Applications of TIMS data in agricultural areas and related atmospheric considerations

While much of traditional remote sensing in agricultural research was limited to the visible and reflective infrared, advances in thermal infrared remote sensing technology are adding a dimension to digital image analysis of agricultural areas. The Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS) an airborne sensor having six bands over the nominal 8.2 to 12.2 m range, offers the ability to calculate land surface emissivities unlike most previous singular broadband sensors. Preliminary findings on the utility of the TIMS for several agricultural applications and related atmospheric considerations are discussed

Combined photo- and electroreflectance of multijunction solar cells enabled by subcell electric coupling

Electric coupling between subcells of a monolithically grown multijunction solar cell in short circuit allows their simultaneous and independent characterization by means of photo- and electroreflectance. The photovoltage generated by selective absorption of the pump beam in a given subcell during photoreflectance measurements results in reverse biasing the complementary subunits at the modulation frequency set on the pump illumination. Such voltage bias modulation acts then as external perturbation on the complementary subcells. The spectral separation of the different subcell absorption ranges permits the probe beam to record in a single spectrum the response of the complete device as a combination of photo- and electroreflectance, thereby providing access for diagnosis of subcells on an individual basis. This form of modulation spectroscopy is demonstrated on a GaInP/GaAs tandem solar cell.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. This article has been accepted by Appl. Phys. Lett. After it is published, it will be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.506260

Transition metal ions at the crossroads of mucosal immunity and microbial pathogenesis.

Transition metal ions are essential micronutrients for all living organisms. In mammals, these ions are often protein-bound and sequestered within cells, limiting their availability to microbes. Moreover, in response to infection, mammalian hosts further reduce the availability of metal nutrients by activating epithelial cells and recruiting neutrophils, both of which release metal-binding proteins with antimicrobial function. Microorganisms, in turn, have evolved sophisticated systems to overcome these limitations and acquire the metal ions essential for their growth. Here we review some of the mechanisms employed by the host and by pathogenic microorganisms to compete for transition metal ions, with a discussion of how evading "nutritional immunity" benefits pathogens. Furthermore, we provide new insights on the mechanisms of host-microbe competition for metal ions in the mucosa, particularly in the inflamed gut

NON-CODING RNAS IDENTIFY THE INTRINSIC MOLECULAR SUBTYPES OF MUSCLE-INVASIVE BLADDER CANCER

NON-CODING RNAS IDENTIFY THE INTRINSIC MOLECULAR SUBTYPES OF MUSCLE-INVASIVE BLADDER CANCER Andrea Elizabeth Ochoa, B.S. Advisory Professors: David J. McConkey, Ph.D. and Joya Chandra, Ph.D. There has been a recent explosion of genomics data in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) to better understand the underlying biology of the disease that leads to the high amount of heterogeneity that is seen clinically. These studies have identified relatively stable intrinsic molecular subtypes of MIBC that show similarities to the basal and luminal subtypes of breast cancer. However, previous studies have primarily focused on protein-coding genes or DNA mutations/alterations. There is emerging evidence implicating non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), both short (miRNA) and long (lncRNA), in the regulation of various biological processes involved in cancer development and progression. The molecular mechanisms of miRNAs are relatively straightforward by inhibiting their mRNA targets, but the molecular mechanisms of lncRNAs are largely unknown. The identification of miRNAs and lncRNAs that contribute to the gene expression patterns of basal and luminal subtypes of MIBC will add another layer of subtype regulation. In this work, we sought to study the differences in miRNA and lncRNA expression across the subtypes of MIBC. We started with TCGA’s cohort of 408 tumors as a discovery cohort to identify differentially expressed miRNAs and lncRNAs that were specific to the basal and luminal subtypes of MIBC. We developed our own miRNA-sequencing data set to perform validation studies, and we found that the mRNA targets of the differentially expressed miRNAs were highly reminiscent of the already known basal and luminal subtype biology. We also developed bioinformatic analyses to extract lncRNA expression data that was used for unsupervised consensus clustering. Surprisingly, unsupervised analyses of the lncRNA expression data revealed two distinct clusters that exhibited more than 90% concordance with the subtype classifications made using mRNA expression data. Taken together, the results presented here suggest that miRNA expression profiles, or lncRNA expression profiles, could be used as an alternative strategy to identify MIBC subtype. These findings could have significant clinical implications in the development of diagnostic tools for MIBC since miRNAs and lncRNAs are both stably expressed in body fluids