Epitaxial undoped indium oxide thin films: Structural and physical properties.

Indium oxide thin films were grown by the pulsed electron beam deposition method on c-cut sapphire substrates at 10−2 mbar oxygen pressure and temperature up to 500 1C. Such conditions lead to the formation of dense, smooth and stoichiometric In2O3 films, with the cubic bixbyite structure. Epitaxial thin films were obtained at substrate temperatures as low as 200 1C. Pole figure measurements indicate the existence of (111) oriented In2O3 crystallites with different in-plane symmetry, i.e. three-fold and six-fold symmetry. The origin of this effect may be related to the specificities of the growth method which can induce a large disorder in the oxygen network of In2O3, leading then to a six-fold symmetry in the (111) plane of the bixbyite structure. This temperature resistivity behaviour shows metallic conductivity at room temperature and a metal– semiconductor transition at low temperature for In2O3 films grown at 200 1C, while the classical semiconductor behaviour was observed for the films grown at 400 and 500 1C. A maximum mobility of 24.7 cm2/V s was measured at 200 1C, and then it falls off with improving the crystalline quality of films. The optical transparency is high (480%) in a spectral range from 500 nm to 900 nm

Effects of substrate and ambient gas on epitaxial growth indium oxide thin films

Indium oxide thin films were grown by pulsed electron beam deposition method at 500 °C on c-cut sapphire and (0 0 1) oriented LaAlO3 single crystal substrates in oxygen or argon gas. The effects of ambient gas and substrate symmetry on the growth of indium oxide thin films were studied. Stoichiometric In2O3 films are formed in oxygen, while oxygen deficient In2O2.5 films are grown in argon, with In metallic nanoclusters embedded in a In2O3 matrix (nanocomposite films). In both cases, epitaxial In2O3 films having the bixbyite phase were grown with various orientation relationships, depending upon the substrate symmetry and gas ambient (oxygen or argon). Domain matching epitaxy was used to describe the precise in-plane epitaxial film-substrate relationships. The differences in film texture were correlated to the differences in growth conditions, while the differences in the film properties were correlated to the film oxygen composition

Initiations in the Burmese Ritual Landscape

In Buddhist Burma, a variety of ritual has been found pertaining to quite differentiated aspects of religion. This rich ritual landscape remains under-examined due partly to the Buddhist-studies bias of most of the scholars looking at religion in Burma. In this paper, I develop comparative analysis of a class of ritual, namely that of initiation, in three components of Burmese religion: Buddhist monasticism, Buddhist esotericism, and spirit worship. At least from the present analytic perspective, the three components considered could be taken as encompassing the entire Buddhist religious sphere in Burma. Looking at initiation rituals in these three ‘paths’ is a means of understanding how they frame contrasting kinds of differently valued religious practice, and of showing that, although not often discussed, rituals do matter in Burma because they help distinguish categories of action according to their relative religiosity. By doing so, I aim to give a sense of the real diversity of the Burmese ritual landscape, which until recently was rarely taken into account, and to contribute to the on-going debate in the field of Buddhist studies on what could be encapsulated as the question of Buddhism and spirit cults in Southeast Asian Theravada

The source of laterally transferred genes in bacterial genomes

BACKGROUND: Laterally transferred genes have often been identified on the basis of compositional features that distinguish them from ancestral genes in the genome. These genes are usually A+T-rich, arguing either that there is a bias towards acquiring genes from donor organisms having low G+C contents or that genes acquired from organisms of similar genomic base compositions go undetected in these analyses. RESULTS: By examining the genome contents of closely related, fully sequenced bacteria, we uncovered genes confined to a single genome and examined the sequence features of these acquired genes. The analysis shows that few transfer events are overlooked by compositional analyses. Most observed lateral gene transfers do not correspond to free exchange of regular genes among bacterial genomes, but more probably represent the constituents of phages or other selfish elements. CONCLUSIONS: Although bacteria tend to acquire large amounts of DNA, the origin of these genes remains obscure. We have shown that contrary to what is often supposed, their composition cannot be explained by a previous genomic context. In contrast, these genes fit the description of recently described genes in lambdoid phages, named 'morons'. Therefore, results from genome content and compositional approaches to detect lateral transfers should not be cited as evidence for genetic exchange between distantly related bacteria

Evolutionary history of phosphatidylinositol- 3-kinases: ancestral origin in eukaryotes and complex duplication patterns

BACKGROUND: Phosphatidylinositol-3-kinases (PI3Ks) are a family of eukaryotic enzymes modifying phosphoinositides in phosphatidylinositols-3-phosphate. Located upstream of the AKT/mTOR signalling pathway, PI3Ks activate secondary messengers of extracellular signals. They are involved in many critical cellular processes such as cell survival, angiogenesis and autophagy. PI3K family is divided into three classes, including 14 human homologs. While class II enzymes are composed of a single catalytic subunit, class I and III also contain regulatory subunits. Here we present an in-depth phylogenetic analysis of all PI3K proteins. RESULTS: We confirmed that PI3K catalytic subunits form a monophyletic group, whereas regulatory subunits form three distinct groups. The phylogeny of the catalytic subunits indicates that they underwent two major duplications during their evolutionary history: the most ancient arose in the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) and led to the emergence of class III and class I/II, while the second – that led to the separation between class I and II – occurred later, in the ancestor of Unikonta (i.e., the clade grouping Amoebozoa, Fungi, and Metazoa). These two major events were followed by many lineage specific duplications in particular in vertebrates, but also in various protist lineages. Major loss events were also detected in Vidiriplantae and Fungi. For the regulatory subunits, we identified homologs of class III in all eukaryotic groups indicating that, for this class, both the catalytic and the regulatory subunits were presents in LECA. In contrast, homologs of the regulatory class I have a more recent origin. CONCLUSIONS: The phylogenetic analysis of the PI3K shed a new light on the evolutionary history of these enzymes. We found that LECA already contained a PI3K class III composed of a catalytic and a regulatory subunit. Absence of class II regulatory subunits and the recent origin of class I regulatory subunits is puzzling given that the class I/II catalytic subunit was present in LECA and has been conserved in most present-day eukaryotic lineages. We also found surprising major loss and duplication events in various eukaryotic lineages. Given the functional specificity of PI3K proteins, this suggests dynamic adaptation during the diversification of eukaryotes. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0498-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

On the relevance of large scale pulsed-laser deposition: Evidence of structural heterogeneities in ZnO thin films

Pulsed-laser deposition is known as a well-suited method for growing thin films of oxide compounds presenting a wide range of functional properties. A limitation of this method for industrial process is the very anisotropic expansion dynamics of the plasma plume, which induces difficulties to grow on large scale films with homogeneous thickness and composition. The specific aspect of the crystalline or orientation uniformity has not been investigated, despite its important role on oxide films properties. In this work, the crystalline parameters and the texture of zinc oxide films are studied as a function of position with respect to the central axis of the plasma plume. We demonstrate the existence of large non-uniformities in the films. The stoichiometry, the lattice parameter, and the distribution of crystallites orientations drastically depend on the position with respect to the plume axis, i.e., on the oblique incidence of the ablated species. The origin of these non-uniformities, in particular, the unexpected tilted orientation of the ZnO c-axis may be attributed to the combined effects of the oblique incidence and of the ratio between oxygen and zinc fluxes reaching the surface of the growing film

Alejandra Pupio, Rodrigo Alonzo Alcalde y Laura de la Fuente (eds.) ¿Qué nos hace humanos? Un manual para pensar (nos) en las aulas. Bahía Blanca: Editorial de la Universidad Nacional del Sur. Año 2019. 190 páginas. Reseña de Hernán Perrière

¿Qué nos hace humanos? es un manual para pensarnos en las aulas de las escuelas argentinas que parte de un proyecto editorial interdisciplinario y que articula investigaciones realizadas por distintos equipos en la Argentina y en España. Es un libro que parte de preguntas que estudiantes secundarios se realizaron sobre la evolución humana y que son respondidas por especialistas científicos, artistas y desde la filosofía. Este manual es un valioso aporte para la enseñanza de la prehistoria y de la vida humana. Un libro de escritura colectiva y de divulgación científica, que propone pensarnos desde la diversidad, la pluralidad y la alteridad. En esta reseña, destaco los aportes de este manual para el desarrollo de prácticas interculturales en los espacios escolares

Cross-platform comparison and visualisation of gene expression data using co-inertia analysis

BACKGROUND: Rapid development of DNA microarray technology has resulted in different laboratories adopting numerous different protocols and technological platforms, which has severely impacted on the comparability of array data. Current cross-platform comparison of microarray gene expression data are usually based on cross-referencing the annotation of each gene transcript represented on the arrays, extracting a list of genes common to all arrays and comparing expression data of this gene subset. Unfortunately, filtering of genes to a subset represented across all arrays often excludes many thousands of genes, because different subsets of genes from the genome are represented on different arrays. We wish to describe the application of a powerful yet simple method for cross-platform comparison of gene expression data. Co-inertia analysis (CIA) is a multivariate method that identifies trends or co-relationships in multiple datasets which contain the same samples. CIA simultaneously finds ordinations (dimension reduction diagrams) from the datasets that are most similar. It does this by finding successive axes from the two datasets with maximum covariance. CIA can be applied to datasets where the number of variables (genes) far exceeds the number of samples (arrays) such is the case with microarray analyses. RESULTS: We illustrate the power of CIA for cross-platform analysis of gene expression data by using it to identify the main common relationships in expression profiles on a panel of 60 tumour cell lines from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) which have been subjected to microarray studies using both Affymetrix and spotted cDNA array technology. The co-ordinates of the CIA projections of the cell lines from each dataset are graphed in a bi-plot and are connected by a line, the length of which indicates the divergence between the two datasets. Thus, CIA provides graphical representation of consensus and divergence between the gene expression profiles from different microarray platforms. Secondly, the genes that define the main trends in the analysis can be easily identified. CONCLUSIONS: CIA is a robust, efficient approach to coupling of gene expression datasets. CIA provides simple graphical representations of the results making it a particularly attractive method for the identification of relationships between large datasets

Producción de conocimientos sobre pueblos indígenas y apropiaciones educativas en un museo histórico municipal (Bahía Blanca, Argentina)

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar, analizar y problematizar los conocimientos que se producen en el Museo y Archivo Histórico de Bahía Blanca (MAHBB) referidos a los pueblos indígenas y las apropiaciones del patrimonio que realizan docentes y estudiantes en las visitas y posteriormente en las escuelas secundarias. Este texto se basa en una revisión de mis investigaciones de doctorado (2014-2018) oportunidad en la que estudié etnográficamente los aprendizajes en los museos y las escuelas. Analizo aquí las observaciones de las visitas de dos cursos de tercer año de distintas escuelas secundarias y los cambios que se produjeron en la exhibición museística hasta el año 2018, cuando efectué las entrevistas al personal del museo. Con esta investigación pretendo contribuir al campo de la antropología de la educación al analizar las prácticas sociales y educativas en un museo histórico y la utilización, modificación y recreación del patrimonio por parte del personal del museo

Voice and Speech therapy using VOCALAB - From research to practice

In order to help speech therapists in the evaluation and therapy of voice and speech of patients of all ages with communication difficulties, a software platform called VOCALAB has been developed, which has been gradually deployed in France and French-speaking countries. From the feedback and suggestions of speech therapists, the platform has been enhanced and extended in order to provide the optimum tools for efficient voice/speech evaluation and therapy