Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Aggressive Implementation of Digitization in the Modern Business

The global economic crisis business environment pressures companies to streamline their operations and thus forcing them to significantly speed up the process of digitizing, creating a kind of digital markets. It becomes clear that those who recognize the moment and who are willing to think a modern and unconventional, in terms of innovation, customer and business partners engagement, corporative organization, strategies, business models and the role of technology in their business enterprise, will be those who will be well-positioned in this new market, which will enable them to significant revenue growth. On the other hand, there is a significant business risk of fatal business loss in case of inaction, slowness, neglect and lack of understanding of this very important process in the business

PROTECTIVE EFFECT OF THE VERAPAMIL UPON THE TUBULAR EPITHELIUM DESQUAMATION IN THE GENTAMICIN NEPHRO-TOXICITY

The protective effect of the verapamil upon the tubular epithelium desquamation of the rats in the gentamicin nephip-toxicity is analyzed. In the animals that received the gentamicin the necrosis and the tubular epitelium desquamation developed while in the animals treated by verapamil and gentamicin the degenerative changes took place along with an easier desquamation of the tubular epithelium. The animals that obtained only the gentamicin had a statistically important increase of the urea and creatine along with"a kalium decrease with respect to the animals treated by verapamil and gentamicin. On the basis of the obtained results the authors assume that the verapamil has a protective effect upon the tubular epithelium desquamation in the gentamicin nephro-toxicity

A phase-field model for chemo-mechanical induced fracture in lithium-ion battery electrode particles

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Capacity fade in conventional Li-ion battery systems due to chemo-mechanical degradation during charge-discharge cycles is the bottleneck in high-performance battery design. Stresses generated by diffusion-mechanical coupling in Li-ion intercalation and deintercalation cycles, accompanied by swelling and shrinking at finite strains, cause micro-cracks, which finally disturb the electrical conductivity and isolate the electrode particles. This leads to battery capacity fade. As a first attempt towards a reliable description of this complex phenomenon, we propose a novel finite strain theory for chemo-elasticity coupled with phase-field modeling of fracture, which regularizes a sharp crack topology. We apply a rigorous geometric approach to the diffusive crack modeling based on the introduction of a global evolution equation of regularized crack surface, governed by the crack phase field. The irreversible evolution of the crack phase field is modeled through a novel critical stress-based growth function. A modular concept is outlined for linking of the diffusive crack modeling to the complex chemo-elastic material response of the bulk material. Here, we incorporate standard as well as gradient-extended Cahn-Hilliard-type diffusion for the Li-ions, where the latter accounts for a possible phase segregation. From the viewpoint of the methodology, the separation of modules for the crack evolution and the bulk response provides a highly attractive and transparent structure of the multi-physics problem. This structure is exploited on the numerical side by constructing a robust finite element method, based on an algorithmic decoupling of updates for the crack phase field and the state variables of the chemo-mechanical bulk response. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed coupled multi-field formulation by an analysis of representative boundary value problems