Elasto-inertial turbulence

Turbulence is ubiquitous in nature yet even for the case of ordinary Newtonian fluids like water our understanding of this phenomenon is limited. Many liquids of practical importance however are more complicated (e.g. blood, polymer melts or paints), they exhibit elastic as well as viscous characteristics and the relation between stress and strain is nonlinear. We here demonstrate for a model system of such complex fluids that at high shear rates turbulence is not simply modified as previously believed but it is suppressed and replaced by a new type of disordered motion, elasto-inertial turbulence (EIT). EIT is found to occur at much lower Reynolds numbers than Newtonian turbulence and the dynamical properties differ significantly. In particular the drag is strongly reduced and the observed friction scaling resolves a longstanding puzzle in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics regarding the nature of the so-called maximum drag reduction asymptote. Theoretical considerations imply that EIT will arise in complex fluids if the extensional viscosity is sufficiently large

Die Rolle von programmiertem Zelltod in der epidermalen Resistenz von Gerste

Ustilago hordei ist der Erreger von Hartbrand bei Gerste und Hafer. Um pflanzlichen Abwehrreaktionen entgegenzuwirken ist dieser basidiomycete Brandpilz zur Etablierung einer biotrophen Interaktion mit seiner Wirtspflanze auf eine Vielzahl sekretierter Effektor-proteine angewiesen, wobei der Unterdrückung von programmiertem Zelltod eine besondere Rolle zu kommt. Deletionsmutanten für den sekretierten Effektor Pep1 sind hingegen nicht in der Lage die Epidermis zu penetrieren und verursachen zahlreiche Abwehrreaktionen, welche im programmierten Zelltod der attackierten Pflanzenzelle resultieren. Im Maispathogen Ustilago maydis ist der Virulenzfaktor Pep1 funktionell konserviert und inhibiert den PAMP-vermittelten ‚oxidative burst’ durch direkte Interaktion mit apoplastischen Peroxidasen. Infektionen von Gerste mit dem inkompatiblen Nicht-Wirt-Pathogen U. maydis führen ebenfalls zu epidermalem Zelltod, ähnlich einer hypersensitiven Antwort (HR; hypersensitive response). Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den molekularen und zellulären Prozessen in kompatiblen und inkompatiblen Ustilago/Gerste-Interaktionen. Anhand einer U. hordei Transkriptomanalyse während kompatiblen sowie inkompatiblen Interaktionen wurden 18 Kandidatengene ausgewählt, die auf eine Rolle während der Wirtsbesiedelung untersucht werden sollten. Vorläufige Ergebnisse zeigen bislang fünf Kandidaten mit einer möglichen Virulenzfunktion. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wurden die zellulären Reaktionen bei Gerste während Ustilago-Interaktionen untersucht. Hier wurde zwischen der kompatiblen Interaktion mit U. hordei und den inkompatiblen Interaktionen mit dem Nicht-Wirt-Pathogen U. maydis, sowie der U. hordei und U. maydis pep1-Mutante verglichen. Zwar resultiert Inkompatibilität jeweils in programmiertem Zelltod, mittels verschiedener Lebendzellfärbungen, einem enzy-matischen Aktivitätstest und Infektionen Bax Inhibitor-1 (BI-1)-überexprimierender Pflanzen konnte jedoch zwischen zwei verschiedenen Zelltodarten unterschieden werden. Während Autophagie an Zelltod bei pep1-Infektionen beteiligt ist, kommt es in Abhängigkeit von BI-1 zu Apoptose-ähnlichem Zelltod nach U. maydis-Infektion. Dies konnte mittels Transmissionselektronenmikroskopie bestätigt werden. Zusätzlich haben die Bestimmung von Wasserstoffperoxid in Apoplastenflüssigkeit und die Genregulation typischer HR-assoziierter Marker gezeigt, dass eine HR nur duch U. maydis ausgelöst wird, während pep1-Infektionen in einer basalen, PAMP-vermittelten Immunität resultieren. Demnach konnte gezeigt werden, dass verschiedene Zelltodmechanismen die Resistenz von Gerste in Abhängigkeit des infizierenden Pathogens determinieren

New Container Architectures for Mobile, Drone, and Cloud Computing

Containers are increasingly used across many different types of computing to isolate and control apps while efficiently sharing computing resources. By using lightweight operating system virtualization, they can provide apps with a virtual computing abstraction while imposing minimal hardware requirements and a small footprint. My thesis is that new container architectures can provide additional functionality, better resource utilization, and stronger security for mobile, drone, and cloud computing. To demonstrate this, we introduce three new container architectures that enable new mobile app migration functionality, a new notion of virtual drones and efficient utilization of drone hardware, and stronger security for cloud computing by protecting containers against untrusted operating systems. First, we introduce Flux to support multi-surface apps, apps that seamlessly run across multiple user devices, through app migration. Flux introduces two key mechanisms to overcome device heterogeneity and residual dependencies associated with app migration to enable app migration. Selective Record/Adaptive Replay to record just those device-agnostic app calls that lead to the generation of app-specific device-dependent state in services and replay them on the target. Checkpoint/Restore in Android (CRIA) to transition an app into a state in which device-specific information the app contains can be safely discarded before checkpointing and restoring the app within a containerized environment on the new device. Second, we introduce AnDrone, a drone-as-a-service solution that makes drones accessible in the cloud. AnDrone provides a drone virtualization architecture to leverage the fact that computational costs are cheap compared to the operational and energy costs of putting a drone in the air. This enables multiple virtual drones to run simultaneously on the same physical drone at very little additional cost. To enable multiple virtual drones to run in an isolated and secure manner, each virtual drone runs its own containerized operating system instance. AnDrone introduces a new device container architecture, providing virtual drones with secure access to a full range of drone hardware devices, including sensors such as cameras and geofenced flight control. Finally, we introduce BlackBox, a new container architecture that provides fine-grain protection of application data confidentiality and integrity without the need to trust the operating system. BlackBox introduces a container security monitor, a small trusted computing base that creates separate and independent physical address spaces for each container, such that there is no direct information flow from container to operating system or other container physical address spaces. Containerized apps do not need to be modified, can still make full use of operating system services via system calls, yet their CPU and memory state are isolated and protected from other containers and the operating system

Use of folding modulators to improve heterologous protein production in Escherichia coli

Despite the fundamental importance of E. coli in the manufacture of a wide range of biotechnological and biomedical products, extensive process and/or target optimisation is routinely required in order to achieve functional yields in excess of low mg/l levels. Molecular chaperones and folding catalysts appear to present a panacea for problems of heterologous protein folding in the organism, due largely to their broad substrate range compared with, e.g., protein-specific mutagenesis approaches. Painstaking investigation of chaperone overproduction has, however, met with mixed – and largely unpredictable – results to date. The past 5 years have nevertheless seen an explosion in interest in exploiting the native folding modulators of E. coli, and particularly cocktails thereof, driven largely by the availability of plasmid systems that facilitate simultaneous, non-rational screening of multiple chaperones during recombinant protein expression. As interest in using E. coli to produce recombinant membrane proteins and even glycoproteins grows, approaches to reduce aggregation, delay host cell lysis and optimise expression of difficult-to-express recombinant proteins will become even more critical over the coming years. In this review, we critically evaluate the performance of molecular chaperones and folding catalysts native to E. coli in improving functional production of heterologous proteins in the bacterium and we discuss how they might best be exploited to provide increased amounts of correctly-folded, active protein for biochemical and biophysical studies

Sensory Electrical Stimulation Improves Foot Placement during Targeted Stepping Post-Stroke

Proper foot placement is vital for maintaining balance during walking, requiring the integration of multiple sensory signals with motor commands. Disruption of brain structures post-stroke likely alters the processing of sensory information by motor centers, interfering with precision control of foot placement and walking function for stroke survivors. In this study, we examined whether somatosensory stimulation, which improves functional movements of the paretic hand, could be used to improve foot placement of the paretic limb. Foot placement was evaluated before, during, and after application of somatosensory electrical stimulation to the paretic foot during a targeted stepping task. Starting from standing, twelve chronic stroke participants initiated movement with the non-paretic limb and stepped to one of five target locations projected onto the floor with distances normalized to the paretic stride length. Targeting error and lower extremity kinematics were used to assess changes in foot placement and limb control due to somatosensory stimulation. Significant reductions in placement error in the medial–lateral direction (p = 0.008) were observed during the stimulation and post-stimulation blocks. Seven participants, presenting with a hip circumduction walking pattern, had reductions (p = 0.008) in the magnitude and duration of hip abduction during swing with somatosensory stimulation. Reductions in circumduction correlated with both functional and clinical measures, with larger improvements observed in participants with greater impairment. The results of this study suggest that somatosensory stimulation of the paretic foot applied during movement can improve the precision control of foot placement

Autonomic and Brain Responses Associated with Empathy Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Accumulating evidence suggests that autonomic signals and their cortical representations are closely linked to emotional processes, and that related abnormalities could lead to social deficits. Although socio-emotional impairments are a defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), empirical evidence directly supporting the link between autonomic, cortical, and socio-emotional abnormalities in ASD is still lacking. In this study, we examined autonomic arousal indexed by skin conductance responses (SCR), concurrent cortical responses measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, and effective brain connectivity estimated by dynamic causal modeling in seventeen unmedicated high-functioning adults with ASD and seventeen matched controls while they performed an empathy-for-pain task. Compared to controls, adults with ASD showed enhanced SCR related to empathetic pain, along with increased neural activity in the anterior insular cortex, although their behavioral empathetic pain discriminability was reduced and overall SCR was decreased. ASD individuals also showed enhanced correlation between SCR and neural activities in the anterior insular cortex.Importantly, significant group differences in effective brain connectivity were limited to greater reduction in the negative intrinsic connectivity of the anterior insular cortex in the ASD group, indicating a failure in attenuating anterior insular responses to empathetic pain. These results suggest that aberrant interoceptive precision, as indexed by abnormalities in autonomic activity and its central representations, may underlie empathy deficits in AS

Autonomic and Brain Responses Associated with Empathy Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Accumulating evidence suggests that autonomic signals and their cortical representations are closely linked to emotional processes, and that related abnormalities could lead to social deficits. Although socio-emotional impairments are a defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), empirical evidence directly supporting the link between autonomic, cortical, and socio-emotional abnormalities in ASD is still lacking. In this study, we examined autonomic arousal indexed by skin conductance responses (SCR), concurrent cortical responses measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, and effective brain connectivity estimated by dynamic causal modeling in seventeen unmedicated high-functioning adults with ASD and seventeen matched controls while they performed an empathy-for-pain task. Compared to controls, adults with ASD showed enhanced SCR related to empathetic pain, along with increased neural activity in the anterior insular cortex, although their behavioral empathetic pain discriminability was reduced and overall SCR was decreased. ASD individuals also showed enhanced correlation between SCR and neural activities in the anterior insular cortex.Importantly, significant group differences in effective brain connectivity were limited to greater reduction in the negative intrinsic connectivity of the anterior insular cortex in the ASD group, indicating a failure in attenuating anterior insular responses to empathetic pain. These results suggest that aberrant interoceptive precision, as indexed by abnormalities in autonomic activity and its central representations, may underlie empathy deficits in AS

Cells: A Virtual Mobile Smartphone Architecture

Cellphones are increasingly ubiquitous, so much so that many users are inconveniently forced to carry multiple cellphones to accommodate work, personal, and geographic mobility needs. We present Cells, a virtualization architecture for enabling multiple virtual smartphones to run simultaneously on the same physical cellphone device in a securely isolated manner. Cells introduces a usage model of having one foreground virtual phone and multiple background virtual phones. This model enables a new device namespace mechanism and novel device proxies that integrate with lightweight operating system virtualization to efficiently and securely multiplex phone hardware devices across multiple virtual phones while providing native hardware device performance to all applications. Virtual phone features include fully-accelerated graphics for gaming, complete power management features, and full telephony functionality with separately assignable telephone numbers and caller ID support. We have implemented a Cells prototype that supports multiple Android virtual phones on the same phone hardware. Our performance results demonstrate that Cells imposes only modest runtime and memory overhead, works seamlessly across multiple hardware devices including Google Nexus 1 and Nexus S phones and an NVIDIA tablet, and transparently runs all existing Android applications without any modifications

Functional deficits of the attentional networks in autism

Attentional dysfunction is among the most consistent observations of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, the neural nature of this deficit in ASD is still unclear. In this study, we aimed to identify the neurobehavioral correlates of attentional dysfunction in ASD. We used the Attention Network Test-Revised and functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine alerting, orienting, and executive control functions, as well as the neural substrates underlying these attentional functions in unmedicated, high-functioning adults with ASD (n = 12) and matched healthy controls (HC, n = 12). Compared with HC, individuals with ASD showed increased error rates in alerting and executive control, accompanied by lower activity in the mid-frontal gyrus and the caudate nucleus for alerting, and by the absence of significant functional activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for executive control. In addition, greater behavioral deficiency in executive control in ASD was correlated with less functional activation of the ACC. These findings of behavioral and neural abnormalities in alerting and executive control of attention in ASD may suggest core attentional deficits, which require further investigation