Italian opinions about Great Britain during the period of the Italian renaissance

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A gut feeling:Noninvasive brain stimulation, gut microbiota and decision-making under risk

The majority of our daily choices include some degree of risk. This dissertation comprises a series of studies that investigate risk-taking behavior through the lens of decision neuroscience, exploring its neural processing from the brain to the gut. The first part includes studies using transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the role of frontal theta-band activity in the modulation of risk-taking behavior. Part 2 explores the specific roles of the right DLPFC (rDLPFC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) in this type of behavior and demonstrates that both areas are involved in valuation processing and the modulation of risk-taking behavior, reinforcing evidence of a strong functional interplay (Hare et al., 2009; Schiller et al., 2014). Finally, in part 3, the neural basis of risk-taking behavior was explored by looking beyond the central nervous system. The gut microbiota can influence various cognitive processes via the gut-brain axis (GBA). This study explores the effects of a probiotics manipulation on participants’ risk-taking behavior and intertemporal choices. The results show that probiotics led to a relative reduction in risk-taking behavior and increased likelihood of opting for delayed gratification, with reduced discount rates and lower risk proneness. In conclusion, this dissertation provides novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying risk-taking behavior, both within the central nervous system and including the gut-brain axis as a potential key actor

A model reduction scheme with preserved optimal performance

This paper addresses a problem in control relevant model reduction. More specifically, a model reduction scheme is proposed that preserves the disturbance decoupling property of the to-be-reduced plant. It is shown that optimal feedback laws designed for the reduced system will actually be optimal for the non-reduced system. Moreover, a characterization is given for the minimal reduction order for which this property can be established. This can be extended to the design of observers for complex systems. The results are illustrated by a simulation example

Assessing Global Transcriptome Changes in Response to South African Cassava Mosaic Virus [ZA-99] Infection in Susceptible Arabidopsis thaliana.

In susceptible plant hosts, co-evolution has favoured viral strategies to evade host defenses and utilize resources to their own benefit. The degree of manipulation of host gene expression is dependent on host-virus specificity and certain abiotic factors. In order to gain insight into global transcriptome changes for a geminivirus pathosystem, South African cassava mosaic virus [ZA:99] and Arabidopsis thaliana, 4×44K Agilent microarrays were adopted. After normalization, a log2 fold change filtering of data (p<0.05) identified 1,743 differentially expressed genes in apical leaf tissue. A significant increase in differential gene expression over time correlated with an increase in SACMV accumulation, as virus copies were 5-fold higher at 24 dpi and 6-fold higher at 36 dpi than at 14 dpi. Many altered transcripts were primarily involved in stress and defense responses, phytohormone signalling pathways, cellular transport, cell-cycle regulation, transcription, oxidation-reduction, and other metabolic processes. Only forty-one genes (2.3%) were shown to be continuously expressed across the infection period, indicating that the majority of genes were transient and unique to a particular time point during infection. A significant number of pathogen-responsive genes were suppressed during the late stages of pathogenesis, while during active systemic infection (14 to 24 dpi), there was an increase in up-regulated genes in several GO functional categories. An adaptive response was initiated to divert energy from growth-related processes to defense, leading to disruption of normal biological host processes. Similarities in cell-cycle regulation correlated between SACMV and Cabbage leaf curl virus (CaLCuV), but differences were also evident. Differences in gene expression between the two geminiviruses clearly demonstrated that, while some global transcriptome responses are generally common in plant virus infections, temporal host-specific interactions are required for successful geminivirus infection. To our knowledge this is the first geminivirus microarray study identifying global differentially expressed transcripts at 3 time points.Funding was from the National Bioinformatics Network through the Department of Science and Technology (www.dst.gov.za) and the National Research Foundation (www.nrf.ac.za).NCS2016

Rational representations and controller synthesis of L2 behaviors

This paper considers linear dynamical systems restricted to square integrable trajectories. Following the behavioral formalism, a number of relevant classes of linear and shift-invariant L2systems are defined. It is shown that rational functions, analytic in specific half-spaces of the complex plane, prove most useful for representing such systems. For various classes of L2 systems, this paper provides a complete characterization of system equivalence in terms of rational kernel representations of L2 systems. In addition, a complete solution is given for the problem when selected (non-manifest) variables of an L2 system can be completely eliminated from their behavior. This elimination theorem has considerable independent interest in general modeling problems. It is shown that the elimination result is key in the solution of the problem for realizing an arbitrary L2 system as the interconnection of a given L2 system and a to-be-synthesized L2 system. In the context of control, this problem amounts to characterizing the existence and parameterization of all controllers that, after interconnection with a given plant, constitute a desired controlled system