Prague's Emission Fourier Transform Microwave Spectrometer - Design and Preliminary Results

The design, performance and operation of the high resolution microwave spectrometer are described. The spectrometer is based on the Fabry-Perot resonator supplemented by a pulsed supersonic nozzle for adiabatic cooling of the sample. The spectrometer’s high sensitivity and resolution are demonstrated by several examples

Hybrid Elastic ARM&Cloud HPC Collaborative Platform for generic tasks

Compute-heavy workloads are currently run on Hybrid HPC structures using x86 CPUs and GPUs from Intel, AMD, or NVidia, which have extremely high energy and financial costs. However, thanks to the incredible progress made on CPUs and GPUs based on the ARM architecture and their ubiquity in today’s mobile devices, it’s possible to conceive of a low-cost solution for our world’s data processing needs. Every year ARM-based mobile devices become more powerful, efficient, and come in ever smaller packages with ever growing storage. At the same time, smartphones waste these capabilities at night while they’re charging. This represents billions of idle devices whose processing power is not being utilized. For that reason, the objective of this paper is to evaluate and develop a hybrid, distributed, scalable, and redundant platform that allows for the utilization of these idle devices through a cloud-based administration service. The system would allow for massive improvements in terms of efficiency and cost for com-pute-heavy workload. During the evaluation phase, we were able to establish savings in power and cost significant enough to justify exploring it as a serious alternative to traditional computing architectures.Instituto de Investigación en Informátic

Instruments Measuring Self-Care in Children and Young Adults With Chronic Conditions: A Systematic Review

: Children and young adults (CYAs) with chronic conditions need to engage in self-care to improve their quality of life. This study aimed to retrieve the literature on instruments to assess self-care in CYAs living with chronic conditions and evaluate the psychometric proprieties of the instruments retrieved. A systematic literature review was conducted on six databases to identify peer-reviewed papers that described or used an evaluation instrument of self-care in CYAs with chronic conditions. Twenty-three articles describing 11 instruments of self-care were identified. Five instruments (45.45%) were developed for specific diseases, while six (54.54%) for various chronic illnesses. Most of the instruments were focused on treatment adherence within self-care maintenance (i.e., behaviors to maintain illness stability), excluding the monitoring of clinical parameters or the management of exacerbations. This review provides an overview of available instruments that measure self-care in CYAs with chronic conditions, which health professionals could use for patient education

Promoter hypermethylation of SHOX2 and SEPT9 is a potential biomarker for minimally invasive diagnosis in adenocarcinomas of the biliary tract

Clinicopathological data of the 20 biliary tract cancer cases and 100 gender- and age-matched controls included in plasma study. (XLSX 116 kb

Pengembangan Keterampilan Sosial dan Kewirausahaan pada Organisasi Pemuda Keagamaan di Depok

Penelitian ini mengkaji kelompok pemuda dalam organisasi Muhammadiyah sebagai Faith Based Organization (FBO) menjadi agen Perubah dalam pengembangan masyarakat lokal di Kelurahan Cinangka, Depok, Jawa Barat. Penelitian ini membahas tentang proses intervensi kelompok pemuda dengan mempergunakan strategi penelitian aksi (participatory action research). Tahapan penelitian aksi terdiri dari tiga tahap, yaitu mengidentifikasi kebutuhan dan potensi (look), merancang program intervensi (think), dan mengimplementasikan program intervensi (act). Berdasarkan identifikasi masalah dan kebutuhan pada tahap look, penelitian ini menemukan potensi masyarakat dalam upaya menyelesaian permasalahan lingkungan. Selain pemuda yang tergabung dalam FBO, ada juga kelompok ibu yang terlibat. Tahap look memperlihatkan bahwa potensi pemuda dari FBO dapat maksimal apabila mendapatkan dukungan dari elemen lain, terutama orang tua di dalam komunitas sasaran. Kemudian melalui proses perencanaan kegiatan dalam tahap think bersama komunitas sasaran, terdapat beberapa kegiatan yang diimplementasikan dalam penelitian ini, yaitu pengembangan keterampilan sosial dan kewirausahaan. Penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa intervensi kelompok pemuda dalam pengembangan komunitas melalui pengembangan keterampilan kewirausahaan, tidak dapat menanggalkan urgensi keterampilan sosial guna memperkuat peran pemuda dari FBO di komunitas.Kata Kunci: pengembangan masyarakat, intervensi kelompok pemuda, pengelolaan lingkungan, Faith Based Organization, keterampilan mikro.This study examines the youth groups in the Muhammadiyah organization as an Faith Based Organization (FBO) as agents of change in community development at Cinangka Village, Depok, West Java. By using a Participatory Action Research, this study discusses the process of youth group intervention in three stages, which covers needs and potencies assessment (look), action plan (think) and implementation (act). Based on ‘look' phase, this study found people's potential at their community which are youth in FBO and groups women. In this phase has identified that youth's potencies in FBO could be maximized if supported by parents. In the next stage through planning process, there were some activities that are implemented in this study which are development of social skills and entrepreneurship. This study has found that youth group intervention should also recognize social skills on strengthen the role of youth in FBO

Identification of the skeletal progenitor cells forming osteophytes in osteoarthritis.

OBJECTIVES: Osteophytes are highly prevalent in osteoarthritis (OA) and are associated with pain and functional disability. These pathological outgrowths of cartilage and bone typically form at the junction of articular cartilage, periosteum and synovium. The aim of this study was to identify the cells forming osteophytes in OA. METHODS: Fluorescent genetic cell-labelling and tracing mouse models were induced with tamoxifen to switch on reporter expression, as appropriate, followed by surgery to induce destabilisation of the medial meniscus. Contributions of fluorescently labelled cells to osteophytes after 2 or 8 weeks, and their molecular identity, were analysed by histology, immunofluorescence staining and RNA in situ hybridisation. Pdgfrα-H2BGFP mice and Pdgfrα-CreER mice crossed with multicolour Confetti reporter mice were used for identification and clonal tracing of mesenchymal progenitors. Mice carrying Col2-CreER, Nes-CreER, LepR-Cre, Grem1-CreER, Gdf5-Cre, Sox9-CreER or Prg4-CreER were crossed with tdTomato reporter mice to lineage-trace chondrocytes and stem/progenitor cell subpopulations. RESULTS: Articular chondrocytes, or skeletal stem cells identified by Nes, LepR or Grem1 expression, did not give rise to osteophytes. Instead, osteophytes derived from Pdgfrα-expressing stem/progenitor cells in periosteum and synovium that are descendants from the Gdf5-expressing embryonic joint interzone. Further, we show that Sox9-expressing progenitors in periosteum supplied hybrid skeletal cells to the early osteophyte, while Prg4-expressing progenitors from synovial lining contributed to cartilage capping the osteophyte, but not to bone. CONCLUSION: Our findings reveal distinct periosteal and synovial skeletal progenitors that cooperate to form osteophytes in OA. These cell populations could be targeted in disease modification for treatment of OA

Baltic Salmon, Salmo salar, from Swedish River Lule Älv Is More Resistant to Furunculosis Compared to Rainbow Trout

BACKGROUND: Furunculosis, caused by Aeromonas salmonicida, continues to be a major health problem for the growing salmonid aquaculture. Despite effective vaccination programs regular outbreaks occur at the fish farms calling for repeated antibiotic treatment. We hypothesized that a difference in natural susceptibility to this disease might exist between Baltic salmon and the widely used rainbow trout. STUDY DESIGN: A cohabitation challenge model was applied to investigate the relative susceptibility to infection with A. salmonicida in rainbow trout and Baltic salmon. The course of infection was monitored daily over a 30-day period post challenge and the results were summarized in mortality curves. RESULTS: A. salmonicida was recovered from mortalities during the entire test period. At day 30 the survival was 6.2% and 34.0% for rainbow trout and Baltic salmon, respectively. Significant differences in susceptibility to A. salmonicida were demonstrated between the two salmonids and hazard ratio estimation between rainbow trout and Baltic salmon showed a 3.36 higher risk of dying from the infection in the former. CONCLUSION: The finding that Baltic salmon carries a high level of natural resistance to furunculosis might raise new possibilities for salmonid aquaculture in terms of minimizing disease outbreaks and the use of antibiotics

Gene Expression in the Rodent Brain is Associated with Its Regional Connectivity

The putative link between gene expression of brain regions and their neural connectivity patterns is a fundamental question in neuroscience. Here this question is addressed in the first large scale study of a prototypical mammalian rodent brain, using a combination of rat brain regional connectivity data with gene expression of the mouse brain. Remarkably, even though this study uses data from two different rodent species (due to the data limitations), we still find that the connectivity of the majority of brain regions is highly predictable from their gene expression levels–the outgoing (incoming) connectivity is successfully predicted for 73% (56%) of brain regions, with an overall fairly marked accuracy level of 0.79 (0.83). Many genes are found to play a part in predicting both the incoming and outgoing connectivity (241 out of the 500 top selected genes, p-value<1e-5). Reassuringly, the genes previously known from the literature to be involved in axon guidance do carry significant information about regional brain connectivity. Surveying the genes known to be associated with the pathogenesis of several brain disorders, we find that those associated with schizophrenia, autism and attention deficit disorder are the most highly enriched in the connectivity-related genes identified here. Finally, we find that the profile of functional annotation groups that are associated with regional connectivity in the rodent is significantly correlated with the annotation profile of genes previously found to determine neural connectivity in C. elegans (Pearson correlation of 0.24, p<1e-6 for the outgoing connections and 0.27, p<1e-5 for the incoming). Overall, the association between connectivity and gene expression in a specific extant rodent species' brain is likely to be even stronger than found here, given the limitations of current data