Red Flour Beetle Aggregation

The Red flour beetle feeds on grain which is why it is considered a pest. Understanding their aggregation behavior can help us to find new ways to control them. What we don’t yet know is what makes them group together the way they do, whether it be instinctive or a learned behavior. If the beetles are driven by strain-specific behaviors, then we should see a greater proportion of them aggregate with the same strain, which would mean they follow instinctive behavior. The results showed to be contradictory to the original hypothesis. The beetles seemed to show learned behavior due to them grouping more with beetles from the same starting environment rather than the same strain. These results tell us that we need to consider the environment, not just genetic strains, when trying to develop control strategies

Improving Parallel I/O Performance Using Interval I/O

Today\u27s most advanced scientific applications run on large clusters consisting of hundreds of thousands of processing cores, access state of the art parallel file systems that allow files to be distributed across hundreds of storage targets, and utilize advanced interconnections systems that allow for theoretical I/O bandwidth of hundreds of gigabytes per second. Despite these advanced technologies, these applications often fail to obtain a reasonable proportion of available I/O bandwidth. The reasons for the poor performance of application I/O include the noncontiguous I/O access patterns used for scientific computing, contention due to false sharing, and the somewhat finicky nature of parallel file system performance. We argue that a more fundamental cause of this problem is the legacy view of a file as a linear sequence of bytes. To address these issues, we introduce a novel approach for parallel I/O called Interval I/O. Interval I/O is an innovative approach that uses application access patterns to partition a file into a series of intervals, which are used as the fundamental unit for subsequent I/O operations. Use of this approach provides superior performance for the noncontiguous access patterns which are frequently used by scientific applications. In addition, the approach reduces false contention and the unnecessary serialization it causes. Interval I/O also significantly increases the performance of atomic mode operations. Finally, the Interval I/O approach includes a technique for supporting parallel I/O for cooperating applications. We provide a prototype implementation of our Interval I/O system and use it to demonstrate performance improvements of as much as 1000% compared to ROMIO when using Interval I/O with several common benchmarks

The Interactive Effects Of Citizenship Pressure And Job Embeddedness On Positive And Negative Outcomes Of Engagement

A more comprehensive understanding of the positive and negative outcomes of engagement could allow for a better conceptualization of the construct. The three goals of this study were: (1) to examine, based on the job demands and resources framework, potential negative antecedent and outcome relationships (i.e., role conflict, role ambiguity, and counterproductive work behaviors); (2) to identify interactions that could negatively impact engagement’s positive outcomes (i.e. citizenship pressure); and (3) to identify interactions that could positively impact engagement’s negative outcomes (i.e. job embeddedness). To accomplish these goals, the study collected data from both employees and their direct supervisors. An employee survey was utilized to collect data on the independent variables (POS, PSS, role conflict, and role ambiguity), moderators (citizenship pressure and job embeddedness), and engagement. An additional survey, which collected data from the employee’s direct supervisor, contained questions pertaining to the dependent variables (Task performance, OCB-O, OCB-I, and CWB). The results supported the effect of perceived supervisor support on engagement and engagement’s partial mediation of the hypothesized antecedent and outcomes relationships. The interaction of citizenship pressure and engagement was found to weaken engagement’s effect on organizational citizenship behavior targeting the organization. Lastly, the interaction of job embeddedness and engagement made engagement’s effect on counterproductive work behaviors less negative

Enumerating Colorings, Tensions and Flows in Cell Complexes

We study quasipolynomials enumerating proper colorings, nowhere-zero tensions, and nowhere-zero flows in an arbitrary CW-complex $X$, generalizing the chromatic, tension and flow polynomials of a graph. Our colorings, tensions and flows may be either modular (with values in $\mathbb{Z}/k\mathbb{Z}$ for some $k$) or integral (with values in $\{-k+1,\dots,k-1\}$). We obtain deletion-contraction recurrences and closed formulas for the chromatic, tension and flow quasipolynomials, assuming certain unimodularity conditions. We use geometric methods, specifically Ehrhart theory and inside-out polytopes, to obtain reciprocity theorems for all of the aforementioned quasipolynomials, giving combinatorial interpretations of their values at negative integers as well as formulas for the numbers of acyclic and totally cyclic orientations of $X$.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures. Final version, to appear in J. Combin. Theory Series

Investigating Smart City Initiatives in Mandi Town, Himachal Pradesh

A growing population and demand for services in Mandi has strained its surrounding environment and infrastructure. Utilizing a Smart City framework used nationally in India, this project identified promising features present in the city and determined potential future initiatives. We created a map of the local amenities and engaged residents and officials to highlight areas that could benefit from further development. Our fieldwork surveys and documentation identified potential areas for improvement in waste management and collection, parking spaces, road networks, and business centers. We proposed: (1) waste organization, separation, and collection, (2) city areas and processes for waste management, and (3) a multistory complex to alleviate congestion

Hedgehog Pathway Activation Alters Ciliary Signaling in Primary Hypothalamic Cultures

Primary cilia dysfunction has been associated with hyperphagia and obesity in both ciliopathy patients and mouse models of cilia perturbation. Neurons throughout the brain possess these solitary cellular appendages, including in the feeding centers of the hypothalamus. Several cell biology questions associated with primary neuronal cilia signaling are challenging to address in vivo. Here we utilize primary hypothalamic neuronal cultures to study ciliary signaling in relevant cell types. Importantly, these cultures contain neuronal populations critical for appetite and satiety such as pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) and agouti related peptide (AgRP) expressing neurons and are thus useful for studying signaling involved in feeding behavior. Correspondingly, these cultured neurons also display electrophysiological activity and respond to both local and peripheral signals that act on the hypothalamus to influence feeding behaviors, such as leptin and melanin concentrating hormone (MCH). Interestingly, we found that cilia mediated hedgehog signaling, generally associated with developmental processes, can influence ciliary GPCR signaling (Mchr1) in terminally differentiated neurons. Specifically, pharmacological activation of the hedgehog-signaling pathway using the smoothened agonist, SAG, attenuated the ability of neurons to respond to ligands (MCH) of ciliary GPCRs. Understanding how the hedgehog pathway influences cilia GPCR signaling in terminally differentiated neurons could reveal the molecular mechanisms associated with clinical features of ciliopathies, such as hyperphagia-associated obesity

F*** workflows: when parts of FAIR are missing

The FAIR principles for scientific data (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) are also relevant to other digital objects such as research software and scientific workflows that operate on scientific data. The FAIR principles can be applied to the data being handled by a scientific workflow as well as the processes, software, and other infrastructure which are necessary to specify and execute a workflow. The FAIR principles were designed as guidelines, rather than rules, that would allow for differences in standards for different communities and for different degrees of compliance. There are many practical considerations which impact the level of FAIR-ness that can actually be achieved, including policies, traditions, and technologies. Because of these considerations, obstacles are often encountered during the workflow lifecycle that trace directly to shortcomings in the implementation of the FAIR principles. Here, we detail some cases, without naming names, in which data and workflows were Findable but otherwise lacking in areas commonly needed and expected by modern FAIR methods, tools, and users. We describe how some of these problems, all of which were overcome successfully, have motivated us to push on systems and approaches for fully FAIR workflows.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures, accepted to ERROR 2022 workshop (see https://error-workshop.org/ for more information), to be published in proceedings of IEEE eScience 202

Expression and Site-Directed Mutagenesis of Type III Polyketide Synthases

Natural products are a well-established source of drugs, and evolution has yielded polyketides such as leinamycin and iso-migrastatin that have demonstrated anti-tumor activity. Polyketides are large metabolites with a high degree of chemical variability and are commonly produced by soil bacteria. Polyketide synthases (PKS) exist as three different archetypes, and the reaction mechanisms of ketosynthases from all archetypes is not understood. Type III PKSs exist as an independently functioning ketosynthase (KS), which primarily use coenzyme A (CoA), with some exceptions, for the biosynthesis of polyketides. We elected to focus our studies on ketosynthases, because they are responsible for forming the carbon-carbon bonds seen in polyketides. To study these Type III PKS KS, we expressed Streptomyces coelicolor germicidin synthase (Gcs) and tetrahydroxynaphthlene synthase (THNS) in E. coli and mutant versions where the catalytic active cysteine was changed to a serine or glutamine. In previous studies, serine slowed the overall progress of the reaction, and glutamine abolished carbon-carbon bond formation but promoted malonyl-CoA decarboxylation. We verified our mutations using a third party organization’s fluorescent sequencing by dye termination services, as well as confirmed that an acceptable level of expression of our protein is occurring in our BL21 cell lines using SDS-PAGE and Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography (FPLC). Now that we have successfully expressed and mutated our protein, we can move forward and use substrate mimics in conjunction with our mutants to further understand the catalytic mechanism of ketosynthases