Targeting Oxidative Stress and Aberrant Critical Period Plasticity in the Developmental Trajectory to Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder reflecting a convergence of genetic risk and early life stress. The slow progression to first psychotic episode represents both a window of vulnerability as well as opportunity for therapeutic intervention. Here, we consider recent neurobiological insight into the cellular and molecular components of developmental critical periods and their vulnerability to redox dysregulation. In particular, the consistent loss of parvalbumin-positive interneuron (PVI) function and their surrounding perineuronal nets (PNNs) as well as myelination in patient brains is consistent with a delayed or extended period of circuit instability. This linkage to critical period triggers (PVI) and brakes (PNN, myelin) implicates mistimed trajectories of brain development in mental illness. Strategically introduced antioxidant treatment or later reinforcement of molecular brakes may then offer a novel prophylactic psychiatr

Improving Orbit Estimates for Incomplete Orbits with a New Approach to Priors -- with Applications from Black Holes to Planets

We propose a new approach to Bayesian prior probability distributions (priors) that can improve orbital solutions for low-phase-coverage orbits, where data cover less than approximately 40% of an orbit. In instances of low phase coverage such as with stellar orbits in the Galactic center or with directly-imaged exoplanets, data have low constraining power and thus priors can bias parameter estimates and produce under-estimated confidence intervals. Uniform priors, which are commonly assumed in orbit fitting, are notorious for this. We propose a new observable-based prior paradigm that is based on uniformity in observables. We compare performance of this observable-based prior and of commonly assumed uniform priors using Galactic center and directly-imaged exoplanet (HR 8799) data. The observable-based prior can reduce biases in model parameters by a factor of two and helps avoid under-estimation of confidence intervals for simulations with less than about 40% phase coverage. Above this threshold, orbital solutions for objects with sufficient phase coverage such as S0-2, a short-period star at the Galactic center with full phase coverage, are consistent with previously published results. Below this threshold, the observable-based prior limits prior influence in regions of prior dominance and increases data influence. Using the observable-based prior, HR 8799 orbital analyses favor lower eccentricity orbits and provide stronger evidence that the four planets have a consistent inclination around 30 degrees to within 1-sigma. This analysis also allows for the possibility of coplanarity. We present metrics to quantify improvements in orbital estimates with different priors so that observable-based prior frameworks can be tested and implemented for other low-phase-coverage orbits.Comment: Published in AJ. 23 pages, 14 figures. Monte Carlo chains are available in the published article, or are available upon reques

Production, breeding and potential of cowpea crop in Brazil.

About 50 years ago cowpea was reported as a relatively minor tropical legume. However, in the last years, it has been emerging as one of the most important food legume of the 21st century (SINGH, 2010). Brazil is not out of this panorama. Brazilian agriculture is undergoing major technological changes and, in addition, globalization in agribusiness has caused impacts on the production chain of several crops, particularly those heavily dependent on the use of a large volume of agricultural inputs, mainly fertilizers and pesticides. Such crops have had a higher production cost each year. On the other hand, this situation has brought new opportunities. Business farmers have sought new alternatives for their production arrangements. In this context cowpea constitutes one of the best options.bitstream/item/85620/1/Doc-216-Production.pd

Numerical Simulation of Porosity in Cements

The pores in cementitious materials, their sizes and connectivity have an important influence on the durability of concrete. Several microstructural models have been developed to simulate the three-dimensional pore network in cement pastes. In this article, microstructures with the \upmu μ ic model are compared with experimental results. It is seen that despite having a resolution for the capillary pores very close to reality, the experimentally observed breakthrough diameter from mercury intrusion is much lower than the values obtained by applying an algorithm of mercury intrusion to the simulated microstructure. The effect of some of the most important input parameters on the pore sizes in the simulated microstructure explored. The phenomenon which seems best able to explain this discrepancy is that C-S-H is not in fact a phase with a smooth surface as represented in microstructural models, but a phase which grows as needles into the pore space, leading to very small water-filled capillary pores from quite young ages. The results demonstrate it will be extremely challenging to represent the porosity of real microstructures in microstructural models on the scale of hundreds of microns necessary to study macroscopic transpor

Numerical Simulation of Porosity in Cements

The pores in cementitious materials, their sizes and connectivity have an important influence on the durability of concrete. Several microstructural models have been developed to simulate the three-dimensional pore network in cement pastes. In this article, microstructures with the ic model are compared with experimental results. It is seen that despite having a resolution for the capillary pores very close to reality, the experimentally observed breakthrough diameter from mercury intrusion is much lower than the values obtained by applying an algorithm of mercury intrusion to the simulated microstructure. The effect of some of the most important input parameters on the pore sizes in the simulated microstructure explored. The phenomenon which seems best able to explain this discrepancy is that C-S-H is not in fact a phase with a smooth surface as represented in microstructural models, but a phase which grows as needles into the pore space, leading to very small water-filled capillary pores from quite young ages. The results demonstrate it will be extremely challenging to represent the porosity of real microstructures in microstructural models on the scale of hundreds of microns necessary to study macroscopic transport

MediaEval 2016 Predicting Media Interestingness Task

Volume: 1739 Host publication title: MediaEval 2016 Multimedia Benchmark Workshop Host publication sub-title: Working Notes Proceedings of the MediaEval 2016 WorkshopNon peer reviewe

Sources of resistance in accessions of Cucurbita spp. to virus species from the genus Potyvirus.

The identification of source of resistance in cultivated cucurbits species is very important for the development of resistant cultivars to control diseases caused by virus from the genus Potyvirus. The present research had the objective to evaluate the phenotypic reactions and the behavior of pumpkin (Cucurbita spp.) accessions to the virus species from the genus Potyvirus: Papaya ringspot virus type Watermelon (PRSV-W), Zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) and Watermelon mosaic virus (WMV). Twenty-eight accessions of pumpkin from the Cucurbit Germplasm Bank from Embrapa Semiárido, Petrolina, PE, Brazil were evaluated. Twelve young plants from each pumpkin accession were inoculated with each one of the virus species and were maintained at greenhouse for their symptom reaction evaluations. All possible virus infections or absence of infection were confirmed by plate-trapped antigen enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (PTA-ELISA) against antisera specific to PRSV-W, ZYMV and WMV at the Plant Virus Laboratory, Universidade Federal do Ceará. Three pumpkin accessions showed extreme resistant to WMV and eight accessions presented mild mosaic when inoculated with PRSV-W. The most severe symptoms were observed on those accessions inoculated with ZYMV and 50% of the accessions showed to be highly susceptible. On the other hand, the pumpkin accessions inoculated with WMV presented the mildest symptoms, indicating that 39% of them were resistant, and 39% were tolerant. The Cucurbita spp. accessions BGC 518, BGC 530, BGC 567, and BGC 683 that showed resistance to one or more than one virus species constitute promising sources of resistance for developing virus resistant pumpkin cultivars or hybrids

Enhancing Transport Efficiency by Hybrid Routing Strategy

Traffic is essential for many dynamic processes on real networks, such as internet and urban traffic systems. The transport efficiency of the traffic system can be improved by taking full advantage of the resources in the system. In this paper, we propose a dual-strategy routing model for network traffic system, to realize the plenary utility of the whole network. The packets are delivered according to different "efficient routing strategies" [Yan, et al, Phys. Rev. E 73, 046108 (2006)]. We introduce the accumulate rate of packets, {\eta} to measure the performance of traffic system in the congested phase, and propose the so-called equivalent generation rate of packet to analyze the jamming processes. From analytical and numerical results, we find that, for suitable selection of strategies, the dual- strategy system performs better than the single-strategy system in a broad region of strategy mixing ratio. The analytical solution to the jamming processes is verified by estimating the number of jammed nodes, which coincides well with the result from simulation.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure