id
stringlengths 6
42
| title
stringlengths 3
499
| abstract
stringlengths 0
6.24k
| label
listlengths 1
6
|
|---|---|---|---|
10.1088/0004-637X/789/1/56 | Observations Of Mcg 5 23 16 With Suzaku Xmm Newton And Nustar Disk Tomography And Compton Hump Reverberation | MCG-5-23-16 is one of the first AGN where relativistic reverberation in the iron K line originating in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole was found, based on a short XMM-Newton observation. In this work, we present the results from long X-ray observations using Suzaku, XMM-Newton and NuSTAR designed to map the emission region using X-ray reverberation. A relativistic iron line is detected in the lag spectra on three different time-scales, allowing the emission from different regions around the black hole to be separated. Using NuSTAR coverage of energies above 10 keV reveals a lag between these energies and the primary continuum, which is detected for the first time in an AGN. This lag is a result of the Compton reflection hump responding to changes in the primary source in a manner similar to the response of the relativistic iron K line. | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter"
]
|
638704 | Topological phononics in crystalline materials | Phonons are the quantized vibration of the crystal lattice that carry heat in insulators and semiconductors and thus the ability of manipulating them is central in many applications, ranging from thermal management, thermoelectricity and ,perhaps the most visionary of them, phonon-based logic and computing. Topological nontrivial phonons have been studied in artificial periodic structures, i.e. phononic crystals, and as intrinsic quantized collective excitations of atomic vibrations at terahertz frequency. The latter are of particular importance and can promote fundamental investigations and promising applications related to phonons, such as dissipationless phonon transport, quantized Hall effect, etc. The goal of this project is to investigate the intrinsic topological phononic states inside realistic crystalline solids and provide recipes for their experimental realization and engineering. The TOPological pHONonics In Crystalline materiALS (TOPHONICALS) project will deliver a framework aimed at designing and realizing nontrivial topological phonon states in realistic crystalline materials, exploring their use in applications related to renewable energy and information technology. Specifically, TOPHONICALS will focus on topological phononic states like quantum anomalous/spin/valley hall-like (Q(A/S/V)H-like) states and Weyl phonons with the purpose to achieve these states in the realistic materials, so that thermal devices such as dissipationless phonon waveguides, phonon diodes, negative refraction materials can be further designed and engineered. The challenge and novelty of TOPHONICALS is delivering a set of recipes to realize these devices not simply using theoretical models but realistic materials. This approach would allow us to imagine a low power phononic circuits, highly efficient phonon valley filters and an ideal phonon diode, as the topological phononic states are promising one-way boundary states immune to scattering. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1177/0791603517725990 | Occupy In Ireland Impacts On Activists And Subsequent Protest | I explore the impact that Occupy in Ireland had on subsequent campaigns and the lives of some of its core activists and analyse the interpretative processes through which they evaluated and modifie. . . | [
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems"
]
|
W2166694183 | Bridging the gap between risk and recovery: a human needs approach | Summary There is an inexorable drive in psychiatric services in the UK, including forensic services, towards organising and delivering care based on the principles of the recovery model. Hence recovery, and its subjective and objective measures, is the goal of these services and the standard by which the quality of the service is evaluated. At the same time, all psychiatric services are expected to practise evidence-based risk assessment and management practices and can be subject to severe criticism or sanctions if they do not do so. In this paper I set out the view that the values that underlie the recovery approach and the clinical risk assessment approach appear to be polar opposites. However, an understanding of human behaviour using a humanneeds model is an explanatory paradigm that underlies both the recovery model and the understanding of risk behaviour, and can thus unify these two approaches. Therefore a more explicit integration of this model into forensic care would be beneficial and there should be more research directed to the correlates of recovery-oriented measures and risk-related measures. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"The Human Mind and Its Complexity",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
W2372660658 | The Observation on the Clinical Effects of Cataract Extraction with Small Incision and Intraocular Lens Implantation Combined with Trabeculectomy for the Treatment of Cataract and Glaucoma | Objective To discuss the clinical effects of cataract extraction with small incision and intraocular lens implantation combined with trabeculectomy for the treatment of cataract and glaucoma.Methods From April 2010 to February 2012,152 patients with cataract and glaucoma were selected as objects in Dalian Armed Police Corps Hospital of Liaoning.76 cases(85 eyes,observation group) were given cataract extraction with small incision and intraocular lens implantation combined with trabeculectomy,76 cases(86 eyes,control group) were given conventional surgery.The recovery condition of the two groups were summarized and analyzed.Results In observation group,the patients with good eyesight rates of 1,4 and 12 weeks after surgery were 91.8%,85.9%,75.3%,which were better than that of the control group' s 76.7%,66.3%,54.7% with statistically significant difference(all P 0.05);the incidence of complication of the observation group was lower than the control group with statistically significant difference(P 0.05).Conclusion Cataract extraction with small incision and intraocular lens implantation combined with trabeculectomy for the treatment of cataract and glaucoma is better than the conventional surgery,which is worth learning and promoting. | [
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
10.1007/978-3-319-96145-3_18 | Constraint Based Synthesis Of Coupling Proofs | Proof by coupling is a classical technique for proving properties about pairs of randomized algorithms by carefully relating (or coupling) two probabilistic executions. In this paper, we show how to automatically construct such proofs for probabilistic programs. First, we present f-coupled postconditions, an abstraction describing two correlated program executions. Second, we show how properties of f-coupled postconditions can imply various probabilistic properties of the original programs. Third, we demonstrate how to reduce the proof-search problem to a purely logical synthesis problem of the form Open image in new window , making probabilistic reasoning unnecessary. We develop a prototype implementation to automatically build coupling proofs for probabilistic properties, including uniformity and independence of program expressions. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
646299 | Functional organic nanocrystals for ultralong phosphorescence lifetime bioimaging applications | Recently, organic room-temperature phosphorescence materials (ORTPs) have gathered tremendous interest due to their high brightness and ultra-long lifetime (ULL) features, and ORTPs are useful in many advanced applications, including optoelectronics, bioimaging(BI), and photomedicine. However, at this early stage of development, processing of nanoform ORTPs and scalable synthesis lag behind other forms of ORTPs, leaving the chances for many applications nearly uncharted. Thus, the FUNCrystals project aims to develop functional ORTP nanocrystals (NCs) for two-photon phosphorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (2P-PLIM) BI applications. In particular, the project proposes 3 main activities that capitalize on the strength of the proposed experienced researcher and the host research group (Prof. Clemens Kaminski), in ORTP-NCs synthesis and 2P-PLIM usage. 1.Develop a synthesis process to control the size and shape of ORTP-NCs with high emission quantum yield (QY) and ULL. 2.Investigate the nonlinear optical (NLO) properties and biocompatibility analysis of ORTP-NCs. 3.Use the ORTP-NCs as nanoprobes in the 2P-PLIM to capture the high spatiotemporal and high contrast image in the primary Epithelial cell lines. The expected results will exploit the size and shape-dependent properties of the ORTP-NCs, aiming to demonstrate property performances that can elicit commercial interest in potential nanoprobes for 2P-PLIM bioimaging applications. This project's success will make a substantial contribution to one of the European Union's main concerns on developing nanotechnologies and advanced materials. Overall, this proposed multidisciplinary project brings benefits to both the applicant and the host institution(University of Cambridge) in terms of mutual knowledge transfer, joint publications, new collaborations, networking actions, and personal career development of the researcher as well as increased public awareness about research resulting from the ambitious outreach actions. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Materials Engineering",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
W1554862624 | Total Synthesis of the Phenolic Glycolipid Mycoside B and the Glycosylatedp-Hydroxybenzoic Acid Methyl Ester HBAD-I, Virulence Markers ofMycobacterium tuberculosis | The phenolic glycolipid mycoside B, present in Mycobacterium bovis and hypervirulent strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has been synthesized for the first time. Multiple methyl groups were introduced by the extensive use of catalytic asymmetric 1,4-addition reactions, asymmetric hydrogenation of a -keto ester afforded the basis for the central 1,3-diol moiety, and introduction of the 2-O-methyl--L-rhamnoside unit was achieved by stereoselective glycosylation with p-iodophenol and subsequent Sonogashira coupling, providing a basis for the generation of analogues. In addition, the related monosaccharide HBAD-I, present in the same species, has been efficiently synthesized for the first time by selective methylation of the hydroxy group at C-2 of a rhamnoside. | [
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1016/j.matpur.2017.09.015 | Large time monotonicity of solutions of reaction–diffusion equations in R<sup>N</sup> | In this paper, we consider nonnegative solutions of spatially heterogeneous reaction–diffusion equations in the whole space. Under some assumptions on the initial conditions, including in particular the case of compactly supported initial conditions, we show that, above any arbitrary positive value, the solution is increasing in time at large times. Furthermore, in the one-dimensional case, we prove that, if the equation is homogeneous outside a bounded interval and the reaction is linear around the zero state, then the solution is time-increasing in the whole line at large times. The question of the monotonicity in time is motivated by a medical imagery issue. | [
"Mathematics"
]
|
10.1021/jacs.7b08670 | Mediating Reductive Charge Shift Reactions in Electron Transport Chains | We report the synthesis of a full-fledged family of covalent electron donor-acceptor1-acceptor2 conjugates and their charge-transfer characterization by means of advanced photophysical assays. By virtue of variable excited state energies and electron donor strengths, either Zn(II)Porphyrins or Zn(II)Phthalocyanines were linked to different electron-transport chains featuring pairs of electron accepting fullerenes, that is, C60 and C70. In this way, a fine-tuned redox gradient is established to power a unidirectional, long-range charge transport from the excited-state electron donor via a transient C60•- toward C70•-. This strategy helps minimize energy losses in the reductive, short-range charge shift from C60 to C70. At the forefront of our investigations are excited-state dynamics deduced from femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopic measurements and subsequent computational deconvolution of the transient absorption spectra. These provide evidence for cascades of short-range charge-transfer processes, including reductive charge shift reactions between the two electron-accepting fullerenes, and for kinetics that are influenced by the nature and length of the respective spacer. Of key importance is the postulate of a mediating state in the charge-shift reaction at weak electronic couplings. Our results point to an intimate relationship between triplet-triplet energy transfer and charge transfer. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Condensed Matter Physics"
]
|
224988 | Population dynamics in the southeast european neolithic: prehistoric archaeology and palaeogenomics | “Population dynamics in the Southeast European Neolithic” is an interdisciplinary project, focusing on the Neolithic transition, a major turning point in human history, when people domesticated plants and animals, and built the first permanent villages. The work of the Palaeogenetics Group in Mainz shows that the first European farmers probably migrated from Anatolia, one of the first regions to adopt agriculture after food plants and animals were domesticated in Southwest Asia.
The question that this project addresses is how, in a practical sense, early farmers interacted with foragers, as well as with other farmers, during the initial phases of agricultural spread in Southeast Europe. For instance, is there any evidence that early farmers and foragers lived side by side? If so, did they admix to any significant extent? What was the population structure of early farming communities? And how did the structure of Neolithic settlements affect farmer-forager and farmer-farmer interactions? Specifically, the project will test archaeologically-informed population models and provide context in terms of where ancient DNA results produced by the Palaeogenetics Group sit archaeologically. This will help to lead the field of palaeogenetics from its continental and large-scale oriented perspective towards finer-scale population genetic inference at regional, site-specific or even household levels. For archaeology, this is an opportunity to reclaim the field of prehistoric migrations and engage with the latest results of aDNA research.
In the course of the project, I hope to establish myself as an archaeologist who is able to critically evaluate approaches and techniques used in statistical genomics, in order to help bridge the gap and bring prehistoric archaeology and palaeogenomics closer together. | [
"The Study of the Human Past",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
10.1101/gad.552910 | Cooperative interaction between retinoic acid receptor-α and estrogen receptor in breast cancer | Retinoic acid receptor-a (RARa) is a known estrogen target gene in breast cancer cells. The consequence of RARa induction by estrogen was previously unknown. We now show that RARa is required for efficient estrogen receptor-a (ER)-mediated transcription and cell proliferation. RARa can interact with ER-binding sites, but this occurs in an ER-dependent manner, providing a novel role for RARa that is independent of its classic role. We show, on a genome-wide scale, that RARa and ER can co-occupy regulatory regions together within the chromatin. This transcriptionally active co-occupancy and dependency occurs when exposed to the predominant breast cancer hormone, estrogen-an interaction that is promoted by the estrogen-ER induction of RARa. These findings implicate RARa as an essential component of the ER complex, potentially by maintaining ER-cofactor interactions, and suggest that different nuclear receptors can cooperate for effective transcriptional activity in breast cancer cells. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
217477 | Robot for autonomous underground trenchless operations, mapping and navigation | The goal of the proposed project is the design and development of the BADGER autonomous underground robotic system that can drill, manoeuvre, localise, map and navigate in the underground space, and which will be equipped with tools for constructing horizontal and vertical networks of stable bores and pipelines. The proposed robotic system will enable the execution of tasks that cut across different application domains of high societal and economic impact including trenchless constructions, cabling and pipe installations, geotechnical investigations, large-scale irrigation installations, search and rescue operations, remote science and exploration, and defence applications.
For this purpose, BADGER will deliver a highly innovative robotic system by integrating research into all required novel technical advances. BADGER will integrate innovative mechatronic concepts with robust industrial drilling tools to yield advanced manoeuvrability and motion capability; will integrate perception, localisation and mapping techniques in order to sense map and interpret the surrounding underground environment; the system will merge collected underground data with legacy digital maps to plan and track the motion of the robot with respect to physical landmarks. The robotic system actions and reactions will be governed by the cognition component which makes decisions on task execution, path planning and motion planning. Finally, the robotic system will be capable to manage and intelligently combine the massive data gathered during underground operation so as to continuously improve its perception and cognition abilities whilst also providing human users the means to store, process and analyse this data, thus enabling the efficient off-line planning and on-line remote monitoring and control of the overall operation process. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b00983 | Selective <sup>1</sup>H-<sup>1</sup>H Distance Restraints in Fully Protonated Proteins by Very Fast Magic-Angle Spinning Solid-State NMR | Very fast magic-angle spinning (MAS > 80 kHz) NMR combined with high-field magnets has enabled the acquisition of proton-detected spectra in fully protonated solid samples with sufficient resolution and sensitivity. One of the primary challenges in structure determination of protein is observing long-range 1H-1H contacts. Here we use band-selective spin-lock pulses to obtain selective 1H-1H contacts (e. g. , HN-HN) on the order of 5-6 Å in fully protonated proteins at 111 kHz MAS. This approach is a major advancement in structural characterization of proteins given that magnetization can be selectively transferred between protons that are 5-6 Å apart despite the presence of other protons at shorter distance. The observed contacts are similar to those previously observed only in perdeuterated proteins with selective protonation. Simulations and experiments show the proposed method has performance that is superior to that of the currently used methods. The method is demonstrated on GB1 and a β-barrel membrane protein, AlkL. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
259668 | Provable Security for Physical Cryptography | Modern cryptographic security definitions do not capture real world adversaries who can attack the algorithm's physical implementation, as they do not take into account so called side-channel attacks where the adversary learns information about the internal state of the cryptosystem during execution, for example by measuring the running time or the power consumption of a smart-card.
Current research on side-channels security resembles a cat and mouse game. New attacks are discovered, and then heuristic countermeasures are proposed to prevent this particular new attacks. This is fundamentally different from the ""provable security"" approach followed by modern cryptography, where one requires that a cryptosystem is proven secure against all adversaries in a broad and well-defined attack scenario. Clearly, this situation is unsatisfactory: what is provable security good for, if ultimately the security of a cryptosystem hinges on some ad-hoc side-channel countermeasure?
Despite this, until recently the theory community did not give much attention to this problem as it was believed that side-channels are a practical problem, and theory can only be of limited use to prevent them. But recently results indicate that this view is much too pessimistic.
On a high level, the goal of this project is to bring research on side-channels from the realm of engineering and security research to modern cryptography. One aspect of this proposal it to further investigate the framework of leakage-resilience which adapts the methodology of provable security to the physical world. If a cryptosystem is leakage-resilient, then this implies that its implementation is secure against every side-channel attack, making only some mild (basically minimal) assumptions on the underlying hardware. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
Q4938171 | (16807.19102018.132000069) DIAGNO-V&V PEM | COMESA HAT DANK SEINER DREISSIGJÄHRIGEN ERFAHRUNG MIT EISENBAHNSICHERHEITSSIGNALSYSTEMEN BESCHLOSSEN, EINE INVESTITION ZU PLANEN, UM EIN INNOVATIVES PEDAL (PEM) VOLLELEKTRONISCH ZU REALISIEREN, DAS DIE DERZEIT VERWENDETEN MECHANISCHEN ODER ELEKTROHYDRAULISCHEN TYPEN VOLLSTÄNDIG ERSETZEN KANN. OBLIGATORISCHE ZYKLISCHE WARTUNG UND VERZICHT AUF DEN KAUF UND DIE ENTSORGUNG DES SONST NOTWENDIGEN SPEZIALÖLS. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1093/molbev/mss211 | Genomic evidence for large, long-lived ancestors to placental mammals | It is widely assumed that our mammalian ancestors, which lived in the Cretaceous era, were tiny animals that survived massive asteroid impacts in shelters and evolved into modern forms after dinosaurs went extinct, 65 Ma. The small size of most Mesozoic mammalian fossils essentially supports this view. Paleontology, however, is not conclusive regarding the ancestry of extant mammals, because Cretaceous and Paleocene fossils are not easily linked to modern lineages. Here, we use full-genome data to estimate the longevity and body mass of early placental mammals. Analyzing 36 fully sequenced mammalian genomes, we reconstruct two aspects of the ancestral genome dynamics, namely GC-content evolution and nonsynonymous over synonymous rate ratio. Linking these molecular evolutionary processes to life-history traits in modern species, we estimate that early placental mammals had a life span above 25 years and a body mass above 1 kg. This is similar to current primates, cetartiodactyls, or carnivores, but markedly different from mice or shrews, challenging the dominant view about mammalian origin and evolution. Our results imply that long-lived mammals existed in the Cretaceous era and were the most successful in evolution, opening new perspectives about the conditions for survival to the Cretaceous-Tertiary crisis. | [
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution"
]
|
642137 | Ground-Breaking roof tile solution for solar energy collection | The overall objective of the project is to mature, qualify and enable a swift market launch and scale-up of our revolutionary solar roof technology with the overarching aim to become the new reference for solar roof technology in Europe and beyond.
Our disruptive E-Tile+ solution is the first solar system made of real roof tiles, having the same size, shape and appearance as normal roof tiles. These features, in contrast to standard solar panels or tiles, entail high ease of installment (40% lower installation time), reliability (i.e. 30% higher lifetime and lower maintenance costs) and safety (<120V operations vs. 400V), as well as increased exploitation of available roof area (30% more). With E-Tile+, 20-30 million roofs across the EU, which cannot be served with standard solar panels today, could be targeted to harvest solar energy. Furthermore, our unique and patented tiles contacting approach (plug-and-play and parallel connection) provides more power output (20% higher conversion efficiency) than today’s solar panels. The latter are connected in-series and thus suffer from shadow effects, high additional costs and danger (high-voltage operations that require specially qualified electricians). Hence, E-Tile+ is a solar system specifically designed for the needs of construction companies, complying with upcoming energy regulations and solving the current issues of traditional PV roof panels.
This FTI project will mature E-Tile+ in terms of performance, manufacturing cost, production yield and ensure full qualification of our product for its launch in our target markets, with a Business Plan adapted to guarantee a fast and sustained market entry. TilePlus project will address the solar roof market. We will argue that E-Tile+ can be installed on 13,700 roofs, while providing 142GWh in year 5 post-project, generating accumulated revenues of €267m and net profits of €156m, create 65 new FTEs among the consortium and unlocking CO2 emission cuts of 64.4kt. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1063/1.5021569 | Progress Of The Apex Experiment For Creation Of An Electron Positron Pair Plasma | Electron-positron pair plasmas are an unexplored state of matter predicted to have properties intriguing for plasma physics as well as astrophysics. Here we described recent progress in the APEX collaboration dedicated to the production of a cold, confined electron-positron plasma in the laboratory. We focus on methods to inject positrons produced externally into a magnetic dipole trap, and to manipulate the ensuing trapped positron cloud. These experiments are carried out at the NEPOMUC positron beamline of the FRM II research reactor. Recent progress in producing more intense positron beams is briefly discussed. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Universe Sciences"
]
|
10.1126/sciadv.1400251 | High-performance transistors for bioelectronics through tuning of channel thickness | Despite recent interest in organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), sparked by their straightforward fabrication and high performance, the fundamental mechanism behind their operation remains largely unexplored. OECTs use an electrolyte in direct contact with a polymer channel as part of their device structure. Hence, they offer facile integration with biological milieux and are currently used as amplifying transducers for bioelectronics. Ion exchange between electrolyte and channel is believed to take place in OECTs, although the extent of this process and its impact on device characteristics are still unknown. We show that the uptake of ions from an electrolyte into a film of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) doped with polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) leads to a purely volumetric capacitance of 39 F/cm3. This results in a dependence of the transconductance on channel thickness, a new degree of freedom that we exploit to demonstrate high-quality recordings of human brain rhythms. Our results bring to the forefront a transistor class in which performance can be tuned independently of device footprint and provide guidelines for the design of materials that will lead to state-of-the-art transistor performance. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
W2072788178 | Comparing limb-volume measurement techniques: 3D models from an infrared depth sensor versus water displacement | In our previous work, a new method for measuring limb volume based on infrared depth sensors was presented. The system, which can be operated in the comfort of our homes, allows for the early detection of swelling associated with lymphedema - a chronic disease caused by failure in the lymphatic system. Early detection and management can significantly reduce the potential for symptoms and complications; however, many patients fail to seek medical assistance at the first sign of the disease. So, the proposed system can potentially affect the lives of nearly 500,000 people in the U.S. who suffer from lymphedema with over 2.6 million breast cancer survivors and over 230,000 new cases every year <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> who are at-risk for developing this disease at some point in their life. In this paper, a series of improvements made to the system is presented. The changes led to the complete automation of the process of 3D imaging the arms. The proposed technique for limb-volume measurement was compared with the water displacement and the perometry. Being an ongoing research, the results presented here are limited to 14 arms of healthy volunteers. In the future, test will include a larger number of limbs of healthy as well as cancer patients. | [
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1073/pnas.1319599111 | Observation time scale, free-energy landscapes, and molecular symmetry | When structures that interconvert on a given time scale are lumped together, the corresponding free-energy surface becomes a function of the observation time. This view is equivalent to grouping structures that are connected by free-energy barriers below a certain threshold. We illustrate this time dependence for some benchmark systems, namely atomic clusters and alanine dipeptide, highlighting the connections to broken ergodicity, local equilibrium, and "feasible" symmetry operations of the molecular Hamiltonian. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Condensed Matter Physics"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pbio.1002352 | Microbial Hub Taxa Link Host and Abiotic Factors to Plant Microbiome Variation | Plant-associated microorganisms have been shown to critically affect host physiology and performance, suggesting that evolution and ecology of plants and animals can only be understood in a holobiont (host and its associated organisms) context. Host-associated microbial community structures are affected by abiotic and host factors, and increased attention is given to the role of the microbiome in interactions such as pathogen inhibition. However, little is known about how these factors act on the microbial community, and especially what role microbe–microbe interaction dynamics play. We have begun to address this knowledge gap for phyllosphere microbiomes of plants by simultaneously studying three major groups of Arabidopsis thaliana symbionts (bacteria, fungi and oomycetes) using a systems biology approach. We evaluated multiple potential factors of microbial community control: we sampled various wild A. thaliana populations at different times, performed field plantings with different host genotypes, and implemented successive host colonization experiments under lab conditions where abiotic factors, host genotype, and pathogen colonization was manipulated. Our results indicate that both abiotic factors and host genotype interact to affect plant colonization by all three groups of microbes. Considering microbe–microbe interactions, however, uncovered a network of interkingdom interactions with significant contributions to community structure. As in other scale-free networks, a small number of taxa, which we call microbial “hubs,” are strongly interconnected and have a severe effect on communities. By documenting these microbe–microbe interactions, we uncover an important mechanism explaining how abiotic factors and host genotypic signatures control microbial communities. In short, they act directly on “hub” microbes, which, via microbe–microbe interactions, transmit the effects to the microbial community. We analyzed two “hub” microbes (the obligate biotrophic oomycete pathogen Albugo and the basidiomycete yeast fungus Dioszegia) more closely. Albugo had strong effects on epiphytic and endophytic bacterial colonization. Specifically, alpha diversity decreased and beta diversity stabilized in the presence of Albugo infection, whereas they otherwise varied between plants. Dioszegia, on the other hand, provided evidence for direct hub interaction with phyllosphere bacteria. The identification of microbial “hubs” and their importance in phyllosphere microbiome structuring has crucial implications for plant–pathogen and microbe–microbe research and opens new entry points for ecosystem management and future targeted biocontrol. The revelation that effects can cascade through communities via “hub” microbes is important to understand community structure perturbations in parallel fields including human microbiomes and bioprocesses. In particular, parallels to human microbiome “keystone” pathogens and microbes open new avenues of interdisciplinary research that promise to better our understanding of functions of host-associated microbiomes. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1080/1369183X.2017.1367650 | Anticipating The Citizenship Premium Before And After Effects Of Immigrant Naturalisation On Employment | ABSTRACTCan citizenship improve the economic integration of immigrants, and if so, how? Scholars traditionally understand a citizenship premium in the labour market, besides access to restricted jobs, as the result of a positive signal of naturalisation towards employers. While we do not discard these mechanisms, we argue that explanations should also take into account that migrants anticipate rewards and opportunities of naturalisation by investing in their human capital development. We thus expect to observe improved employment outcomes already before the acquisition of citizenship. We use micro-level register data from Statistics Netherlands from 1999 until 2011 (N = 94,320) to test this expectation. Results show a one-time boost in the probability of having employment after naturalisation, consistent with the prevalent notion of positive signalling. However, we find that the employment probability of naturalising migrants already develops faster during the years leading up to citizenship acquisition, . . . | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations",
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"Human Mobility, Environment, and Space"
]
|
10.1063/1.4961613 | Preface To The Special Edition On Femtochemistry And The Hamburg Conference On Femtochemistry 2015 Femto12 | This special issue is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Ahmed Zewail, the founder of the field and the public-keynote speaker of the Leuchtturm (Tower of Light) Lecture (https://www. femto12. org/leuchtturm) at FEMTO12. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pone.0093955 | Amphetamine sensitization alters reward processing in the human striatum and amygdala | Dysregulation of mesolimbic dopamine transmission is implicated in a number of psychiatric illnesses characterised by disruption of reward processing and goal-directed behaviour, including schizophrenia, drug addiction and impulse control disorders associated with chronic use of dopamine agonists. Amphetamine sensitization (AS) has been proposed to model the development of this aberrant dopamine signalling and the subsequent dysregulation of incentive motivational processes. However, in humans the effects of AS on the dopamine-sensitive neural circuitry associated with reward processing remains unclear. Here we describe the effects of acute amphetamine administration, following a sensitising dosage regime, on blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal in dopaminoceptive brain regions during a rewarded gambling task performed by healthy volunteers. Using a randomised, double-blind, parallel-groups design, we found clear evidence for sensitization to the subjective effects of the drug, while rewarded reaction times were unchanged. Repeated amphetamine exposure was associated with reduced dorsal striatal BOLD signal during decision making, but enhanced ventromedial caudate activity during reward anticipation. The amygdala BOLD response to reward outcomes was blunted following repeated amphetamine exposure. Positive correlations between subjective sensitization and changes in anticipation- and outcome-related BOLD signal were seen for the caudate nucleus and amygdala, respectively. These data show for the first time in humans that AS changes the functional impact of acute stimulant exposure on the processing of reward-related information within dopaminoceptive regions. Our findings accord with pathophysiological models which implicate aberrant dopaminergic modulation of striatal and amygdala activity in psychosis and drug-related compulsive disorders. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pone.0161156 | The sense of agency is more sensitive to manipulations of outcome than movement-related feedback irrespective of sensory modality | The sense of agency describes the ability to experience oneself as the agent of one's own actions. Previous studies of the sense of agency manipulated the predicted sensory feedback related either to movement execution or to the movement's outcome, for example by delaying the movement of a virtual hand or the onset of a tone that resulted from a button press. Such temporal sensorimotor discrepancies reduce the sense of agency. It remains unclear whether movement-related feedback is processed differently than outcome-related feedback in terms of agency experience, especially if these types of feedback differ with respect to sensory modality. We employed a mixed-reality setup, in which participants tracked their finger movements by means of a virtual hand. They performed a single tap, which elicited a sound. The temporal contingency between the participants' finger movements and (i) the movement of the virtual hand or (ii) the expected auditory outcome was systematically varied. In a visual control experiment, the tap elicited a visual outcome. For each feedback type and participant, changes in the sense of agency were quantified using a forced-choice paradigm and the Method of Constant Stimuli. Participants were more sensitive to delays of outcome than to delays of movement execution. This effect was very similar for visual or auditory outcome delays. Our results indicate different contributions of movement- versus outcome-related sensory feedback to the sense of agency, irrespective of the modality of the outcome. We propose that this differential sensitivity reflects the behavioral importance of assessing authorship of the outcome of an action. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"The Human Mind and Its Complexity"
]
|
W1531810803 | Now you see it: Genome methylation makes a comeback inDrosophila | Drosophila melanogaster is often considered to lack genomic 5-methylcytosine (m(5) C), an opinion reinforced by two whole genome bisulfite-sequencing studies that failed to find m(5) C. New evidence, however, indicates that genomic methylation is indeed present in the fly, albeit in small quantities and in unusual patterns. At embryonic stage 5, m(5) C occurs in short strand-specific regions that cover ∼1% of the genome, at tissue levels suggesting a distribution restricted to a subset of nuclei. Its function is not obvious, but methylation in subsets of nuclei would obscure functional associations since transcript levels and epigenetic modifications are assayed in whole embryos. Surprisingly, Mt2, the fly's only candidate DNA methyltransferase, is not necessary for the observed methylation. Full evaluation of the functions of genome methylation in Drosophila must await discovery and experimental inactivation of the DNA methyltransferase, as well as a better understanding of the pattern and developmental regulation of genomic m(5) C. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
631400 | Multi-Modal tensor tomography | Capture structures without looking at them directly, but rather by probing their interaction with electromagnetic waves - this is the basic principle for the new multi-modal tensor tomography developed in this research programme. It will enable to study the arrangement of nanostructures in macroscopic samples, six orders of magnitude larger than its building blocks, allowing to apprehend the structure of complex hierarchical materials.
I will use visible light observing change in their polarization state as well as the scattering of hard X-rays to probe nanostructure. Both modes capture alignment of nanostructure, while complementary in other aspects e.g. high penetration depth of synchrotron radiation and easy accessibility of laboratory polarimetric setups.
At the core of MUMOTT lays the development of the methodological framework implemented in an open-source software package allowing for the reconstruction of tensors in each sub-volume or voxel of the three-dimensional tomogram. Whereas in a first step I will work out a general approach, we will incorporate flexible modules to capture details of the different types of interaction. This approach includes method development pushing the boundaries of traditional synchrotron methods to make full use of the high brilliance and coherence of the new generation of synchrotrons coming online as well as the enabling of studies with lab-based equipment. It opens up for addressing new scientific problems by widening the range of materials as well as the user community.
Apart from the methodology framework we will implement the different modes to prove their capability to solve critical problems in materials and bio-science; to investigate the structure of light-weight composites based on cellulose nanofibrils, reveal how the arrangement of nanoparticles in a plasmonic composite is connected to its sensing capabilities, as well as shed light on the disruptive collagen network in liver fibrosis. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1038/srep35293 | Fitness costs associated with building and maintaining the burying beetle's carrion nest | It is well-known that features of animal nest architecture can be explained by fitness benefits gained by the offspring housed within. Here we focus on the little-tested suggestion that the fitness costs associated with building and maintaining a nest should additionally account for aspects of its architecture. Burying beetles prepare an edible nest for their young from a small vertebrate carcass, by ripping off any fur or feathers and rolling the flesh into a rounded ball. We found evidence that only larger beetles are able to construct rounder carcass nests, and that rounder carcass nests are associated with lower maintenance costs. Offspring success, however, was not explained by nest roundness. Our experiment thus provides rare support for the suggestion that construction and maintenance costs are key to understanding animal architecture. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution"
]
|
W3202949414 | Manejo clínico de las complicaciones agudas de la anemia falciforme: 11 años de experiencia en un hospital terciario | La drepanocitosis es una anemia emergente en Europa que condiciona una elevada morbilidad con complicaciones agudas y crónicas. El manejo de estos pacientes es complejo y requiere atención interdisciplinar. El objetivo del estudio es analizar las características y el manejo de los pacientes con drepanocitosis que ingresan por complicaciones agudas. Estudio descriptivo retrospectivo de los ingresos por complicaciones agudas de pacientes con drepanocitosis menores de 16 años en un hospital terciario entre 2010 y 2020. Se revisaron los datos clínicos, analíticos y radiológicos. Se incluyeron 71 ingresos correspondientes a 25 pacientes, el 40% diagnosticados por cribado neonatal. Los ingresos se incrementaron de forma progresiva durante este periodo. Los diagnósticos más frecuentes fueron la crisis vasooclusiva (35,2%), el síndrome febril (33,8%) y el síndrome torácico agudo (32,3%). Nueve pacientes precisaron ingreso en cuidados intensivos. En 20 ingresos se obtuvo documentación microbiológica, 60% bacterias. En el 86% se administró antibioterapia y 28% precisaron analgesia con opioides. El 89% cumplían la pauta de vacunación adecuada y el 41% recibían hidroxiurea previo al ingreso. Las complicaciones agudas que precisan ingreso hospitalario son frecuentes en los pacientes con drepanocitosis, siendo las más habituales la crisis vasooclusiva y el síndrome febril. Esto conlleva un uso elevado de antibioterapia y opioides. El diagnóstico precoz facilita el reconocimiento de complicaciones de riesgo vital como el síndrome torácico agudo y el secuestro esplénico. A pesar de las medidas preventivas y los tratamientos indicados en la actualidad, estas complicaciones agudas precisan manejo hospitalario. Sickle cell disease is an emerging anemia in Europe leading to high morbidity with severe acute complications requiring hospital admission and chronic consequences. The management of these patients is complex and needs interdisciplinary care. The objective is to analyze clinical characteristics and management of patients with sickle cell disease admitted for acute complications. Retrospective descriptive study of admissions for acute complications of patients with sickle cell disease under 16 years of age in a tertiary hospital between 2010 and 2020. Clinical, laboratory and radiological data were reviewed. We included 71 admissions corresponding to 25 patients, 40% diagnosed by neonatal screening. Admissions increased during this period. The most frequent diagnoses were vaso-occlusive crisis (35.2%), febrile syndrome (33.8%) and acute chest syndrome (32.3%). Nine patients required critical care at PICU. Positive microbiological results were confirmed in 20 cases, bacterial in 60%. Antibiotic therapy was administered in 86% of cases and the vaccination schedule of asplenia was adequately fulfilled by 89%. Opioid analgesia was required in 28%. Chronic therapy with hydroxyurea prior to admission was used in 41%. Acute complications requiring hospital admission are frequent in patients with sickle cell disease, being vaso-occlusive crisis and febrile syndrome the most common. These patients need a high use of antibiotics and opioid analgesia. Prior diagnosis facilitates the recognition of life-threatening complications such as acute chest syndrome and splenic sequestration. Despite the prophylactic and therapeutic measures currently provided to these patients, many patients suffer acute complications that require hospital management. | [
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy"
]
|
10.1038/s41467-020-16529-6 | A library of ab initio Raman spectra for automated identification of 2D materials | Raman spectroscopy is frequently used to identify composition, structure and layer thickness of 2D materials. Here, we describe an efficient first-principles workflow for calculating resonant first-order Raman spectra of solids within third-order perturbation theory employing a localized atomic orbital basis set. The method is used to obtain the Raman spectra of 733 different monolayers selected from the Computational 2D Materials Database (C2DB). We benchmark the computational scheme against available experimental data for 15 known monolayers. Furthermore, we propose an automatic procedure for identifying a material based on an input experimental Raman spectrum and apply it to the cases of MoS2 (H-phase) and WTe2 (T′-phase). The Raman spectra of all materials at different excitation frequencies and polarization configurations are freely available from the C2DB. Our comprehensive and easily accessible library of ab initio Raman spectra should be valuable for both theoreticians and experimentalists in the field of 2D materials. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials"
]
|
10.1190/geo2018-0340.1 | Transmission compensated primary reflection retrieval in the data domain and consequences for imaging | We have developed a scheme that retrieves primary reflections in the two-way traveltime domain by filtering the data. The data have their own filter that removes internal multiple reflections, whereas the amplitudes of the retrieved primary reflections are compensated for two-way transmission losses. Application of the filter does not require any model information. It consists of convolutions and correlations of the data with itself. A truncation in the time domain is applied after each convolution or correlation. The retrieved data set can be used as the input to construct a better velocity model than the one that would be obtained by working directly with the original data and to construct an enhanced subsurface image. Two 2D numerical examples indicate the effectiveness of the method. We have studied bandwidth limitations by analyzing the effects of a thin layer. The presence of refracted and scattered waves is a known limitation of the method, and we studied it as well. Our analysis indicates that a thin layer is treated as a more complicated reflector, and internal multiple reflections related to the thin layer are properly removed. We found that the presence of refracted and scattered waves generates artifacts in the retrieved data. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
740472 | Smartphones, Smart Ageing and mHealth | This project will investigate fundamental changes in people’s relationship to age and health associated with the global rise of the smartphone. The aim is to combine an intellectual challenge in understanding the contemporary nature of age and the impact of new media, with an applied challenge to use this knowledge to help make mHealth a more effective intervention.
Through simultaneous 15 month ethnographies in China, Japan, Iran, Ireland, Nigeria and Tanzania (and supplementary work in Trinidad) a team will explore the experience of age for those between 45-70 i.e. neither clearly young nor elderly, who represent an unprecedented population that has resulted from changed life expectancy and changed aspirations. We will examine how this shift in the experience of age is impacted by the rise of smartphones that bring access to technologies associated with the young. mHealth started with youth orientated issues of fitness and wellbeing but is increasingly becoming a significant intervention in helping older populations deal with disease and frailties. mHealth has potential both for helping those with low access to professional care but also threatens to bypass and undermine professional medical services. Our aim is to complement technology led mHealth interventions with ethnography led participatory design, consisting of a collaboration between mHealth professionals with our ethnographically informed team and our informants.
The applied anthropology will inform our intellectual advances in the field of digital anthropology. Reflections on mHealth will contribute to the core aim of advancing our understanding of the experience of age in this new interstitial period of life, and to appreciate the major transformations in society and sociality represented by the new ubiquity of the smartphone. Both the intellectual and applied components will be shown to depend upon sensitivity to the forms of cultural diversity uncovered by our comparative ethnographic approach. | [
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"Studies of Cultures and Arts",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
10.1145/2187980.2188044 | Automatically Learning Gazetteers From The Deep Web | Wrapper induction faces a dilemma: To reach web scale, it requires automatically generated examples, but to produce accurate results, these examples must have the quality of human annotations. We resolve this conflict with AMBER, a system for fully automated data extraction from result pages. In contrast to previous approaches, AMBER employs domain specific gazetteers to discern basic domain attributes on a page, and leverages repeated occurrences of similar attributes to group related attributes into records rather than relying on the noisy structure of the DOM. With this approach AMBER is able to identify records and their attributes with almost perfect accuracy (>98%) on a large sample of websites. To make such an approach feasible at scale, AMBER automatically learns domain gazetteers from a small seed set. In this demonstration, we show how AMBER uses the repeated structure of records on deep web result pages to learn such gazetteers. This is only possible with a highly accurate extraction system. Depending on its parametrization, this learning process runs either fully automatically or with human interaction. We show how AMBER bootstraps a gazetteer for UK locations in 4 iterations: From a small seed sample we achieve 94. 4% accuracy in recognizing UK locations in the $4th$ iteration. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
DE 3742448 A | Cable duct | The invention relates to a cable duct consisting of an elongated trough-shaped part whose side walls are subdivided into upwardly projecting tongues by means of vertical slots which are arranged at intervals from one another and extend from the upper rim in the direction towards the bottom. The cable duct is to be configured in such a way that it is possible to guide optical cables in and out at virtually any arbitrary point without falling below a prescribed minimum bending radius. It is proposed for this purpose that at at least one side wall there is arranged a cable outlet part having two side walls, which are essentially bent outwards beyond the vertical to run towards one another, and having a third side wall, which is bent off downwards away from the unslotted region of the side walls at the bottom of the cable duct. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
EP 2017080894 W | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TREATING BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES | Disclosed are methods and systems for unmasking protein antigens and nucleic acid targets in fixed cell samples using UV light. In some embodiments, UV light exposure is combined with other unmasking methods and agents to help ensure difficult to unmask molecular entities are reliably rendered detectable. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
10.1007/978-3-319-43425-4_4 | Exploiting Robust Optimization For Interval Probabilistic Bisimulation | Verification of PCTL properties of MDPs with convex uncertainties has been investigated recently by Puggelli et al. However, model checking algorithms typically suffer from the state space explosion problem. In this paper, we discuss the use of probabilistic bisimulation to reduce the size of such an MDP while preserving the PCTL properties it satisfies. As a core part, we show that deciding bisimilarity of a pair of states can be encoded as adjustable robust counterpart of an uncertain LP. We show that using affine decision rules, probabilistic bisimulation relation can be approximated in polynomial time. We have implemented our approach and demonstrate its effectiveness on several case studies. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Mathematics"
]
|
896925 | Software defined application infrastructures management and engineering | SODALITE will provide application developers and infrastructure operators with tools that (a) abstract their application and infrastructure requirements to (b) enable simpler and faster development, deployment, operation, and execution of heterogeneous applications reflecting diverse circumstances over (c) heterogeneous, software-defined, high-performance, cloud infrastructures, with a particular focus on performance, quality, manageability, and reliability. In doing so, it will produce several tangible results, (1) pattern-based abstraction library, including application, infrastructure and an absolute novum, performance abstractions, (2) design and programming model for full-stack application and infrastructure descriptions, using abstraction library; (3) deployment framework, enabling static optimisation of the so-abstracted applications onto specific infrastructures (4) automated run-time optimisation and management of so-deployed applications. This toolset will directly support Digital Transformation of European Industry through (1) increasing design and runtime effectiveness of software-defined infrastructures, to ensure high-performance execution over dynamic heterogeneous execution environments; (2) increasing simplicity of modelling applications and infrastructures, to improve manageability, collaboration, and time to market. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pone.0125438 | Virtual-'light-sheet' single-molecule localisation microscopy enables quantitative optical sectioning for super-resolution imaging | Single-molecule super-resolution microscopy allows imaging of fluorescently-tagged proteins in live cells with a precision well below that of the diffraction limit. Here, we demonstrate 3D sectioning with single-molecule super-resolution microscopy by making use of the fitting information that is usually discarded to reject fluorophores that emit from above or below a virtual-'light-sheet', a thin volume centred on the focal plane of the microscope. We describe an easy-to-use routine (implemented as an open-source ImageJ plug-in) to quickly analyse a calibration sample to define and use such a virtual light-sheet. In addition, the plug-in is easily usable on almost any existing 2D super-resolution instrumentation. This optical sectioning of super-resolution images is achieved by applying well-characterised width and amplitude thresholds to diffraction-limited spots that can be used to tune the thickness of the virtual light-sheet. This allows qualitative and quantitative imaging improvements: by rejecting out-of-focus fluorophores, the super-resolution image gains contrast and local features may be revealed; by retaining only fluorophores close to the focal plane, virtual-'light-sheet' single-molecule localisation microscopy improves the probability that all emitting fluorophores will be detected, fitted and quantitatively evaluated. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1021/jp411715n | D-π-A porphyrin employing an indoline donor group for high efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells | Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) devices were fabricated using a novel donor-(π bridge)-acceptor (D-π-A) porphyrin sensitizer, VC-70, in which an indoline is linked directly to the porphyrin core and functions as the donor group. The best efficiencies of VC-70 and reference YD2-o-C8 devices were found to be 7. 31 and 7. 60%, respectively, and AMG 1. 5 illumination and device properties were fully characterized using transient absorption, charge extraction, and transient photovoltage techniques. A notable effect on TiO 2 conduction band energetics and electron lifetime was observed following light soaking of VC-70 devices under AMG 1. 5 illumination. Upon cosensitization of VC-70 with the organic dye D205 an improved efficiency of 8. 10% was obtained. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1088/1361-648X/29/8/084004 | Ultrafast Adiabatic Second Harmonic Generation | We introduce a generalization of the adiabatic frequency conversion method for an efficient conversion of ultrashort pulses in the full nonlinear regime. Our analysis takes into account dispersion as well as two-photon processes and Kerr effect, allowing complete analysis of any three waves with arbitrary phase mismatched design and any nonlinear optical process. We use this analysis to design an efficient and robust second harmonic generation, the most widely used nonlinear process for both fundamental and applied research. We experimentally show that such design not only allows for very efficient conversion of various of ultrashort pulses, but is also very robust to variations in the parameters of both the nonlinear crystal and the incoming light. These include variation of more than 100 °C in the crystal temperature, a wide bandwidth of up to 75 nm and a chirp variation of 300 fs to 3. 5 ps of the incoming pulse. Also, we show the dependency of the adiabatic second harmonic generation design on the pump intensity and the crystal length. Our study shows that two photon absorption plays a critical role in such high influence nonlinear dynamics, and that it must be considered in order to achieve agreement with experimental results. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.5194/acp-18-3369-2018 | Evaluation of stratospheric age of air from CF<sub>4</sub>, C<sub>2</sub>F<sub>6</sub>, C<sub>3</sub>F<sub>8</sub>, CHF<sub>3</sub>, HFC-125, HFC-227ea and SF<sub>6</sub>; implications for the calculations of halocarbon lifetimes, fractional release factors and ozone depletion potentials | . In a changing climate, potential stratospheric circulation changes require long-term monitoring. Stratospheric trace gas measurements are often used as a proxy for stratospheric circulation changes via the mean age of air values derived from them. In this study, we investigated five potential age of air tracers – the perfluorocarbons CF4, C2F6 and C3F8 and the hydrofluorocarbons CHF3 (HFC-23) and HFC-125 – and compare them to the traditional tracer SF6 and a (relatively) shorter-lived species, HFC-227ea. A detailed uncertainty analysis was performed on mean ages derived from these new tracers to allow us to confidently compare their efficacy as age tracers to the existing tracer, SF6. Our results showed that uncertainties associated with the mean age derived from these new age tracers are similar to those derived from SF6, suggesting that these alternative compounds are suitable in this respect for use as age tracers. Independent verification of the suitability of these age tracers is provided by a comparison between samples analysed at the University of East Anglia and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. All five tracers give younger mean ages than SF6, a discrepancy that increases with increasing mean age. Our findings qualitatively support recent work that suggests that the stratospheric lifetime of SF6 is significantly less than the previous estimate of 3200 years. The impact of these younger mean ages on three policy-relevant parameters – stratospheric lifetimes, fractional release factors (FRFs) and ozone depletion potentials – is investigated in combination with a recently improved methodology to calculate FRFs. Updates to previous estimations for these parameters are provided. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
218306 | Second generation technologies in ocean energy | The interest for renewable energies has exponentially risen in the last few years. Several factors have contributed to this growth, highlighting the increase of the energy demand, the political instability of many countries that produce fossil fuels, the high fluctuation of oil prices, the countries’ energy dependence and the concern generated by the environmental impact produced by the traditional sources of energy. This fact has boosted the development of numerous renewable energies sources and has promoted the establishment of ambitious objectives by the main world organisations, such as the one set by the European Commission of covering 20% of the energy demand with renewable energies sources by 2020. By using current marine energy harnessing technology, it would be possible to provide up to 13% of the global energy, by extracting 2,200 TWh/year.
The OCEAN_2G (Validation and pre-certification of a new 2 MW tidal energy converter) innovation project aims to validate and develop and pre-certify for its later industrialization stage an innovative full-size tidal energy harnessing system solution, ready to enter into European and global markets boosting the growth performance of industrial partners of the consortium and placing itself as a worldwide referent in the manufacturing of floating tidal energy converters.
Magallanes Renovables SL has designed, built and tested the 1:10 scale model of the platform in open water conditions, and has finalised the construction of a full-scale prototype. The outcome of this Fast Track to Innovation project is to provide a 2 MW pre-marketable floating tidal energy platform technically validated at Vigo estuary (controlled environment) and in Scotland (real operation conditions) with the involvement in the consortium of the European reference centre for tidal energy, EMEC (European Marine Energy Centre) for the pre-certification of the platform. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
281591 | The evolution of antibiotic resistance: integrating molecular mechanisms of resistance and evolutionary context | The evolution of antibiotic resistance poses an important threat to human health and welfare. Antibiotic resistance is accompanied by fitness costs that have been shown to play a key role in the spread of resistance. These costs are variable, but the underlying ecological and genetic causes of this variation remain obscure. Unfortunately, bacteria can adapt to the cost of resistance by compensatory mutations, and this permits resistance to be maintained in pathogen populations after antibiotics have been withdrawn from use. Resistance mutations vary in their potential for compensatory adaptation, but the causes of this variation remain unknown. In this project, we will determine how the molecular mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and the (i) ecological and (ii) genetic context in which resistance evolves interact to determine (a) the fitness costs associated with antibiotic resistance and (b) the potential and mechanisms for adaptation to the cost of resistance. Conceptually, we will approach this problem using an interdisciplinary approach that combines theory from population genetics and systems biology into the same evolutionary framework. To carry out this research program, we will use high-throughput experimental evolution of resistance to the broad-spectrum antibiotic rifampicin in bacteria from the genus Pseudomonas. This research approach will allow us to measure both the costs of resistance and the (i) rate and (ii) mechanisms of compensation for this cost at an unprecedented scale. The results of this research program will provide key insights into the underlying drivers of resistance emergence and persistence, and it may ultimately be possible to apply the insights from this research program to help combat resistance in pathogen populations. At a more conceptual level, this research will provide an important experimental test of the roles of chance, necessity, and historical contingency in shaping the rate and mechanisms of adaptation. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
10.1186/s12915-017-0351-0 | Population genomics reveals that an anthropophilic population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in West Africa recently gave rise to American and Asian populations of this major disease vector | Background: The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the main vector of dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses. This major disease vector is thought to have arisen when the African subspecies Ae. aegypti formosus evolved from being zoophilic and living in forest habitats into a form that specialises on humans and resides near human population centres. The resulting domestic subspecies, Ae. aegypti aegypti, is found throughout the tropics and largely blood-feeds on humans. Results: To understand this transition, we have sequenced the exomes of mosquitoes collected from five populations from around the world. We found that Ae. aegypti specimens from an urban population in Senegal in West Africa were more closely related to populations in Mexico and Sri Lanka than they were to a nearby forest population. We estimate that the populations in Senegal and Mexico split just a few hundred years ago, and we found no evidence of Ae. aegypti aegypti mosquitoes migrating back to Africa from elsewhere in the tropics. The out-of-Africa migration was accompanied by a dramatic reduction in effective population size, resulting in a loss of genetic diversity and rare genetic variants. Conclusions: We conclude that a domestic population of Ae. aegypti in Senegal and domestic populations on other continents are more closely related to each other than to other African populations. This suggests that an ancestral population of Ae. aegypti evolved to become a human specialist in Africa, giving rise to the subspecies Ae. aegypti aegypti. The descendants of this population are still found in West Africa today, and the rest of the world was colonised when mosquitoes from this population migrated out of Africa. This is the first report of an African population of Ae. aegypti aegypti mosquitoes that is closely related to Asian and American populations. As the two subspecies differ in their ability to vector disease, their existence side by side in West Africa may have important implications for disease transmission. | [
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy"
]
|
10.1126/science.aar3778 | Prospects for harnessing biocide resistance for bioremediation and detoxification | Prokaryotes in natural environments respond rapidly to high concentrations of chemicals and physical stresses. Exposure to anthropogenic toxic substances—such as oil, chlorinated solvents, or antibiotics—favors the evolution of resistant phenotypes, some of which can use contaminants as an exclusive carbon source or as electron donors and acceptors. Microorganisms similarly adapt to extreme pH, metal, or osmotic stress. The metabolic plasticity of prokaryotes can thus be harnessed for bioremediation and can be exploited in a variety of ways, ranging from stimulated natural attenuation to bioaugmentation and from wastewater treatment to habitat restoration. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering"
]
|
W2221129296 | Annotating evidence-based argumentation in biomedical text | A new challenge in natural language processing, argumentation mining is the automatic identification of an argument's premises, conclusion, and argumentation scheme, and relationships between arguments. Argumentation mining could provide critical context for information extraction and question answering and support new forms of summarization and citation indexing. However, argumentation mining, in this sense, has not yet been addressed in BioNLP. This theoretical paper contributes towards annotation of argumentation in biomedical/biological corpora. We show that argumentative zone models and models of discourse coherence do not represent the same aspects of discourse as a model of evidence-based argumentation. We explore the challenges of annotation of argumentation in full-text biomedical articles and describe the steps we have taken towards annotating a biomedical corpus for argumentation mining research. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pone.0102365 | Experimental evolution of an oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus with increased selectivity for p53-deficient cells | Experimental evolution has been used for various biotechnological applications including protein and microbial cell engineering, but less commonly in the field of oncolytic virotherapy. Here, we sought to adapt a rapidly evolving RNA virus to cells deficient for the tumor suppressor gene p53, a hallmark of cancer cells. To achieve this goal, we established four independent evolution lines of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in p53-knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts (p53-/- MEFs) under conditions favoring the action of natural selection. We found that some evolved viruses showed increased fitness and cytotoxicity in p53-/- cells but not in isogenic p53+ /+ cells, indicating gene-specific adaptation. However, full-length sequencing revealed no obvious or previously described genetic changes associated with oncolytic activity. Half-maximal effective dose (EC50) assays in mouse p53-positive colon cancer (CT26) and p53-deficient breast cancer (4T1) cells indicated that the evolved viruses were more effective against 4T1 cells than the parental virus or a reference oncolytic VSV (MΔ51), but showed no increased efficacy against CT26 cells. In vivo assays using 4T1 syngeneic tumor models showed that one of the evolved lines significantly delayed tumor growth compared to mice treated with the parental virus or untreated controls, and was able to induce transient tumor suppression. Our results show that RNA viruses can be specifically adapted typical cancer features such as p53 inactivation, and illustrate the usefulness of experimental evolution for oncolytic virotherapy. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering"
]
|
IB 2012051486 W | ASSEMBLY COMPRISING A SECURITY APPARATUS EQUIPPING A LIFTING DEVICE, IN PARTICULAR A WINCH, AND SYSTEM FOR ACTUATING SAID APPARATUS | This assembly (1) comprises a security apparatus (2) equipping a lifting device, in particular a winch, and a system (3) for actuating said apparatus; the security apparatus (2) comprises a toothed wheel (5), wedged on the shaft of the lifting device, and a worm (6) meshing with said toothed wheel. According to the invention, said assembly (1) also comprises: -a splined shaft (15) secured to one end of the worm (6); -a pocketed wheel (21) with inner and outer splines, engaged on the splined shaft (15); -an elastic member (22)between the pocketed wheel (21)and a stop piece(23); -a drive wheel (20) with a splined hub, with which the pocketed wheel (21) is capable of engaging rotationally; -a back-up motor (35), capable of rotating the drive wheel (20). | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
US 2011/0042861 W | HOLE TRANSPORT COMPOSITIONS AND RELATED DEVICES AND METHODS (II) | A composition comprising: at least one compound comprising a hole transporting core, wherein the core is covalently bonded to a first arylamine group and also covalently bonded to a second arylamine group different from the first, and wherein the compound is covalently bonded to at least one intractability group, wherein the intractability group is covalently bonded to the hole transporting core, the first arylamine group, the second arylamine group, or a combination thereof, and wherein the compound has a molecular weight of about 5,000 g/mole or less. Blended mixtures of arylamine compounds, including fluorene core compounds, can provide good film formation and stability when coated onto hole injection layers. Solution processing of OLEDs is a particularly important application. | [
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Materials Engineering",
"Condensed Matter Physics"
]
|
10.1890/14-1300.1 | Long Term Individual Foraging Site Fidelity Why Some Gannets Don T Change Their Spots | Many established models of animal foraging assume that individuals are ecologically equivalent. However, it is increasingly recognized that populations may comprise individuals who differ consistently in their diets and foraging behaviors. For example, recent studies have shown that individual foraging site fidelity (IFSF, when individuals consistently forage in only a small part of their population's home range) occurs in some colonial breeders. Short-term IFSF could result from animals using a win–stay, lose–shift foraging strategy. Alternatively, it may be a consequence of individual specialization. Pelagic seabirds are colonial central-place foragers, classically assumed to use flexible foraging strategies to target widely dispersed, spatiotemporally patchy prey. However, tracking has shown that IFSF occurs in many seabirds, although it is not known whether this persists across years. To test for long-term IFSF and to examine alternative hypotheses concerning its cause, we repeatedly tracked 55 Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) from a large colony in the North Sea within and across three successive breeding seasons. Gannets foraged in neritic waters, predictably structured by tidal mixing and thermal stratification, but subject to stochastic, wind-induced overturning. Both within and across years, coarse to mesoscale (tens of kilometers) IFSF was significant but not absolute, and foraging birds departed the colony in individually consistent directions. Carbon stable isotope ratios in gannet blood tissues were repeatable within years and nitrogen ratios were also repeatable across years, suggesting long-term individual dietary specialization. Individuals were also consistent across years in habitat use with respect to relative sea surface temperature and in some dive metrics, yet none of these factors accounted for IFSF. Moreover, at the scale of weeks, IFSF did not decay over time and the magnitude of IFSF across years was similar to that within years, suggesting that IFSF is not primarily the result of win–stay, lose–shift foraging. Rather, we hypothesize that site familiarity, accrued early in life, causes IFSF by canalizing subsequent foraging decisions. Evidence from this and other studies suggests that IFSF may be common in colonial central-place foragers, with far-reaching consequences for our attempts to understand and conserve these animals in a rapidly changing environment. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
US 202117335445 A | Power-activated cam lock | In general, the present invention is incorporated in a cam lock housing that is securable relative to a drawer or door. Coupled to the cam lock housing is an actuator package. The actuator package of this exemplary cam lock system can include a retractable geared plate or tongue, a micro gear motor, a controller, and a power system. In operation, the drive gear/pinion causes lateral displacement of tongue towards or away from a latch in order to lock or unlock the item. As such, a medicine cabinet (or similar), can be remotely locked or unlocked. Alternatively, rotation of a physical key within the cam lock rotates the cam lock housing and the tongue towards or away from a latch so that the cam lock can also be operated manually. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1145/3338286.3340120 | How Do People Type On Mobile Devices Observations From A Study With 37 000 Volunteers | This paper presents a large-scale dataset on mobile text entry collected via a web-based transcription task performed by 37,370 volunteers. The average typing speed was 36. 2 WPM with 2. 3% uncorrected errors. The scale of the data enables powerful statistical analyses on the correlation between typing performance and various factors, such as demographics, finger usage, and use of intelligent text entry techniques. We report effects of age and finger usage on performance that correspond to previous studies. We also find evidence of relationships between performance and use of intelligent text entry techniques: auto-correct usage correlates positively with entry rates, whereas word prediction usage has a negative correlation. To aid further work on modeling, machine learning and design improvements in mobile text entry, we make the code and dataset openly available. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1186/s13550-016-0248-x | Hepatobiliary scintigraphy may improve radioembolization treatment planning in HCC patients | Background: Routine work-up for transarterial radioembolization, based on clinical and laboratory parameters, sometimes fails, resulting in severe hepatotoxicity in up to 5% of patients. Quantitative assessment of the pretreatment liver function and its segmental distribution, using hepatobiliary scintigraphy may improve patient selection and treatment planning. A case series will be presented to illustrate the potential of this technique. Hepatocellular carcinoma patients with cirrhosis (Child-Pugh A and B) underwent hepatobiliary scintigraphy pre- and 3 months post-radioembolization as part of a prospective study protocol, which was prematurely terminated because of limited accrual. Included patients were analysed together with their clinical, laboratory and treatment data. Results: Pretreatment-corrected 99mTc-mebrofenin liver uptake rates were marginal (1. 8–3. 0%/min/m2), despite acceptable clinical and laboratory parameters. Posttreatment liver functions seriously declined (corrected 99mTc-mebrofenin liver uptake rates: 0. 6–2. 4%/min/m2), resulting in lethal radioembolization-induced liver disease in two out of three patients. Conclusions: Hepatobiliary scintigraphy may be of added value during work-up for radioembolization, to estimate liver function reserve and its segmental distribution, especially in patients with underlying cirrhosis, for whom analysis of clinical and laboratory parameters may not be sufficient. | [
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
10.1088/0004-637X/792/2/116 | Magnetic Fields And Massive Star Formation | Massive stars (M > 8 M {sub ☉}) typically form in parsec-scale molecular clumps that collapse and fragment, leading to the birth of a cluster of stellar objects. We investigate the role of magnetic fields in this process through dust polarization at 870 μm obtained with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). The SMA observations reveal polarization at scales of ≲0. 1 pc. The polarization pattern in these objects ranges from ordered hour-glass configurations to more chaotic distributions. By comparing the SMA data with the single dish data at parsec scales, we found that magnetic fields at dense core scales are either aligned within 40° of or perpendicular to the parsec-scale magnetic fields. This finding indicates that magnetic fields play an important role during the collapse and fragmentation of massive molecular clumps and the formation of dense cores. We further compare magnetic fields in dense cores with the major axis of molecular outflows. Despite a limited number of outflows, we found that the outflow axis appears to be randomly oriented with respect to the magnetic field in the core. This result suggests that at the scale of accretion disks (≲ 10{sup 3} AU), angular momentum and dynamic interactions possibly due to close binarymore » or multiple systems dominate over magnetic fields. With this unprecedentedly large sample of massive clumps, we argue on a statistical basis that magnetic fields play an important role during the formation of dense cores at spatial scales of 0. 01-0. 1 pc in the context of massive star and cluster star formation. « less | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
3734598 | Training network on the conversion of co2 by smart autotrophic biorefineries | The development of processes for the utilization of renewable resources is one of the main challenges of our society. The CONCO2RDE EJD will train 11 ESRs in cutting edge research projects on (i) the combination of synthetic biology approaches with metabolic and process engineering for an adaptive laboratory evolution to create an efficient route from CO2 fixation to the production of chemicals, (ii) H2/CO2/O2-based fermentation and process intensification in order to optimize commercially relevant processes together with industry, (iii) defining a road-map for the industrial implementation of autotrophic biotransformations. The double degree program allows in-depth training in two complementary disciplines, further strengthened by a transferable skills training with strong industry participation. The objectives will be attained through a consortium of one translational institute, six universities, eight industrial partners and one cluster, providing the ideal environment to foster complementary expertise in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biocatalysis, process engineering and analytics. CONCO2RDE focuses on the development of genetic tools for strain manipulation, the integration of H2-driven biotransformations, new reactor concepts for H2/CO2/O2-based fermentation to reach high cell densities and a better understanding of the cell physiology under autotrophic culture conditions. CONCO2RDE's research agenda will be accompanied by a dedicated training of the ESRs as well as the dissemination of results to the scientific community and the wider public. The inter- and multidisciplinary setting offered through double degrees combined with industrial training in secondments and the training agenda will not only provide the tools and means necessary for the implementation of sustainable processes, but also prepare the next generation of researchers for the implementation of sustainable autotrophic processes in the European Biotech sector. | [
"Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering",
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1063/1.4714557 | Performance Of Dissipative Dielectric Elastomer Generators | Dielectric elastomer generators are high-energy-density electromechanical transducers. Their performance is affected by dissipative losses. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of a dielectric elastomer generator with two dissipative processes: viscoelasticity and current leakage. Conversion cycles are shown to attain steady-state after several cycles. Performance parameters such as electrical energy generated per cycle, average power, and mechanical to electrical energy conversion efficiency are introduced. Trade-offs between large electrical energy and power output and poor conversion efficiency are discussed. Excessive current leakage results in negative efficiency—the dielectric elastomer generator wastes energy instead of generating it. The general framework developed in this paper helps in the design and assessment of conversion cycles for dissipative dielectric elastomer generators. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Materials Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
897395 | Secure and private health data exchange | The Health sector’s increasing dependence on digital information and communication infrastructures renders it vulnerable to threats to privacy and cybersecurity, especially as the theft of health data has become particularly lucrative for cyber criminals. At the same time, a breach of integrity of health data can have dramatic consequences for the patients affected. CUREX addresses comprehensively the protection of the confidentiality and integrity of health data by producing a novel, flexible and scalable situational awareness-oriented platform. It allows a healthcare provider to assess the realistic cybersecurity and privacy risks they are exposed to and suggest mathematically optimal strategies for addressing these risks with safeguards tailored specifically for each business case and application. CUREX is fully GDPR compliant by design. At its core, a decentralised architecture enhanced with a private blockchain infrastructure ensures the integrity of the risk assessment process and of all data transactions that occur between the diverse range of stakeholders involved. Crucially, CUREX expands beyond technical measures and places emphasis also on improving cyber hygiene through training and raising awareness activities for a healthcare institution’s personnel. Its validation focuses on the highly challenging condition of (cross-border) health data exchange, spanning patient cross-border mobility, remote healthcare, and data exchange for research. CUREX consortium will also utilise the outcomes of the well-known MyHealthMyData project in a dedicated demonstration that will use their blockchain-enabled platform which will control the actual data exchange. We envisage that CUREX will impact the European market developing one of the first blockchain platform for risk assessment management under the GDPR. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1080/00905992.2012.743514 | Cutting The Mists Of The Black Mountain Cleavages In Montenegro S Divide Over Statehood And Identity | The two decades of Montenegro's transition that followed the disintegration of Yugoslavia were marked by the transformation of the ambitions of the ruling political elites, which pushed the republic that once sought to be a member in a federal state towards independence. The shift in the agendas of the political elites also changed the meaning of the notions of “Montenegrin” and “Serb”. Hence, this paper looks at the cleavages that emerged during Montenegro's divide over statehood and identity. It asserts that elite competition in unconsolidated states prompts the emergence of ethno-cultural cleavages, which are necessary for establishing the identities of political elites and of their followers. The study first identifies the critical junctures for the emergence of functional and structural cleavages in Montenegro and associates these cleavages with the changing political context. It proceeds with an analysis of ethno-cultural cleavages, arguing that these emerged from the politicization of historical na. . . | [
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems",
"The Social World and Its Interactions",
"The Study of the Human Past"
]
|
W123594003 | Optimization of operating parameters for efficient photocatalytic inactivation of Escherichia coli based on a statistical design of experiments | In this work, the individual and interaction effects of three key operating parameters of the photocatalytic disinfection process were evaluated and optimized using response surface methodology (RSM) for the first time. The chosen operating parameters were: reaction temperature, initial pH of the reaction mixture and TiO2 P-25 photocatalyst loading. Escherichia coli concentration, after 90 minutes irradiation of UV-A light, was selected as the response. Twenty sets of photocatalytic disinfection experiments were conducted by adjusting operating parameters at five levels using the central composite design. Based on the experimental data, a semi-empirical expression was established and applied to predict the response. Analysis of variance revealed a strong correlation between predicted and experimental values of the response. The optimum values of the reaction temperature, initial pH of the reaction mixture and photocatalyst loading were found to be 40.3 °C, 5.9 g/L, and 1.0 g/L, respectively. Under the optimized conditions, E. coli concentration was observed to reduce from 107 to about 11 CFU/mL during the photocatalytic process. Moreover, all these results showed the great significance of the RSM in developing high performance processes for photocatalytic water disinfection. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Products and Processes Engineering"
]
|
10.4337/9781785365805 | Handbook on the geographies of regions and territories | This new international Handbook provides the reader with the most up-to-date and original viewpoints on critical debates relating to the rapidly transforming geographies of regions and territories, as well as related key concepts such as place, scale, networks and regionalism. Bringing together renowned specialists who have extensively theorized these spatial concepts and contributed to rich empirical research in disciplines such as geography, sociology, political science and IR studies, this interdisciplinary collection offers fresh, cutting-edge, and contextual insights on the significance of regions and territories in today's dynamic world. | [
"Human Mobility, Environment, and Space"
]
|
W2115921302 | Spatial and temporal patterns of nearshore clarity in Lake Tahoe from fine resolution turbidity measurements | Abstract The nearshore areas of lakes respond quickly to watershed runoff, increases in tributary inflows from annual snowmelt, and increased anthropogenic activity in the basin. Therefore, this area of the lake serves both as an early warning system for water quality degradation and as an indicator of the effectiveness of land management practices or sediment control projects. In this study we evaluated the usefulness of combining fine-scale water quality measurements and discrete particle sample analysis to gain a better understanding of seasonal and spatial trends in the nearshore area of Lake Tahoe. Turbidity and mineral composition at 0.5 m depth were measured in nearshore waters near the City of South Lake Tahoe at a spatial resolution of 5–30 m in 2002 and 2003. Particles filtered from discrete samples collected 200 m from shore were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and chemical analysis using quantum electron dispersive spectrometry. Baseline turbidity levels were extremely low (0.15 NTU) ... | [
"Earth System Science",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
interreg_31 | A joint catalogue | This project is going to ensure the electronic retrieval of the catalogue data that are part of the bibliographic wealth owned by the partner bodies, in order to set up a single OPAC or metaOPAC to be freely consulted through the web. At present the whole bibliographic wealth of Trieste University can be accessed through the web, but after consulting different catalogues. The project is going to unify all catalogues, joining them with those - already computerized or to be computerized - belonging to the participating bodies, and setting up a single OPAC query mask, both in Italian and in Slovene. The OPAC is managed through a couple of dedicated servers, which can restore the service immediately in case of hardware problems; the joint OPAC will foster the circulation of the bibliographic material, increasing the number of interlibrary lending transactions. The project is divided into two stages: the organization of a single OPAC to access all computerized data and the beginning of mutual interlibrary lending; the completion of bibliographic data by entering non-computerized data, whilst ascertaining the accuracy of the bibliographic description of the automatically retrieved data. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1016/j.cels.2020.01.001 | A Global Screen for Assembly State Changes of the Mitotic Proteome by SEC-SWATH-MS | Living systems integrate biochemical reactions that determine the functional state of each cell. Reactions are primarily mediated by proteins. In proteomic studies, these have been treated as independent entities, disregarding their higher-level organization into complexes that affects their activity and/or function and is thus of great interest for biological research. Here, we describe the implementation of an integrated technique to quantify cell-state-specific changes in the physical arrangement of protein complexes concurrently for thousands of proteins and hundreds of complexes. Applying this technique to a comparison of human cells in interphase and mitosis, we provide a systematic overview of mitotic proteome reorganization. The results recall key hallmarks of mitotic complex remodeling and suggest a model of nuclear pore complex disassembly, which we validate by orthogonal methods. To support the interpretation of quantitative SEC-SWATH-MS datasets, we extend the software CCprofiler and provide an interactive exploration tool, SECexplorer-cc. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1255/jsi.2019.a4 | Comparison of spectral selection methods in the development of classification models from visible near infrared
hyperspectral imaging data | Applications of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) to the quantitative and qualitative measurement of samples have grown
widely in recent years, due mainly to the improved performance and lower cost of imaging spectroscopy instrumentation. Data sampling is a crucial yet often overlooked step in hyperspectral image analysis, which impacts the subsequent
results and their interpretation. In the selection of pixel spectra for the calibration of classification models, the spatial
information in HSI data can be exploited. In this paper, a variety of sampling strategies for selection of pixel spectra are
presented, exemplified through five case studies. The strategies are compared in terms of the proportion of global
variability captured, practicality and predictive model performance. The use of variographic analysis as a guide to the
spatial segmentation prior to sampling leads to the selection of representative subsets while reducing the variation in model
performance parameters over repeated random selection. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
10.1038/nature13971 | Isotopic constraints on marine and terrestrial N <inf>2</inf> O emissions during the last deglaciation | Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance that has anthropogenic as well as natural marine and terrestrial sources. The tropospheric N2O concentrations have varied substantially in the past in concert with changing climate on glacial-interglacial and millennial timescales. It is not well understood, however, how N2O emissions from marine and terrestrial sources change in response to varying environmental conditions. The distinct isotopic compositions of marine and terrestrial N2O sources can help disentangle the relative changes in marine and terrestrial N2O emissions during past climate variations. Here we present N2O concentration and isotopic data for the last deglaciation, from 16,000 to 10,000 years before present, retrieved from air bubbles trapped in polar ice at Taylor Glacier, Antarctica. With the help of our data and a box model of the N2O cycle, we find a 30 per cent increase in total N2O emissions from the late glacial to the interglacial, with terrestrial and marine emissions contributing equally to the overall increase and generally evolving in parallel over the last deglaciation, even though there is no a priori connection between the drivers of the two sources. However, we find that terrestrial emissions dominated on centennial timescales, consistent with a state-of-the-art dynamic global vegetation and land surface process model that suggests that during the last deglaciation emission changes were strongly influenced by temperature and precipitation patterns over land surfaces. The results improve our understanding of the drivers of natural N2O emissions and are consistent with the idea that natural N2O emissions will probably increase in response to anthropogenic warming. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
10.1002/anie.201406412 | Bacterial reaction centers purified with styrene maleic acid copolymer retain native membrane functional properties and display enhanced stability | Integral membrane proteins often present daunting challenges for biophysical characterization, a fundamental issue being how to select a surfactant that will optimally preserve the individual structure and functional properties of a given membrane protein. Bacterial reaction centers offer a rare opportunity to compare the properties of an integral membrane protein in different artificial lipid/surfactant environments with those in the native bilayer. Here, we demonstrate that reaction centers purified using a styrene maleic acid copolymer remain associated with a complement of native lipids and do not display the modified functional properties that typically result from detergent solubilization. Direct comparisons show that reaction centers are more stable in this copolymer/lipid environment than in a detergent micelle or even in the native membrane, suggesting a promising new route to exploitation of such photovoltaic integral membrane proteins in device applications. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Synthetic Chemistry and Materials",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1146/annurev-pathol-020117-043634 | Modeling Disease with Human Inducible Pluripotent Stem Cells | Understanding the physiopathology of disease remains an essential step in developing novel therapeutics. Although animal models have certainly contributed to advancing this enterprise, their limitation in modeling all the aspects of complex human disorders is one of the major challenges faced by the biomedical research field. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) derived from patients represent a great opportunity to overcome this deficiency because these cells cover the genetic diversity needed to fully model human diseases. Here, we provide an overview of the history of hiPSC technology and discuss common challenges and approaches that we and others have faced when using hiPSCs to model disease. Our emphasis is on liver disease, and consequently, we review the progress made using this technology to produce functional liver cells in vitro and how these systems are being used to recapitulate a diversity of developmental, metabolic, genetic, and infectious liver disorders. | [
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing"
]
|
10.1109/CSF.2011.21 | The Complexity Of Quantitative Information Flow Problems | In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of quantitative information flow (QIF) problems. Information-theoretic quantitative relaxations of noninterference (based on Shannon entropy)have been introduced to enable more fine-grained reasoning about programs in situations where limited information flow is acceptable. The QIF bounding problem asks whether the information flow in a given program is bounded by a constant $d$. Our first result is that the QIF bounding problem is PSPACE-complete. The QIF memoryless synthesis problem asks whether it is possible to resolve nondeterministic choices in a given partial program in such a way that in the resulting deterministic program, the quantitative information flow is bounded by a given constant $d$. Our second result is that the QIF memoryless synthesis problem is also EXPTIME-complete. The QIF memoryless synthesis problem generalizes to QIF general synthesis problem which does not impose the memoryless requirement (that is, by allowing the synthesized program to have more variables then the original partial program). Our third result is that the QIF general synthesis problem is EXPTIME-hard. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics"
]
|
interreg_630 | Central Europe Upstreaming for Policy Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing & Industry 4.0 towards 2030 | CEUP 2030 strives for excellence in policy making on Industry 4.0/Advanced Manufacturing in Central Europe. An upstreaming process is designed to meet the challenges & needs of available, high-quality innovation know-how in the CE area, which lacks sufficient cooperation & structure to really add-value at a policy-level & limits the competitive potential of connected regions. Transnational, multi-level learning supports regions to overcome this challenge. CEUP 2030 creates a comprehensive innovation system for policy making to set best-in-class structures (Trend&Innovation Networks, RIS3 Round Tables) & processes (Policy Learning Lab, Policy Intelligence Dashboard) for immediate use & long-term validity (Policy Framework 2021-2027). The status-quo is shifted through intensive, mutual triple-helix stakeholders learning, common EU-wide tech trend monitoring, to gain & streamline emerging knowledge & policy building in a regional & CE/EU context. Existing outputs & results (e.g. Tech&Inno Camps, CE Brain Base, EU-wide DIH Network) from 3 CE & 3 Horizon 2020 projects contribute to upstreaming, alongside the development of structures, tools, policy & strategy implementation with high impact. A barrier for upstreaming has been poorly defined, common understanding for new technologies among triple-helix partners, due to time-constraints & limited policy alignment among regions/countries. Both are overcome by joint policy learning including new, targeted know-how from Tech Radars & a strategic common policy strategy for 2021-2027 incl. cross-linked use of programmes. CEUP 2030 synergises the outputs & results of the 6 CE/H2020 twin projects & sets strong links to jointly & consistently implement them & emerging spin-off projects. The project sets a unique innovation system approach for regional & transnational policy making with high practical relevance. The involved 30 CE/EU regions gain well-aligned future robust strategies with a quick start & with transnational value. | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations",
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems"
]
|
862342 | Analysis of geometry-driven phenomena in fluid mechanics, PDEs and spectral theory | This project aims to go significantly beyond the state of the art in several fundamental questions in PDEs with a clear geometric flavor. Central to this proposal is the Euler equation for an incompressible fluid, where the topics that I will be concerned with range from free boundary problems where I will strive to prove that the curvature of the interface blows up in finite time due to the appearance of kinks of controlled geometry, to the existence of smooth stationary solutions that feature chaotic trajectories confined in knotted vortex tubes of any topology, as conjectured by V.I. Arnold over fifty years ago. I will also consider a number of questions in spectral theory about the geometry of the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian and of the curl operator (the so called Beltrami fields, of crucial importance in the study of stationary Euler flows), analyze the process of creation and destruction of vortex structures in the 3D Navier-Stokes and Gross-Pitaevskii equations, consider blowup problems in magnetohydrodynamics, develop global approximation theorems for dispersive equations, and study the limiting measures of a sequence of solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equation. Key for the feasibility of this deep, ambitious project is that these topics are by no means disjoint, so some common themes and fundamental ideas keep coming up in protean forms throughout the research project, and that I have already achieved major results in essentially all the topics covered in the proposal. This includes the proofs of well-known conjectures in fluid mechanics and spectral theory due to Lord Kelvin (1875), V.I. Arnold (1965), S.T. Yau (1993) and M. Berry (2001). The award of a Consolidator Grant would allow me to consolidate both my position as a leader in my fields of interest and the top-level research group on these topics that I am building. | [
"Mathematics",
"Condensed Matter Physics"
]
|
10.1111/j.1365-2435.2011.01854.x | Interactive effects of Pgi genotype and temperature on larval growth and survival in the Glanville fritillary butterfly | 1. Genetic polymorphism in the gene phosphoglucose isomerase (Pgi) encoding for a glycolytic enzyme has been shown to affect many traits in adult insects, including flight metabolism, running speed, fecundity and longevity, but it is not known to what extent Pgi genotypic effects are consistent across different life stages. 2. In the Glanville fritillary butterfly, heterozygous AC adult individuals for a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (AA111) in the coding region of Pgi have superior fitness to the common homozygotes (AA) in practically all life-history traits. 3. Here, we studied associations between Pgi SNP AA111 and larval and pupal weights, larval development time in three different temperatures and adult longevity. Small body size and limited mobility of larvae offer little buffer against changes in ambient temperature; hence, temperature is expected to affect greatly larval growth and development. 4. In contrast to adults, larval performance was superior in AA homozygotes in two respects. First, survival was higher in AA homozygotes under stressful conditions, represented by the low-temperature treatment in which survival was generally low. Second, the AA homozygotes had heavier pupae. In spite of the latter result, adult life span was longer in the AC heterozygotes, in support of previous studies. 5. The results on larval growth are consistent with the hypothesis of a trade-off between thermal stability and kinetic efficiency between the different isoforms of the PGI enzyme, but the results also indicate unexpected differences in the genotypic effects at different life stages. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems"
]
|
10.4049/jimmunol.1700287 | IL-1β and IL-23 promote extrathymic commitment of CD27<sup>+</sup>CD1222 γδ T cells to γδ T17 cells | gdT17 cells are a subset of gd T cells committed to IL-17 production and are characterized by the expression of IL-23R and CCR6 and lack of CD27 expression. gdT17 cells are believed to arise within a narrow time window during prenatal thymic development. In agreement with this concept, we show in this study that adult Rag12/2 recipient mice of Il23rgfp/+ (IL-23R reporter) bone marrow selectively lack IL-23R+ gdT17 cells. Despite their absence in secondary lymphoid tissues during homeostasis, gdT17 cells emerge in bone marrow chimeric mice upon induction of skin inflammation by topical treatment with imiquimod cream (Aldara). We demonstrate that IL-1β and IL-23 together are able to promote the development of bona fide gdT17 cells from peripheral CD1222IL-23R2 gd T cells, whereas CD122+ gd T cells fail to convert into gdT17 cells and remain stable IFN-g producers (gdT1 cells). IL-23 is instrumental in expanding extrathymically generated gdT17 cells. In particular, TCR-Vg4+ chain-expressing CD1222IL-23R2 gd T cells are induced to express IL-23R and IL-17 outside the thymus during skin inflammation. In contrast, TCR-Vg1+ gd T cells largely resist this process because prior TCR engagement in the thymus has initiated their commitment to the gdT1 lineage. In summary, our data reveal that the peripheral pool of gd T cells retains a considerable degree of plasticity because it harbors ?naive? precursors, which can be induced to produce IL-17 and replenish peripheral niches that are usually occupied by thymus-derived gdT17 cells. | [
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy"
]
|
10.1177/1367877917750670 | Be Creative For The State Creative Workers In Chinese State Owned Cultural Enterprises | This article studies creative labour in Chinese state-owned cultural enterprises (SOCEs). Based on the empirical analysis of fieldwork data, it analyses the governmentality of creative labour in Ch. . . | [
"Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems",
"The Social World and Its Interactions"
]
|
10.1039/c6cc08492c | A red-NIR fluorescent dye detecting nuclear DNA G-quadruplexes: in vitro analysis and cell imaging | Light-up of nuclear G-quadruplex DNA in cells by an aggregating and red/NIR emitting dye. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.12.005 | Tax design in the alcohol market | Alcohol consumption generates negative externalities that are non-linear in the total amount of alcohol consumed. If tastes for products are heterogeneous and correlated with marginal externalities, then varying tax rates on different products can lead to welfare gains. We study this problem in an optimal tax framework and empirically for the UK market. We find that heavy drinkers have systematically different patterns of alcohol demands and welfare gains from optimally varying rates are higher the more concentrated externalities are among heavy drinkers. | [
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations"
]
|
W2620907930 | Will ice sheets collapse in West Antarctica? | Climate
The West Antarctic ice sheet is highly vulnerable to climate warming, raising the specter of substantial sea level rise. In a Perspective, Hulbe examines whether collapse of the ice sheet is inevitable. Models suggest that if the world can rein in fossil fuel emissions and follow a low-emissions pathway, the ice sheet’s retreat may stop. However, the models are incomplete, particularly regarding the ocean cavity under the floating ice. Observational and model studies are under way to further elucidate how warmer water circulating under the ice shelf could destabilize the ice sheet, even under low-emission conditions.
Science , this issue p. [910][1]
[1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aam9728 | [
"Earth System Science",
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution"
]
|
10.1126/science.aao7043 | Photoionization in the time and frequency domain | Ultrafast processes in matter, such as the electron emission after light absorption, can now be studied using ultrashort light pulses of attosecond duration (10−18 seconds) in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range. The lack of spectral resolution due to the use of short light pulses has raised issues in the interpretation of the experimental results and the comparison with theoretical calculations. We determine photoionization time delays in neon atoms over a 40–electron volt energy range with an interferometric technique combining high temporal and spectral resolution. We spectrally disentangle direct ionization from ionization with shake-up, in which a second electron is left in an excited state, and obtain excellent agreement with theoretical calculations, thereby solving a puzzle raised by 7-year-old measurements. | [
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
639889 | Imaging the Dynamical Imprints of Planet Formation in Protoplanetary Discs | The gas and dust discs around young stars are thought to be the birthplace of planetary systems and are a key area to study if further progress is to be made on understanding the history of our solar system and our own origins. Once planets have formed in these discs, they dynamically sculpt their environment, for instance by opening tidally-cleared gaps or triggering spiral arms and disc warps. The late stages of this process are likely observed in the “transitional” discs, where regions spanning tens of astronomical units (AU) have been cleared. The aim of this project is to image the planet formation signatures both during the transitional disc and the earlier T Tauri or Herbig Ae/Be stars phase, where the protoplanetary bodies are just starting to carve gaps in the optically thick disc. For this purpose, we will employ the latest generation of near-infrared, mid-infrared, and sub-millimeter interferometric instruments that will allow us to trace a wide range of stellocentric radii, disc scale heights, and dust opacities. We will make use of recent revolutionary advancements in infrared detector technology and equip the CHARA/MIRC 6-telescope beam combiner with a low-read noise camera that will significantly increase the sensitivity of this instrument and enable us to image protoplanetary discs with 2.5 times higher resolution and much higher efficiency than ever before. These quick-look imaging capabilities will enable us to trace time-variable structures in the inner few AU and to investigate their relation to the commonly observed photometric and spectroscopic variability. Our interferometric observations in spectral lines aim to detect the accretion signatures of the young protoplanets themselves. Employing sophisticated radiation hydrodynamics simulations we will achieve an unprecedented global view on protoplanetary disc structure and obtain fundamentally new constraints on theoretical models of planet formation, planet-disc interaction, and disc evolution. | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1186/s40645-016-0083-8 | Impact-induced melting during accretion of the Earth | Because of the high energies involved, giant impacts that occur during planetary accretion cause large degrees of melting. The depth of melting in the target body after each collision determines the pressure and temperature conditions of metal-silicate equilibration and thus geochemical fractionation that results from core-mantle differentiation. The accretional collisions involved in forming the terrestrial planets of the inner Solar System have been calculated by previous studies using N-body accretion simulations. Here we use the output from such simulations to determine the volumes of melt produced and thus the pressure and temperature conditions of metal-silicate equilibration, after each impact, as Earth-like planets accrete. For these calculations a parameterised melting model is used that takes impact velocity, impact angle and the respective masses of the impacting bodies into account. The evolution of metal-silicate equilibration pressures (as defined by evolving magma ocean depths) during Earth’s accretion depends strongly on the lifetime of impact-generated magma oceans compared to the time interval between large impacts. In addition, such results depend on starting parameters in the N-body simulations, such as the number and initial mass of embryos. Thus, there is the potential for combining the results, such as those presented here, with multistage core formation models to better constrain the accretional history of the Earth. | [
"Earth System Science",
"Universe Sciences"
]
|
W2210241830 | Vagal stimulation to suppress alternans: Are we saving lives or simply masking surrogate markers? | Multiple studies have demonstrated that the functional modulation of the heart exerted by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) can prove maladaptive in the context of heart failure (HF), and it is evident that increased sympathetic and reduced parasympathetic tone play an important pathophysiological role in the progression of HF irrespective of its etiology. In light of its implications in the pathogenesis of HF, there has been growing interest in the potential of ANSmodulation as HF therapy. Theoretically, it is conceivable that enhancing parasympathetic tone to counteract the adverse effects of excessive adrenergic activity could ameliorate or even reverse the course of this progressive disease. Parasympathetic modulation of the heart is carried by the right and left vagus nerves, originating in the medulla and connecting with postganglionic neurons in ganglionated plexi located in the epicardium. The anatomical accessibility of the cervical vagus nerves and their response to electrical impulses provide a unique opportunity to interfere with ANS responses to disease. In 1967 Braunwald et al demonstrated that vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) could reproducibly attenuate angina symptoms and improve exercise capacity in 2 patients after myocardial infarction. Schwartz et al studied the effect of VNS in a series of 8 patients with advanced HF. They demonstrated a significant improvement in left ventricular end-systolic volume and functional class. A nonrandomized study of 32 patients with HF with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) reported that VNS favorably influenced quality of life, exercise capacity, and left ventricular remodeling. However, larger randomized studies have failed to systematically replicate these effects. A sham-controlled trial (NECTAR-HF) showed no benefit of VNS in LVEF or left ventricular remodeling. The ANTHEM-HF trial randomly assigned 31 and 29 patients to left and right cervical VNS, respectively. In contrast to NECTAR-HF, modest but | [
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases"
]
|
260892 | Spatiotemporal regulation of chromosome segregation fidelity | At any given moment, 250 million cells are dividing in the human body through an essential process known as mitosis. Inaccuracy of mitosis leads directly to aneuploidy (gain or loss of chromosomes), a hallmark of several cancers and birth defects. Mitotic fidelity is controlled by the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), a signaling pathway that delays the progression of mitosis to ensure that all chromosomes are attached to mitotic spindle microtubules (MTs). Central to this activity, the kinetochore (KT), a minute structure on each replicated sister-chromatid, promotes the rapid turnover of MTs to correct potential attachment errors during early mitotic stages. Upon anaphase onset, the KT then switches to bind MTs with higher affinity, so that the energy derived from their depolymerizing plus ends helps driving chromosome motion to the poles. While the molecular basis of the KT-MT interface is only now starting to be elucidated, how the multiple KT activities are regulated throughout mitosis remains unknown. Here we propose to dissect from a molecular perspective how the interaction between spindle MTs and KTs controls chromosome segregation fidelity in space and time. For this purpose we will combine the power of biochemical analysis and genome-wide RNAi screens with the detailed functional investigation of already identified candidate genes using state-of-the-art live cell microscopy and pilot laser microsurgery tools in animal cells. Additionally, we have in place all the necessary conditions to investigate the physiological significance of chromosome segregation errors and evaluate respective outcomes using unique mammalian model systems. With this synergistic approach we aim to unveil the molecular routes of aneuploidygenesis and their implications to human health. | [
"Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
W1979893134 | Optimization of WEDM Process Parameters of Hybrid Composites (A413 / B<sub>4</sub>C / Fly Ash) Using Grey Relational Analysis | This paper presents an optimum method to find the significant parameters affecting Wire Electrical Discharge machining (WEDM) performance using Grey relational analysis. A413 Aluminium Alloy reinforced with 20 microns of Boron Carbide and 75 microns of Fly Ash, hybrid composites was fabricated using stir casting technique. Experiments have been conducted with the process parameters like pulse on time, pulse off time, wire feed, gap voltage and weight percentage reinforcement with three different levels. The influence of each parameter on the responses material removal rate and surface roughness is established using analysis of variances (ANOVA). The optimal machining-parameters setting for minimum surface roughness and maximum material removal rate was obtained by applying Grey relational analysis. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
10.1051/0004-6361/201937154 | Spiral Arms And Instability Within The Afgl 4176 Mm1 Disc | We present high-resolution (30 mas or 130 au at 4. 2 kpc) Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations at 1. 2 mm of the disc around the forming O-type star AFGL 4176 mm1. The disc (AFGL 4176 mm1-main) has a radius of ~1000 au and contains significant structure, most notably a spiral arm on its redshifted side. We fitted the observed spiral with logarithmic and Archimedean spiral models. We find that both models can describe its structure, but the Archimedean spiral with a varying pitch angle fits its morphology marginally better. As well as signatures of rotation across the disc, we observe gas arcs in CH$_3$CN that connect to other millimetre continuum sources in the field, supporting the picture of interactions within a small cluster around AFGL 4176 mm1-main. Using local thermodynamic equilibrium modelling of the CH$_3$CN K-ladder, we determine the temperature and velocity field across the disc, and thus produce a map of the Toomre stability parameter. Our results indicate that the outer disc is gravitationally unstable and has already fragmented or is likely to fragment in the future, possibly producing further companions. These observations provide evidence that disc fragmentation is one possible pathway towards explaining the high fraction of multiple systems around high-mass stars. | [
"Universe Sciences",
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences"
]
|
10.1039/C6LC90088G | Miniaturized Soft Bio Hybrid Robotics A Step Forward Into Healthcare Applications | Soft robotics is an emerging discipline that employs soft flexible materials such as fluids, gels and elastomers in order to enhance the use of robotics in healthcare applications. Compared to their rigid counterparts, soft robotic systems have flexible and rheological properties that are closely related to biological systems, thus allowing the development of adaptive and flexible interactions with complex dynamic environments. With new technologies arising in bioengineering, the integration of living cells into soft robotic systems offers the possibility of accomplishing multiple complex functions such as sensing and actuating upon external stimuli. These emerging bio-hybrid systems are showing promising outcomes and opening up new avenues in the field of soft robotics for applications in healthcare and other fields. | [
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"Materials Engineering"
]
|
W2055034182 | Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for weight control: Model, evidence, and future directions | Behavioral weight loss programs achieve substantial short-term weight loss; however attrition and poor weight loss maintenance remain significant problems. Recently, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been used in an attempt to improve long-term outcomes. This conceptual article outlines the standard behavioral and ACT approach to weight control, discusses potential benefits and obstacles to combing approaches, briefly reviews current ACT for weight control outcome research, and highlights significant empirical questions that remain. The current evidence suggests that ACT could be useful as an add-on treatment, or in a combined format, for improving long-term weight loss outcomes. Larger studies with longer follow-up are needed as well as studies that aim to identify how best to combine standard treatments and ACT and also who would benefit most from these approaches. | [
"Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing",
"Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases",
"The Human Mind and Its Complexity"
]
|
10.1126/science.aao6463 | Microbial oxidation of lithospheric organic carbon in rapidly eroding tropical mountain soils | Lithospheric organic carbon (“petrogenic”; OCpetro) is oxidized during exhumation and subsequent erosion of mountain ranges. This process is a considerable source of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere over geologic time scales, but the mechanisms that govern oxidation rates in mountain landscapes are poorly constrained. We demonstrate that, on average, 67 ± 11% of the OCpetro initially present in bedrock exhumed from the tropical, rapidly eroding Central Range of Taiwan is oxidized in soils, leading to CO2 emissions of 6. 1 to 18. 6 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer per year. The molecular and isotopic evolution of bulk OC and lipid biomarkers during soil formation reveals that OCpetro remineralization is microbially mediated. Rapid oxidation in mountain soils drives CO2 emission fluxes that increase with erosion rate, thereby counteracting CO2 drawdown by silicate weathering and biospheric OC burial. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1007/s10909-017-1817-8 | Lifshitz Transitions, Type-II Dirac and Weyl Fermions, Event Horizon and All That | The type-II Weyl and type-II Dirac points emerge in semimetals and also in relativistic systems. In particular, the type-II Weyl fermions may emerge behind the event horizon of black holes. In this case the horizon with Painlevé–Gullstrand metric serves as the surface of the Lifshitz transition. This relativistic analogy allows us to simulate the black hole horizon and Hawking radiation using the fermionic superfluid with supercritical velocity, and the Dirac and Weyl semimetals with the interface separating the type-I and type-II states. The difference between such type of the artificial event horizon and that which arises in acoustic metric is discussed. At the Lifshitz transition between type-I and type-II fermions the Dirac lines may also emerge, which are supported by the combined action of topology and symmetry. The type-II Weyl and Dirac points also emerge as the intermediate states of the topological Lifshitz transitions. Different configurations of the Fermi surfaces, involved in such Lifshitz transition, are discussed. In one case the type-II Weyl point connects the Fermi pockets and the Lifshitz transition corresponds to the transfer of the Berry flux between the Fermi pockets. In the other case the type-II Weyl point connects the outer and inner Fermi surfaces. At the Lifshitz transition the Weyl point is released from both Fermi surfaces. They loose their Berry flux, which guarantees the global stability, and without the topological support the inner surface disappears after shrinking to a point at the second Lifshitz transition. These examples reveal the complexity and universality of topological Lifshitz transitions, which originate from the ubiquitous interplay of a variety of topological characters of the momentum-space manifolds. For the interacting electrons, the Lifshitz transitions may lead to the formation of the dispersionless (flat) band with zero energy and singular density of states, which opens the route to room-temperature superconductivity. Originally, the idea of the enhancement of Tc due to flat band has been put forward by the nuclear physics community, and this also demonstrates the close connections between different areas of physics. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter"
]
|
10.1088/1742-6596/456/1/012007 | The Quantum Percolation Model Of The Scaling Theory Of The Quantum Hall Effect A Unifying Model For Plateau To Plateau Transitions | We present a unifying model of plateau-to-plateau transitions in the quantum Hall effect based on results from high resolution frequency scaling experiments. We show that as the frequency or quantum coherence length of the two-dimensional electron system is varied, one observes a crossover between classical percolation and quantum percolation in the measured values of the critical scaling exponents of the plateau-to-plateau transitions. This crossover is dependent on the relationship between certain relevant length scales of a two-dimensional system and can be explained using a quantum percolation model. The model explains why quantum criticality can be observed in some systems, but is absent from others. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Fundamental Constituents of Matter"
]
|
323711 | Memory Mechanisms in Man and Machine | The project aims to validate a set of 10 provocative claims. 1) Humans can recognize visual and auditory stimuli that they have not experienced for decades. 2) Recognition is possible without ever reactivating the memory trace in the intervening period. 3) During memorization, sensory memory strength increases roughly linearly with the number of exposures. 4) A few tens of presentations can be enough to form a memory that can last a lifetime. 5) Attention-related oscillatory brain activity helps store memories efficiently. 6) Storing such very long-term memories involves the creation of highly selective ""Grandmother Cells"" that only fire if the original training stimulus is experienced again. 7) The neocortex contains large numbers of totally silent cells (""Neocortical Dark Matter"") that constitute the long-term memory store. 8) Grandmother Cells can be produced using simple spiking neural network models including Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) and competitive inhibitory lateral connections. 9) This selectivity only requires binary synaptic weights that are either ""on"" or ""off"", greatly simplifying the problem of maintaining the memory over long periods. 10) Artificial systems using memristor-like devices can implement the same principles, allowing the development of powerful new processing architectures that could replace conventional computing hardware.
We will test these claims with a highly interdisciplinary approach involving psychology, neuroscience, computational modeling and hardware development. Novel experimental paradigms will study the formation and maintenance of very long term sensory memories. They will be combined with imaging techniques including fMRI imaging, EEG recording, and intracerebral recording from epileptic patients. In parallel, computer simulations using networks of spiking neurons with Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity will model the experimental results, and develop bio-inspired hardware that mimics the brains memory systems. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"The Human Mind and Its Complexity"
]
|
10.1371/journal.pone.0201619 | Neural responses when learning spatial and object sequencing tasks via imitation | Humans often learn new things via imitation. Here we draw on studies of imitation in children to characterise the brain system(s) involved in the imitation of different sequence types using functional magnetic resonance imaging. On each trial, healthy adult participants learned one of two rule types governing the sequencing of three pictures: a motor-spatial rule (in the spatial task) or an object-based rule (in the cognitive task). Sequences were learned via one of three demonstration types: a video of a hand selecting items in the sequence using a joystick (Hand condition), a computer display highlighting each item in order (Ghost condition), or a text-based demonstration of the sequence (Text condition). Participants then used a joystick to execute the learned sequence. Patterns of activation during demonstration observation suggest specialisation for object-based imitation in inferior frontal gyrus, specialisation for spatial sequences in anterior intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and a general preference for imitation in middle IPS. Adult behavioural performance contrasted with that of children in previous studies—indicating that they experienced more difficulty with the cognitive task—while neuroimaging results support the engagement of different neural regions when solving these tasks. Further study is needed on whether children’s differential performance is related to delayed IPS maturation. | [
"Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System",
"The Human Mind and Its Complexity"
]
|
W2063752165 | The Factors that Influence Skin Penetration of Solutes | Abstract In this study, human skin permeation data are analysed using a number of physicochemical descriptors. It is shown that the equilibrium distribution of compounds between the stratum corneum and water (log Km) can be correlated with either water-octanol partition coefficients (log Poct) or Abraham solute descriptors. The latter reveals that partitioning of compounds is governed by solute size and hydrogen-bond acidity that favour the stratum corneum, and solute dipolarity/polarizability, and hydrogen-bond basicity that favour water. For water-skin permeation coefficient (log kp) data it is demonstrated that log Poct cannot be used as a descriptor across a wide range of chemical families, but that log kp can be correlated using Abraham solute descriptors. These disclose that log kp values are increased by solute size and decreased by solute dipolarity/polarizability, hydrogen-bond acidity and hydrogen-bond basicity. It is suggested that different solutes travel through the stratum corneum by the same route, which cannot be distinguished as an intercellular or transcellular mechanism. Backward skin permeation is examined and it is demonstrated that factors governing this process can be rationalized. Furthermore, it is shown that using the Abraham analysis, log Poct can be corrected to correlate log kp over a wide range of compounds. The determination of solute descriptors is also described, indicating that Abraham solute descriptors can be obtained by substructure summation and partition coefficient measurements, so that dermatological properties can be predicted for solutes without the necessity for synthesis. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions"
]
|
220261 | The manufuture 2017 conference | This project proposes to organise and hold the MANUFUTURE 2017 conference in Estonia during the Estonian Presidency. The conference will focus on the competencies and capabilities that EU companies should develop to move into higher value activities and to become globally competitive. Three major issues will be addressed in the sub-themes of the conference: energy and resource efficient manufacturing, digital manufacturing and collaborative technology innovation. The conference will also look at a number of cross-cutting issues: the development of skills, access to finance, the use of innovative business models and better regulation. This project will support the objectives of the Estonian Presidency as well as promoting the success of the European manufacturing sector. | [
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"Systems and Communication Engineering",
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations"
]
|
10.1098/rspa.2019.0098 | Silicon isotopes in Arctic and sub-Arctic glacial meltwaters: the role of subglacial weathering in the silicon cycle | Glacial environments play an important role in high-latitude marine nutrient cycling, potentially contributing significant fluxes of silicon (Si) to the polar oceans, either as dissolved silicon (DSi) or as dissolvable amorphous silica (ASi). Silicon is a key nutrient in promoting marine primary productivity, contributing to atmospheric CO 2 removal. We present the current understanding of Si cycling in glacial systems, focusing on the Si isotope (δ 30 Si) composition of glacial meltwaters. We combine existing glacial δ 30 Si data with new measurements from 20 sub-Arctic glaciers, showing that glacial meltwaters consistently export isotopically light DSi compared with non-glacial rivers (+0. 16‰ versus +1. 38‰). Glacial δ 30 Si ASi composition ranges from −0. 05‰ to −0. 86‰ but exhibits low seasonal variability. Silicon fluxes and δ 30 Si composition from glacial systems are not commonly included in global Si budgets and isotopic mass balance calculations at present. We discuss outstanding questions, including the formation mechanism of ASi and the export of glacial nutrients from fjords. Finally, we provide a contextual framework for the recent advances in our understanding of subglacial Si cycling and highlight critical research avenues for assessing potential future changes in these environments. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
10.1111/1365-2656.12156 | Species Versus Guild Level Differentiation Revealed Across The Annual Cycle By Isotopic Niche Examination | Interspecific competitive interactions typically result in niche differentiation to alleviate competition through mechanisms including character displacement. However, competition is not the sole constraint on resource partitioning, and its effects are mediated by factors including the environmental context in which species coexist. Colonial seabirds provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the importance of competition in shaping realized niche widths because their life histories lead to variation in intra- and interspecific competition across the annual cycle. Dense breeding aggregations result in intense competition for prey in surrounding waters, whereas non-breeding dispersal to larger geographical areas produces lower densities of competitors. Bayesian hierarchical models of the isotopic niche, closely aligned to the trophic niche, reveal the degree of segregation between species and functional groups during both time periods. Surprisingly, species explained far more of the variance in the isotopic niche during the non-breeding than the breeding period. Our results underline the key role of non-breeding dynamics in alleviating competition and promoting distinctions between species through the facilitation of resource partitioning. Such situations may be common in a diverse range of communities sustained by ephemeral but abundant food items. This highlights how consideration of the hierarchical grouping of competitive interactions alongside consideration of abiotic constraints across the complete annual cycle allows a full understanding of the role of competition in driving patterns of character displacement. | [
"Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution",
"Earth System Science"
]
|
W563589594 | Paint it Black – To Protect the Qubits | This thesis deals with reducing quasiparticle generation in superconducting circuits caused by stray photons by utilizing electromagnetic absorbers. This thesis deals with reducing quasiparticle generation in superconducting circuits caused by stray photons by utilizing electromagnetic absorbers.
Quasiparticle generation is a known problem in several superconducting circuit applications such as quantum computing research.
In order to quantify successful radiation reduction, a superconducting resonator was used as a sensor and a cylindrical shield was designed for testing the absorbers.
Four different absorbers were tested, three of them are commercially available microwave absorbers and one was designed by our group.
Internal differences were observed between the absorbers, however, compared to reference measurements, no improvements were observed.
The results also indicates that the resonators properties changed in-between measurements and more tests should be performed in order to draw final conclusions. | [
"Condensed Matter Physics",
"Systems and Communication Engineering"
]
|
10.1088/0957-4484/24/37/375204 | Tuning The Kondo Effect In Thin Au Films By Depositing A Thin Layer Of Au On Molecular Spin Dopants | We report on the tuning of the Kondo effect in thin Au films containing a monolayer of cobalt(II) terpyridine complexes by altering the ligand structure around the Co2+ ions by depositing a thin Au capping layer on top of the monolayer on Au by magnetron sputtering (more energetic) and e-beam evaporation (softer). We show that the Kondo effect is slightly enhanced with respect to that of the uncapped film when the cap is deposited by evaporation, and significantly enhanced when magnetron sputtering is used. The Kondo temperature (T-K) increases from 3 to 4. 2/6. 2 K for the evaporated/sputtered caps. X-ray absorption spectroscopy and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy investigation showed that the organic ligands remain intact upon Au e-beam evaporation; however, sputtering inflicts significant change in the Co2+ electronic environment. The location of the monolayer-on the surface or embedded in the film-has a small effect. However, the damage of Co-N bonds induced by sputtering has a drastic effect on the increase of the impurity-electron interaction. This opens up the way for tuning of the magnetic impurity states, e. g. spin quantum number, binding energy with respect to the host Fermi energy, and overlap via the ligand structure around the ions. | [
"Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences",
"Condensed Matter Physics"
]
|
10.24963/ijcai.2020/568 | Online Revenue Maximization for Server Pricing | Efficient and truthful mechanisms to price time on remote servers/machines have been the subject of much work in recent years due to the importance of the cloud market. This paper considers online revenue maximization for a unit capacity server, when jobs are non preemptive, in the Bayesian setting: at each time step, one job arrives, with parameters drawn from an underlying distribution. We design an efficiently computable truthful posted price mechanism, which maximizes revenue in expectation and in retrospect, up to additive error. The prices are posted prior to learning the agent's type, and the computed pricing scheme is deterministic. We also show the pricing mechanism is robust to learning the job distribution from samples, where polynomially many samples suffice to obtain near optimal prices. | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Individuals, Markets and Organisations"
]
|
10.1080/10447318.2019.1630934 | Understanding Interaction Design Challenges In Mobile Extreme Citizen Science | ABSTRACTExtreme citizen science is a bottom up practice used to empower people by supporting them, via processes and technological tools, to find solutions for local problems, but also to tackle ma. . . | [
"Computer Science and Informatics",
"Products and Processes Engineering",
"The Social World and Its Interactions"
]
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.