Thermodynamic basis for the genome to capsid charge relationship in viral encapsidation

We establish an appropriate thermodynamic framework for determining the optimal genome length in electrostatically driven viral encapsidation. Importantly, our analysis includes the electrostatic potential due to the Donnan equilibrium, which arises from the semipermeable nature of the viral capsid, i.e., permeable to small mobile ions but impermeable to charged macromolecules. Because most macromolecules in the cellular milieu are negatively charged, the Donnan potential provides an additional driving force for genome encapsidation. In contrast to previous theoretical studies, we find that the optimal genome length is the result of combined effects from the electrostatic interactions of all charged species, the excluded volume and, to a very significant degree, the Donnan potential. In particular, the Donnan potential is essential for obtaining negatively overcharged viruses. The prevalence of overcharged viruses in nature may suggest an evolutionary preference for viruses to increase the amount of genome packaged by utilizing the Donnan potential (through increases in the capsid radius), rather than high charges on the capsid, so that structural stability of the capsid is maintained

Sistema de Produção Integrada do leite de cabra na região do Cariri Paraibano.

Resumo: O Sistema Agropecuário de Produção Integrada (SAPI) é uma política pública voltada à obtenção de alimentos seguros, para atender exigências sanitárias, tecnológicas, ambientais e sociais deste novo mercado consumidor. O sistema emprega tecnologias, as quais permitem a aplicação de Boas Práticas Agropecuárias (BPA) e controle efetivo de todo o processo produtivo. Idealizou-se o presente estudo, com o objetivo de implementar medidas de BPA em duas propriedades do Cariri Paraibano, as quais se tornarão Unidades Técnicas de Referência Local (UTRL) para o Sistema Agropecuário de Produção Integrada de Caprinocultura Leiteira. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que esse modelo de produção tem potencial para proporcionar uma nova competitividade para a produção de leite de cabra e derivados. [Integrated production system for goat milk in the cariri region of paraíba, Brazil]. Abstract: Goat milk is an inclusion product in family agriculture within the institutional and other new types of markets. In northeastern Brazil where as a rule all goat milk goes to school meal-provisions, goat breeding in family homesteads is being developed in expansion hubs even though such features as quantity and quality required improvement. The Agricultural-Stockbreeding System of Integrated Production (SAPI) is a government policy for safe food deemed to comply with sanitary, technological, environmental and social requirements of the new consumer market. The system employs technologies through the application of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and efficient control throughout the production process. Current analysis aims at deploying GAP on two farms in the Cariri region of the state of Paraíba, Brazil, which will become the Technical Units for Local Reference for the Agricultural-Stockbreeding System of Integrated Production. Results show that the production model is capable of providing new competitiveness for the production of goat milk and derived products

On the Usefulness of Modern Animism: Co-Creating Architecture with Soils as Ontopolitical Practice

In opposition to the general understanding of animism as an irrational religious set of beliefs, the—secular—modern animism embodied in this practice of built and grown architecture is operative. It conceives of places—ecosystems—as beings with agency that we garden with to nurture and express their resilience. It is a useful ontology for ecological practice; this architectural animism is ontopolitical; it co-creates a common world. At a recent symposium, a number of projects were presented as architectural soils and to give a voice to these earthly beings, the method was to write a letter from them to me. This first letter with the response in this article forms the beginning of an animistic correspondence. The medium places the reader in a pluriverse, in between the multiple voices of various “actants.” The text is isomorphic to the embodied dialogue of this earthy practice. It is useful both to nurture societal awareness—empathy and care—towards these fragmentary ecosystemic beings, and as research method to conceive them, and our relationship

Human innate lymphoid cells (ILCs): Toward a uniform immune-phenotyping.

Helper innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), the most recently identified population of the ILC family, play a fundamental role in the restoration of tissue integrity, in the protection against infiltrating pathogens as well as in tumor immune-surveillance. ILCs have been divided into three main subsets, ILC1, ILC2, and ILC3, that can be specifically activated by different signals coming either indirectly from pathogens or from other cell populations, including cancer cells. Following activation, ILCs are in turn able to promptly secrete a wide range of soluble mediators that modulate effector cell functions. The discovery and the study of these immune cells is now offering important opportunities for innovative therapies of allergic airway diseases, inflammatory disorders and might be crucial for the discovery of new targets for the therapy of cancer. It is therefore fundamental that the scientific community establishes harmonized guidelines to obtain a consensus in the identification and phenotypical and functional characterization of ILCs. © 2018 International Clinical Cytometry Society

A Cordial Sync: Going Beyond Marginal Policies for Multi-Agent Embodied Tasks

Autonomous agents must learn to collaborate. It is not scalable to develop a new centralized agent every time a task's difficulty outpaces a single agent's abilities. While multi-agent collaboration research has flourished in gridworld-like environments, relatively little work has considered visually rich domains. Addressing this, we introduce the novel task FurnMove in which agents work together to move a piece of furniture through a living room to a goal. Unlike existing tasks, FurnMove requires agents to coordinate at every timestep. We identify two challenges when training agents to complete FurnMove: existing decentralized action sampling procedures do not permit expressive joint action policies and, in tasks requiring close coordination, the number of failed actions dominates successful actions. To confront these challenges we introduce SYNC-policies (synchronize your actions coherently) and CORDIAL (coordination loss). Using SYNC-policies and CORDIAL, our agents achieve a 58% completion rate on FurnMove, an impressive absolute gain of 25 percentage points over competitive decentralized baselines. Our dataset, code, and pretrained models are available at https://unnat.github.io/cordial-sync .Comment: Accepted to ECCV 2020 (spotlight); Project page: https://unnat.github.io/cordial-syn

Projeto piloto de implantação do Sistema de Produção Integrada do leite de cabra na Região do Cariri Paraibano.

A Paraíba foi selecionada para ser sede do Projeto Piloto por possuir considerável bacia leiteira, além de ser um dos estados do país que possui melhor organização da cadeia produtiva, resultado do empenho de produtores e da constante busca de apoio através dos órgãos governamentais, instituições de pesquisa e agências de fomento.bitstream/item/115328/1/COT-140.pd