2,110 research outputs found
Analysis of rotational coupling in collisions of Li+ with Ne leading to double excitation of Ne \ud
Electron angular distributions due to autoionization of Ne, doubly excited to the (2p43s2)1D state in collisions with Li+ in the energy range 1.2-2.2 keV, are measured in coincidence with Li+ scattered into a well defined direction ( Phi =0 degrees , Theta cm=10.8 degrees ). The experimental findings are analysed with the help of a collision model proposed earlier. In this model the initial excitation occurs by radial diabatic coupling to a molecular Sigma -state at small distances, followed by rotational coupling to Pi - and Delta -states at intermediate distances in the second half of the collision. The energy splitting between the Sigma -, Pi - and Delta -states is described by a model function. By adapting two parameters of this model function, the experimental findings can be reproduced within the experimental error in numerical calculations involving the relevant set of coupled differential equations. \u
Functional profiles of orphan membrane transporters in the life cycle of the malaria parasite
Assigning function to orphan membrane transport proteins and prioritizing candidates for detailed biochemical characterization remain fundamental challenges and are particularly important for medically relevant pathogens, such as malaria parasites. Here we present a comprehensive genetic analysis of 35 orphan transport proteins of Plasmodium berghei during its life cycle in mice and Anopheles mosquitoes. Six genes, including four candidate aminophospholipid transporters, are refractory to gene deletion, indicative of essential functions. We generate and phenotypically characterize 29 mutant strains with deletions of individual transporter genes. Whereas seven genes appear to be dispensable under the experimental conditions tested, deletion of any of the 22 other genes leads to specific defects in life cycle progression in vivo and/or host transition. Our study provides growing support for a potential link between heavy metal homeostasis and host switching and reveals potential targets for rational design of new intervention strategies against malaria
Copper-transporting ATPase is important for malaria parasite fertility
Homeostasis of the trace element copper is essential to all eukaryotic life. Copper serves as a cofactor in metalloenzymes and catalyses electron transfer reactions as well as the generation of potentially toxic reactive oxygen species. Here, we describe the functional characterization of an evolutionarily highly conserved, predicted copper-transporting P-type ATPase (CuTP) in the murine malaria model parasite Plasmodium berghei. Live imaging of a parasite line expressing a fluorescently tagged CuTP demonstrated that CuTP is predominantly located in vesicular bodies of the parasite. A P. berghei loss-of-function mutant line was readily obtained and showed no apparent defect in in vivo blood stage growth. Parasite transmission through the mosquito vector was severely affected, but not entirely abolished. We show that male and female gametocytes are abundant in cutp− parasites, but activation of male microgametes and exflagellation were strongly impaired. This specific defect could be mimicked by addition of the copper chelator neocuproine to wild-type gametocytes. A cross-fertilization assay demonstrated that female fertility was also severely abrogated. In conclusion, we provide experimental genetic and pharmacological evidence that a healthy copper homeostasis is critical to malaria parasite fertility of both genders of gametocyte and, hence, to transmission to the mosquito vector
lassopack: Model selection and prediction with regularized regression in Stata
This article introduces lassopack, a suite of programs for regularized
regression in Stata. lassopack implements lasso, square-root lasso, elastic
net, ridge regression, adaptive lasso and post-estimation OLS. The methods are
suitable for the high-dimensional setting where the number of predictors
may be large and possibly greater than the number of observations, . We
offer three different approaches for selecting the penalization (`tuning')
parameters: information criteria (implemented in lasso2), -fold
cross-validation and -step ahead rolling cross-validation for cross-section,
panel and time-series data (cvlasso), and theory-driven (`rigorous')
penalization for the lasso and square-root lasso for cross-section and panel
data (rlasso). We discuss the theoretical framework and practical
considerations for each approach. We also present Monte Carlo results to
compare the performance of the penalization approaches.Comment: 52 pages, 6 figures, 6 tables; submitted to Stata Journal; for more
information see https://statalasso.github.io
VIENA2: A Driving Anticipation Dataset
Action anticipation is critical in scenarios where one needs to react before
the action is finalized. This is, for instance, the case in automated driving,
where a car needs to, e.g., avoid hitting pedestrians and respect traffic
lights. While solutions have been proposed to tackle subsets of the driving
anticipation tasks, by making use of diverse, task-specific sensors, there is
no single dataset or framework that addresses them all in a consistent manner.
In this paper, we therefore introduce a new, large-scale dataset, called
VIENA2, covering 5 generic driving scenarios, with a total of 25 distinct
action classes. It contains more than 15K full HD, 5s long videos acquired in
various driving conditions, weathers, daytimes and environments, complemented
with a common and realistic set of sensor measurements. This amounts to more
than 2.25M frames, each annotated with an action label, corresponding to 600
samples per action class. We discuss our data acquisition strategy and the
statistics of our dataset, and benchmark state-of-the-art action anticipation
techniques, including a new multi-modal LSTM architecture with an effective
loss function for action anticipation in driving scenarios.Comment: Accepted in ACCV 201
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