Alien Registration- Morneau, Flavius J. (Waterville, Kennebec County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/14685/thumbnail.jp

Enlarged Perivascular Spaces are Negatively Associated with Montreal Cognitive Assessment Scores in Older Adults

Emerging evidence suggests that enlarged perivascular spaces (ePVS) may be a clinically significant neuroimaging marker of global cognitive function related to cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD). We tested this possibility by assessing the relationship between ePVS and both a standardized measure of global cognitive function, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and an established marker of cSVD, white matter hyperintensity volume (WMH) volume. One hundred and eleven community-dwelling older adults (56–86) underwent neuroimaging and MoCA testing. Quantification of region-specific ePVS burden was performed using a previously validated visual rating method and WMH volumes were computed using the standard ADNI pipeline. Separate linear regression models were run with ePVS as a predictor of MoCA scores and whole brain WMH volume. Results indicated a negative association between MoCA scores and both total ePVS counts (P ≤ 0.001) and centrum semiovale ePVS counts (P ≤ 0.001), after controlling for other relevant cSVD variables. Further, WMH volumes were positively associated with total ePVS (P = 0.010), basal ganglia ePVS (P ≤ 0.001), and centrum semiovale ePVS (P = 0.027). Our results suggest that ePVS burden, particularly in the centrum semiovale, may be a clinically significant neuroimaging marker of global cognitive dysfunction related to cSVD

Non-invasive hydrodynamic imaging in plant roots at cellular resolution

A key impediment to studying water-related mechanisms in plants is the inability to non-invasively image water fluxes in cells at high temporal and spatial resolution. Here, we report that Raman microspectroscopy, complemented by hydrodynamic modelling, can achieve this goal - monitoring hydrodynamics within living root tissues at cell- and sub-second-scale resolutions. Raman imaging of water-transporting xylem vessels in Arabidopsis thaliana mutant roots reveals faster xylem water transport in endodermal diffusion barrier mutants. Furthermore, transverse line scans across the root suggest water transported via the root xylem does not re-enter outer root tissues nor the surrounding soil when en-route to shoot tissues if endodermal diffusion barriers are intact, thereby separating ‘two water worlds’

Semantics-based information extraction for detecting economic events

As today's financial markets are sensitive to breaking news on economic events, accurate and timely automatic identification of events in news items is crucial. Unstructured news items originating from many heterogeneous sources have to be mined in order to extract knowledge useful for guiding decision making processes. Hence, we propose the Semantics-Based Pipeline for Economic Event Detection (SPEED), focusing on extracting financial events from news articles and annotating these with meta-data at a speed that enables real-time use. In our implementation, we use some components of an existing framework as well as new components, e.g., a high-performance Ontology Gazetteer, a Word Group Look-Up component, a Word Sense Disambiguator, and components for detecting economic events. Through their interaction with a domain-specific ontology, our novel, semantically enabled components constitute a feedback loop which fosters future reuse of acquired knowledge in the event detection process

Studies Of Thermobifida Fusca Cellulases Cel9A And Cel48A Using A Novel Kinetic Modeling Approach For The Enzymatic Digestion Of Cellulose.

Lignocellulosic biomass is a potential source of sustainable transportation fuels, but efficient enzymatic saccharification of cellulose is a key challenge in its utilization. Enzymatic digestion of cellulose is a complex, heterogeneous process. An enzyme must repeatedly take multiple steps to hydrolyze the substrate to product. In addition, most bulk cellulose contains crystalline, semi-crystalline, and amorphous fractions, whose ratio likely changes during digestion. Access to substrate, rather than hydrolysis, is widely accepted to be the rate limiting step, as we showed experimentally using Cel9A, and the rate of digestion rapidly and continuously drops off as digestion proceeds. Predictive kinetic models typically incorporate different parameters and constants to account for the possible factors responsible for such behavior. Cellulose hydrolysis by individual cellulases and their mixtures can be modeled with a simple two-parameter model based on a modified classical kinetics scheme. Analogous to a fractal kinetics approach, the specific activity constant is replaced with a time-dependent activity coefficient in order to account for the continuous decrease in the digestion rate. The parameter that quantifies the time dependence of the digestion rate is an intrinsic constant for a given cellulase or mixture on a given substrate. The developed kinetic model was utilized in studies aimed to understand the function of aromatic residues located near the active site tunnel entrance of Cel48A and to develop a distinct model of synergistic cooperation between Cel48A and Cel9A. Additional experiments were carried out to establish experimentally the catalytic base in family 48 glycoside hydrolases