanical systems (KC Balram et al., Nature Photonics (2016)) by exploiting its favorable piezoelectric (for coupling RF signals to propagating acoustic waves) and elasto-optic (for engineering strong acousto-optic interactions) properties. In this project, I would like to extend this work and address the issue of weak RF signal detection by up-converting RF signals to the optical domain using integrated Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) and shot-noise limited optical detection. Piezoelectric SBS systems can also be used to build high frequency, high gain RF amplifiers with noise figures that can be lower than conventional RF amplifiers. Working in a novel GaAs on insulator platform helps provide some unique advantages (tightly confined acoustic and optical modes with large modal overlap and a large elasto-optic coefficient leading to significant Brillouin gain) while holding the potential for interfacing complex circuitry in a well-established III-V materials platform. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1073/pnas.1815394116 | Synergy of topoisomerase and structural-maintenance-of-chromosomes proteins creates a universal pathway to simplify genome topology | Topological entanglements severely interfere with important biological processes. For this reason, genomes must be kept unknotted and unlinked during most of a cell cycle. Type II topoisomerase (TopoII) enzymes play an important role in this process but the precise mechanisms yielding systematic disentanglement of DNA in vivo are not clear. Here we report computational evidence that structural-maintenance-of-chromosomes (SMC) proteins—such as cohesins and condensins—can cooperate with TopoII to establish a synergistic mechanism to resolve topological entanglements. SMC-driven loop extrusion (or diffusion) induces the spatial localization of essential crossings, in turn catalyzing the simplification of knots and links by TopoII enzymes even in crowded and confined conditions. The mechanism we uncover is universal in that it does not qualitatively depend on the specific substrate, whether DNA or chromatin, or on SMC processivity; we thus argue that this synergy may be at work across organisms and throughout the cell cycle. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1088/1742-6596/524/1/012114 | Wind Farm Performance In Conventionally Neutral Atmospheric Boundary Layers With Varying Inversion Strengths | In this study we consider large wind farms in a conventionally neutral atmospheric boundary layer. In large wind farms the energy extracted by the turbines is dominated by downward vertical turbulent transport of kinetic energy from the airflow above the farm. However, atmospheric boundary layers are almost always capped by an inversion layer which slows down the entrainment rate and counteracts boundary layer growth. In a suite of large eddy simulations the effect of the strength of the capping inversion on the boundary layer and on the performance of a large wind farm is investigated. For simulations with and without wind turbines the results indicate that the boundary layer growth is effectively limited by the capping inversion and that the entrainment rate depends strongly on the inversion strength. The power output of wind farms is shown to decrease for increasing inversions. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
772021 | Advancing Econometric Methods for Analyzing Data from Regression Discontinuity Designs | Over the past two decades, regression discontinuity (RD) designs have become one of empirical economics' most popular strategies for estimating causal effects from observational data. In such designs, units are assigned to the treatment group if and only if a special covariate, or running variable, falls above a known cutoff value. Under mild conditions, those units close to the cutoff are as good as randomly assigned to receive the treatment, which provides a simple and transparent source of identification of the treatment's causal effect.
This project extends the range of methodological tools available to applied researchers working with data from RD designs. It is divided into three parts. The first part develops methods for incorporating covariates and group structures into the analysis of RD designs by adapting modern machine learning methods and empirical Bayes approaches. The second part considers RD designs with a discrete running variable. It shows that current state-of-the-art inference procedures are likely to be misleading in such settings, and develops new confidence intervals for causal effects. The third part develops methods for estimation and inference that account for manipulation in RD designs. Here manipulation refers to any strategic action taken by the actors within the respective institutional context that leads to observational units on different sides of the cutoff being non-comparable. The part develops a general framework for manipulation with corresponding nonparametric methods for estimation and inference, and considers various extensions.
Given the huge popularity of RD designs, and the proposal's focus on practical methods, this project has the potential to have a sizable impact on empirical economic research in a number of policy relevant areas, including education and public finance; but also on other branches of science where researchers commonly work with observational data, such as sociology or epidemiology. | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations",
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Mathematics"
]
|
W2484743201 | Nobody Does the Right Thing: A Novel | A young poet is killed by her lover, a politician, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. Soon afterward, across India in Bombay, an idealistic journalist is hired by a movie director to write a Bollywood screenplay about the murdered poet. Research for the script takes the writer, Binod, back to Bihar, where he and his cousin Rabinder were raised. While the high-minded Binod struggles to turn the poet’s murder into a steamy tale about small towns, desire, and intrigue, Rabinder sits in a Bihari jail cell, having been arrested for distributing pornography through a cybercafe. Rabinder dreams of a career in Bollywood filmmaking, and, unlike his cousin, he is not burdened by ethical scruples. Nobody Does the Right Thing is the story of these two cousins and the ways that their lives unexpectedly intertwine. Set in the rural villages of Bihar and the metropolises of Bombay and Delhi, the novel is packed with telling details and anecdotes about life in contemporary India. At the same time, it is a fictional investigation into how narratives circulate and vie for supremacy through gossip, cinema, popular fiction, sensational journalism, and the global media. | [
"Texts and Concepts",
"The Social World and Its Interactions"
]
|
10.1016/j.chembiol.2012.12.008 | A yeast chemical genetic screen identifies inhibitors of human telomerase | Telomerase comprises a reverse transcriptase and an internal RNA template that maintains telomeres in many eukaryotes, and it is a well-validated cancer target. However, there is a dearth of small molecules with efficacy against human telomerase in vivo. We developed a surrogate yeast high-throughput assay to identify human telomerase inhibitors. The reversibility of growth arrest induced by active human telomerase was assessed against a library of 678 compounds preselected for bioactivity in S. cerevisiae. Four of eight compounds identified reproducibly restored growth to strains expressing active human telomerase, and three of these four compounds also specifically inhibited purified human telomerase in vitro. These compounds represent probes for human telomerase function, and potential entry points for development of lead compounds against telomerase-positive cancers. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
W2064069359 | Psychological Distress in Patients with Benign Voice Disorders | <i>Objective: </i>The aims of this study were to investigate the frequency of anxiety and depression in patients with benign voice disorders with respect to gender and diagnosis and to determine correlations between psychological distress and some sociodemographic factors and the Voice Handicap Index (VHI). <i>Methods:</i> Psychological distress was assessed for 437 consecutive adult patients with benign voice disorders and 88 healthy controls by a standardized Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). In addition, sociodemographic factors, unhealthy habits and VHI were investigated. <i>Results:</i> Mild to severe HADS-Anxiety scores were seen in 42.1% of the whole patient group, while mild to severe HADS-Depression scores were seen in only 19.2% of patients. The anxiety rate rather than the depression rate in voice patients was found to be significantly higher compared to controls (p < 0.05). Female patients expressed more anxiety than males. HADS-Anxiety scores were similar for most benign voice disorders. The worst depression scores were found in patients with vocal fold paralysis. Higher psychological distress was significantly related to female gender, older age, less education and higher VHI scores. <i>Conclusions:</i> We recommend screening for psychological distress in patients with benign voice disorders using a simple HADS tool to identify those patients who might benefit from a more psychologically based approach to therapy. | [
"The Human Mind and Its Complexity",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
W4213202993 | Une sociohistoire des critiques numériques | Cet article de présentation du dossier thématique rappelle que la multiplication des remises en cause de la Silicon Valley s’inscrit dans une histoire plus longue des mobilisations sociales et des théories critiques de l’informatique et des réseaux. L’objet du dossier est de relire l’histoire du numérique à travers les lunettes de la critique. L’historiographie et la sociologie de ces critiques permettent de reconstituer les étapes de construction du numérique en tant qu’objet homogène, en dépit d’une multitude de pratiques, d’espaces et de sens. Elles éclairent également les thèmes qui ont accompagné ce développement. Cette introduction présente ce faisant les grandes lignes d’une sociohistoire des critiques du numérique depuis la fin des années 1970 ; elle souligne à la fois la continuité et le renouvellement des motifs critiques depuis cette période jusqu’au techlash actuel. À partir de quoi, le dossier propose des outils analytiques, qui témoignent de l’influence de lignages philosophiques et politiques plus anciens tels que la critique sociale, la critique libérale et la critique écologique. L’étude des critiques numériques rejoue ainsi l’opposition classique entre critique interne et critique externe. L’article propose enfin une réflexion sur les « numérisations de la critique ». | [
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"Texts and Concepts"
]
|
W4205144296 | The role of hydrogen in the optimal design of off-grid hybrid renewable energy systems | The optimal design of off-grid hybrid renewable energy systems (HRESs) is a challenging task, which often involves conflicting goals to be faced. In this work, levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and CO2 emissions have been addressed simultaneously by using the ε-constraint method together with the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Cost-emissions Pareto fronts of different HRES configurations were developed to gain greater awareness about the potential of renewable-based energy systems in off-grid applications. Various combinations of the following components were investigated: photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, batteries, hydrogen and diesel generators. The hydrogen-based system comprises an electrolyzer to convert the excess renewable energy into hydrogen, a pressurized tank for H2 storage and a fuel cell for the reconversion of hydrogen into electricity during renewable energy deficits. Electrolyzer and fuel cell devices were modelled by means of part-load performance curves. Size-dependent costs and component lifetimes as a function of the cumulative operational duty were also considered for a more accurate techno-economic assessment. The proposed methodology was applied to the Froan islands (Norway), which were chosen as a reference case study since they are well representative of many other insular microgrid environments in Northern Europe. Results from the sizing simulations revealed that energy storage devices are key components to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels. In particular, the hydrogen storage system is crucial in off-grid areas to enhance the RES penetration and avoid a sharp increase in the cost of energy. Hydrogen, in fact, allows the battery and RES technologies not to be oversized, thanks to its cost-effective long-term storage capability. Concerning the extreme case with no diesel, the cheapest configuration, which includes both batteries and hydrogen, has an LCOE of 0.41 €/kWh. This value is around 35% lower than the LCOE of a system with only batteries as energy storage. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1017/S174392131601022X | The Origin Of The Galaxy Color Bimodality | The star formation history of galaxies is a complex process usually considered to be stochastic in nature, for which we can only give average descriptions such as the color-density relation. In this work we follow star-forming gas particles in a hydrodynamical N-body simulation back in time in order to study their initial spatial configuration. By keeping record of the time when a gas particle started forming stars we can produce Lagrangian gas-star isochrone surfaces delineating the surfaces of accreting gas that begin producing stars at different times. These surfaces form a complex a network of filaments in Eulerian space from which galaxies accrete cold gas. Lagrangian accretion surfaces are closely packed inside dense regions, intersecting each other, and as a result galaxies inside proto-clusters stop accreting gas early, naturally explaining the color dependence on density. The process described here has a purely gravitational / geometrical origin, arguably operating at a more fundamental level than complex processes such as AGN and supernovae, and providing a conceptual origin for the color-density relation. | [
"Universe Sciences"
]
|
W159060080 | Overview of End Cretaceous Extinctions☆ | Although the end-Cretaceous extinction event goes by a variety of names in both the technical and popular literature (e.g., Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) mass extinction, K–T boundary extinction, Cretaceous–Paleocene (K–Pg) mass extinction, Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) extinction), it is most closely associated with the uppermost Cretaceous System/Stage – the Maastrichtian – and, to a lesser extent, the lowermost Palaeogene Epoch/Age – the Danian. As such, any review of effects and causes that may (or may not) have occurred during this episode of Earth history must begin with a review of the stratigraphy of these two intervals, not only because this provides the temporal, environmental, geographic, and tectonic context within which the extinction event must be understood, but also because the study cause–effect associations in Earth history is, by definition, largely a stratigraphic exercise. | [
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1007/JHEP10(2016)107 | Full Top Quark Mass Dependence In Higgs Boson Pair Production At Nlo | We study the effects of the exact top-quark mass dependent two-loop corrections to Higgs boson pair production by gluon fusion at the LHC and at a 100 TeV hadron collider. We perform a detailed comparison of the full next-to-leading order result to various approximations at the level of differential distributions and also analyse non-standard Higgs self-coupling scenarios. We find that the different next-to-leading order approximations differ from the full result by up to 50 percent in relevant differential distributions. This clearly stresses the importance of the full NLO result. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter"
]
|
978847 | Probing ultrafast stereochemical dynamics by femtosecond electronic circular dichroism spectroscopy | Since the structure of a (bio)-molecule is crucially linked to its biochemical functions, following its evolution in the course of a chemical reaction or biological process would allow one to gain fundamental insights into the reaction mechanisms and pathways. This calls for optical spectroscopy techniques capable of recording structural dynamics with high time resolution, down to the femtosecond regime. Circular dichroism (CD), i.e. the difference in absorption of left- and right-handed circularly polarised light, is a sensitive probe of the structure of chiral molecules. CHIRALSCOPY aims to develop an innovative time-resolved CD spectrometer which combines the structural sensitivity of steady-state CD spectroscopy with the high time resolution of ultrafast nonlinear optical spectroscopy. CHIRALSCOPY will adopt an innovative approach which directly measures in the time domain the chiral light field from a molecule by combining interferometric detection with optical heterodyne amplification. The state-of-the-art time-resolved CD instrument will be used to elucidate structural dynamics during a prototypical biochemical reaction. CHIRALSCOPY will equip the Experienced Researcher with new knowledge and skills in advanced optical technologies and biophysics, thus broadening his scientific background and enhancing his prospects as an independent researcher. At the same time, the Action and the Host Institution will benefit from the advanced knowledge in ultrafast spectroscopy acquired by Researcher during his PhD thesis. CHIRALSCOPY promises to open new vistas in the field of ultrafast optical spectroscopy enabling one to interrogate molecular dynamics with femtosecond temporal resolution and exquisite structural sensitivity−thus realising the chemist’s dream of a capturing a ‘molecular-motion-picture’ of a chemical reaction. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.3167/fcl.2016.740102 | Reclaiming the lake | Since the early 1990s Peru has experienced an expansion in mining activities and an expansion in what the Peruvian ombudsman defines as socioenvironmental conflicts. This article examines the dynamics through which an environmental issue is transformed into a matter of citizenship and social belonging during a weeklong uprising in defense of Lake Conococha. Highlighting the collective actions and personal narratives from participants in the region-wide blockade, the article therefore seeks to understand how dispossessions of environmental resources perceived as common property are cast in terms of individual rights that move well beyond the site of conflict. It is therefore argued that the actions to reclaim Lake Conococha were not only a battle for natural resources and clean water, but more fundamentally an attempt to repossess a citizenship that may be constitutionally secured but all too often fails to be a lived reality in the high Andes of Peru. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Human Mobility, Environment, and Space",
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems"
]
|
10.1021/acs.est.9b03554 | FABIO - The Construction of the Food and Agriculture Biomass Input-Output Model | Harvested biomass is linked to final consumption by networks of processes and actors that convert and distribute food and nonfood goods. Achieving a sustainable resource metabolism of the economy is an overarching challenge which manifests itself in a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Modeling the physical dimensions of biomass conversion and distribution networks is essential to understanding the characteristics, drivers, and dynamics of the socio-economic biomass metabolism. In this paper, we present the Food and Agriculture Biomass Input-Output model (FABIO), a set of multiregional supply, use and input-output tables in physical units, that document the complex flows of agricultural and food products in the global economy. The model assembles FAOSTAT statistics reporting crop production, trade, and utilization in physical units, supplemented by data on technical and metabolic conversion efficiencies, into a consistent, balanced, input-output framework. FABIO covers 191 countries and 130 agriculture, food and forestry products from 1986 to 2013. The physical supply use tables offered by FABIO provide a comprehensive, transparent, and flexible structure for organizing data representing flows of materials within metabolic networks. They allow tracing of biomass flows and embodied environmental pressures along global supply chains at an unprecedented level of product and country detail and can help to answer a range of questions regarding environment, agriculture, and trade. Here we apply FABIO to the case of cropland footprints and show the evolution of consumption-based cropland demand in China, the E. U. , and the U. S. A. for plant-based and livestock-based food and nonfood products. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
10.1109/JPROC.2015.2500501 | Techniques For Ventricular Repolarization Instability Assessment From The Ecg | Instabilities in ventricular repolarization have been documented to be tightly linked to arrhythmia vulnerability. Translation of the information contained in the repolarization phase of the electrocardiogram (ECG) into valuable clinical decision-making tools remains challenging. This work aims at providing an overview of the last advances in the proposal and quantification of ECG-derived indices that describe repolarization properties and whose alterations are related with threatening arrhythmogenic conditions. A review of the state of the art is provided, spanning from the electrophysiological basis of ventricular repolarization to its characterization on the surface ECG through a set of temporal and spatial risk markers. | [
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1038/srep11484 | Hydrodynamic chronoamperometry for probing kinetics of anaerobic microbial metabolism - Case study of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii | Monitoring in vitro the metabolic activity of microorganisms aids bioprocesses and enables better understanding of microbial metabolism. Redox mediators can be used for this purpose via different electrochemical techniques that are either complex or only provide non-continuous data. Hydrodynamic chronoamperometry using a rotating disc electrode (RDE) can alleviate these issues but was seldom used and is poorly characterized. The kinetics of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii A2-165, a beneficial gut microbe, were determined using a RDE with riboflavin as redox probe. This butyrate producer anaerobically ferments glucose and reduces riboflavin whose continuous monitoring on a RDE provided highly accurate kinetic measurements of its metabolism, even at low cell densities. The metabolic reaction rate increased linearly over a broad range of cell concentrations (9× 10 4 to 5× 10 7 cells. mL 1). Apparent Michaelis-Menten kinetics was observed with respect to riboflavin (K M = 6 1/4M; k cat = 5. 3×10 5 s 1, at 37;°C) and glucose (K M = 6 μ 4M; k cat = 2. 4× 10 5 s 1). The short temporal resolution allows continuous monitoring of fast cellular events such as kinetics inhibition with butyrate. Furthermore, we detected for the first time riboflavin reduction by another potential probiotic, Butyricicoccus pullicaecorum. The ability of the RDE for fast, accurate, simple and continuous measurements makes it an ad hoc tool for assessing bioprocesses at high resolution. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering"
]
|
10.1007/978-1-4471-4881-4 | Electrical Diseases Of The Heart Second Edition Volume 1 Basic Foundations And Primary Electrical Diseases | In this second edition of Electrical Disease of the Heart, our goal was to embrace and highlight the explosion of knowledge that our field has witnessed since the publication of the first edition of this book. Building on the success of our first edition, our approach continues to be one of bridging basic and clinical science in an attempt to meaningfully advance our understanding of heart disease and identify the knowledge gaps that exist. The book is organized into 77 chapters in 2 volumes. Each chapter includes up-to-date results of studies aimed at providing an understanding of the electrical function of the heart in health and disease, established and evidence- based knowledge of clinical outcomes, areas of controversy, and future trends. Our goal is to provide a contemporary and succinct distillation of the state of the art. Although many of the chapters are highly sub-specialized, this book is designed for a broad audience, ranging from medical and graduate students to clinicians and scientists. The book is the result of a collaboration that has brought together the skills and perspectives of researchers, scientists, and clinicians. We are deeply indebted to our associate editors and to all of the authors for their valuable contributions. | [
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
10.3389/fimmu.2018.00417 | The long pentraxin 3 plays a role in bone turnover and repair | Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is an inflammatory mediator acting as a fluid-phase pattern recognition molecule and playing an essential role in innate immunity and matrix remodeling. Inflammatory mediators also contribute to skeletal homeostasis, operating at multiple levels in physiological and pathological conditions. This study was designed to investigate the role of PTX3 in physiological skeletal remodeling and bone healing. Micro-computed tomography (μCT) and bone histomorphometry of distal femur showed that PTX3 gene-targeted female and male mice (ptx3-/-) had lower trabecular bone volume than their wild-type (ptx3+/+) littermates (BV/TV by μCT: 3. 50 ± 1. 31 vs 6. 09 ± 1. 17 for females, p < 0. 0001; BV/TV 9. 06 ± 1. 89 vs 10. 47 ± 1. 97 for males, p = 0. 0435). In addition, μCT revealed lower trabecular bone volume in second lumbar vertebra of ptx3-/- mice. PTX3 was increasingly expressed during osteoblast maturation in vitro and was able to reverse the negative effect of fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) on osteoblast differentiation. This effect was specific for the N-terminal domain of PTX3 that contains the FGF2-binding site. By using the closed transversal tibial fracture model, we found that ptx3-/- female mice formed significantly less mineralized callus during the anabolic phase following fracture injury compared to ptx3+/+ mice (BV/TV 17. 05 ± 4. 59 vs 20. 47 ± 3. 32, p = 0. 0195). Non-hematopoietic periosteal cells highly upregulated PTX3 expression during the initial phase of fracture healing, particularly CD51+ and aSma+ osteoprogenitor subsets, and callus tissue exhibited concomitant expression of PTX3 and FGF2 around the fracture site. Thus, PTX3 supports maintenance of the bone mass possibly by inhibiting FGF2 and its negative impact on bone formation. Moreover, PTX3 enables timely occurring sequence of callus mineralization after bone fracture injury. These results indicate that PTX3 plays an important role in bone homeostasis and in proper matrix mineralization during fracture repair, a reflection of the function of this molecule in tissue homeostasis and repair. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
W2127164956 | Investment in workforce health: Exploring the implications for workforce safety climate and commitment | The relationship between investment in employee health and non-health outcomes has received little research attention. Drawing from social exchange and climate theory, the current study uses a multilevel approach to examine the implications of worksite health investment for worksite safety and health climate and employee safety compliance and commitment to the worksite. Data were collected from 1932 personnel working on 31 offshore installations operating in UK waters. Installation medics provided corporate workforce health investment details for 20 of these installations. The findings provide support for a strong link between health investment practices and worksite safety and health climate. The results also found a relationship between health investment practices and organizational commitment among employees. These results suggest that health investment practices are associated with committed workforces and climates that reflect a priority on health and safety. | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations",
"The Social World and Its Interactions"
]
|
10.1111/imr.12300 | Linear ubiquitination signals in adaptive immune responses | Ubiquitin can form eight different linkage types of chains using the intrinsic Met 1 residue or one of the seven intrinsic Lys residues. Each linkage type of ubiquitin chain has a distinct three-dimensional topology, functioning as a tag to attract specific signaling molecules, which are so-called ubiquitin readers, and regulates various biological functions. Ubiquitin chains linked via Met 1 in a head-to-tail manner are called linear ubiquitin chains. Linear ubiquitination plays an important role in the regulation of cellular signaling, including the best-characterized tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-induced canonical nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway. Linear ubiquitin chains are specifically generated by an E3 ligase complex called the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex (LUBAC) and hydrolyzed by a deubiquitinase (DUB) called ovarian tumor (OTU) DUB with linear linkage specificity (OTULIN). LUBAC linearly ubiquitinates critical molecules in the TNF pathway, such as NEMO and RIPK1. The linear ubiquitin chains are then recognized by the ubiquitin readers, including NEMO, which control the TNF pathway. Accumulating evidence indicates an importance of the LUBAC complex in the regulation of apoptosis, development, and inflammation in mice. In this article, I focus on the role of linear ubiquitin chains in adaptive immune responses with an emphasis on the TNF-induced signaling pathways. | [
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1016/j.clnu.2019.04.032 | Diet quality and nutrient density in subjects with metabolic syndrome: Influence of socioeconomic status and lifestyle factors. A cross-sectional assessment in the PREDIMED-Plus study | Background: Socioeconomic disparities and lifestyle factors are likely to determine the overall quality of the diet. In addition, overeating is compatible with inadequate micronutrient intake and it can lead to adverse health outcomes. Objective: To assess adequacy of dietary nutrient intake and to investigate the influence of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors on nutrient density in a large primary cardiovascular prevention trial conducted in healthy participants with metabolic syndrome (MetS) to assess the cardiovascular effects of an energy-restricted Mediterranean diet (PREDIMED-Plus). Methods: Baseline cross-sectional analysis of the PREDIMED-Plus trial with 6646 Spanish participants (aged 55–75 years in men and 60–75 years in women) with overweight/obesity and MetS. Energy and nutrient intake (for 10 nutrients) were calculated using a validated 143-item Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and nutrient density was estimated dividing the absolute nutrient intake by total energy intake. The prevalence of inadequate intake was estimated according to dietary reference intakes. Multivariable linear regression models were fitted to examine associations between socioeconomic status or lifestyle factors and nutrient density. Results: A considerable proportion of the screened participants showed a deficient intake of vitamins A, D, E, B9, calcium, magnesium and dietary fibre. Inadequate intake of four or more of the ten nutrients considered was present in 17% of participants. A higher nutrient density was directly and significantly associated with female sex, higher educational level and a better adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Lifestyle factors such as non-smoking and avoidance of sedentary lifestyles were also independently associated with better nutrient density. Conclusions: Patients with MetS, despite being overweight, exhibited suboptimal nutrient intake, especially among men. Low nutrient density diet can be largely explained by differences in socioeconomic and lifestyle factors. These results highlight the importance of focussing on nutritional education in vulnerable populations, taking into account nutrient requirements. | [
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
10.1002/ece3.2169 | Measuring size and composition of species pools: a comparison of dark diversity estimates | Ecological theory and biodiversity conservation have traditionally relied on the number of species recorded at a site, but it is agreed that site richness represents only a portion of the species that can inhabit particular ecological conditions, that is, the habitat-specific species pool. Knowledge of the species pool at different sites enables meaningful comparisons of biodiversity and provides insights into processes of biodiversity formation. Empirical studies, however, are limited due to conceptual and methodological difficulties in determining both the size and composition of the absent part of species pools, the so-called dark diversity. We used >50,000 vegetation plots from 18 types of habitats throughout the Czech Republic, most of which served as a training dataset and 1083 as a subset of test sites. These data were used to compare predicted results from three quantitative methods with those of previously published expert estimates based on species habitat preferences: (1) species co-occurrence based on Beals' smoothing approach; (2) species ecological requirements, with envelopes around community mean Ellenberg values; and (3) species distribution models, using species environmental niches modeled by Biomod software. Dark diversity estimates were compared at both plot and habitat levels, and each method was applied in different configurations. While there were some differences in the results obtained by different methods, particularly at the plot level, there was a clear convergence, especially at the habitat level. The better convergence at the habitat level reflects less variation in local environmental conditions, whereas variation at the plot level is an effect of each particular method. The co-occurrence agreed closest the expert estimate, followed by the method based on species ecological requirements. We conclude that several analytical methods can estimate species pools of given habitats. However, the strengths and weaknesses of different methods need attention, especially when dark diversity is estimated at the plot level. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1039/c3ee42099j | Energy applications of ionic liquids | Ionic liquids offer a unique suite of properties that make them important candidates for a number of energy related applications. Cation-anion combinations that exhibit low volatility coupled with high electrochemical and thermal stability, as well as ionic conductivity, create the possibility of designing ideal electrolytes for batteries, super-capacitors, actuators, dye sensitised solar cells and thermo-electrochemical cells. In the field of water splitting to produce hydrogen they have been used to synthesize some of the best performing water oxidation catalysts and some members of the protic ionic liquid family co-catalyse an unusual, very high energy efficiency water oxidation process. As fuel cell electrolytes, the high proton conductivity of some of the protic ionic liquid family offers the potential of fuel cells operating in the optimum temperature region above 100 °C. Beyond electrochemical applications, the low vapour pressure of these liquids, along with their ability to offer tuneable functionality, also makes them ideal as CO<inf>2</inf> absorbents for post-combustion CO<inf>2</inf> capture. Similarly, the tuneable phase properties of the many members of this large family of salts are also allowing the creation of phase-change thermal energy storage materials having melting points tuned to the application. This perspective article provides an overview of these developing energy related applications of ionic liquids and offers some thoughts on the emerging challenges and opportunities. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
10.1525/bio.2013.63.2.6 | The challenge of lignocellulosic bioenergy in a water-limited world | It is hoped that lignocellulosic sources will provide energy security, offset carbon dioxide enrichment of the atmosphere, and stimulate the development of new economic sectors. However, little is known about the productivity and sustainability of plant cell-wall energy industries. In this study, we used 16 global circulation models to project the global distribution of relative water availability in the coming decades and summarized the available data on the water-use efficiency of tree- and grass-based bioenergy systems. The data on bioenergy water use were extremely limited. Productivity was strongly correlated with water-use efficiency, with C4 grasses having a distinct advantage in this regard. Our analysis of agro climatic drivers of bioenergy productivity suggests that relative water availability will be one of the most important climatic changes to consider in the design of bioenergy systems. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1093/nar/gkx1048 | Discovering the 3' UTR-mediated regulation of alpha-synuclein | Recent evidence indicates a link between Parkinson's Disease (PD) and the expression of a-synuclein (SNCA) isoforms with different 3' untranslated regions (3'UTRs). Yet, the post-transcriptional mechanisms regulating SNCA expression are unknown. Using a large-scale in vitro/in silico screening we identified RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that interact with SNCA 3' UTRs. We identified two RBPs, ELAVL1 and TIAR, that bind with high affinity to the most abundant and translationally active 3' UTR isoform (575 nt). Knockdown and overexpression experiments indicate that both ELAVL1 and TIAR positively regulate endogenous SNCA in vivo. The mechanism of regulation implies mRNA stabilization as well as enhancement of translation in the case of TIAR. We observed significant alteration of both TIAR and ELAVL1 expression in motor cortex of postmortem brain donors and primary cultured fibroblast from patients affected by PD and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). Moreover, trans expression quantitative trait loci (trans-eQTLs) analysis revealed that a group of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TIAR genomic locus influences SNCA expression in two different brain areas, nucleus accumbens and hippocampus. Our study sheds light on the 3' UTRmediated regulation of SNCA and its link with PD pathogenesis, thus opening up new avenues for investigation of post-transcriptional mechanisms in neurodegeneration. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1016/j.chom.2018.05.003 | Gut Microbiota Regulation of Tryptophan Metabolism in Health and Disease | The gut microbiota is a crucial actor in human physiology. Many of these effects are mediated by metabolites that are either produced by the microbes or derived from the transformation of environmental or host molecules. Among the array of metabolites at the interface between these microorganisms and the host is the essential aromatic amino acid tryptophan (Trp). In the gut, the three major Trp metabolism pathways leading to serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine), kynurenine (Kyn), and indole derivatives are under the direct or indirect control of the microbiota. In this review, we gather the most recent advances concerning the central role of Trp metabolism in microbiota-host crosstalk in health and disease. Deciphering the complex equilibrium between these pathways will facilitate a better understanding of the pathogenesis of human diseases and open therapeutic opportunities. Many metabolites are involved in host-microbiota interactions. Agus et al. review recent advances concerning the central role of tryptophan metabolism in microbiota-host crosstalk in health and disease. This review examines the direct effect of the gut microbiota in producing tryptophan-derived bioactive molecules and its indirect control of host tryptophan metabolism. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution"
]
|
GB 9803422 W | IMPROVED PIPE FOR CONVEYING FLUIDS SUCH AS PETROLEUM PRODUCTS | A flexible secondarily-contained pipe of unitary or one-piece construction characterised in that it comprises the following combination of features: an inner supply pipe (1); an inner barrier layer (6) which forms an internal surface of the supply pipe (1) and which is formed from a first polymeric plastics material, an outer containment pipe (2); a plurality of passages associated with the secondary containment pipe, said passages being adapted to receive any fluid which has leaked from the inner supply pipe and to convey said fluid to a remote leak detector. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1128/mra.00315-20 | Draft Genome Sequences of Two Acidophilic, Mesophilic Verrucomicrobial Methanotrophs Contain Only One
pmoCAB
Operon | Methylacidimicrobium cyclopophantes
3B and
Methylacidimicrobium tartarophylax
4AC are Gram-negative rod-shaped mesophilic methanotrophs isolated from soil samples with low pH at the Solfatara Crater, near Naples, Italy. The genomes of these extremophilic verrucomicrobia were sequenced using Illumina technology, and both species possess one
pmoCAB
operon and two
xoxF
genes. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution"
]
|
988801 | Artificial intelligence techniques for ice core analyses | The detection of insoluble particles trapped in ice or sediment cores, like pollen grains, foraminiferal and diatom assemblages, volcanic and dust particles represents the basis for paleoresearch on the biosphere, volcanism and oceanic and atmospheric realms. To date, except for ice core dust, this analytical goal is achieved during years of particle observations by manual microscopy. Artificial Intelligence predictive models are already applied to several research fields within geoscience, but up to date its implementation to paleoclimate is missing. With ICELEARNING, I aim to develop a two-phase routine for the automatic quantification of insoluble particles trapped in ice cores. The routine is based on a commercial Flow Imaging Microscope producing particle images from within melted ice samples. The images are then analyzed by Pattern Recognition algorithms which will be developed for automatic particle classification and counting. The routine will be specifically developed in order to be implemented in Continuous Flow Analysis (CFA) systems, therefore surpassing the traditional methods by providing continuous particle records from ice cores. ICELEARNING methodology is suitable to any diluted sample, thus representing a ground-breaking analytical advancement from ice core science to marine geology. This innovative routine is automatic and non-destructive, imperative prerequisites for the future Antarctic ice core project analytical measurements, aiming to retrieve a continuous climatic and environmental record covering the last 1.5 Myr. ICELERNING will be developed at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice with Prof. Carlo Barbante, leading expert in trace and ultra-trace level impurity detections in ice cores and with the University of Bergen, a top institution in marine geology and paleoceanography. This unique synergy, in addition to the proposer’s knowledge of CFA systems and machine learning techniques will provide the best preconditions for the project success. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
interreg_483 | BRIDGES OF HISTORY AND TRADITION | The key objectives of the project are to promote and preserve the cultural heritage, to exchange architectural and historic knowledge of stone bridges, to exploit traditional stone bridges, in the scope of thematic tourism with the purpose of increasing the number of visitors to the participating regions. The main expected outputs include: • Development of a cultural and touristic portal that will host an online museum, electronic library and a GIS mapping solution • Setup of two cross-border information and knowledge centers promoting the art of traditional stone bridges • Participation in exhibitions and in cultural festivals • Production of an informational booklet • Operation of workshops and educational conferences • Development of a Study regarding the touristic exploitation of traditional stone bridges and a Marketing Plan concerning the development of alternative forms of tourism | [
"The Study of the Human Past",
"Human Mobility, Environment, and Space",
"Studies of Cultures and Arts",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1109/LICS.2013.17 | Magnitude Monadic Logic Over Words And The Use Of Relative Internal Set Theory | Cost monadic logic extends monadic second-order logic with the ability to measure the cardinality of sets and comes with decision procedures for boundedness related questions. We provide new decidability results allowing the systematic investigation of questions involving "relative boundedness". We first introduce a suitable logic, magnitude monadic logic. We then establish the decidability of this logic over finite words. We finally advocate that developing the proofs in the axiomatic system of "relative internal set theory", a variant of nonstandard analysis, entails a significant simplification of the proofs. | [
"Mathematics",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1051/0004-6361/201935235 | Modelling Of The B Type Binaries Cw Cep And U Oph A Critical View On Dynamical Masses Core Boundary Mixing And Core Mass | Context: Intermediate-Mass stars are often overlooked as they are not supernova progenitors but still host convective cores and complex atmospheres which require computationally expensive treatment. Due to this, there is a general lack of such stars modelled by state of the art stellar structure and evolution codes. Aims: This paper aims to use high-quality spectroscopy to update the dynamically obtained stellar parameters and produce a new evolutionary assessment of the bright B0. 5+B0. 5 and B5V+B5V binary systems CW Cep and U Oph. Methods: We use new spectroscopy obtained with the Hermes spectrograph to revisit the photometric binary solution of the two systems. The updated mass ratio and effective temperatures are incorporated to obtain new dynamical masses for the primary and secondary. With these, we perform isochrone-cloud based evolutionary modelling to investigate the core properties of these stars. Results: We report the first abundances for CW Cep and U Oph as well as report an updated dynamical solution for both systems. We find that we cannot uniquely constrain the amount of core boundary mixing in any of the stars we consider. Instead, we report their core masses and compare our results to previous studies. Conclusions: We find that the per-cent level precision on fundamental stellar quantities are accompanied with core mass estimates to between ~ 5-15%. We find that differences in analysis techniques can lead to substantially different evolutionary mode | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
10.3390/en13092162 | Containergy—A Container-Based Energy and Performance Profiling Tool for Next Generation Workloads | Run-time profiling of software applications is key to energy efficiency. Even the most optimized hardware combined to an optimally designed software may become inefficient if operated poorly. Moreover, the diversification of modern computing platforms and broadening of their run-time configuration space make the task of optimally operating software ever more complex. With the growing financial and environmental impact of data center operation and cloud-based applications, optimal software operation becomes increasingly more relevant to existing and next-generation workloads. In order to guide software operation towards energy savings, energy and performance data must be gathered to provide a meaningful assessment of the application behavior under different system configurations, which is not appropriately addressed in existing tools. In this work we present Containergy, a new performance evaluation and profiling tool that uses software containers to perform application run-time assessment, providing energy and performance profiling data with negligible overhead (below 2%). It is focused on energy efficiency for next generation workloads. Practical experiments with emerging workloads, such as video transcoding and machine-learning image classification, are presented. The profiling results are analyzed in terms of performance and energy savings under a Quality-of-Service (QoS) perspective. For video transcoding, we verified that wrong choices in the configuration space can lead to an increase above 300% in energy consumption for the same task and operational levels. Considering the image classification case study, the results show that the choice of the machine-learning algorithm and model affect significantly the energy efficiency. Profiling datasets of AlexNet and SqueezeNet, which present similar accuracy, indicate that the latter represents 55. 8% in energy saving compared to the former. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
W2239475530 | Application of wavelet techniques for cancer diagnosis using ultrasound images: A Review | Ultrasound is an important and low cost imaging modality used to study the internal organs of human body and blood flow through blood vessels. It uses high frequency sound waves to acquire images of internal organs. It is used to screen normal, benign and malignant tissues of various organs. Healthy and malignant tissues generate different echoes for ultrasound. Hence, it provides useful information about the potential tumor tissues that can be analyzed for diagnostic purposes before therapeutic procedures. Ultrasound images are affected with speckle noise due to an air gap between the transducer probe and the body. The challenge is to design and develop robust image preprocessing, segmentation and feature extraction algorithms to locate the tumor region and to extract subtle information from isolated tumor region for diagnosis. This information can be revealed using a scale space technique such as the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). It decomposes an image into images at different scales using low pass and high pass filters. These filters help to identify the detail or sudden changes in intensity in the image. These changes are reflected in the wavelet coefficients. Various texture, statistical and image based features can be extracted from these coefficients. The extracted features are subjected to statistical analysis to identify the significant features to discriminate normal and malignant ultrasound images using supervised classifiers. This paper presents a review of wavelet techniques used for preprocessing, segmentation and feature extraction of breast, thyroid, ovarian and prostate cancer using ultrasound images. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Mathematics"
]
|
10.1016/j.molcel.2018.08.034 | Cilia-Associated Oxysterols Activate Smoothened | Primary cilia are required for Smoothened to transduce vertebrate Hedgehog signals, but how Smoothened accumulates in cilia and is activated is incompletely understood. Here, we identify cilia-associated oxysterols that promote Smoothened accumulation in cilia and activate the Hedgehog pathway. Our data reveal that cilia-associated oxysterols bind to two distinct Smoothened domains to modulate Smoothened accumulation in cilia and tune the intensity of Hedgehog pathway activation. We find that the oxysterol synthase HSD11β2 participates in the production of Smoothened-activating oxysterols and promotes Hedgehog pathway activity. Inhibiting oxysterol biosynthesis impedes oncogenic Hedgehog pathway activation and attenuates the growth of Hedgehog pathway-associated medulloblastoma, suggesting that targeted inhibition of Smoothened-activating oxysterol production may be therapeutically useful for patients with Hedgehog-associated cancers. How Smoothened localizes to primary cilia and is activated is poorly understood. Raleigh et al. find that cilia contain oxysterol lipids that bind to Smoothened and activate the Hedgehog pathway. Moreover, they identify an enzyme involved in cilia-associated oxysterol biosynthesis that is enriched in Hedgehog pathway-associated medulloblastoma and that blocking this enzyme using a compound in black licorice inhibits tumor growth. | [
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
10.1002/2017GC007048 | Magmatic Focusing To Mid Ocean Ridges The Role Of Grain Size Variability And Non Newtonian Viscosity | Melting beneath mid-ocean ridges occurs over a region that is much broader than the zone of magmatic emplacement that forms the oceanic crust. Magma is focused into this zone by lateral transport. This focusing has typically been explained by dynamic pressure gradients associated with corner flow, or by a sub-lithospheric channel sloping upward toward the ridge axis. Here we discuss a novel mechanism for magmatic focusing: lateral transport driven by gradients in compaction pressure within the asthenosphere. These gradients arise from the co-variation of melting rate and compaction viscosity. The compaction viscosity, in previous models, was given as a function of melt fraction and temperature. In contrast, we show that the viscosity variations relevant to melt focusing arise from grain-size variability and non-Newtonian creep. The asthenospheric distribution of melt fraction predicted by our models provides an improved explanation of the electrical resistivity structure beneath one location on the East Pacific Rise. More generally, we find that although grain size and non-Newtonian viscosity are properties of the solid phase, their effect on melt transport beneath mid-ocean ridges is more profound than their effect on the mantle corner-flow. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
884878 | The rowp system by quiske ltd is a game changing rowing technique measuring and coaching system for any level of rowers or crew both outdoor and indoors. | Quiske is a Finnish sports technology startup company. The Quiske team have developed an advanced yet affordable and simple to use RowP product which helps rowers improve their technique. The RowP system gives instant feedback and post-training analytics for on water as well as indoor rowing. The pilot product was first launched in the summer and has since generated interest worldwide. Quiske seeks funding to create a business plan commercialize the product and to reach new markets.
The RowP product consists of a lightweight and affordable multifunctional pod which can measure handle or seat speeds and the instant feedback can be viewed on any smartphone display. Advanced algorithms allow analyzing and even comparing the technique of rowers with each other in the RowP cloud service. We are bringing the advanced rowing performance measurements not only to elite competitive rowers but also to the much higher volume indoor rowing market to help anyone learn to row correctly. The RowP system also includes a Virtual Coach to help indoor rowers improve their performance. Indoor rowing is practiced by 100s of millions of people in gyms across the world. However, most people do it with bad technique which doesn’t help improve their fitness optimally.
In addition to the innovative Virtual Coach we we will also bring Augmented Reality to make the indoor rowing experience better. The RowP App will be gamified to make it more fun to use and to include sharing of results to social media. Based on request from customers we will also build an iOS version of the App.
The feasibility study will result in a business plan to roll out the RowP product and analytics platform globally and to collect and technically validate the features for the commercial RowP product, that our first pilot customers have asked for. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
Q2862260 | productive innovation Aquagri | The present project aims to diversify the production of an establishment, with a view to the development of a new innovative and internationalizable service and to focus on the process innovation of the current service. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
GB 2015052202 W | USAGE MONITORING SYSTEM AND METHOD | An apparatus for monitoring the usage of at least one maintainable part or component of a transfer valve or coupling comprises : data storage means for storing data representative of at least one attribute of the maintainable part or component of the valve or coupling; monitoring means for monitoring usage of the valve or coupling; and processing means for comparing the monitored usage of the valve or coupling against the at least one attribute of the maintainable part or component of the valve. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
291414 | Microscopic Processes and Phenomena at Oxide Surfaces and Interfaces | Metal oxide surfaces and interfaces play a key role in energy-related applications and in novel schemes for electronic devices that exploit the special physical and chemical properties of these promising materials.
For progress in both areas, a detailed, mechanistic understanding of the atomic and molecular processes that occur at oxide surfaces and interfaces is critical. Experiments on well-characterized model systems in conjunction with computational modelling can provide such insights, but current investigations are limited in the range of materials and scope of phenomena that can be studied, and to experiments in a low-pressure environment.
Research conducted in this project will push these limits by:
• Developing new methodologies for atomic-scale investigations of the subsurface region of oxides with mixed electronic and ionic conduction to measure mass and charge transport across oxide interfaces.
• Combining cutting-edge molecular beam epitaxy techniques with atomically-resolved scanning tunneling microscopy to synthesize samples of multi-component metal oxide materials with tailored surface properties.
• Establishing a new research thrust that will combine both ex-situ and in-situ electrochemical surface science techniques to study structurally well characterized metal oxide surfaces in an aqueous environment. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
W2585326492 | A dynamic model of open source vs proprietary R&D | Abstract We propose a dynamic model in which firms compete to produce sequential and cumulative innovations, and in which the more firms do research in one sector the more likely it is that one of them innovates. Firms choose research effort and whether to patent innovations or to use an Open Source license like the General Public License. We show that ( i ) patents generate a larger stationary reward but foreclose research within a sector, and that ( ii ) Open Source generates a smaller stationary reward but allows everyone to use the technology, and therefore, by attracting firms to the sector, it induces a faster pace of innovation. We characterize all the equilibria of the model and show that in equilibrium an Open Source sector appears only after a proprietary sector. We also find conditions under which the model has a unique equilibrium, in which a proprietary and an Open Source sector coexist and compete in the short run, but the Open Source sector dominates the industry in the long run. We use our model to study whether patents are inefficient, and to explain firms’ behavior in the software and the biomedical industry. | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations",
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems"
]
|
10.1002/app5.5 | Health Policy in Asia and the Pacific: Navigating Local Needs and Global Challenges | Asia and the Pacific is undergoing a remarkable economic transformation, which is occurring at an exceptional pace. There is clear evidence of an equally rapid epidemiological transition in the region. This article sets out the policy challenges of building healthy societies in the context of rapid economic change. The region's location at the crossroads of contemporary globalisation, resulting in intensified population mobility, large-scale trade and investment, and pressures to take collective action on shared problems, adds to the complexity of this task. The article argues that health is integral to building stable and sustainable societies, and that there are opportunities to develop more holistic approaches that bring together hitherto separate policy spheres. | [
"Human Mobility, Environment, and Space",
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations"
]
|
984900 | In-Mouth drilling robots for automating tooth repair and scaling dentist revenues | Dental caries and severe periodontal disease are major contributors to the loss of natural teeth. About 30% of Europeans aged 65–74 years have no natural teeth which reduce their function and quality of life. Nowadays, the most commonly used teeth replacement procedures are prosthetics and implants. While prosthetics are more affordable and versatile, when they require the reshaping of the teeth the procedure can take longer and there is a higher risk of malpractice because of the inaccuracies of the manual procedure. This can cause various side effects from a less durable prosthesis to the loss of the teeth.
DentistRobot Ltd was set up with the main aim to eliminate the inaccuracies by introducing robot technology to the dental industry with our combined software and hardware solution that has been protected with a copyright. It simplifies and improves the process of several teeth replacement procedures reducing the chance of malpractice and improving the patient's satisfaction while increases the number of patients served during a given time. Right now we have a working prototype, and we want to test the procedure in a real patient's mouth. We intend to enter the market within 2 years.
To achieve our goals, we have to re-evaluate some of our technical decisions as well as our market researches. We also would like to extend our knowledge about the current legislation processes within the European Union (and beyond). In order to enter the market fast and to be able to supply the demand we are considering making partnerships with manufacturing and distributor companies.
For this reason we have decided to apply for the SME Instrument Phase 1 program. With this extended knowledge, we aim to submit a Phase 2 project to develop and implement a production line for the robot and to build an international sales network to distribute the final product. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
10.1109/LRA.2020.2972847 | Learning Robust Task Priorities And Gains For Control Of Redundant Robots | Generating complex movements in redundant robots like humanoids is usually done by means of multi-task controllers based on quadratic programming, where a multitude of tasks is organized according to strict or soft priorities. Time-consuming tuning and expertise are required to choose suitable task priorities, and to optimize their gains. Here, we automatically learn the controller configuration (soft and strict task priorities and Convergence Gains), looking for solutions that track a variety of desired task trajectories efficiently while preserving the robot's balance. We use multi-objective optimization to compare and choose among Pareto-optimal solutions that represent a trade-off of performance and robustness and can be transferred onto the real robot. We experimentally validate our method by learning a control configuration for the iCub humanoid, to perform different whole-body tasks, such as picking up objects, reaching and opening doors. | [
"Systems and Communication Engineering",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
W2914225204 | Discovery of anomalous molybdenum enrichment in lower Carboniferous coal and its availability and origin | Abstract Less attention has been paid to element variations in lower Carboniferous coal (South China) due to the relatively thin coal-bearing seam thickness, but these variations are of great significance for broad industrial utilization and to evaluate the environmental effects of these coals. This study investigated 34 elemental varations of Carboniferous M2 coal-bearing seam collected from Guizhou Province in South China. The new findings include that molybdenum (Mo) is abnormally enriched in these coals with an mean of 945 mg/kg (0.12–7928 mg/kg), which is 782 and 306 times more than Mo of upper continental crust and Chinese coals. The studied coal bed (Moavg = 2264.89 mg/kg, range = 474 to 7928 mg/kg, ca. 1 m thick) may be utilized as a Mo resource. The Mo origin of the studied Carboniferous coal is influenced by terrigenous inputs and hydrothermal fluids, but the leading Mo source of the Carboniferous coals with anomalous Mo enrichment was derived from the hydrothermal fluids. In addition, Ga and Li have potential applications after recycling, and coal from this seam could be considered to be a Se-rich fertilizer after grinding. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pone.0206667 | Determination of the presence of 5-methylcytosine in Paramecium tetraurelia | 5-methylcytosine DNA methylation regulates gene expression and developmental programming in a broad range of eukaryotes. However, its presence and potential roles in ciliates, complex single-celled eukaryotes with germline-somatic genome specialization via nuclear dimorphism, are largely uncharted. While canonical cytosine methyltransferases have not been discovered in published ciliate genomes, recent studies performed in the stichotrichous ciliate Oxytricha trifallax suggest de novo cytosine methylation during macronuclear development. In this study, we applied bisulfite genome sequencing, DNA mass spectrometry and antibody-based fluorescence detection to investigate the presence of DNA methylation in Paramecium tetraurelia. While the antibody-based methods suggest cytosine methylation, DNA mass spectrometry and bisulfite sequencing reveal that levels are actually below the limit of detection. Our results suggest that Paramecium does not utilize 5-methylcytosine DNA methylation as an integral part of its epigenetic arsenal. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
W64332451 | Discriminative Hierarchical Part-Based Models for Human Parsing and Action Recognition | We consider the problem of parsing human poses and recognizing their actions in static images with part-based models. Most previous work in part-based models only considers rigid parts (e.g., torso, head, half limbs) guided by human anatomy. We argue that this representation of parts is not necessarily appropriate. In this paper, we introduce hierarchical poselets--a new representation for modeling the pose configuration of human bodies. Hierarchical poselets can be rigid parts, but they can also be parts that cover large portions of human bodies (e.g., torso + left arm). In the extreme case, they can be the whole bodies. The hierarchical poselets are organized in a hierarchical way via a structured model. Human parsing can be achieved by inferring the optimal labeling of this hierarchical model. The pose information captured by this hierarchical model can also be used as a intermediate representation for other high-level tasks. We demonstrate it in action recognition from static images. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1016/j.smim.2016.05.008 | Natural killer cell memory in context | Immune memory has traditionally been considered a hallmark of vertebrate T and B lymphocytes. However, given the advantage in mounting quicker and more robust responses to recurrent infection, it is unsurprising that alternative strategies of memory are found in various immune cells throughout the evolutionary tree. In this context, a variety of NK cell memory subsets have recently been identified. Mouse models of cytomegalovirus infection have been instrumental in revealing the kinetics and molecular mechanisms of long-lived NK cell memory. Moreover, murine liver-resident memory NK cell subsets have been identified that potentially harbour antigen-specificity. Phenotypic counter-parts have recently been characterised in the human liver, adding to the mounting evidence suggesting that a spectrum of NK cell memory subsets exist in primates. These include cytomegalovirus-associated peripheral blood NK cell expansions that in humans have been shown to harbour epigenetic alterations that impact cellular phenotype and function. Here we discuss some general mechanisms of non-classical immune memory. We highlight themes of commonality that may yield clues to the molecular mechanisms of NK cell memory, whilst emphasising some outstanding questions. | [
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
337797 | The function of higher-order cortical and thalamic pathways during vision | When interacting with the environment we depend on our perception of the world around us. Visual perception relies on information flow from the eye to the visual cortex, where it is relayed and transformed via a series of cortical processing stages. Most research so far has focused on feedforward processing of visual information. However, it is increasingly obvious that perception crucially depends on how sensory input is interpreted in the context of an animal’s behavioural state, goals and actions. These non-sensory signals may be relayed by prominent long-range projections from higher-order cortical and thalamic areas, whose contribution to vision remains largely unexplored. Recent advances in imaging techniques and genetic tools for visualizing and manipulating neuronal activity enable us for the first time to study directly what information is conveyed through these major alternative visual pathways in the behaving animal and how they influence the processing of feedforward sensory information to allow us to actively perceive and interpret the environment.
Using state-of-the-art methodology combining in vivo imaging, electrophysiology, animal behaviour, virtual reality, genetic tools and targeted optogenetics using advanced optics, we will determine the functional role of (i) cortical feedback and (ii) higher-order thalamic signals during cortical processing of visual information in the behaving mouse. Specifically, we will investigate what information these projections convey to the visual cortex in anaesthetized and awake mice, whether they provide signals mediating the increased saliency of behaviourally relevant stimuli, and whether they enable the integration of sensory and motor information during locomotion and navigation. Together, the proposed work will answer fundamental questions about the role of these important but poorly understood visual pathways in active processing of visual input as animals interact with their environment. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
interreg_2034 | Gottardo-Lake Maggiore cross-border cycle tour through the San Giacomo Pass: connection between the Swiss National Routes 1 and 3 and the Via del Mare | The project intends to complete the Gottardo-Airolo-Domodossola-Lago Maggiore cross-border bike path (MTB) through P.so San Giacomo. This axis, now interrupted at the border, will connect the Swiss National Routes n.1 and n.3 with the Piedmont regional interest route "Via del Mare" and to connect 3 MTB districts: Gottardo Bike Arena ( CH), Blenio Bike (CH) and Ossola Bike Arena (IT). The objective is to establish a single large BIKE district in the highly attractive cross-border region which, in dialogue with the Laghi bike district, can overcome the limitations of the individual areas. It provides for the arrangement, organization, signage of the network of routes, 1 bikegrill at P.so S.Giacomo, as well as the organization of an e-bike rental network with charging and delivery points in IT and CH and the cross-border network of specific services for bikers. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Human Mobility, Environment, and Space"
]
|
10.1038/nri3365 | Innate lymphoid cells-a proposal for uniform nomenclature | Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are a family of developmentally related cells that are involved in immunity and in tissue development and remodelling. Recent research has identified several distinct members of this family. Confusingly, many different names have been used to characterize these newly identified ILC subsets. Here, we propose that ILCs should be categorized into three groups based on the cytokines that they can produce and the transcription factors that regulate their development and function. | [
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration"
]
|
10.1051/0004-6361/201630362 | Extreme Value Statistics For Two Dimensional Convective Penetration In A Pre Main Sequence Star | Context. In the interior of stars, a convectively unstable zone typically borders a zone that is stable to convection. Convective motions can penetrate the boundary between these zones, creating a layer characterized by intermittent convective mixing, and gradual erosion of the density and temperature stratification. Aims. We examine a penetration layer formed between a central radiative zone and a large convection zone in the deep interior of a young low-mass star. Using the Multidimensional Stellar Implicit Code (MUSIC) to simulate two-dimensional compressible stellar convection in a spherical geometry over long times, we produce statistics that characterize the extent and impact of convective penetration in this layer. Methods. We apply extreme value theory to the maximal extent of convective penetration at any time. We compare statistical results from simulations which treat non-local convection, throughout a large portion of the stellar radius, with simulations designed to treat local convection in a small region surrounding the penetration layer. For each of these situations, we compare simulations of different resolution, which have different velocity magnitudes. We also compare statistical results between simulations that radiate energy at a constant rate to those that allow energy to radiate from the stellar surface according to the local surface temperature. Results. Based on the frequency and depth of penetrating convective structures, we observe two distinct layers that form between the convection zone and the stable radiative zone. We show that the probability density function of the maximal depth of convective penetration at any time corresponds closely in space with the radial position where internal waves are excited. We find that the maximal penetration depth can be modeled by a Weibull distribution with a small shape parameter. Using these results, and building on established scalings for diffusion enhanced by large-scale convective motions, we propose a new form for the diffusion coefficient that may be used for one-dimensional stellar evolution calculations in the large Peclet number regime. These results should contribute to the 321D link. Key words: methods: numerical / convection / stars: interiors / stars: low-mass / stars: evolution | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Mathematics"
]
|
10.1051/0004-6361/201526222 | Probing The Effects Of External Irradiation On Low Mass Protostars Through Unbiased Line Surveys | (abridged) Context: The envelopes of molecular gas around embedded low-mass protostars show different chemistries, which can be used to trace their formation history and physical conditions. The excitation of some molecular species can also be used to trace these physical conditions, making it possible to constrain e. g. sources of heating and excitation. Aims: To study the range of influence of an intermediate-mass Herbig Be protostar, and to find what chemical and physical impact feedback effects from the environment may have on embedded protostars. Methods: We follow up on an earlier line survey of the Class 0/I source R CrA IRS7B in the 0. 8 mm window with an unbiased line survey of the same source in the 1. 3 mm window using the APEX telescope. We also study the excitation of the key species H2CO, CH3OH, and c-C3H2 in a complete sample of the 18 embedded protostars in the Corona Australis star-forming region. Radiative transfer models are used to establish abundances of the molecular species. Results: We detect line emission from 20 molecular species (32 including isotopologues) in the two surveys. The most complex species detected are CH3OH, CH3CCH, CH3CHO, and CH3CN. Several complex organics are significantly under-abundant in comparison with "hot corino" protostars. The H2CO temperatures of the sources in the region decrease with the distance to the Herbig Be star R CrA, whereas the c-C3H2 temperatures remain constant across the star-forming region. Conclusions: The high H2CO temperatures observed towards objects close to R CrA suggest that this star has a sphere of influence of several 10000 AU in which it increases the temperature of the molecular gas to 30-50 K through irradiation. The chemistry in the IRS7B envelope differs significantly from many other embedded protostars, which could be an effect of the external irradiation from R CrA. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Universe Sciences"
]
|
308267 | Fluid Spectrum Acess | Spectrum is a key and scarce resource in wireless communication networks, and it remains tightly controlled by regulation authorities. Most of the frequency bands are exclusively allocated to a single system licensed to use it everywhere and for long periods of time. This rigid spectrum management model inevitably leads to significant inefficiencies in spectrum use. The explosion of demand for broadband wireless services also calls for more flexible models where much larger spectrum parts could be dynamically shared among users in a fluid manner. In such models, Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) techniques will play a major role. These techniques make it possible for radio devices to become frequency-agile, i.e. able to rapidly and dynamically access bands of a wide spectrum part.
The success and spread of dynamic spectrum access strongly rely on the ability for many frequency-agile devices (or systems) to coexist peacefully and efficiently. With multiple interacting devices, the research agenda shifts from spectrum access problems to spectrum sharing problems, which raises original and challenging questions. There may be limited or no communication between the different devices or systems sharing spectrum. We further expect systems to be heterogeneous in their transmission capabilities, but also in the type of service they support. In that context, the design of spectrum access strategies resulting in an efficient and fair spectrum resource use constitutes a challenging puzzle. The broad objective of the proposed research is to develop original analytical and simulation tools to tackle dynamic spectrum sharing issues. The project leverages and marries techniques from distributed optimization and machine learning to design decentralized, efficient, and fair spectrum sharing algorithms. We believe that such algorithms are critical for the birth and rapid expansion of DSA technologies and hence for the development of future wireless broadband systems. | [
"Systems and Communication Engineering",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
W2594692205 | Outcrop to subsurface stratigraphic analysis of the Niobrara Formation, Sand Wash Basin, Colorado, An | The Niobrara Formation is an unconventional oil and gas play containing continuous petroleum accumulations. In the Sand Wash Basin, historical production from the formation has largely occurred at the flanks of the basin from vertical wells that were drilled into swarms of natural fractures associated with Laramide deformation. However, as oil and gas companies explore further basinward, away from natural fracture swarms, the understanding of lateral and stratigraphic variations in mineralogy and TOC in the Niobrara Formation is critical for successful future development. This study combines information gathered from core descriptions, outcrop descriptions, XRD analysis, XRF analysis, geochemical data, and electric well log data to describe how the Niobrara Formation changes from a chalkier lithology in the eastern region of deposition to a marlier lithology in the western region of deposition. Based on the whole rock and well log data analyzed, peak carbonate deposition and TOC preservation in the Niobrara Formation of the Sand Wash Basin are interpreted to be associated with periods of maximum transgression. These periods occur in the Buck Peak Bench, Tow Creek Bench, and (to a lesser extent) the Wolf Mountain Bench. Peak TOC preservation also correlates to a discrete mineral assemblage in both the Sand Wash and DJ Basins (50 wt.% carbonates, 30 wt.% clays, and 20 wt.% quartz). This mineral assemblage represents the optimal conditions for the preservation of TOC in the Western Interior Seaway during the deposition of the Niobrara Formation. Consequently, the most prospective lateral targets in the Niobrara Formation appear to be associated with maximum transgressive events in the Buck Peak Bench and Tow Creek Bench, and possibly in the Wolf Mountain Bench. These intervals are predicted to be both high quality sources and reservoirs in the formation. The high TOC values associated with these intervals suggest favorable conditions for hydrocarbon generation. Additionally, the high carbonate content suggests favorable brittleness characteristics that make the rocks prone to fracturing (both naturally and from hydraulic stimulation). | [
"Earth System Science",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
10.1088/0957-4484/27/27/275703 | Subsurface Imaging Of Silicon Nanowire Circuits And Iron Oxide Nanoparticles With Sub 10 Nm Spatial Resolution | Non-destructive subsurface characterization of nanoscale structures and devices is of significant interest in nanolithography and nanomanufacturing. In those areas, the accurate location of the buried structures and their nanomechanical properties are relevant for optimization of the nanofabrication process and the functionality of the system. Here we demonstrate the capabilities of bimodal and trimodal force microscopy for imaging silicon nanowire devices buried under an ultrathin polymer film. We resolve the morphology and periodicities of silicon nanowire pairs. We report a spatial resolution in the sub-10 nm range for nanostructures buried under a 70 nm thick polymer film. By using numerical simulations we explain the role of the excited modes in the subsurface imaging process. Independent of the bimodal or trimodal atomic force microscopy approach, the fundamental mode is the most suitable for tracking the topography while the higher modes modulate the interaction of the tip with the buried nanostructures and provide subsurface contrast. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1051/0004-6361/201834956 | Spectroscopic binaries RV Tauri and DF Cygni | Context. Some RV Tauri stars show a long-term photometric variability in their mean magnitudes. DF Cygni (DF Cyg), the only RV Tauri star in the original Kepler field, and the prototype RV Tauri (RV Tau) are two such stars. Aims. The focus of this paper is on two famous but still poorly understood RV Tauri stars: RV Tau and DF Cyg. We aim to confirm their suspected binary nature and derive their orbital elements to investigate the impact of their orbits on the evolution of these systems. This research is embedded in a wider endeavour to study binary evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars. Methods. The high amplitude pulsations were cleaned from the radial-velocity data to better constrain the orbital motion, allowing us to obtain accurate orbital parameters. We also analysed the photometric time series of both stars using a Lomb-Scargle periodogram. We used Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) parallaxes in combination with the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) to compute their luminosities. These luminosities were complemented with the ones we computed using a period-luminosity-colour (PLC) relation for RV Tauri stars. The ratio of the circumstellar infrared (IR) flux to the photospheric flux obtained from the SEDs was used to estimate the orbital inclination of each system. Results. DF Cyg and RV Tau are binaries with spectroscopic orbital periods of 784 ± 16 days and 1198 ± 17 days, respectively. These orbital periods are found to be similar to the long-term periodic variability in the photometry, indicating that binarity indeed explains the long-term photometric variability. The SEDs of these systems indicate the presence of a circumbinary disc. Our line of sight grazes the dusty disc, which causes the photometric flux from the star to extinct periodically with the orbital period. Our derived orbital inclinations enabled us to obtain accurate companion masses for DF Cyg and RV Tau, and these were found to be 0. 6 ± 0. 1 M⊙ and 0. 7 ± 0. 1 M⊙, respectively. The derived luminosities suggest that RV Tau is a post asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) binary, while DF Cyg is likely a post red giant branch (post-RGB) binary. Analysis of the Kepler photometry of DF Cyg revealed a power spectrum with side lobes around the fundamental pulsation frequency. This modulation corresponds to the spectroscopic orbital period and hence to the long-term photometric period. Finally we report on the evidence of high velocity absorption features related to the Hα profile in both objects, indicating outflows launched from around the companion. | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
10.1088/1367-2630/17/2/022003 | Optimal Randomness Generation From Optical Bell Experiments | Genuine randomness can be certified from Bell tests without any detailed assumptions on the working of the devices with which the test is implemented. An important class of experiments for implementing such tests is optical setups based on polarisation measurements of entangled photons distributed from a spontaneous parametric down conversion source. Here we compute the maximal amount of randomness which can be certified in such setups under realistic conditions. We provide relevant yet unexpected numerical values for the physical parameters and achieve four times more randomness than previous methods. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1103/PhysRevD.94.026001 | Holography as a highly efficient renormalization group flow. I. Rephrasing gravity | We investigate how the holographic correspondence can be reformulated as a generalization of Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) flow in a strongly interacting large-N quantum field theory. We first define a highly efficient RG flow as one in which the Ward identities related to local conservation of energy, momentum and charges preserve the same form at each scale. To achieve this, it is necessary to redefine the background metric and external sources at each scale as functionals of the effective single-trace operators. These redefinitions also absorb the contributions of the multitrace operators to these effective Ward identities. Thus, the background metric and external sources become effectively dynamical, reproducing the dual classical gravity equations in one higher dimension. Here, we focus on reconstructing the pure gravity sector as a highly efficient RG flow of the energy-momentum tensor operator, leaving the explicit constructive field theory approach for generating such RG flows to the second part of the work. We show that special symmetries of the highly efficient RG flows carry information through which we can decode the gauge fixing of bulk diffeomorphisms in the corresponding gravity equations. We also show that the highly efficient RG flow which reproduces a given classical gravity theory in a given gauge is unique provided the endpoint can be transformed to a nonrelativistic fixed point with a finite number of parameters under a universal rescaling. The results obtained here are used in the second part of this work, where we do an explicit field-theoretic construction of the RG flow and obtain the dual classical gravity theory. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Mathematics"
]
|
10.1088/1742-6596/1522/1/012022 | Prediction Of Wall Bounded Turbulence From Wall Quantities Using Convolutional Neural Networks | A fully-convolutional neural-network model is used to predict the streamwise velocity fields at several wall-normal locations by taking as input the streamwise and spanwise wall-shear-stress planes in a turbulent open channel flow. The training data are generated by performing a direct numerical simulation (DNS) at a friction Reynolds number of $Re_{\tau}=180$. Various networks are trained for predictions at three inner-scaled locations ($y^+ = 15,~30,~50$) and for different time steps between input samples $\Delta t^{+}_{s}$. The inherent non-linearity of the neural-network model enables a better prediction capability than linear methods, with a lower error in both the instantaneous flow fields and turbulent statistics. Using a dataset with higher $\Delta t^+_{s}$ improves the generalization at all the considered wall-normal locations, as long as the network capacity is sufficient to generalize over the dataset. The use of a multiple-output network, with parallel dedicated branches for two wall-normal locations, does not provide any improvement over two separated single-output networks, other than a moderate saving in training time. Training time can be effectively reduced, by a factor of 4, via a transfer learning method that initializes the network parameters using the optimized parameters of a previously-trained network. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
10.1073/pnas.1900233116 | Ancient trash mounds unravel urban collapse a century before the end of Byzantine hegemony in the southern Levant | The historic event of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) was recently identified in dozens of natural and geological climate proxies of the northern hemisphere. Although this climatic downturn was proposed as a major cause for pandemic and extensive societal upheavals in the sixth–seventh centuries CE, archaeological evidence for the magnitude of societal response to this event is sparse. This study uses ancient trash mounds as a type of proxy for identifying societal crisis in the urban domain, and employs multidisciplinary investigations to establish the terminal date of organized trash collection and high-level municipal functioning on a city-wide scale. Survey, excavation, sediment analysis, and geographic information system assessment of mound volume were conducted on a series of mounds surrounding the Byzantine urban settlement of Elusa in the Negev Desert. These reveal the massive collection and dumping of domestic and construction waste over time on the city edges. Carbon dating of charred seeds and charcoal fragments combined with ceramic analysis establish the end date of orchestrated trash removal near the mid-sixth century, coinciding closely with the beginning of the LALIA event and outbreak of the Justinian Plague in the year 541. This evidence for societal decline during the sixth century ties with other arguments for urban dysfunction across the Byzantine Levant at this time. We demonstrate the utility of trash mounds as sensitive proxies of social response and unravel the time–space dynamics of urban collapse, suggesting diminished resilience to rapid climate change in the frontier Negev region of the empire. | [
"The Study of the Human Past",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1109/IPDPS.2015.78 | Contention Based Nonminimal Adaptive Routing In High Radix Networks | Adaptive routing is an efficient congestion avoidance mechanism for modern Data enter and HPC networks. Congestion detection traditionally relies on the occupancy of the router queues. However, this approach can hinder performance due to coarse-grain measurements with small buffers, and potential routing oscillations with large buffers. We introduce an alternative mechanism, labelled Contention-Based Adaptive Routing. Our mechanism adapts routing based on an estimation of "network contention", the simultaneity of traffic flows contending for a network port. Our system employs a set of counters which track the demand for each output port. This exploits path diversity thanks to earlier detection of adversarial traffic patterns, and decouples buffer size and queue occupancy from contention detection. We evaluate our mechanism in a Dragonfly network. Our evaluations show this mechanism achieves optimal latency under uniform traffic and similar to best previous routing mechanisms under adversarial patterns, with immediate adaptation to traffic pattern changes. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1145/3238147.3238179 | Parti A Multi Interval Theory Solver For Symbolic Execution | Symbolic execution is an effective program analysis technique whose scalability largely depends on the ability to quickly solve large numbers of first-order logic queries. We propose an effective general technique for speeding up the solving of queries in the theory of arrays and bit-vectors with a specific structure, while otherwise falling back to a complete solver. The technique has two stages: a learning stage that determines the solution sets of each symbolic variable, and a decision stage that uses this information to quickly determine the satisfiability of certain types of queries. The main challenges involve deciding which operators to support and precisely dealing with integer type casts and arithmetic underflow and overflow. We implemented this technique in an incomplete solver called PARTI (``PARtial Theory solver for Intervals''), directly integrating it into the popular KLEE symbolic execution engine. We applied KLEE with PARTI and a state-of-the-art SMT solver to synthetic and real-world benchmarks. We found that PARTI practically does not hurt performance while many times achieving order-of-magnitude speedups. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.3934/mcrf.2017013 | Boundary feedback stabilization of the monodomain equations | Boundary feedback control for a coupled nonlinear PDE-ODE system (in the two and three dimensional cases) is studied. Particular focus is put on the monodomain equations arising in the context of cardiac electrophysiol-ogy. Neumann as well as Dirichlet based boundary control laws are obtained by an algebraic operator Riccati equation associated with the linearized system. Local exponential stability of the nonlinear closed loop system is shown by a fixed-point argument. Numerical examples are given for a finite element discretization of the two dimensional monodomain equations. | [
"Mathematics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1038/nprot.2013.024 | Mass spectrometry of intact membrane protein complexes | Mass spectrometry (MS) of intact soluble protein complexes has emerged as a powerful technique to study the stoichiometry, structure-function and dynamics of protein assemblies. Recent developments have extended this technique to the study of membrane protein complexes, where it has already revealed subunit stoichiometries and specific phospholipid interactions. Here we describe a protocol for MS of membrane protein complexes. The protocol begins with the preparation of the membrane protein complex, enabling not only the direct assessment of stoichiometry, delipidation and quality of the target complex but also the evaluation of the purification strategy. A detailed list of compatible nonionic detergents is included, along with a protocol for screening detergents to find an optimal one for MS, biochemical and structural studies. This protocol also covers the preparation of lipids for protein-lipid binding studies and includes detailed settings for a quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) mass spectrometer after the introduction of complexes from gold-coated nanoflow capillaries. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
W4281787765 | Amazonas no epicentro da pandemia de COVID-19 uma revisao sistemática / Amazon at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic a systematic review | O trabalho resulta de investigação que buscou compreender o contexto da pandemia no Estado do Amazonas sob os impactos que o novo coronavírus provocou na vida das populações locais bem como a tomada de decisão de gestores e legisladores para o combate à pandemia.Foi utilizada a pesquisa documental cujas fontes de | [
"Earth System Science",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"The Social World and Its Interactions"
]
|
W4298204481 | Influência da Hipertensão arterial sistêmica no desfecho clínico dos casos de COVID-19 | Objetivou-se analisar a influência da hipertensão arterial sistêmica no desfecho clínico de casos de COVID-19. Estudo epidemiológico, quantitativo, com dados extraídos de prontuários de 618 pacientes com COVID-19 de um município do oeste de Santa Catarina, no período de março até setembro de 2020. Evidenciou-se correlação entre ser portador de hipertensão e sintomas da COVID-19 como astenia (p=<0,001); prostração (p=0,007); cefaleia (p=<0,001); tosse (p=0,006); e dispneia (p=<0,001). Os hipertensos foram associados à maior risco de internação em enfermaria (p=<0,001); internação em Unidade de Tratamento Intensivo (p=<0,001); e ao óbito (p=<0,001). Os achados confirmam o risco agregado à condição clínica dos pacientes com COVID-19 pela hipertensão e potencialmente sinalizam às equipes para a atenção necessária a esse grupo. | [
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
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