Fog paradigm for local energy management systems

Cloud Computing infrastructures have been extensively deployed to support energy computation within built environments. This has ranged from predicting potential energy demand for a building (or a group of buildings), undertaking heat profile/energy distribution simulations, to understanding the impact of climate and weather on building operation. Cloud computing usage in these scenarios have benefited from resource elasticity, where the number and types of resources can change based on the complexity of the simulation being considered. While there are numerous advantages of using a cloud based energy management system, there are also significant limitations. For instance, many such systems assume that the data has been pre-staged at a cloud platform prior to simulation, and do not take account of data transfer times from the building to the simulation platform. The need for supporting computation at edge resources, which can be hosted within the building itself or shared within a building complex, has become important over recent year. Additionally, network connectivity between the sensing infrastructure within a built environment and a data centre where analysis is to be carried out can be intermittent or may fail. There is therefore also a need to better understand how computation/analysis can be carried out closer to the data capture site to complement analysis that would be undertaken at the data centre. We describe how the Fog computing paradigm can be used to support some of these requirements, extending the capability of a data centre to support energy simulation within built environments

Organ-specific responses during brain death:increased aerobic metabolism in the liver and anaerobic metabolism with decreased perfusion in the kidneys

Hepatic and renal energy status prior to transplantation correlates with graft survival. However, effects of brain death (BD) on organ-specific energy status are largely unknown. We studied metabolism, perfusion, oxygen consumption, and mitochondrial function in the liver and kidneys following BD. BD was induced in mechanically-ventilated rats, inflating an epidurally-placed Fogarty-catheter, with sham-operated rats as controls. A 9.4T-preclinical MRI system measured hourly oxygen availability (BOLD-related R2*) and perfusion (T1-weighted). After 4 hrs, tissue was collected, mitochondria isolated and assessed with high-resolution respirometry. Quantitative proteomics, qPCR, and biochemistry was performed on stored tissue/plasma. Following BD, the liver increased glycolytic gene expression (Pfk-1) with decreased glycogen stores, while the kidneys increased anaerobic- (Ldha) and decreased gluconeogenic-related gene expression (Pck-1). Hepatic oxygen consumption increased, while renal perfusion decreased. ATP levels dropped in both organs while mitochondrial respiration and complex I/ATP synthase activity were unaffected. In conclusion, the liver responds to increased metabolic demands during BD, enhancing aerobic metabolism with functional mitochondria. The kidneys shift towards anaerobic energy production while renal perfusion decreases. Our findings highlight the need for an organ-specific approach to assess and optimise graft quality prior to transplantation, to optimise hepatic metabolic conditions and improve renal perfusion while supporting cellular detoxification

Entanglement in Many-Body Systems

The recent interest in aspects common to quantum information and condensed matter has prompted a prosperous activity at the border of these disciplines that were far distant until few years ago. Numerous interesting questions have been addressed so far. Here we review an important part of this field, the properties of the entanglement in many-body systems. We discuss the zero and finite temperature properties of entanglement in interacting spin, fermionic and bosonic model systems. Both bipartite and multipartite entanglement will be considered. At equilibrium we emphasize on how entanglement is connected to the phase diagram of the underlying model. The behavior of entanglement can be related, via certain witnesses, to thermodynamic quantities thus offering interesting possibilities for an experimental test. Out of equilibrium we discuss how to generate and manipulate entangled states by means of many-body Hamiltonians.Comment: 61 pages, 29 figure

Role of ENPP1 on Adipocyte Maturation

BACKGROUND: It is recognized that the ability of adipose tissue to expand in response to energy excess, i.e. adipocyte maturation, is important in determining systemic abnormalities in glucose and lipid metabolism. Ectonucleotide pyrophosphatase phosphodiesterase 1 (ENPP1, also known as PC-1) has been recently reported to be involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and related diseases. However, its role on adipose tissue physiology as a mechanism of systemic insulin resistance is not understood. This study was performed to evaluate whether ENPP1 is regulated during adipogenesis and whether over-expression in adipocytes can affect adipocyte maturation, a potential novel mechanism of ENPP1-related insulin resistance. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: ENPP1 expression was found down-regulated during 3T3-L1 maturation, and over-expression of human ENPP1 in 3T3-L1 (pQCXIP-ENPP1 vector) resulted in adipocyte insulin resistance and in defective adipocyte maturation. Adipocyte maturation was more efficient in mesenchymal embryonal cells from ENPP1 knockout mice than from wild-type. CONCLUSIONS: We identify ENPP1 as a novel mechanism of defective adipocyte maturation. This mechanism could contribute to the pathogenesis of insulin resistance in absence of obesity

Purification and functional characterisation of rhiminopeptidase A, a novel aminopeptidase from the venom of Bitis gabonica rhinoceros

This study describes the discovery and characterisation of a novel aminopeptidase A from the venom of B. g. rhinoceros and highlights its potential biological importance. Similar to mammalian aminopeptidases, rhiminopeptidase A might be capable of playing roles in altering the blood pressure and brain function of victims. Furthermore, it could have additional effects on the biological functions of other host proteins by cleaving their N-terminal amino acids. This study points towards the importance of complete analysis of individual components of snake venom in order to develop effective therapies for snake bites

Ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices: mimicking condensed matter physics and beyond

We review recent developments in the physics of ultracold atomic and molecular gases in optical lattices. Such systems are nearly perfect realisations of various kinds of Hubbard models, and as such may very well serve to mimic condensed matter phenomena. We show how these systems may be employed as quantum simulators to answer some challenging open questions of condensed matter, and even high energy physics. After a short presentation of the models and the methods of treatment of such systems, we discuss in detail, which challenges of condensed matter physics can be addressed with (i) disordered ultracold lattice gases, (ii) frustrated ultracold gases, (iii) spinor lattice gases, (iv) lattice gases in "artificial" magnetic fields, and, last but not least, (v) quantum information processing in lattice gases. For completeness, also some recent progress related to the above topics with trapped cold gases will be discussed.Comment: Review article. v2: published version, 135 pages, 34 figure

Many body physics from a quantum information perspective

The quantum information approach to many body physics has been very successful in giving new insight and novel numerical methods. In these lecture notes we take a vertical view of the subject, starting from general concepts and at each step delving into applications or consequences of a particular topic. We first review some general quantum information concepts like entanglement and entanglement measures, which leads us to entanglement area laws. We then continue with one of the most famous examples of area-law abiding states: matrix product states, and tensor product states in general. Of these, we choose one example (classical superposition states) to introduce recent developments on a novel quantum many body approach: quantum kinetic Ising models. We conclude with a brief outlook of the field.Comment: Lectures from the Les Houches School on "Modern theories of correlated electron systems". Improved version new references adde

Prolactin Receptor Signaling Is Essential for Perinatal Brown Adipocyte Function: A Role for Insulin-like Growth Factor-2

BACKGROUND: The lactogenic hormones prolactin (PRL) and placental lactogens (PL) play central roles in reproduction and mammary development. Their actions are mediated via binding to PRL receptor (PRLR), highly expressed in brown adipose tissue (BAT), yet their impact on adipocyte function and metabolism remains unclear. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: PRLR knockout (KO) newborn mice were phenotypically characterized in terms of thermoregulation and their BAT differentiation assayed for gene expression studies. Derived brown preadipocyte cell lines were established to evaluate the molecular mechanisms involved in PRL signaling on BAT function. Here, we report that newborn mice lacking PRLR have hypotrophic BAT depots that express low levels of adipocyte nuclear receptor PPARgamma2, its coactivator PGC-1alpha, uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) and the beta3 adrenoceptor, reducing mouse viability during cold challenge. Immortalized PRLR KO preadipocytes fail to undergo differentiation into mature adipocytes, a defect reversed by reintroduction of PRLR. That the effects of the lactogens in BAT are at least partly mediated by Insulin-like Growth Factor-2 (IGF-2) is supported by: i) a striking reduction in BAT IGF-2 expression in PRLR KO mice and in PRLR-deficient preadipocytes; ii) induction of cellular IGF-2 expression by PRL through JAK2/STAT5 pathway activation; and iii) reversal of defective differentiation in PRLR KO cells by exogenous IGF-2. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate that the lactogens act in concert with IGF-2 to control brown adipocyte differentiation and growth. Given the prominent role of brown adipose tissue during the perinatal period, our results identified prolactin receptor signaling as a major player and a potential therapeutic target in protecting newborn mammals against hypothermia

The Indian cobra reference genome and transcriptome enables comprehensive identification of venom toxins

Snakebite envenoming is a serious and neglected tropical disease that kills ~100,000 people annually. High-quality, genome-enabled comprehensive characterization of toxin genes will facilitate development of effective humanized recombinant antivenom. We report a de novo near-chromosomal genome assembly of Naja naja, the Indian cobra, a highly venomous, medically important snake. Our assembly has a scaffold N50 of 223.35 Mb, with 19 scaffolds containing 95% of the genome. Of the 23,248 predicted protein-coding genes, 12,346 venom-gland-expressed genes constitute the \u27venom-ome\u27 and this included 139 genes from 33 toxin families. Among the 139 toxin genes were 19 \u27venom-ome-specific toxins\u27 (VSTs) that showed venom-gland-specific expression, and these probably encode the minimal core venom effector proteins. Synthetic venom reconstituted through recombinant VST expression will aid in the rapid development of safe and effective synthetic antivenom. Additionally, our genome could serve as a reference for snake genomes, support evolutionary studies and enable venom-driven drug discovery