Tracking the Fine Scale Movements of Fish using Autonomous Maritime Robotics: A Systematic State of the Art Review

This paper provides a systematic state of the art review on tracking the fine scale movements of fish with the use of autonomous maritime robotics. Knowledge of migration patterns and the localization of specific species of fish at a given time is vital to many aspects of conservation. This paper reviews these technologies and provides insight into what systems are being used and why. The review results show that a larger amount of complex systems that use a deep learning techniques are used over more simplistic approaches to the design. Most results found in the study involve Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, which generally require the most complex array of sensors. The results also provide insight into future research such as methods involving swarm intelligence, which has seen an increase in use in recent years. This synthesis of current and future research will be helpful to research teams working to create an autonomous vehicle with intentions to track, navigate or survey

Pseudomonas aeruginosa diversification during infection development in cystic fibrosis lungs - A review

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most prevalent pathogen of cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease. Its long persistence in CF airways is associated with sophisticated mechanisms of adaptation, including biofilm formation, resistance to antibiotics, hypermutability and customized pathogenicity in which virulence factors are expressed according the infection stage. CF adaptation is triggered by high selective pressure of inflamed CF lungs and by antibiotic treatments. Bacteria undergo genetic, phenotypic, and physiological variations that are fastened by the repeating interplay of mutation and selection. During CF infection development, P. aeruginosa gradually shifts from an acute virulent pathogen of early infection to a host-adapted pathogen of chronic infection. This paper reviews the most common changes undergone by P. aeruginosa at each stage of infection development in CF lungs. The comprehensive understanding of the adaptation process of P. aeruginosa may help to design more effective antimicrobial treatments and to identify new targets for future drugs to prevent the progression of infection to chronic stages.The authors thank the project FCT PTDC/SAUSAP/113196/2009/FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-016012, the Strategic Project PEst-OE/EQB/LA0023/2013, the Project. BioHealth-Biotechnology and Bioengineering approaches to improve health quality., Ref. NORTE-07-0124-FEDER-000027, co-funded by the Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (ON.2-O Novo Norte), QREN, FEDER, the project. RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012-Consolidating Research Expertise and Resources on Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology at CEB/IBB., Ref. FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462, FEDER. The authors also acknowledge PhD Grant of Ana MargaridaSousa SFRH/BD/72551/2010

A Gradualist Approach to Criminality: Early British Socialists, Utopia and Crime

The attitudes of early British socialists to criminality are a thoroughly under-researched area of historical scholarship. This paper draws on the utopian ideas of Robert Owen, William Morris, H. G. Wells, Robert Blatchford, Edward Carpenter and Ramsay MacDonald as a vehicle for investigating the attitudes of mainstream fin de siècle British socialists to crime, punishment and penal reform. Placing these figures and their utopias along a spectrum that sees radical ‘Arcadian’ socialists on the far left, ‘technological’ socialists on the far right, and moderate socialists occupying the middle ground, it presents two principal findings. First it demonstrates how crime was predicted by most of the left to decrease to a minimum level under socialism. ‘Arcadians’, ‘technological’ and moderate socialists invoked different methods in this pursuit, but each were in essence grappling with the same broader issue of the relationship of the individual to the state under socialism. Secondly, examining the multifaceted ideological heritage of the British left in relation to their approaches to crime, it is argued that, despite the left’s gradualist philosophy, their own attitudes to criminality actually closely reflected utopian conceptions. Examination of these issues offers an important opportunity to re-evaluate the evolution of British socialist thought

Intestinal barrier interactions with specialized CD8 T Cells

Copyright: © 2017 Konjar, Ferreira, Blankenhaus and Veldhoen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.The trillions of microorganisms that reside in the gastrointestinal tract, essential for nutrient absorption, are kept under control by a single cell barrier and large amounts of immune cells. Intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) are critical in establishing an environment supporting microbial colonization and immunological tolerance. A large population of CD8+ T cells is in direct and constant contact with the IECs and the intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs). Due to their location, at the interphase of the intestinal lumen and external environment and the host tissues, they seem ideally positioned to balance immune tolerance and protection to preserve the fragile intestinal barrier from invasion as well as immunopathology. IELs are a heterogeneous population, with a large innate-like contribution of unknown specificity, intercalated with antigen-specific tissue-resident memory T cells. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of IEL physiology and how they interact with the IECs and contribute to immune surveillance to preserve intestinal homeostasis and host-microbial relationships.Members of the Veldhoen laboratory are supported by European Union H2020 ERA project (N°667824—EXCELLtoINNOV), publication costs were provided by LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-007391, projeto cofinanciado pelo FEDER através POR Lisboa 2020—Programa Operacional Regional de Lisboa, do PORTUGAL 2020, e pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Noisy neighbourhoods: quorum sensing in fungal-polymicrobial infections

Quorum sensing was once considered a way in which a species was able to sense its cell density and regulate gene expression accordingly. However, it is now becoming apparent that multiple microbes can sense particular quorum-sensing molecules, enabling them to sense and respond to other microbes in their neighbourhood. Such interactions are significant within the context of polymicrobial disease, in which the competition or cooperation of microbes can alter disease progression. Fungi comprise a small but important component of the human microbiome and are in constant contact with bacteria and viruses. The discovery of quorum-sensing pathways in fungi has led to the characterization of a number of interkingdom quorum-sensing interactions. Here, we review the recent developments in quorum sensing in medically important fungi, and the implications these interactions have on the host's innate immune response

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Narrative ethics in postcolonial fiction

When considering the ethico-political task of postcolonial criticism Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak claims that "ethics is the experience of the impossible, " and that "deconstruction cannot form a political program of any kind. " Both these ideas motivate the central question of this thesis: if ethics is an experience of the impossible and deconstruction cannot form a political program, can we produce an ethical critique that radically considers the narrative representation of violent oppression within different postcolonial cultures and histories? This question will be addressed via four modes of enquiry: 1) By considering the current role of deconstruction within postcolonial criticism and asking whether deconstruction is a concept of writing that can be incorporated into reading strategies which intend to identify an ethics within writing; 2) by examining recent critical investigations into the idea that literary-linguistic structures themselves have ethical characteristics, and asking whether it is possible to identify an ethics within the structure of certain postcolonial fictions; 3) by investigating the representation of violence and physical oppression intrinsic to these fictions, and asking how the inscription of that violence affects their narrative structures; and, 4) by arguing that the representation of the postcolonial body in pain not only affects the structures of the narratives considered, but also plays a vital role in the radical ethics of that fiction. This last concern is initiated by Elaine Scarry's claim that pain itself remains utterly resistant to language. These enquiries will be made alongside critical examinations of twelve international postcolonial novels and their narrative structures. In doing so this thesis will ask whether it is possible to identify a radical ethics of fiction that is common to various postcolonial cultures, rather than a discursively informed ethics that is culturally or historically specific.When considering the ethico-political task of postcolonial criticism Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak claims that "ethics is the experience of the impossible, " and that "deconstruction cannot form a political program of any kind. " Both these ideas motivate the central question of this thesis: if ethics is an experience of the impossible and deconstruction cannot form a political program, can we produce an ethical critique that radically considers the narrative representation of violent oppression within different postcolonial cultures and histories? This question will be addressed via four modes of enquiry: 1) By considering the current role of deconstruction within postcolonial criticism and asking whether deconstruction is a concept of writing that can be incorporated into reading strategies which intend to identify an ethics within writing; 2) by examining recent critical investigations into the idea that literary-linguistic structures themselves have ethical characteristics, and asking whether it is possible to identify an ethics within the structure of certain postcolonial fictions; 3) by investigating the representation of violence and physical oppression intrinsic to these fictions, and asking how the inscription of that violence affects their narrative structures; and, 4) by arguing that the representation of the postcolonial body in pain not only affects the structures of the narratives considered, but also plays a vital role in the radical ethics of that fiction. This last concern is initiated by Elaine Scarry's claim that pain itself remains utterly resistant to language. These enquiries will be made alongside critical examinations of twelve international postcolonial novels and their narrative structures. In doing so this thesis will ask whether it is possible to identify a radical ethics of fiction that is common to various postcolonial cultures, rather than a discursively informed ethics that is culturally or historically specific

Indescribable pain in literature: A commentary on Crawford

Pain McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) Language Literary writing Embodiment The body

Narrative ethics in postcolonial fiction

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