775 research outputs found
Tissue fusion over non-adhering surfaces
Tissue fusion eliminates physical voids in a tissue to form a continuous
structure and is central to many processes in development and repair. Fusion
events in vivo, particularly in embryonic development, often involve the
purse-string contraction of a pluricellular actomyosin cable at the free edge.
However in vitro, adhesion of the cells to their substrate favors a closure
mechanism mediated by lamellipodial protrusions, which has prevented a
systematic study of the purse-string mechanism. Here, we show that monolayers
can cover well-controlled mesoscopic non-adherent areas much larger than a cell
size by purse-string closure and that active epithelial fluctuations are
required for this process. We have formulated a simple stochastic model that
includes purse-string contractility, tissue fluctuations and effective friction
to qualitatively and quantitatively account for the dynamics of closure. Our
data suggest that, in vivo, tissue fusion adapts to the local environment by
coordinating lamellipodial protrusions and purse-string contractions
Characterization of Streptomyces strain SLO-105 isolated from Lake Oubeira sediments in North-East of Algeria
A microbial strain, SLO-105, isolated from Lake Oubeira sediment was screened for its antimicrobial activity against pathogenic bacteria and fungi. The strain showed broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus MRSA, Bacillus subtilus, Micrococcus leutus,Streptococcus fecalis and fungi Aspergillus niger and Rodotorulla mucilaginosa. However, no activity of the strain was observed against Gram negative bacteria Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as well as on fungi Candida albicans. Analysis of 16S rDNA sequence and themorphological and physiological characteristics of the strain suggested that the isolate belonged to Streptomyces genus
Flow polytopes of signed graphs and the Kostant partition function
We establish the relationship between volumes of flow polytopes associated to
signed graphs and the Kostant partition function. A special case of this
relationship, namely, when the graphs are signless, has been studied in detail
by Baldoni and Vergne using techniques of residues. In contrast with their
approach, we provide entirely combinatorial proofs inspired by the work of
Postnikov and Stanley on flow polytopes. As a fascinating special family of
flow polytopes, we study the Chan-Robbins-Yuen polytopes. Motivated by the
beautiful volume formula for the type version,
where is the th Catalan number, we introduce type and
Chan-Robbins-Yuen polytopes along with intriguing conjectures
pertaining to their properties.Comment: 29 pages, 13 figure
Assessment of myocardial injuries in ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathies using magnetic resonance T1-rho mapping.
To identify clinical correlates of myocardial T1ρ and to examine how myocardial T1ρ values change under various clinical scenarios.
A total of 66 patients (26% female, median age 57 years [Q1-Q3, 44-65 years]) with known structural heart disease and 44 controls (50% female, median age 47 years [28-57 years]) underwent cardiac magnetic resonance imaging at 1.5-T, including T1ρ mapping, T2 mapping, native T1 mapping, late gadolinium enhancement, and ECV imaging.In controls, T1ρ positively related with T2 (P=0.038) and increased from basal to apical levels (P<0.001). As compared to controls and remote myocardium, T1ρ significantly increased in all patients' sub-groups and all types of myocardial injuries: acute and chronic injuries, focal and diffuse tissue abnormalities, as well as ischemic and non-ischemic aetiologies (P<0.05). T1ρ was independently associated with T2 in patients with acute injuries (P=0.004) and with native T1 and ECV in patients with chronic injuries (P<0.05). Myocardial T1ρ mapping demonstrated good intra- and interobserver reproducibility (ICC=0.86 and 0.83, respectively).
Myocardial T1ρ mapping appears to be reproducible and equally sensitive to acute and chronic myocardial injuries, whether of ischemic or non-ischemic origins. It may thus be a contrast-agent-free biomarker for gaining new and quantitative insight into myocardial structural disorders. These findings highlight the need for further studies through prospective and randomized trials
Using Strategy Improvement to Stay Alive
We design a novel algorithm for solving Mean-Payoff Games (MPGs). Besides
solving an MPG in the usual sense, our algorithm computes more information
about the game, information that is important with respect to applications. The
weights of the edges of an MPG can be thought of as a gained/consumed energy --
depending on the sign. For each vertex, our algorithm computes the minimum
amount of initial energy that is sufficient for player Max to ensure that in a
play starting from the vertex, the energy level never goes below zero. Our
algorithm is not the first algorithm that computes the minimum sufficient
initial energies, but according to our experimental study it is the fastest
algorithm that computes them. The reason is that it utilizes the strategy
improvement technique which is very efficient in practice
Presentation of CMV immediate-early antigen to cytolytic T lymphocytes is selectively prevented by viral genes expressed in the early phase
The regulation of antigen processing and presentation to MHC class I-restricted cytolytic T lymphocytes was studied in cells infected with murine cytomegalovirus. Recognition by cytolytic T lymphocytes of the phosphoprotein pp89, the immunodominant viral antigen expressed in the immediate-early phase of infection, was selectively prevented during the subsequent expression of viral early genes. The surface expression of MHC class I glycoproteins and their capacity to present externally added pp89-derived antigenic peptides were not affected. Because recognition of several other antigens occurred during the early phase, a general failure in processing and presentation was excluded. Since neither rate of synthesis, amount, stability, nor nuclear transport of pp89 was modified, the failure in recognition indicates a selective interference with pp89 antigen processing and presentation
Improving Strategies via SMT Solving
We consider the problem of computing numerical invariants of programs by
abstract interpretation. Our method eschews two traditional sources of
imprecision: (i) the use of widening operators for enforcing convergence within
a finite number of iterations (ii) the use of merge operations (often, convex
hulls) at the merge points of the control flow graph. It instead computes the
least inductive invariant expressible in the domain at a restricted set of
program points, and analyzes the rest of the code en bloc. We emphasize that we
compute this inductive invariant precisely. For that we extend the strategy
improvement algorithm of [Gawlitza and Seidl, 2007]. If we applied their method
directly, we would have to solve an exponentially sized system of abstract
semantic equations, resulting in memory exhaustion. Instead, we keep the system
implicit and discover strategy improvements using SAT modulo real linear
arithmetic (SMT). For evaluating strategies we use linear programming. Our
algorithm has low polynomial space complexity and performs for contrived
examples in the worst case exponentially many strategy improvement steps; this
is unsurprising, since we show that the associated abstract reachability
problem is Pi-p-2-complete
The level set method for the two-sided eigenproblem
We consider the max-plus analogue of the eigenproblem for matrix pencils
Ax=lambda Bx. We show that the spectrum of (A,B) (i.e., the set of possible
values of lambda), which is a finite union of intervals, can be computed in
pseudo-polynomial number of operations, by a (pseudo-polynomial) number of
calls to an oracle that computes the value of a mean payoff game. The proof
relies on the introduction of a spectral function, which we interpret in terms
of the least Chebyshev distance between Ax and lambda Bx. The spectrum is
obtained as the zero level set of this function.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures. Changes with respect to the previous version: we
explain relation to mean-payoff games and discrete event systems, and show
that the reconstruction of spectrum is pseudopolynomia
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