On the Effect of Radical Character, Substitution and Atom Encapsulation on the Volume of Icosahedral (Car) boranes1

By means of quantum-mechanical calculations, we study the influence of the charge, spin, substituents, and atom encapsulation on the volume of the cages in icosahedral boranes and carboranes B12H12 2–, CB11H12 –, o-C2B10H12, m- C2B10H12, p-C2B10H12 and 1,2-disubstituted o-C2B10H12.Monoradicals derived from hydrogen abstraction in o-C2B10H12, m-C2B10H12, p-C2B10H12 lead to slight cage contractions (|ΔV| < 0.1 Å3 ). On the other hand, 1,2-disubstitution in o-C2B10H12 and their dianions derived from double proton abstraction on the susbtituent, and {Li+, Be2+} atom encapsulation in B12H12 2–, CB11H12–, o-C2B10H12, m-C2B10H12, p-C2B10H12 always leads to a cage expansion, to a larger extent for endohedral compounds (ΔV ≈ 2 Å3 ) as compared to dianions derived from 1,2-disubstituted o-C2B10H12 (ΔV ≈ 1 Å3 ) and 1,2-disubstituted o-C2B10H12 (ΔV < 0.14 Å3 )

Probabilistic prediction of outbreaks of meningococcus W-135 infections over the next few years in Spain

[EN] The genogroups of meningococcal and other bacteria are in competition in the ecosystem they form with the human hosts. Changes in vaccination strategies, prophylactic measures or usual habits, may also change the distribution of the genogroups in the ecosystem but, usually, this competition is ignored in most epidemiological models, despite it can be highly influential in the evolution of infection diseases and outbreaks. Our goal is to propose a susceptible carrier susceptible (SCS) epidemiological model to determine the percentage of carriers in the population, and introduce a fractional Lotka Volterra competition model to describe the evolution of the meningococcal genogroups in Spain among the carriers. Using data from the distribution of the genogroups in Spain in 2011 and 2012, we find the model parameters and their uncertainties according to a probabilistic fitting approach. On this basis, we predict the evolution of the carriers of the different genogroups over the next few years and, in particular, the percentage of carriers of meningococcus W-135 with a 95% confidence interval. Then, we estimate the probability of having a possible outbreak of meningococcus W-135 in Spain over the next few years. According to our model and, under the present conditions, the risk of a serious outbreak of W-135 in Spain in the next 3 years is below 0.3%.This work has been partially supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad grant MTM2013-41765-P and the FIS grant PI13/01459. We also acknowledge Dr. Julio Vazquez from the Carlos III Institute of Health for providing the epidemiological data used in this work.Acedo Rodríguez, L.; Burgos-Simon, C.; Cortés, J.; Villanueva Micó, RJ. (2017). Probabilistic prediction of outbreaks of meningococcus W-135 infections over the next few years in Spain. Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. 486:106-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2017.05.043S10611748

A Spiking Neural Model of HT3D for Corner Detection

Obtaining good quality image features is of remarkable importance for most computer vision tasks. It has been demonstrated that the first layers of the human visual cortex are devoted to feature detection. The need for these features has made line, segment, and corner detection one of the most studied topics in computer vision. HT3D is a recent variant of the Hough transform for the combined detection of corners and line segments in images. It uses a 3D parameter space that enables the detection of segments instead of whole lines. This space also encloses canonical configurations of image corners, transforming corner detection into a pattern search problem. Spiking neural networks have previously been proposed for multiple image processing tasks, including corner and line detection using the Hough transform. Following these ideas, this paper presents and describes in detail a model to implement HT3D as a Spiking Neural Network for corner detection. The results obtained from a thorough testing of its implementation using real images evince the correctness of the Spiking Neural Network HT3D implementation. Such results are comparable to those obtained with the regular HT3D implementation, which are turn superior to other corner detection algorithms

Sorghum Brown Midrib19 (Bmr19) Gene Links Lignin Biosynthesis to Folate Metabolism

Genetic analysis of brown midrib sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) mutant lines assembled in our program has previously shown that the mutations fall into four allelic groups, bmr2, bmr6, bmr12 or bmr19. Causal genes for allelic groups bmr2, bmr6 and bmr12, have since been identified. In this report, we provide evidence for the nature of the bmr19 mutation. This was accomplished by introgressing each of the four bmr alleles into nine different genetic backgrounds. Polymorphisms from four resequenced bulks of sorghum introgression lines containing either mutation, relative to those of a resequenced bulk of the nine normal midrib recurrent parent lines, were used to locate their respective causal mutations. The analysis confirmed the previously reported causal mutations for bmr2 and bmr6 but failed in the case of bmr12-bulk due to a mixture of mutant alleles at the locus among members of that mutant bulk. In the bmr19-bulk, a common G → A mutation was found among all members in Sobic.001G535500. This gene encodes a putative folylpolyglutamate synthase with high homology to maize Bm4. The brown midrib phenotype co-segregated with this point mutation in two separate F2 populations. Furthermore, an additional variant allele at this locus obtained from a TILLING population also showed a brown midrib phenotype, confirming this locus as Bmr19

Multi-person 3D pose estimation from unlabelled data

Its numerous applications make multi-human 3D pose estimation a remarkably impactful area of research. Nevertheless, it presents several challenges, especially when approached using multiple views and regular RGB cameras as the only input. First, each person must be uniquely identified in the different views. Secondly, it must be robust to noise, partial occlusions, and views where a person may not be detected. Thirdly, many pose estimation approaches rely on environment-specific annotated datasets that are frequently prohibitively expensive and/or require specialised hardware. Specifically, this is the first multi-camera, multi-person data-driven approach that does not require an annotated dataset. In this work, we address these three challenges with the help of self-supervised learning. In particular, we present a three-staged pipeline and a rigorous evaluation providing evidence that our approach performs faster than other state-of-the-art algorithms, with comparable accuracy, and most importantly, does not require annotated datasets. The pipeline is composed of a 2D skeleton detection step, followed by a Graph Neural Network to estimate cross-view correspondences of the people in the scenario, and a Multi-Layer Perceptron that transforms the 2D information into 3D pose estimations. Our proposal comprises the last two steps, and it is compatible with any 2D skeleton detector as input. These two models are trained in a self-supervised manner, thus avoiding the need for datasets annotated with 3D ground-truth poses

Chapter 19. The Blackspot seabream fishery in the Strait of Gibraltar: lessons and future perspectives of shared marine resource

The Blackspot seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo) is one of the most important commercially-exploited fish species for the Spanish and Moroccan fleets which operate in the Strait of Gibraltar. In recent years, landings of Blackspot seabream in the main ports have decreased significantly respect previous periods of maximum catches, which makes it necessary to properly assess the abundance before establishing a management plan to make the fishery sustainable over time. In this chapter, we describe three different approaches to assess the abundance of this species in the Strait of Gibraltar. The results of three approaches tested (LCA/VPA, Gadget model and SimFish model) point out that from the 2010 the stock is kept at very low levels that oscillate between 900 and 1600 t, which supposes that the total biomass is between a 16% and 29% of the potential biomass. Additionally, the reference point values estimated by LCA/VPA and Gadget (F0.1 = 0.12-0.17) imply a clear overexploitation of the resource what is reinforced by the SimFish model results indicating that at least the 64% of abundance variation is a consequence of the fishery component.En prens

Concurrent segregation and erosion effects in medium-energy iron beam patterning of silicon surfaces

This paper is part of: Special Issue on Surfaces Patterned by Ion SputteringWe have bombarded crystalline silicon targets with a 40 keV Fe+ ion beam at different incidence angles. The resulting surfaces have been characterized by atomic force, current-sensing and magnetic force microscopies, scanning electron microscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We have found that there is a threshold angle smaller than 40 degrees for the formation of ripple patterns, which is definitely lower than those frequently reported for noble gas ion beams. We compare our observations with estimates of the value of the critical angle and of additional basic properties of the patterning process, which are based on a continuum model whose parameters are obtained from binary collision simulations. We have further studied experimentally the ripple structures and measured how the surface slopes change with the ion incidence angle. We explore in particular detail the fluence dependence of the pattern for an incidence angle value (40 degrees) close to the threshold. Initially, rimmed holes appear randomly scattered on the surface, which evolve into large, bug-like structures. Further increasing the ion fluence induces a smooth, rippled background morphology. By means of microscopy techniques, a correlation between the morphology of these structures and their metal content can be unambiguously established.This research is supported by the MINECO/FEDER (Spain/UE) grants Nos. MAT2017-85089-C2-1-R, MAT2016-80394-R, FIS2015-66020-C2-1-P, FIS2015-73337-JIN, FIS2016-78883-C2-2-P, and BIO2016-79618-R, and by Comunidad de Madrid grant NANOAVANSENS ref. S2013/MIT-3029. We want to thank C. Ballesteros and B. Galiana for their help in the SEM measurements. ARC acknowledges the Ramón y Cajal contract number RYC-2015-18047 and KL thanks FCT, Portugal, for her grant as Investigador FCT

Urinary Excretion of Mimosine Derivatives by Cows with and without Experience in Consumption of \u3cem\u3eLeucaena leucocephala\u3c/em\u3e

Leucaena leucocephala is a leguminous tree widely distributed in the tropical regions of the world. In Mexico, it has been incorporated into silvopastoral systems and is highly regarded, owing to its high content of crude protein. Nonetheless, L. leucocephala contains secondary metab-olites, such as mimosine, a non-protein free amino acid, which may induce toxic effects in unadapted ruminants that consume the forage (Hammond 1995). Although Synergistes jonesii, an anaerobic bacterium, has the ability to degrade 3,4-DHP and 2,3-DHP to non-toxic compounds (Allison et al. 1992), in Mexico its presence has not yet been confirmed. Recent work has suggested the occurrence of sub-clinical toxicity to 3,4-DHP and 2,3-DHP in cattle grazing L. leucocephala in Australia and Thailand (Graham 2007; Dalzell et al. 2012; Phaikaew et al. 2012). Several options such as the transfer of rumen liquor and the adaptation of ruminants to the intake of L. leucocephala have been studied in an attempt to reduce the excretion of mimosine and its metabolites (Palmer et al. 2010). The aim of the present work was to evaluate the effect of the experience of consumption of L. leucocephala on excretion of mimosine derivatives (3,4-DHP and 2,3-DHP) in the urine of cattle

Hypotonic swelling promotes nitric oxide release in cardiac ventricular myocytes: Impact on swelling-induced negative inotropic effect

Aims Cardiomyocyte swelling occurs in multiple pathological situations and has been associated with contractile dysfunction, cell death, and enhanced propensity to arrhythmias.We investigate whether hypotonic swelling promotes nitric oxide (NO) release in cardiomyocytes, and whether it impacts on swelling-induced contractile dysfunction. Methods and results Superfusing rat cardiomyocytes with a hypotonic solution (HS; 217 mOsm), increased cell volume, reduced myocyte contraction and Ca2+ transient, and increased NO-sensitive 4-amino-5-methylamino-2', 7'-difluorofluorescein diacetate (DAF-FM) fluorescence. When cells were exposed to HS + 2.5 mMof theNOsynthase inhibitor L-NAME, cell swelling occurred in the absence of NOrelease. Swelling-induced NO release was also prevented by the nitric oxide synthase 1 (NOS1) inhibitor, nitroguanidine, and significantly reduced in NOS1 knockout mice. Additionally, colchicine (inhibitor of microtubule polymerization) prevented the increase in DAF-FM fluorescence induced by HS, indicating that microtubule integrity is necessary for swelling-inducedNOrelease. The swelling-induced negative inotropic effectwas exacerbated in the presence of either L-NAME, nitroguandine, the guanylate cyclase inhibitor, ODQ, or the PKG inhibitor, KT5823, suggesting that NOS1-derived NO provides contractile support via a cGMP/PKG-dependent mechanism. Indeed, ODQ reduced Ca2+ wave velocity and both ODQ and KT5823 reduced the HS-induced increment in ryanodine receptor (RyR2, Ser2808) phosphorylation, suggesting that in this context, cGMP/PKG may contribute to preserve contractile function by enhancing sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release. Conclusions Our findings suggest a novel mechanism for NO release in cardiomyocytes with putative pathophysiological relevance determined, at least in part, by its capability to reduce the extent of contractile dysfunction associated with hypotonic swelling.Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculare

Subcellular distribution of dolichol phosphate

originalFil: Dallner, Gustav. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas Fundación Campomar; ArgentinaFil: Behrens, Nicolás H.. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas Fundación Campomar; ArgentinaFil: Parodi, Armando José A.. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas Fundación Campomar; ArgentinaFil: Leloir, Luis Federico. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas Fundación Campomar; ArgentinaBlanco y negro3 páginas en pdfLFL-PI-O-ART. Artículos científicosUnidad documental simpleAR-HYL-201