Emerging pathogenic links between microbiota and the gut-lung axis

© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. The microbiota is vital for the development of the immune system and homeostasis. Changes in microbial composition and function, termed dysbiosis, in the respiratory tract and the gut have recently been linked to alterations in immune responses and to disease development in the lungs. In this Opinion article, we review the microbial species that are usually found in healthy gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts, their dysbiosis in disease and interactions with the gut-lung axis. Although the gut-lung axis is only beginning to be understood, emerging evidence indicates that there is potential for manipulation of the gut microbiota in the treatment of lung diseases

RoboCup 2D Soccer Simulation League: Evaluation Challenges

We summarise the results of RoboCup 2D Soccer Simulation League in 2016 (Leipzig), including the main competition and the evaluation round. The evaluation round held in Leipzig confirmed the strength of RoboCup-2015 champion (WrightEagle, i.e. WE2015) in the League, with only eventual finalists of 2016 competition capable of defeating WE2015. An extended, post-Leipzig, round-robin tournament which included the top 8 teams of 2016, as well as WE2015, with over 1000 games played for each pair, placed WE2015 third behind the champion team (Gliders2016) and the runner-up (HELIOS2016). This establishes WE2015 as a stable benchmark for the 2D Simulation League. We then contrast two ranking methods and suggest two options for future evaluation challenges. The first one, "The Champions Simulation League", is proposed to include 6 previous champions, directly competing against each other in a round-robin tournament, with the view to systematically trace the advancements in the League. The second proposal, "The Global Challenge", is aimed to increase the realism of the environmental conditions during the simulated games, by simulating specific features of different participating countries.Comment: 12 pages, RoboCup-2017, Nagoya, Japan, July 201

Theory of the propagation of coupled waves in arbitrarily-inhomogeneous stratified media

We generalize the invariant imbedding theory of the wave propagation and derive new invariant imbedding equations for the propagation of arbitrary number of coupled waves of any kind in arbitrarily-inhomogeneous stratified media, where the wave equations are effectively one-dimensional. By doing this, we transform the original boundary value problem of coupled second-order differential equations to an initial value problem of coupled first-order differential equations, which makes the numerical solution of the coupled wave equations much easier. Using the invariant imbedding equations, we are able to calculate the matrix reflection and transmission coefficients and the wave amplitudes inside the inhomogeneous media exactly and efficiently. We establish the validity and the usefulness of our results by applying them to the propagation of circularly-polarized electromagnetic waves in one-dimensional photonic crystals made of isotropic chiral media. We find that there are three kinds of bandgaps in these structures and clarify the nature of these bandgaps by exact calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Europhys. Let

Gliders2d: Source Code Base for RoboCup 2D Soccer Simulation League

We describe Gliders2d, a base code release for Gliders, a soccer simulation team which won the RoboCup Soccer 2D Simulation League in 2016. We trace six evolutionary steps, each of which is encapsulated in a sequential change of the released code, from v1.1 to v1.6, starting from agent2d-3.1.1 (set as the baseline v1.0). These changes improve performance by adjusting the agents' stamina management, their pressing behaviour and the action-selection mechanism, as well as their positional choice in both attack and defense, and enabling riskier passes. The resultant behaviour, which is sufficiently generic to be applicable to physical robot teams, increases the players' mobility and achieves a better control of the field. The last presented version, Gliders2d-v1.6, approaches the strength of Gliders2013, and outperforms agent2d-3.1.1 by four goals per game on average. The sequential improvements demonstrate how the methodology of human-based evolutionary computation can markedly boost the overall performance with even a small number of controlled steps.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, Gliders2d code releas

Broadside radar echoes from ionized trails

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77210/1/AIAA-2347-553.pd

Quiet daytime Arctic ionospheric D region

Phase and amplitude measurements of VLF radio waves propagating sub‐ionospherically on long paths across the Arctic are used to determine the high latitude, daytime D region height and sharpness of the bottom edge of the Earth's ionosphere. The principal path used is from the 23.4 kHz transmitter, DHO, in north Germany, northwards across the Arctic passing ~2° from the North Pole, and then southwards to Nome, Alaska, thus avoiding most land and all thick ice. Significant observational support is obtained from the also nearly all‐sea path from JXN in Norway (~67° N, 16.4 kHz) across the North Pole to Nome. By suitably comparing measurements with modeling using the US Navy code LWPC, the daytime D region (Wait) height and sharpness parameters in the Arctic are found to be H' = 73.7 ± 0.7 km and ß = 0.32 ±0.02 km‐1 in the summer of 2013 ‐ i.e., at (weak) solar maximum. It is also found that, unlike at lower latitudes, VLF phase and amplitude recordings on (~1000 km) paths at high subarctic latitudes show very little change with solar zenith angle in both phase and amplitude during daytime for solar zenith angles ~300 keV for electrons) with a contribution from galactic cosmic rays, rather than by solar Lyman‐α which dominates at low and middle latitudes

Disease-associated gut microbiome and metabolome changes in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third commonest cause of death globally, and manifests as a progressive inflammatory lung disease with no curative treatment. The lung microbiome contributes to COPD progression, but the function of the gut microbiome remains unclear. Here we examine the faecal microbiome and metabolome of COPD patients and healthy controls, finding 146 bacterial species differing between the two groups. Several species, including Streptococcus sp000187445, Streptococcus vestibularis and multiple members of the family Lachnospiraceae, also correlate with reduced lung function. Untargeted metabolomics identifies a COPD signature comprising 46% lipid, 20% xenobiotic and 20% amino acid related metabolites. Furthermore, we describe a disease-associated network connecting Streptococcus parasanguinis_B with COPD-associated metabolites, including N-acetylglutamate and its analogue N-carbamoylglutamate. While correlative, our results suggest that the faecal microbiome and metabolome of COPD patients are distinct from those of healthy individuals, and may thus aid in the search for biomarkers for COPD

Power, Connected Coalitions, and Efficiency: Challenges to the Council of the European Union

This article is concerned with challenges to reforming the voting procedures of the Council of the European Union (EU). The next major waves of EU enlargement will cause the Union to increase to a membership of first twenty-one, and then twenty-six or possibly even more states. How does enlargement affect the Council's inherent "capacity to act" under the currently used qualified majority voting rule? It is demon strated here that the expected increase in EU membership will most likely induce a larger "status quo bias" as compared to the present situation in the Council if the crucial majority decision quota is not lowered. In addition, the article is responding to some criticism that has been applied against assessing the leverage of EU governments in one of the EU's most important institutions: the Council of the EU. By resorting to techniques that capture the influence of a priori coalitions on the one hand and "connected coalitions" among EU governments on the other—applying n- person cooperative game theory—the piece illustrates how the assessment of relative voting leverage in the framework of weighted voting systems may be extended and applied to situations in which the specific distribu tion of members' preferences is known. These calculations are again relevant in the face of the upcoming rounds of EU enlargement and projects for institutional reform.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68064/2/10.1177_019251219902000404.pd