Mitochondrial DNA lineages of Italian Giara and Sarcidano horses

Giara and Sarcidano are 2 of the 15 extant native Italian horse breeds with limited dispersal capability that originated from a larger number of individuals. The 2 breeds live in two distinct isolated locations on the island of Sardinia. To determine the genetic structure and evolutionary history of these 2 Sardinian breeds, the first hypervariable segment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was sequenced and analyzed in 40 Giara and Sarcidano horses and compared with publicly available mtDNA data from 43 Old World breeds. Four different analyses, including genetic distance, analysis of molecular variance, haplotype sharing, and clustering methods, were used to study the genetic relationships between the Sardinian and other horse breeds. The analyses yielded similar results, and the FST values indicated that a high percentage of the total genetic variation was explained by between-breed differences. Consistent with their distinct phenotypes and geographic isolation, the two Sardinian breeds were shown to consist of 2 distinct gene pools that had no gene flow between them. Giara horses were clearly separated from the other breeds examined and showed traces of ancient separation from horses of other breeds that share the same mitochondrial lineage. On the other hand, the data from the Sarcidano horses fit well with variation among breeds from the Iberian Peninsula and North-West Europe: genetic relationships among Sarcidano and the other breeds are consistent with the documented history of this breed

Protective effects of curcumin and vitamin E on carbon tetrachloride-induced nephrotoxicity in rats

The present investigation reports the protective effects of curcumin (CMN) and vitamin E against CCl4 induced oxidative stress and nephrotoxicity in rats. The toxicant CCl4 was used to induce nephrotoxicity at a dose of 1 ml/kg as 1:1(v/v) mixture with liquid paraffin twice weekly for 8 weeks. Plasma total protein, albumin, urea and creatinine concentrations were measured to assess the renal function. Antioxidant status in the kidney was estimated by determining the activities of glutathione peroxidase (GPx), glutathione reductase (GR), glutathione-S-transferase (GST), catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) as well as by histopathological examination. CCl4 caused elevated levels of urea and creatinine while it decreased levels of total protein and albumin in plasma. Furthermore, CCl4 treated rats showed marked depletion of renal endogenous antioxidant enzymes. Oral administration of curcumin (100 mg/kg, daily for 8 weeks) and in combination with vitamin E (three times weekly for 8 weeks) showed significantly attenuated renal dysfunction by increased activity of antioxidant enzymes in kidney. It also increased the concentrations of plasma total protein and albumin, while reducing the concentration of urea and creatinine. Kidney sections of CCl4 induced rats showed deleterious alterations in micro anatomy. However, curcumin and vitamin E treatment prevented kidney damage induced by CCl4. This study reveals that curcumin in combination with vitamin E possesses strong antioxidant and kidney protective activity compared to curcumin alone

Formation of quantum dots in the potential fluctuations of InGaAs heterostructures probed by scanning gate microscopy

The disordered potential landscape in an InGaAs/InAlAs two-dimensional electron gas patterned into narrow wires is investigated by means of scanning gate microscopy. It is found that scanning a negatively charged tip above particular sites of the wires produces conductance oscillations that are periodic in the tip voltage. These oscillations take the shape of concentric circles whose number and diameter increase for more negative tip voltages until full depletion occurs in the probed region. These observations cannot be explained by charging events in material traps, but are consistent with Coulomb blockade in quantum dots forming when the potential fluctuations are raised locally at the Fermi level by the gating action of the tip. This interpretation is supported by simple electrostatic simulations in the case of a disorder potential induced by ionized dopants. This work represents a local investigation of the mechanisms responsible for the disorder-induced metal-to-insulator transition observed in macroscopic two-dimensional electron systems at low enough density

A Sparse and Locally Coherent Morphable Face Model for Dense Semantic Correspondence Across Heterogeneous 3D Faces

The 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) is a powerful statistical tool for representing 3D face shapes. To build a 3DMM, a training set of face scans in full point-to-point correspondence is required, and its modeling capabilities directly depend on the variability contained in the training data. Thus, to increase the descriptive power of the 3DMM, establishing a dense correspondence across heterogeneous scans with sufficient diversity in terms of identities, ethnicities, or expressions becomes essential. In this manuscript, we present a fully automatic approach that leverages a 3DMM to transfer its dense semantic annotation across raw 3D faces, establishing a dense correspondence between them. We propose a novel formulation to learn a set of sparse deformation components with local support on the face that, together with an original non-rigid deformation algorithm, allow the 3DMM to precisely fit unseen faces and transfer its semantic annotation. We extensively experimented our approach, showing it can effectively generalize to highly diverse samples and accurately establish a dense correspondence even in presence of complex facial expressions. The accuracy of the dense registration is demonstrated by building a heterogeneous, large-scale 3DMM from more than 9,000 fully registered scans obtained by joining three large datasets together

Increasing the agricultural sustainability of closed agrivoltaic systems with the integration of vertical farming: A case study on baby-leaf lettuce

The photovoltaic (PV) greenhouses are closed agrivoltaic (CA) systems that allow the production of energy and food on the same land, but may result in a yield reduction when the shading of the PV panels is excessive. Adopting innovative cropping systems can increase the yield of the CA area, generating a more productive and sustainable agrosystem. In this case study we quantified the increase of land productivity derived from the integration of an experimental vertical farm (VF) for baby leaf lettuce inside a pre-existing commercial CA. The mixed system increased the yield by 13 times compared to the CA and the average LER was 1.31, but only 12 % of the energy consumption was covered by the CA energy. To achieve the energy self-sufficiency and avoid the related CO2 emissions, the VF area should not exceed 7–18 % of the CA area, depending on the PV energy yield and the daily light integral (DLI) of the LED lighting, meaning a land consumption from 5 to 14 times higher than the VF area. The support of the PV energy was essential for the profitability of the VFCA. Design features and solutions were proposed to increase the agronomic and economic sustainability of the VFCA. The VFs can be considered a possible answer for the reconversion of the actual underutilized CAs with high PV cover ratios into productive and efficient cropping systems, but a trade-off between energy production and land consumption should be identified to ensure an acceptable environmental sustainability of the mixed system

Ohmic Behavior in Metal Contacts to n/p-Type Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides: Schottky versus Tunneling Barrier Trade-off

High contact resistance (RC) between 3D metallic conductors and single-layer 2D semiconductors poses major challenges toward their integration in nanoscale electronic devices. While in experiments the large RC values can be partly due to defects, ab initio simulations suggest that, even in defect-free structures, the interaction between metal and semiconductor orbitals can induce gap states that pin the Fermi level in the semiconductor band gap, increase the Schottky barrier height (SBH), and thus degrade the contact resistance. In this paper, we investigate, by using an in-house-developed ab initio transport methodology that combines density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) transport calculations, the physical properties and electrical resistance of several options for n-type top metal contacts to monolayer MoS2, even in the presence of buffer layers, and for p-type contacts to monolayer WSe2. The delicate interplay between the SBH and tunneling barrier thickness is quantitatively analyzed, confirming the excellent properties of the Bi-MoS2 system as an n-type ohmic contact. Moreover, simulation results supported by literature experiments suggest that the Au-WSe2 system is a promising candidate for p-type ohmic contacts. Finally, our analysis also reveals that a small modulation of a few angstroms of the distance between the (semi)metal and the transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) leads to large variations of RC. This could help to explain the scattering of RC values experimentally reported in the literature because different metal deposition techniques can result in small changes of the metal-to-TMD distance besides affecting the density of possible defects

Bond strength of plasma sprayed ceramic coatings on the phosphated steels

In the presented work, results of adhesion measurements for different systems of steel sheet-phosphate interlayer-ceramiccoating are described. The interlayers were produced by zinc phosphating; alumina, olivine and zirconiasilica-alumina (e.g. eucor) coatings were deposited by water stabilized plasma torch WSP®. However, successful application of the WSP technique depends on the choice of correct deposition parameters preserving the hydrated phosphates from thermal destruction by the molten ceramic particles. For the adhesion measurement ISO 4624standardized test was used. Corrosion resistivity was measured by polarisation resistance and free corrosion potential in 3 % NaCl solution. Key words

Cellulose-binding domains as a tool for paper recycling

Treatment of secondary paper fibres with cellulose-binding domains allows for improvements of pulp drainability and of paper mechanical properties. The interfacial system fibrewater- fibre, and after drying, fibre-air-fibre, may be affected by the CBD treatment, influencing the pulp and paper technical properties. Inverse Gas Chromatography provides experimental evidence that support this hypothesis

Transport inefficiency in branched-out mesoscopic networks: An analog of the Braess paradox

We present evidence for a counter-intuitive behavior of semiconductor mesoscopic networks that is the analog of the Braess paradox encountered in classical networks. A numerical simulation of quantum transport in a two-branch mesoscopic network reveals that adding a third branch can paradoxically induce transport inefficiency that manifests itself in a sizable conductance drop of the network. A scanning-probe experiment using a biased tip to modulate the transmission of one branch in the network reveals the occurrence of this paradox by mapping the conductance variation as a function of the tip voltage and position.Comment: 2nd version with minor stylistic corrections. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett.: Editorially approved for publication 6 January 201