Nuclear Environments Inspection with Micro Aerial Vehicles: Algorithms and Experiments

In this work, we address the estimation, planning, control and mapping problems to allow a small quadrotor to autonomously inspect the interior of hazardous damaged nuclear sites. These algorithms run onboard on a computationally limited CPU. We investigate the effect of varying illumination on the system performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first fully autonomous system of this size and scale applied to inspect the interior of a full scale mock-up of a Primary Containment Vessel (PCV). The proposed solution opens up new ways to inspect nuclear reactors and to support nuclear decommissioning, which is well known to be a dangerous, long and tedious process. Experimental results with varying illumination conditions show the ability to navigate a full scale mock-up PCV pedestal and create a map of the environment, while concurrently avoiding obstacles.Comment: 10 pages, ISER 201

Multiple myeloma cells Graphs and Figures inhibit adipogenesis, increase senescencerelated and inflammatory gene transcript expression, and alter metabolism in preadipocytes

Myeloma cells alter metabolism & induce senescence in adipocyte-lineage cells, suggesting that senescence-associated proteins are involved in multiple myeloma.https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2021/1032/thumbnail.jp

Some investigations into non passive listening

Our knowledge of the function of the auditory nervous system is based upon a wealth of data obtained, for the most part, in anaesthetised animals. More recently, it has been generally acknowledged that factors such as attention profoundly modulate the activity of sensory systems and this can take place at many levels of processing. Imaging studies, in particular, have revealed the greater activation of auditory areas and areas outside of sensory processing areas when attending to a stimulus. We present here a brief review of the consequences of such non-passive listening and go on to describe some of the experiments we are conducting to investigate them. In imaging studies, using fMRI, we can demonstrate the activation of attention networks that are non-specific to the sensory modality as well as greater and different activation of the areas of the supra-temporal plane that includes primary and secondary auditory areas. The profuse descending connections of the auditory system seem likely to be part of the mechanisms subserving attention to sound. These are generally thought to be largely inactivated by anaesthesia. However, we have been able to demonstrate that even in an anaesthetised preparation, removing the descending control from the cortex leads to quite profound changes in the temporal patterns of activation by sounds in thalamus and inferior colliculus. Some of these effects seem to be specific to the ear of stimulation and affect interaural processing. To bridge these observations we are developing an awake behaving preparation involving freely moving animals in which it will be possible to investigate the effects of consciousness (by contrasting awake and anaesthetized), passive and active listening

New hints towards a precision medicine strategy for IDH wild-type glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma represents the most common primary malignancy of the central nervous system in adults and remains a largely incurable disease. The elucidation of disease subtypes based on mutational profiling, gene expression and DNA methylation has so far failed to translate into improved clinical outcomes. However, new knowledge emerging from the subtyping effort in the IDH-wild-type setting may provide directions for future precision therapies. Here, we review recent learnings in the field, and further consider how tumour microenvironment differences across subtypes may reveal novel contexts of vulnerability. We discuss recent treatment approaches and ongoing trials in the IDH-wild-type glioblastoma setting, and propose an integrated discovery stratagem incorporating multi-omics, single-cell technologies and computational approaches

Histone modifications associated with herpes simplex virus type 1 genomes during quiescence and following ICP0-mediated de-repression

In the current study, it was shown that repressed virus genomes in quiescently infected MRC5 cells adopt a repressed histone-associated structure marked by the enrichment of deacetylated histones at a wide variety of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) promoters. In addition, it was shown that genome de-repression, mediated by HSV-2 superinfection or delivery of ICP0 using a recombinant adenovirus vector, resulted in the enrichment of acetylated histones on HSV DNA. These data indicate that ICP0-mediated genome de-repression is intimately linked to enrichment of acetylated histones at virus promoters. The fold change in association of pan-acetylated histone H3 following Ad.TRE.ICP0-mediated de-repression consistently revealed promoter-specific variation, with the highest fold changes (>50-fold) being observed at the latency-associated transcript promoter and enhancer regions. Chromatin immunoprecipitation analyses using an antibody specific to the C terminus of histone H3 as a surrogate measure of nucleosome occupancy revealed little variability in the total loading of histone H3 at the various HSV promoters. This observation suggests that acetylation of histone H3 in response to ICP0 expression is not uniformly targeted across the HSV-1 genome during ICP0-mediated de-repression

Affect, Relationality and the 'Problem of Personality'

This peer-reviewed journal article sets out an argument regarding the importance of genealogical work for understanding concepts such as affect and suggestion

Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 gravitational lens systems – VIII. A radio census of lensed systems

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/We present radio observations of 24 confirmed and candidate strongly lensed quasars identified by the Gaia Gravitational Lenses working group. We detect radio emission from eight systems in 5.5 and 9 GHz observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), and 12 systems in 6 GHz observations with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). The resolution of our ATCA observations is insufficient to resolve the radio emission into multiple lensed images, but we do detect multiple images from 11 VLA targets. We have analysed these systems using our observations in conjunction with existing optical measurements, including measuring offsets between the radio and optical positions for each image and building updated lens models. These observations significantly expand the existing sample of lensed radio quasars, suggest that most lensed systems are detectable at radio wavelengths with targeted observations, and demonstrate the feasibility of population studies with high-resolution radio imaging.Peer reviewe

Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 Gravitational Lens Systems. VIII. A radio census of lensed systems

We present radio observations of 24 confirmed and candidate strongly lensed quasars identified by the Gaia Gravitational Lenses (GraL) working group. We detect radio emission from 8 systems in 5.5 and 9 GHz observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), and 12 systems in 6 GHz observations with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). The resolution of our ATCA observations is insufficient to resolve the radio emission into multiple lensed images, but we do detect multiple images from 11 VLA targets. We have analysed these systems using our observations in conjunction with existing optical measurements, including measuring offsets between the radio and optical positions, for each image and building updated lens models. These observations significantly expand the existing sample of lensed radio quasars, suggest that most lensed systems are detectable at radio wavelengths with targeted observations, and demonstrate the feasibility of population studies with high resolution radio imaging

Intracellular SERS nanoprobes for distinction of different neuronal cell types.

Distinction between closely related and morphologically similar cells is difficult by conventional methods especially without labeling. Using nuclear-targeted gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as intracellular probes we demonstrate the ability to distinguish between progenitor and differentiated cell types in a human neuroblastoma cell line using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). SERS spectra from the whole cell area as well as only the nucleus were analyzed using principal component analysis that allowed unambiguous distinction of the different cell types. SERS spectra from the nuclear region showed the developments during cellular differentiation by identifying an increase in DNA/RNA ratio and proteins transcribed. Our approach using nuclear-targeted AuNPs and SERS imaging provides label-free and noninvasive characterization that can play a vital role in identifying cell types in biomedical stem cell research