Genetic dissection of shoot development in maize

The isolation of genes affecting plant shoot formation is an important prerequisite for understanding the logic of plant development as well as for manipulating plant architecture. To this aim, maize transpositional mutagenesis has been adopted in our laboratory and has led to the isolation of different developmental mutants that are currently under study. Two of them, shootmeristemless (sml) and fused leaves (fdl), are presently described. Their locations, on the long arm of chromosome 10 and chromosome 7 respectively, have been established by traditional B-A translocation mapping and subsequently by linkage analysis with visible, as well as molecular, markers. The sml gene is a recessive mutation affecting shoot apical meristem maintenance and lateral organ formation. Its introgression in different genetic backgrounds has highlighted the epistatic interaction between sml and the unlinked distorted growth (dgr) locus. Seeds homozygous for both sml and dgr loci have a shootless phenotype whereas Dgr/-sml/sml seeds produce plants with altered fillotaxis and abnormal leaf morphogenesis. Microscopy analysis of young dgr primordia will be presented showing that the mutation does not interfere with epidermis formation although cell shape is less regular than in the wild-type. The fdl mutation confers a pleiotropic phenotype to the maize plant, which is specifically confined to the juvenile phase. The lack of a regular coleoptile opening that in normal development occurs after germination, is one of the fdl specific traits that we are presently investigating, for its putative relationship with the programmed cell death (PCD) process. We will present preliminary data on the cloning of the fdl gene along with a description of the strategy we have undertaken for the isolation of novel alleles. They will constitute proof for the gene identity and will provide new genetic material suitable for functional studies

GiViP: A Visual Profiler for Distributed Graph Processing Systems

Analyzing large-scale graphs provides valuable insights in different application scenarios. While many graph processing systems working on top of distributed infrastructures have been proposed to deal with big graphs, the tasks of profiling and debugging their massive computations remain time consuming and error-prone. This paper presents GiViP, a visual profiler for distributed graph processing systems based on a Pregel-like computation model. GiViP captures the huge amount of messages exchanged throughout a computation and provides an interactive user interface for the visual analysis of the collected data. We show how to take advantage of GiViP to detect anomalies related to the computation and to the infrastructure, such as slow computing units and anomalous message patterns.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

Quantitative real-time imaging of intracellular FRET biosensor dynamics using rapid multi-beam confocal FLIM

Fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) is a quantitative, intensity-independent microscopical method for measurement of diverse biochemical and physical properties in cell biology. It is a highly effective method for measurements of Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), and for quantification of protein-protein interactions in cells. Time-domain FLIM-FRET measurements of these dynamic interactions are particularly challenging, since the technique requires excellent photon statistics to derive experimental parameters from the complex decay kinetics often observed from fluorophores in living cells. Here we present a new time-domain multi-confocal FLIM instrument with an array of 64 visible beamlets to achieve parallelised excitation and detection with average excitation powers of ~ 1–2 μW per beamlet. We exemplify this instrument with up to 0.5 frames per second time-lapse FLIM measurements of cAMP levels using an Epac-based fluorescent biosensor in live HeLa cells with nanometer spatial and picosecond temporal resolution. We demonstrate the use of time-dependent phasor plots to determine parameterisation for multi-exponential decay fitting to monitor the fractional contribution of the activated conformation of the biosensor. Our parallelised confocal approach avoids having to compromise on speed, noise, accuracy in lifetime measurements and provides powerful means to quantify biochemical dynamics in living cells

GaAs-Based Superluminescent Light-Emitting Diodes with 290-nm Emission Bandwidth by Using Hybrid Quantum Well/Quantum Dot Structures

A high-performance superluminescent light-emitting diode (SLD) based upon a hybrid quantum well (QW)/quantum dot (QD) active element is reported and is assessed with regard to the resolution obtainable in an optical coherence tomography system. We report on the appearance of strong emission from higher order optical transition from the QW in a hybrid QW/QD structure. This additional emission broadening method contributes significantly to obtaining a 3-dB linewidth of 290 nm centered at 1200 nm, with 2.4 mW at room temperature

Direct quality prediction in resistance spot welding process: Sensitivity, specificity and predictive accuracy comparative analysis

In this work, several of the most popular and state-of-the-art classification methods are compared as pattern recognition tools for classification of resistance spot welding joints. Instead of using the result of a non-destructive testing technique as input variables, classifiers are trained directly with the relevant welding parameters, i.e. welding current, welding time and the type of electrode (electrode material and treatment). The algorithms are compared in terms of accuracy and area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve metrics, using nested cross-validation. Results show that although there is not a dominant classifier for every specificity/sensitivity requirement, support vector machines using radial kernel, boosting and random forest techniques obtain the best performance overallSpanish MICINN Project CSD2010-00034 (SimulPast CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010) and by the Junta de Castilla y León GREX251-200

Pt nanoparticles on tin oxide based support as a beneficial catalyst for oxygen reduction in alkaline solutions

A platinum nanocatalyst on Sb doped tin oxide support (Sb-SnO2) was synthesized and characterized as a catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction in 0.1 mol dm(-3) NaOH solution at 25 degrees C. Sb (5%) doped tin oxide support was synthesized by a modified hydrazine reduction procedure. The platinum nanocatalyst (20% Pt) on Sb-SnO2 support was synthesized by a borohydride reduction method. The synthesized support and catalyst were characterized by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffraction technique (XRD). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was applied to characterize the chemical status of elements before and after Pt-treatment. XPS spectra of Sn 3d, Pt 4f, Sb 3d and O 1s revealed that the Pt-deposition on Sb-SnO2 support induced the reduction of the Sn(4+) oxidation state to Sn(2+) and Sn(0) states, while Pt remained in the metallic state and Sb was in the (3+) oxidation state. Homogenous Pt nanoparticle distribution over the support, without pronounced particle agglomeration, was confirmed by HRTEM technique. The average Pt particle size was 2.9 nm. The electrochemically active Pt surface area of the catalyst was determined by the integration of the cyclic voltammetry curve in the potential region of underpotential deposition of hydrogen, after double layer charge correction, taking into account the reference value of 210 mu C cm(-2) for full monolayer coverage. This calculation gave the value of 51 m(2) g(-1). The kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction with Pt/[Sb-SnO2 catalyst was studied by cyclic voltammetry and linear sweep voltammetry using a rotating gold disc electrode. Two different Tafel slopes were observed: one close to 60 mV dec(-1) in the low current density region, and another at similar to 120 mV dec(-1) in the higher current densities region, as was already referred in previous reports for the oxygen reduction reaction with polycrystalline Pt, as well as with different Pt based nanocatalysts. The specific activities for oxygen reduction, expressed in terms of kinetic current densities per electrochemically Pt active surface area, as well as per mass of Pt loaded, at the constant potential of practical interest (0.85 V and 0.90 V vs. RHE), were compared to a carbon supported (Vulcan XC-72) catalyst. The Pt/[Sb-SnO2 catalyst exhibited similar catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction like carbon supported one. The advantages of the carbon free support application in terms of the durability and stability of the catalysts were proved by accelerated stability tests