'Sounds of Intent' : Mapping musical behaviour and development in children and young people with complex needs

This article reports on the first year of an Esmae Fairbairn Foundation-funded research project into the design and evaluation of an original 'framework' for mapping the behaviour and development in, and through, music for children with complex needs, specifically those with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). An initial four-month design and pilot phase critiqued and evaluated a framework that was grounded in video-based iterative analyses of individual case studies that had been collected during the previous two years. The piloting phase was followed by a sustained period of classroom-based music lesson observation in five special schools over a period of seven months. A total of 630 observations were made using the framework for 68 participants whose ages ranged from 4 years 7 months to 19 years 1 month. Subsequent analyses support the general design features of the observational framework and provide new evidence of PMLD musical behaviour and development

Als3 is a Candida albicans invasin that binds to cadherins and induces endocytosis by host cells.

Candida albicans is the most common cause of hematogenously disseminated and oropharyngeal candidiasis. Both of these diseases are characterized by fungal invasion of host cells. Previously, we have found that C. albicans hyphae invade endothelial cells and oral epithelial cells in vitro by inducing their own endocytosis. Therefore, we set out to identify the fungal surface protein and host cell receptors that mediate this process. We found that the C. albicans Als3 is required for the organism to be endocytosed by human umbilical vein endothelial cells and two different human oral epithelial lines. Affinity purification experiments with wild-type and an als3delta/als3delta mutant strain of C. albicans demonstrated that Als3 was required for C. albicans to bind to multiple host cell surface proteins, including N-cadherin on endothelial cells and E-cadherin on oral epithelial cells. Furthermore, latex beads coated with the recombinant N-terminal portion of Als3 were endocytosed by Chinese hamster ovary cells expressing human N-cadherin or E-cadherin, whereas control beads coated with bovine serum albumin were not. Molecular modeling of the interactions of the N-terminal region of Als3 with the ectodomains of N-cadherin and E-cadherin indicated that the binding parameters of Als3 to either cadherin are similar to those of cadherin-cadherin binding. Therefore, Als3 is a fungal invasin that mimics host cell cadherins and induces endocytosis by binding to N-cadherin on endothelial cells and E-cadherin on oral epithelial cells. These results uncover the first known fungal invasin and provide evidence that C. albicans Als3 is a molecular mimic of human cadherins

Coding Severe Behaviors in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to Train Machine Learning Algorithms

https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2022/1003/thumbnail.jp

Practical Evaluation of Lempel-Ziv-78 and Lempel-Ziv-Welch Tries

We present the first thorough practical study of the Lempel-Ziv-78 and the Lempel-Ziv-Welch computation based on trie data structures. With a careful selection of trie representations we can beat well-tuned popular trie data structures like Judy, m-Bonsai or Cedar

Calibrating the Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation from the infrared surface brightness technique I. The p-factor, the Milky Way relations, and a universal K-band relation

We determine Period-Luminosity relations for Milky Way Cepheids in the optical and near-IR bands. These relations can be used directly as reference for extra-galactic distance determination to Cepheid populations with solar metallicity, and they form the basis for a direct comparison with relations obtained in exactly the same manner for stars in the Magellanic Clouds, presented in an accompanying paper. In that paper we show that the metallicity effect is very small and consistent with a null effect, particularly in the near-IR bands, and we combine here all 111 Cepheids from the Milky Way, the LMC and SMC to form a best relation. We employ the near-IR surface brightness (IRSB) method to determine direct distances to the individual Cepheids after we have recalibrated the projection factor using the recent parallax measurements to ten Galactic Cepheids and the constraint that Cepheid distances to the LMC should be independent of pulsation period. We confirm our earlier finding that the projection factor for converting radial velocity to pulsational velocity depends quite steeply on pulsation period, p=1.550-0.186*log(P) in disagrement with recent theoretical predictions. We delineate the Cepheid PL relation using 111 Cepheids with direct distances from the IRSB analysis. The relations are by construction in agreement with the recent HST parallax distances to Cepheids and slopes are in excellent agreement with the slopes of apparent magnitudes versus period observed in the LMC.Comment: Accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysics. 15 pages, 11 figure

Determination of Geochemical Bio-Signatures in Mars-Like Basaltic Environments

Bio-signatures play a central role in determining whether life existed on early Mars. Using a terrestrial basalt as a compositional analog for the martian surface, we applied a combination of experimental microbiology and thermochemical modeling techniques to identify potential geochemical bio-signatures for life on early Mars. Laboratory experiments were used to determine the short-term effects of biota on the dissolution of terrestrial basalt, and the formation of secondary alteration minerals. The chemoorganoheterotrophic bacterium, Burkholderia sp. strain B_33, was grown in a minimal growth medium with and without terrestrial basalt as the sole nutrient source. No growth was detected in the absence of the basalt. In the presence of basalt, during exponential growth, the pH decreased rapidly from pH 7.0 to 3.6 and then gradually increased to a steady-state of equilibrium of between 6.8 and 7.1. Microbial growth coincided with an increase in key elements in the growth medium (Si, K, Ca, Mg, and Fe). Experimental results were compared with theoretical thermochemical modeling to predict growth of secondary alteration minerals, which can be used as bio-signatures, over a geological timescale. We thermochemically modeled the dissolution of the basalt (in the absence of biota) in very dilute brine at 25°C, 1 bar; the pH was buffered by the mineral dissolution and precipitation reactions. Preliminary results suggested that at the water to rock ratio of 1 × 107, zeolite, hematite, chlorite, kaolinite, and apatite formed abiotically. The biotic weathering processes were modeled by varying the pH conditions within the model to adjust for biologic influence. The results suggested that, for a basaltic system, the microbially-mediated dissolution of basalt would result in “simpler” secondary alteration, consisting of Fe-hydroxide and kaolinite, under conditions where the abiotic system would also form chlorite. The results from this study demonstrate that, by using laboratory-based experiments and thermochemical modeling, it is possible to identify secondary alteration minerals that could potentially be used to distinguish between abiotic and biotic weathering processes on early Mars. This work will contribute to the interpretation of data from past, present, and future life detection missions to Mars

Furin cleavage of SARS-CoV-2 Spike promotes but is not essential for infection and cell-cell fusion.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infects cells by binding to the host cell receptor ACE2 and undergoing virus-host membrane fusion. Fusion is triggered by the protease TMPRSS2, which processes the viral Spike (S) protein to reveal the fusion peptide. SARS-CoV-2 has evolved a multibasic site at the S1-S2 boundary, which is thought to be cleaved by furin in order to prime S protein for TMPRSS2 processing. Here we show that CRISPR-Cas9 knockout of furin reduces, but does not prevent, the production of infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus. Comparing S processing in furin knockout cells to multibasic site mutants reveals that while loss of furin substantially reduces S1-S2 cleavage it does not prevent it. SARS-CoV-2 S protein also mediates cell-cell fusion, potentially allowing virus to spread virion-independently. We show that loss of furin in either donor or acceptor cells reduces, but does not prevent, TMPRSS2-dependent cell-cell fusion, unlike mutation of the multibasic site that completely prevents syncytia formation. Our results show that while furin promotes both SARS-CoV-2 infectivity and cell-cell spread it is not essential, suggesting furin inhibitors may reduce but not abolish viral spread