Egg Quality Characteristics in Autochthonous Genotypes of Chickens Raised on Macedonian Rural Farms

Egg quality characteristics of three different autochthonous chicken phenotypes (phenotype having ashy-silvery-brown leghorn laced plumage color, phenotype having light brown spangled plumage color and phenotype having black or blue plumage color) were examined. These types of chickens are mainly raised as backyard rural area flocks in the villages of R. Macedonia. The data were collected through first systematic approaches in phenotypical identification and characterisation of these autochthonous genotypes realized recently. Three small flocks of old hens collected from different villages and placed in control pens were established. No data about number of eggs/hen/year is available for the established flocks. Further investigations are needed to record productive (number of egg produced) and reproductive data. The plan was that additional, yearly production records be collected from the flock produced as offspring from established flock of old hens collected from different villages and placed in control pens. Set of 90 eggs was collected (30 eggs from each plumage phenotype) and basic egg quality parameters measured. Egg size (weight) was 50.71g for brown laced plumage phenotype, 60.48g for blue plumage phenotype and 52.6 g for light brown spangled plumage phenotype. Egg shell strength was 3965, 3628 and 3924 g/cm2 for brown laced, blue and brown spangled plumage phenotype, respectively. Light brown spangled plumage phenotype had the highest value of yolk color (10.29) and Hough Units (76.63) compared to brown laced (10.08 and 75.27) and blue (9.09 and 71.65) plumage phenotype

CLUPI, a high-performance Imaging System on the rover of theExoMars Mission 2020 to doscover biofabrics on MARS. Science objectives and development status

The scientific objectives of the 2020 ExoMars rover mission are to search for traces of past or present life and to characterise the near-sub surface. Both objectives require study of the rock/regolith materials in terms of structure, textures, mineralogy, and elemental and organic composition. The 2020 ExoMars rover payload consists of a suite of complementary instruments designed to reach These objectives. CLUPI, the high-performance colour close up imager, on board the 2020 ExoMars Rover plays an important role in attaining the mission objectives: it is the equivalent of the hand lens that no geologist is without when undertaking field work. CLUPI is a powerful, highly integrated miniaturized (<900g) low-power robust imaging system, able to sustain very low temperatures (–120°C). CLUPI has a working distance from 11.5cm to infinite providing outstanding pictures with a color detector of 2652x1768x3. At 11.5cm, the spatial resolution is 8 micrometer/pixel in color. The optical-mechanical interface is a smart assembly that can sustain a wide temperature range. The concept benefits from wellproven heritage: Proba, Rosetta, MarsExpress and Smart-1 missions

Spatial multi-omic map of human myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction is a leading cause of death worldwide1. Although advances have been made in acute treatment, an incomplete understanding of remodelling processes has limited the effectiveness of therapies to reduce late-stage mortality2. Here we generate an integrative high-resolution map of human cardiac remodelling after myocardial infarction using single-cell gene expression, chromatin accessibility and spatial transcriptomic profiling of multiple physiological zones at distinct time points in myocardium from patients with myocardial infarction and controls. Multi-modal data integration enabled us to evaluate cardiac cell-type compositions at increased resolution, yielding insights into changes of the cardiac transcriptome and epigenome through the identification of distinct tissue structures of injury, repair and remodelling. We identified and validated disease-specific cardiac cell states of major cell types and analysed them in their spatial context, evaluating their dependency on other cell types. Our data elucidate the molecular principles of human myocardial tissue organization, recapitulating a gradual cardiomyocyte and myeloid continuum following ischaemic injury. In sum, our study provides an integrative molecular map of human myocardial infarction, represents an essential reference for the field and paves the way for advanced mechanistic and therapeutic studies of cardiac disease