Direct vascular contact is a hallmark of cerebral astrocytes

Astrocytes establish extensive networks via gap junctions that allow each astrocyte to connect indirectly to the vasculature. However, the proportion of astrocytes directly associated with blood vessels is unknown. Here, we quantify structural contacts of cortical astrocytes with the vasculature in vivo. We show that all cortical astrocytes are connected to at least one blood vessel. Moreover, astrocytes contact more vessels in deeper cortical layers where vessel density is known to be higher. Further examination of different brain regions reveals that only the hippocampus, which has the lowest vessel density of all investigated brain regions, harbors single astrocytes with no apparent vascular connection. In summary, we show that almost all gray matter astrocytes have direct contact to the vasculature. In addition to the glial network, a direct vascular access may represent a complementary pathway for metabolite uptake and distribution

South American Expert Roundtable : increasing adaptive governance capacity for coping with unintended side effects of digital transformation

This paper presents the main messages of a South American expert roundtable (ERT) on the unintended side effects (unseens) of digital transformation. The input of the ERT comprised 39 propositions from 20 experts representing 11 different perspectives. The two-day ERT discussed the main drivers and challenges as well as vulnerabilities or unseens and provided suggestions for: (i) the mechanisms underlying major unseens; (ii) understanding possible ways in which rebound effects of digital transformation may become the subject of overarching research in three main categories of impact: development factors, society, and individuals; and (iii) a set of potential action domains for transdisciplinary follow-up processes, including a case study in Brazil. A content analysis of the propositions and related mechanisms provided insights in the genesis of unseens by identifying 15 interrelated causal mechanisms related to critical issues/concerns. Additionally, a cluster analysis (CLA) was applied to structure the challenges and critical developments in South America. The discussion elaborated the genesis, dynamics, and impacts of (groups of) unseens such as the digital divide (that affects most countries that are not included in the development of digital business, management, production, etc. tools) or the challenge of restructuring small- and medium-sized enterprises (whose service is digitally substituted by digital devices). We identify specific issues and effects (for most South American countries) such as lack of governmental structure, challenging geographical structures (e.g., inclusion in high-performance transmission power), or the digital readiness of (wide parts) of society. One scientific contribution of the paper is related to the presented methodology that provides insights into the phenomena, the causal chains underlying “wanted/positive” and “unwanted/negative” effects, and the processes and mechanisms of societal changes caused by digitalization

Updated cardiovascular prevention guideline of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology: 2019

Sem informação113478788

Anais do V Encontro Brasileiro de Educomunicação: Educação midiática e políticas públicas

A presente coletânea, que chega ao público através de um suporte digital, tem como objetivo disponibilizar os papers, bem como os relatos de experiências educomunicativas apresentados durante o V ENCONTRO BRASILEIRO DE EDUCOMUNICAÇÃO, que teve como tema central: “Educação Midiática e Políticas Públicas”. O evento foi realizado em São Paulo, entre 19 e 21 de setembro de 2013, a partir de uma parceria entre o NCE/USP - Núcleo de Comunicação e Educação da USP, a Licenciatura em Educomunicação da ECA/USP, a ABPEducom – Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores e Profissionais da Educomunicação e a FAPCOM – Faculdade Paulus de Tecnologia e Comunicação, que ofereceu seu campus, na Vila Mariana, para os atos do evento. Os presentes anais disponibilizam o texto de abertura, de autoria do coordenador geral do evento, denominado “Educação midiática e políticas públicas: vertentes históricas da emergência da Educomunicação na América Latina”. Na sequência, apresentam 61 papers sobre aspectos específicos da temática geral, resultantes de pesquisas na área, seguidos de 27 relatos de práticas educomunicativas, em nível nacional

Educomunicação e suas áreas de intervenção: Novos paradigmas para o diálogo intercultural

oai:omp.abpeducom.org.br:publicationFormat/1O material aqui divulgado representa, em essência, a contribuição do VII Encontro Brasileiro de Educomunicação ao V Global MIL Week, da UNESCO, ocorrido na ECA/USP, entre 3 e 5 de novembro de 2016. Estamos diante de um conjunto de 104 papers executivos, com uma média de entre 7 e 10 páginas, cada um. Com este rico e abundante material, chegamos ao sétimo e-book publicado pela ABPEducom, em seus seis primeiros anos de existência. A especificidade desta obra é a de trazer as “Áreas de Intervenção” do campo da Educomunicação, colocando-as a serviço de uma meta essencial ao agir educomunicativo: o diálogo intercultural, trabalhado na linha do tema geral do evento internacional: Media and Information Literacy: New Paradigms for Intercultural Dialogue

The complete genome sequence of Chromobacterium violaceum reveals remarkable and exploitable bacterial adaptability

Chromobacterium violaceum is one of millions of species of free-living microorganisms that populate the soil and water in the extant areas of tropical biodiversity around the world. Its complete genome sequence reveals (i) extensive alternative pathways for energy generation, (ii) ≈500 ORFs for transport-related proteins, (iii) complex and extensive systems for stress adaptation and motility, and (iv) wide-spread utilization of quorum sensing for control of inducible systems, all of which underpin the versatility and adaptability of the organism. The genome also contains extensive but incomplete arrays of ORFs coding for proteins associated with mammalian pathogenicity, possibly involved in the occasional but often fatal cases of human C. violaceum infection. There is, in addition, a series of previously unknown but important enzymes and secondary metabolites including paraquat-inducible proteins, drug and heavy-metal-resistance proteins, multiple chitinases, and proteins for the detoxification of xenobiotics that may have biotechnological applications

Multi-View Photometric Stereo Revisited

Multi-view photometric stereo (MVPS) is a preferred method for detailed and precise 3D acquisition of an object from images. Although popular methods for MVPS can provide outstanding results, they are often complex to execute and limited to isotropic material objects. To address such limitations, we present a simple, practical ap proach to MVPS, which works well for isotropic as well as other object material types such as anisotropic and glossy. The proposed approach in this paper exploits the benefit of uncertainty modeling in a deep neural network for a reliable fusion of photometric stereo (PS) and multi-view stereo (MVS) network predictions. Yet, contrary to the recently proposed state-of-the-art, we introduce neural volume rendering methodology for a trustworthy fusion of MVS and PS measurements. The advantage of introducing neural volume rendering is that it helps in the reliable modeling of objects with diverse material types, where existing MVS methods, PS methods, or both may fail. Furthermore, it allows us to work on neural 3D shape representation, which has recently shown outstanding results for many geometric processing tasks. Our suggested new loss function aims to fit the zero level set of the implicit neural function using the most certain MVS and PS network predictions coupled with weighted neural volume rendering cost. The proposed approach shows state-of-the-art results when tested extensively on several benchmark datasets