SOLARIS National Synchrotron Radiation Centre in Krakow, Poland

The SOLARIS synchrotron located in Krakow, Poland, is a third-generation light source operating at medium electron energy. The first synchrotron light was observed in 2015, and the consequent development of infrastructure lead to the first users’ experiments at soft X-ray energies in 2018. Presently, SOLARIS expands its operation towards hard X-rays with continuous developments of the beamlines and concurrent infrastructure. In the following, we will summarize the SOLARIS synchrotron design, and describe the beamlines and research infrastructure together with the main performance parameters, upgrade, and development plans

Bray-Curtis Metrics as Measure of Liquid State Machine Separation Ability in Function of Connections Density

AbstractSeparation ability is one of two most important properties of Liquid State Machines used in the Liquid Computing theory. To measure the so-called distance of states that Liquid State Machine can exist in – different norms and metrics can be applied. Till now we have used the Euclidean distance to tell the distance of states representing different stimulations of simulated cortical microcircuits. In this paper we compare our previously used methods and the approach with Bray-Curtis measure of dissimilarity. Systematic analysis of efficiency and its comparison for a different number of simulated synapses present in the model will be discussed to some extent

Extraordinary multi-organismal interactions involving bacteriophages, bacteria, fungi, and rotifers : quadruple microbial trophic network in water droplets

Our observations of predatory fungi trapping rotifers in activated sludge and laboratory culture allowed us to discover a complicated trophic network that includes predatory fungi armed with bacteria and bacteriophages and the rotifers they prey on. Such a network seems to be common in various habitats, although it remains mostly unknown due to its microscopic size. In this study, we isolated and identified fungi and bacteria from activated sludge. We also noticed abundant, virus-like particles in the environment. The fungus developed absorptive hyphae within the prey. The bacteria showed the ability to enter and exit from the hyphae (e.g., from the traps into the caught prey). Our observations indicate that the bacteria and the fungus share nutrients obtained from the rotifer. To narrow the range of bacterial strains isolated from the mycelium, the effects of bacteria supernatants and lysed bacteria were studied. Bacteria isolated from the fungus were capable of immobilizing the rotifer. The strongest negative effect on rotifer mobility was shown by a mixture of Bacillus sp. and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. The involvement of bacteriophages in rotifer hunting was demonstrated based on molecular analyses and was discussed. The described case seems to be an extraordinary quadruple microbiological puzzle that has not been described and is still far from being understood