PGC - 1α Overexpression Improves Angiogenic Signaling Potential of Skeletal Muscle - derived Extracellular Vesicles

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Computer modelling of a penetrator thermal sensor

The Philae lander is part of the Rosetta mission to investigate comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will use a harpoon like device to anchor itself onto the surface. The anchor will perhaps reach depths of 1–2 m. In the anchor is a temperature sensor that will measure the boundary temperature as part of the MUPUS experiment. As the anchor attains thermal equilibrium with the comet ice it may be possible to extract the thermal properties of the surrounding ice, such as the thermal diffusivity, by using the temperature sensor data. The anchor is not an optimal shape for a thermal probe and application of analytical solutions to the heat equation is inappropriate. We prepare a numerical model to fit temperature sensor data and extract the thermal diffusivity. Penetrator probes mechanically compact the material immediately surrounding them as they enter the target. If the thermal properties, composition and dimensions of the penetrator are known, then the thermal properties of this pristine material may be recovered although this will be a challenging measurement. We report on investigations, using a numerical thermal model, to simulate a variety of scenarios that the anchor may encounter and how they will affect the measurement

New insights in dermatophyte research

Dermatophyte research has renewed interest because of changing human floras with changing socioeconomic conditions, and because of severe chronic infections in patients with congenital immune disorders. Main taxonomic traits at the generic level have changed considerably, and now fine-tuning at the species level with state-of-the-art technology has become urgent. Research on virulence factors focuses on secreted proteases now has support in genome data. It is speculated that most protease families are used for degrading hard keratin during nitrogen recycling in the environment, while others, such as Sub6 may have emerged as a result of ancestral gene duplication, and are likely to have specific roles during infection. Virulence may differ between mating partners of the same species and concepts of zoo- and anthropophily may require revision in some recently redefined species. Many of these questions benefit from international cooperation and exchange of materials. The aim of the ISHAM Working Group Dermatophytes aims to stimulate and coordinate international networking on these fungi

Detection of first-order liquid/liquid phase transitions in yttrium oxide-aluminium oxide melts

We combine small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and wide-angle x-ray scattering (WAXS) with aerodynamic levitation techniques to study in situ phase transitions in the liquid state under contactless conditions. At very high temperatures, yttria-alumina melts show a first-order transition, previously inferred from phase separation in quenched glasses. We show how the transition coincides with a narrow and reversible maximum in SAXS indicative of liquid unmixing on the nanoscale, combined with an abrupt realignment in WAXS features related to reversible shifts in polyhedral packing on the atomic scale. We also observed a rotary action in the suspended supercooled drop driven by repetitive transitions (a polyamorphic rotor) from which the reversible changes in molar volume (1.2 ± 0.2 cubic centimeters) and entropy (19 ± 4 joules mole–1 kelvin–1) can be estimated

Challenges of Misbehavior Detection in Industrial Wireless Networks

In recent years, wireless technologies are increasingly adopted in many application domains that were either unconnected before or exclusively used cable networks. This paradigm shift towards - often ad-hoc - wireless communication has led to significant benefits in terms of flexibility and mobility. Alongside with these benefits, however, arise new attack vectors, which cannot be mitigated by traditional security measures. Hence, mechanisms that are orthogonal to cryptographic security techniques are necessary in order to detect adversaries. In traditional networks, such mechanisms are subsumed under the term "intrusion detection system" and many proposals have been implemented for different application domains. More recently, the term "misbehavior detection" has been coined to encompass detection mechanisms especially for attacks in wireless networks. In this paper, we use industrial wireless networks as an exemplary application domain to discuss new directions and future challenges in detecting insider attacks. To that end, we review existing work on intrusion detection in mobile ad-hoc networks. We focus on physical-layer-based detection mechanisms as these are a particularly interesting research direction that had not been reasonable before widespread use of wireless technology.Peer Reviewe

Differences in Brain Function and Changes with Intervention in Children with Poor Spelling and Reading Abilities

Previous fMRI studies in English-speaking samples suggested that specific interventions may alter brain function in language-relevant networks in children with reading and spelling difficulties, but this research strongly focused on reading impaired individuals. Only few studies so far investigated characteristics of brain activation associated with poor spelling ability and whether a specific spelling intervention may also be associated with distinct changes in brain activity patterns. We here investigated such effects of a morpheme-based spelling intervention on brain function in 20 children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities using repeated fMRI. Relative to 10 matched controls, children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities showed increased activation in frontal medial and right hemispheric regions and decreased activation in left occipito-temporal regions prior to the intervention, during processing of a lexical decision task. After five weeks of intervention, spelling and reading comprehension significantly improved in the training group, along with increased activation in the left temporal, parahippocampal and hippocampal regions. Conversely, the waiting group showed increases in right posterior regions. Our findings could indicate an increased left temporal activation associated with the recollection of the new learnt morpheme-based strategy related to successful training

Efficient Passive ICS Device Discovery and Identification by MAC Address Correlation

Owing to a growing number of attacks, the assessment of Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) has gained in importance. An integral part of an assessment is the creation of a detailed inventory of all connected devices, enabling vulnerability evaluations. For this purpose, scans of networks are crucial. Active scanning, which generates irregular traffic, is a method to get an overview of connected and active devices. Since such additional traffic may lead to an unexpected behavior of devices, active scanning methods should be avoided in critical infrastructure networks. In such cases, passive network monitoring offers an alternative, which is often used in conjunction with complex deep-packet inspection techniques. There are very few publications on lightweight passive scanning methodologies for industrial networks. In this paper, we propose a lightweight passive network monitoring technique using an efficient Media Access Control (MAC) address-based identification of industrial devices. Based on an incomplete set of known MAC address to device associations, the presented method can guess correct device and vendor information. Proving the feasibility of the method, an implementation is also introduced and evaluated regarding its efficiency. The feasibility of predicting a specific device/vendor combination is demonstrated by having similar devices in the database. In our ICS testbed, we reached a host discovery rate of 100% at an identification rate of more than 66%, outperforming the results of existing tools.Comment: http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/ICS2018.

Anticoagulant activity of cellulose nanocrystals from isora plant fibers assembled on cellulose and sio2 substrates via a layer-by-layer approach

In this study, we report the isolation of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) from Isora plant fibers by sulfuric acid hydrolysis and their assembly on hydrophilic cellulose and silicon-di-oxide (SiO2) surfaces via a layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition method. The isolated CNCs were monodis-persed and exhibited a length of 200-300 nm and a diameter of 10-20 nm, a negative zetapotential (34-39 mV) over a wide pH range, and high stability in water at various concentrations. The multi-layered structure, adsorbed mass, conformational changes, and anticoagulant activity of sequen-tially deposited anionic (sulfated) CNCs and cationic polyethyleneimine (PEI) on the surfaces of cellulose and SiO2 by LBL deposition were investigated using a quartz crystal microbalance tech-nique. The organization and surface features (i.e., morphology, thickness, wettability) of CNCs ad-sorbed on the surfaces of PEI deposited at different ionic strengths (50-300 mM) of sodium chloride were analysed in detail by profilometry layer-thickness, atomic force microscopy and contact angle measurements. Compared to cellulose (control sample), the total coagulation time and plasma deposition were increased and decreased, respectively, for multilayers of PEI/CNCs. This study should provide new possibilities to fabricate and tailor the physicochemical properties of multilayer films from polysaccharide-based nanocrystals for various biomedical applications.Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge Volker Ribitsch (retired) from the University of Graz/Austria for his support and valuable discussion for this manuscript. The authors also acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian National Research Agency ARRS (Grant No. J4-1764).Scopu

Dry Bacterial Cellulose and Carboxymethyl Cellulose formulations with interfacial-active performance: processing conditions and redispersion

Dry or powdered formulations of food additives facilitate transportation, storage, preservation and handling. In this work, dry formulations of bacterial cellulose and carboxymethyl cellulose (BC:CMC), easily redispersible and preserving the functionality of the never-dried dispersions are reported. Different processing parameters and their effect on the materials properties were evaluated, namely: (i) wet-grinding of BC (Hand-blender, Microcut Head Impeller, High-pressure Homogenizer), (ii) drying of BC:CMC mixtures (fast drying at130 °C and slow drying at 80 °C) and subsequent (iii) comminution to different particle sizes. The dispersibility of the obtained BC:CMC powders was evaluated, and their functionality after redispersion was assessed by measuring the dynamic viscosity, the effect in oil/water interfacial tension (liquidliquid system) and the stabilization of cocoa in milk (solidliquid system). The size of BC fibre bundles was of paramount relevance to its stabilizing ability in multiphasic systems. A more extensive wet-grinding of the BC fibres was accompanied by a loss in the BC:CMC functionality, related to the increasingly smaller size of the BC bundles. Indeed, as the Dv (50) of the wet BC bundles was reduced from 1228 to 55 µm, the BC:CMC viscosity profile dropped and the effect on interfacial tension decreased. This effect was observed both on the never-dried and dry BC:CMC formulations. On the other hand, the drying method did not play a major effect in the materials properties. In a benchmarking study, the BC:CMC formulations, at a low concentration (0.15%), had better stabilizing ability of the cocoa particles than several commercial cellulose products.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-020-03211-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.This study was supported by FCT under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2019 unit and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020-Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Daniela Martins also gratefully acknowledges FCT for the PhD scholarship, reference SFRH/BD/115917/2016.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio