Study of Plastic Deformation in Binary Aluminum Alloys by Internal-Friction Methods

The damping capacity of several aluminum-copper alloys has been investigated during tensile elongation. This damping is shown to depend on strain rate, strain, temperature, alloy content, and heat treatment. A tentative hypothesis, based on the acceleration of solute atom diffusion by deformation-produced vacancies, is proposed to account for the observed behavior. Internal-friction maxima are observed in deformed aluminum and aluminum-copper alloys at -70 deg and -50 deg C. The peaks appear to be relatively insensitive to frequency and alloy content, but they disappear after annealing at temperatures nearing the recrystallization temperature

Regulating STING in health and disease.

The presence of cytosolic double-stranded DNA molecules can trigger multiple innate immune signalling pathways which converge on the activation of an ER-resident innate immune adaptor named "STimulator of INterferon Genes (STING)". STING has been found to mediate type I interferon response downstream of cyclic dinucleotides and a number of DNA and RNA inducing signalling pathway. In addition to its physiological function, a rapidly increasing body of literature highlights the role for STING in human disease where variants of the STING proteins, as well as dysregulated STING signalling, have been implicated in a number of inflammatory diseases. This review will summarise the recent structural and functional findings of STING, and discuss how STING research has promoted the development of novel therapeutic approaches and experimental tools to improve treatment of tumour and autoimmune diseases

Human and machine validation of 14 databases of dynamic facial expressions

With a shift in interest toward dynamic expressions, numerous corpora of dynamic facial stimuli have been developed over the past two decades. The present research aimed to test existing sets of dynamic facial expressions (published between 2000 and 2015) in a cross-corpus validation effort. For this, 14 dynamic databases were selected that featured facial expressions of the basic six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) in posed or spontaneous form. In Study 1, a subset of stimuli from each database (N = 162) were presented to human observers and machine analysis, yielding considerable variance in emotion recognition performance across the databases. Classification accuracy further varied with perceived intensity and naturalness of the displays, with posed expressions being judged more accurately and as intense, but less natural compared to spontaneous ones. Study 2 aimed for a full validation of the 14 databases by subjecting the entire stimulus set (N = 3812) to machine analysis. A FACS-based Action Unit (AU) analysis revealed that facial AU configurations were more prototypical in posed than spontaneous expressions. The prototypicality of an expression in turn predicted emotion classification accuracy, with higher performance observed for more prototypical facial behavior. Furthermore, technical features of each database (i.e., duration, face box size, head rotation, and motion) had a significant impact on recognition accuracy. Together, the findings suggest that existing databases vary in their ability to signal specific emotions, thereby facing a trade-off between realism and ecological validity on the one end, and expression uniformity and comparability on the other

<scp>ReSurveyEurope</scp>: A database of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe

AbstractAimsWe introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, including potential research questions.ResultsReSurveyEurope includes resurveyed vegetation plots from all habitats. Version 1.0 of ReSurveyEurope contains 283,135 observations (i.e., individual surveys of each plot) from 79,190 plots sampled in 449 independent resurvey projects. Of these, 62,139 (78%) are permanent plots, that is, marked in situ, or located with GPS, which allow for high spatial accuracy in resurvey. The remaining 17,051 (22%) plots are from studies in which plots from the initial survey could not be exactly relocated. Four data sets, which together account for 28,470 (36%) plots, provide only presence/absence information on plant species, while the remaining 50,720 (64%) plots contain abundance information (e.g., percentage cover or cover–abundance classes such as variants of the Braun‐Blanquet scale). The oldest plots were sampled in 1911 in the Swiss Alps, while most plots were sampled between 1950 and 2020.ConclusionsReSurveyEurope is a new resource to address a wide range of research questions on fine‐scale changes in European vegetation. The initiative is devoted to an inclusive and transparent governance and data usage approach, based on slightly adapted rules of the well‐established European Vegetation Archive (EVA). ReSurveyEurope data are ready for use, and proposals for analyses of the data set can be submitted at any time to the coordinators. Still, further data contributions are highly welcome.</jats:sec

Virion assembly of the herpes simplex virus type 1 E3 ubiquitin ligase ICP0

Within the herpes simplex virus type 1 particle, a complex compartment termed the tegument is sandwiched between the nucleocapsid and envelope. Interactions between tegument components and the cytoplasmic tails of viral envelope glycoproteins are thought to play some role in the poorly defined process of tegument assembly. Here, virion incorporation of a major tegument protein, VP22, and the immediate-early transactivator of gene expression ICP0 was studied to improve our understanding of herpesvirus morphogenesis. In infected cells VP22 was found to bridge the viral glycoproteins gE and gM to form an assembly complex that also incorporates ICP0. VP22 is the major determinant for ICP0 packaging, although both gE and gM were shown to be required for optimal recruitment of ICP0 into the complex and virion. The glycoproteins are redundant for VP22, but not ICP0, assembly. A conserved region of VP22, and N-terminal sequences known to facilitate VP22 oligomerisation, contribute to complex formation. ICP0 domains important for VP22-ICP0 association and ICP0 assembly include the functionally essential RING finger motif and ICP0’s C-terminus. The immediate-early protein ICP27, known to be required for ICP0 assembly, was shown for the first time to be recruited into virions, independently of VP22 and ICP0. A mutant that packages enhanced levels of ICP0 exhibited augmented growth kinetics, implying that virion ICP0 performs important functions in infection. No impact of VP22 on ICP0 function could be determined, although a new role for VP22 in modulating gene expression was identified. Nevertheless, VP22 mutation modified ICP0 localisation in infected cells. Interestingly, ICP0 was shown to enhance late stages of virus replication. ICP0-mediated ubiquitination within putative cytoplasmic assembly domains was characterised to further investigate this late function. This work significantly improves our understanding of how glycoprotein-tegument interactions lead to the formation of multicomponent assemblies involved in herpesvirus morphogenesis