Design Evaluation and Alteration of the Dark Harbor 17.5: Case Study of a Modern Replica

While there is still a strong passion and interest for traditional crafts, many of the designs now need to be adapted to comply with the contemporary rules and regulations, and additional modifications are required to meet modern expectations, in areas ranging from comfort to safety; hence the need for modern replicas. In order to ascertain the constraints on modern replicas, a redesign of a Dark Harbor 17.5 will be proposed. First, an initial design evaluation will be performed to assess the characteristic of the original yacht, regarding hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, structural arrangement and stability. Modifications in accordance with regulations and owner’s requirements will then be implemented to create a modern replica suited to today’s market. Finally, the new design will be compared to the original one, allowing to evaluate the challenges of design modernization and the impact of contemporary requirements on a traditional design

Quantum state preparation and macroscopic entanglement in gravitational-wave detectors

Long-baseline laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors are operating at a factor of 10 (in amplitude) above the standard quantum limit (SQL) within a broad frequency band. Such a low classical noise budget has already allowed the creation of a controlled 2.7 kg macroscopic oscillator with an effective eigenfrequency of 150 Hz and an occupation number of 200. This result, along with the prospect for further improvements, heralds the new possibility of experimentally probing macroscopic quantum mechanics (MQM) - quantum mechanical behavior of objects in the realm of everyday experience - using gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we provide the mathematical foundation for the first step of a MQM experiment: the preparation of a macroscopic test mass into a nearly minimum-Heisenberg-limited Gaussian quantum state, which is possible if the interferometer's classical noise beats the SQL in a broad frequency band. Our formalism, based on Wiener filtering, allows a straightforward conversion from the classical noise budget of a laser interferometer, in terms of noise spectra, into the strategy for quantum state preparation, and the quality of the prepared state. Using this formalism, we consider how Gaussian entanglement can be built among two macroscopic test masses, and the performance of the planned Advanced LIGO interferometers in quantum-state preparation

Searching for a Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves with LIGO

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has performed the fourth science run, S4, with significantly improved interferometer sensitivities with respect to previous runs. Using data acquired during this science run, we place a limit on the amplitude of a stochastic background of gravitational waves. For a frequency independent spectrum, the new limit is $\Omega_{\rm GW} < 6.5 \times 10^{-5}$. This is currently the most sensitive result in the frequency range 51-150 Hz, with a factor of 13 improvement over the previous LIGO result. We discuss complementarity of the new result with other constraints on a stochastic background of gravitational waves, and we investigate implications of the new result for different models of this background.Comment: 37 pages, 16 figure

Sex differences modulating serotonergic polymorphisms implicated in the mechanistic pathways of risk for depression and related disorders:

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137310/1/jnr23877.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137310/2/jnr23877_am.pd

Cabbage and fermented vegetables : From death rate heterogeneity in countries to candidates for mitigation strategies of severe COVID-19

Large differences in COVID-19 death rates exist between countries and between regions of the same country. Some very low death rate countries such as Eastern Asia, Central Europe, or the Balkans have a common feature of eating large quantities of fermented foods. Although biases exist when examining ecological studies, fermented vegetables or cabbage have been associated with low death rates in European countries. SARS-CoV-2 binds to its receptor, the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). As a result of SARS-CoV-2 binding, ACE2 downregulation enhances the angiotensin II receptor type 1 (AT(1)R) axis associated with oxidative stress. This leads to insulin resistance as well as lung and endothelial damage, two severe outcomes of COVID-19. The nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 (Nrf2) is the most potent antioxidant in humans and can block in particular the AT(1)R axis. Cabbage contains precursors of sulforaphane, the most active natural activator of Nrf2. Fermented vegetables contain many lactobacilli, which are also potent Nrf2 activators. Three examples are: kimchi in Korea, westernized foods, and the slum paradox. It is proposed that fermented cabbage is a proof-of-concept of dietary manipulations that may enhance Nrf2-associated antioxidant effects, helpful in mitigating COVID-19 severity.Peer reviewe

Nrf2-interacting nutrients and COVID-19 : time for research to develop adaptation strategies

There are large between- and within-country variations in COVID-19 death rates. Some very low death rate settings such as Eastern Asia, Central Europe, the Balkans and Africa have a common feature of eating large quantities of fermented foods whose intake is associated with the activation of the Nrf2 (Nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2) anti-oxidant transcription factor. There are many Nrf2-interacting nutrients (berberine, curcumin, epigallocatechin gallate, genistein, quercetin, resveratrol, sulforaphane) that all act similarly to reduce insulin resistance, endothelial damage, lung injury and cytokine storm. They also act on the same mechanisms (mTOR: Mammalian target of rapamycin, PPAR gamma:Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, NF kappa B: Nuclear factor kappa B, ERK: Extracellular signal-regulated kinases and eIF2 alpha:Elongation initiation factor 2 alpha). They may as a result be important in mitigating the severity of COVID-19, acting through the endoplasmic reticulum stress or ACE-Angiotensin-II-AT(1)R axis (AT(1)R) pathway. Many Nrf2-interacting nutrients are also interacting with TRPA1 and/or TRPV1. Interestingly, geographical areas with very low COVID-19 mortality are those with the lowest prevalence of obesity (Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia). It is tempting to propose that Nrf2-interacting foods and nutrients can re-balance insulin resistance and have a significant effect on COVID-19 severity. It is therefore possible that the intake of these foods may restore an optimal natural balance for the Nrf2 pathway and may be of interest in the mitigation of COVID-19 severity

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Rac1 activation inhibits E-cadherin-mediated adherens junctions via binding to IQGAP1 in pancreatic carcinoma cells

Abstract Background Monomeric GTPases of the Rho family control a variety of cellular functions including actin cytoskeleton organisation, cell migration and cell adhesion. Defects in these regulatory processes are involved in tumour progression and metastasis. The development of metastatic carcinoma is accompanied by deregulation of adherens junctions, which are composed of E-cadherin/β- and α-catenin complexes. Results Here, we show that the activity of the monomeric GTPase Rac1 contributes to inhibition of E-cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion in pancreatic carcinoma cells. Stable expression of constitutively active Rac1(V12) reduced the amount of E-cadherin on protein level in PANC-1 pancreatic carcinoma cells, whereas expression of dominant negative Rac1(N17) resulted in an increased amount of E-cadherin. Extraction of proteins associated with the actin cytoskeleton as well as coimmunoprecipitation analyses demonstrated markedly decreased amounts of E-cadherin/catenin complexes in Rac1(V12)-expressing cells, but increased amounts of functional E-cadherin/catenin complexes in cells expressing Rac1(N17). Cell aggregation and migration assays revealed, that cells containing less E-cadherin due to expression of Rac1(V12), exhibited reduced cell-cell adhesion and increased cell motility. The Rac/Cdc42 effector protein IQGAP1 has been implicated in regulating cell-cell adhesion. Coimmunoprecipitation studies showed a decrease in the association between IQGAP1 and β-catenin in Rac1(V12)-expressing PANC-1 cells and an association of IQGAP1 with Rac1(V12). Elevated association of IQGAP1 with the E-cadherin adhesion complex via β-catenin correlated with increased intercellular adhesion of PANC-1 cells. Conclusion These results indicate that active Rac1 destabilises E-cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion in pancreatic carcinoma cells by interacting with IQGAP1 which is associated with a disassembly of E-cadherin-mediated adherens junctions. Inhibition of Rac1 activity induced increased E-cadherin-mediated cellular adhesion.</p