Energy Estimation of Distributed Phase-shift Beamforming

Ad-hoc and sensor networks are composed of small, low-power devices, which can connect between themselves without the help of an infrastructure. Research in this area has been both extensive and intensive and is still very far from exhaustion. Our work in this area is aimed at developing a new type of communication between groups of modules capable of connecting clusters (groups) of devices which are separated by distances greater than the maximum transmission range of the devices themselves, without the help of relays or signal repeaters. In this paper we study the energy requirements for bidirectional communication between two clusters separated by a distance greater than the maximum transmission range of the modules, in the classic way (with the use of repeaters or relays) and by applying distributed phase-shift beamforming

Užití biodegradabilních polymerních konjugátů s vysokou molekulovou hmotností k účinnému/ doručení cytostatických léčiv do solidních nádorů.

Nádorová onemocnění představují jeden z nejzávažnějších problémů současné vědy i medicíny. Incidence maligních nádorů je celosvětově na vzestupu a představují závažný celospolečenský problém jak z důvodů ekonomických, tak společenských. Ačkoli pokroky v nádorové biologii, výzkumu nádorové terapie i imunologii umožnily zavést do klinické praxe mnoha nových léčebných protokolů, modalit i léčiv s molekulárně definovanou specificitou, mnoho nádorových onemocnění má stále velmi nepříznivou prognózu. Je tedy nezbytně nutné pokračovat v intenzivním výzkumu nových způsobů, jak rozšířit dostupné léčebné možnosti. Zavést do klinického užívání zcela nové léčivo je nicméně extrémně časově a finančně náročné a zahrnuje vysoké riziko neúspěchu. V posledních letech se z těchto důvodů objevil nový výzkumný trend, spočívající v pátrání po potenciálních látkách s protinádorovým účinkem mezi léčivy, která jsou nebo byla zavedena v lidské medicíně pro použití v nenádorových indikacích. Tento typ výzkumu může úspěšně zavést látku pro použití v nové indikaci podstatně snáze, rychleji a levněji než výzkum zcela nových terapeutik. Cílem této práce bylo prozkoumat protinádorovou účinnost jednoho z léčiv odhalených tímto přístupem, benzimidazolového anthelmintika mebendazolu. Mebendazol je rutinně užíván v klinické praxi od...Cancer remains one of the most pressing issues of contemporary science and medicine. Incidence of malignant diseases is rising worldwide and they represent a major problem for the society due to both economic and ethical issues they cause. Although the progress in cancer biology, therapy and immunology has led to the introduction of many novel therapeutic protocols, approaches and drugs with specificity defined on a molecular level into clinical practice, many malignancies retain their poor prognosis. Therefore, intense research into new ways to increase our therapeutic options is warranted. Unfortunately, bringing a completely novel drug into clinical use takes extremely high amounts of time and money and entails a high risk of failure. Therefore, a promising approach has been recently adopted which lies in repurposing compounds already used in human medicine for cancer treatment. This form of research can advance through clinical trials for a new indication much easier, faster and cheaper than researching completely new drugs. The aim of this study was to examine the anticancer potential of one such drug, mebendazole. An anthelminthic from the family of benzimidazoles, mebendazole has been in common clinical use from the 1970s and is marked by its low toxicity as well as its very low solubility....Department of Cell BiologyKatedra buněčné biologiePřírodovědecká fakultaFaculty of Scienc

Imunoregulační vlastnosti buněk dětí alergických a nealergických matek a možnost jejich ovlivnění probiotickým kmenem E.coli O83:K24:H31

Vzhledem k vysoké incidenci a socioekonomické i individuální zátěži představují alergická onemocnění jeden z klíčových problémů, kterým imunologie v 21. století čelí. Zejména v poznání časných mechanismů, podílejících se na rozvoji alergie, zatím existují významné mezery. Aby bylo u rizikových jedinců možné účelně a včasně přistoupit k preventivním opatřením, je třeba zavést spolehlivé prediktory vysokého rizika alergie. Podkladem alergie je dysregulace rovnováhy mezi jednotlivými větvemi imunitní reakce, především nežádoucí převaha Th2 odpovědi. Po narození v novorozenci probíhají rozsáhlé změny polarizace imunitního systému za účelem přípravy zrající imunity k adekvátní reaktivitě vůči nově přístupným podnětům zevního prostředí. Regulační T lymfocyty (Treg) hrají klíčovou roli v jemném nastavování této rovnováhy a zodpovídají též za periferní toleranci vůči neškodným externím antigenům včetně alergenů. Na intenzivně se vyvíjející imunitní systém vykazují během časně postnatálního "okna příležitosti" rovněž výrazný vliv externí faktory, především interakce s kolonizující mikrobiotou. Analýzou Treg v pupečníkové krví novorozenců alergických matek jsme odhalili snížení povrchových znaků souvisejících s regulační funkcí těchto buněk a nižší produkci IL-10. U těchto dětí jsme rovněž pozorovali nižší...Due to high incidence, medical and socioeconomic burden and impact on individual quality of life and productivity, allergic disorders are a crucial issue for 21st century immunology. Much still remains to be elucidated, particularly regarding the very early processes in allergy development. In order to introduce timely, effective preventive measures, novel, more reliable predictive factors of allergy risk also need to be established. Dysregulation of proper balance between the branches of immune response, particularly unwarranted dominance of Th2, is the underlying cause of allergy. After birth, new immune balance needs to be established to prepare the neonate for adequate reactivity towards newly encountered environmental stimuli. Regulatory T cells (Treg) play a central role in finely setting this balance and inducing tolerance towards harmless environmental antigens, including allergens. Interactions with external factors, most importantly microbiota, modulate this process during the early postnatal "window of opportunity." Analysis of cord blood Treg of children of allergic mothers uncovered decreased presence of function-associated surface markers and lower production of IL-10. Furthermore, decreased proportion of Helios- induced Treg was observed in children with higher risk of allergy....Institute of Immunology and Microbiology First Faculty of Medicine and General University HospitalÚstav imunologie a mikrobiologie 1. LF UK a VFN1. lékařská fakultaFirst Faculty of Medicin

Software for audio adjustment in multiple loudspeaker system

První část diplomové práce se zabývá teorií číslicového zpracování signálů a popisem knihovny JUCE. Jsou zde vysvětleny operace s digitálními audio signály jako například inverze signálu, zpoždění signálu a lineární interpolace vzorků signálu. Je zde také popsána práce s knihovnou JUCE pro vytvoření audio aplikací v programovacím jazyce C++. Další části diplomové práce jsou věnovány popisu implementované aplikace, která umožňuje zmíněné základní úpravy číslicových zvukových signálů aplikovat v reálném čase. V případě vícekanálových zvukových signálů je možné jednotlivé kanály zpracovat nezávisle.The first part of this Master’s Thesis deals with the theory of digital signal processing and describes the JUCE library. In this part some basic operations are explained with digital audio signals, such as polarity inversion, delay and linear interpolation of signal samples. The creation of new audio applications using the JUCE library in the C++ programming language is explained too. The next parts of this thesis describe the implemented audio application that allows the user to provide the described basic operations with digital audio signals in real time. For multiple channel audio signals the channels can be processed independently.

Migration of Chadic speaking pastoralists within Africa based on population structure of Chad Basin and phylogeography of mitochondrial L3f haplogroup

BACKGROUND: Chad Basin, lying within the bidirectional corridor of African Sahel, is one of the most populated places in Sub-Saharan Africa today. The origin of its settlement appears connected with Holocene climatic ameliorations (aquatic resources) that started ~10,000 years before present (YBP). Although both Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo language families are encountered here, the most diversified group is the Chadic branch belonging to the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. In this article, we investigate the proposed ancient migration of Chadic pastoralists from Eastern Africa based on linguistic data and test for genetic traces of this migration in extant Chadic speaking populations. RESULTS: We performed whole mitochondrial genome sequencing of 16 L3f haplotypes, focused on clade L3f3 that occurs almost exclusively in Chadic speaking people living in the Chad Basin. These data supported the reconstruction of a L3f phylogenetic tree and calculation of times to the most recent common ancestor for all internal clades. A date ~8,000 YBP was estimated for the L3f3 sub-haplogroup, which is in good agreement with the supposed migration of Chadic speaking pastoralists and their linguistic differentiation from other Afro-Asiatic groups of East Africa. As a whole, the Afro-Asiatic language family presents low population structure, as 92.4% of mtDNA variation is found within populations and only 3.4% of variation can be attributed to diversity among language branches. The Chadic speaking populations form a relatively homogenous cluster, exhibiting lower diversification than the other Afro-Asiatic branches (Berber, Semitic and Cushitic). CONCLUSION: The results of our study support an East African origin of mitochondrial L3f3 clade that is present almost exclusively within Chadic speaking people living in Chad Basin. Whole genome sequence-based dates show that the ancestral haplogroup L3f must have emerged soon after the Out-of-Africa migration (around 57,100 +/- 9,400 YBP), but the "Chadic" L3f3 clade has much less internal variation, suggesting an expansion during the Holocene period about 8,000 +/- 2,500 YBP. This time period in the Chad Basin is known to have been particularly favourable for the expansion of pastoralists coming from northeastern Africa, as suggested by archaeological, linguistic and climatic data

Evaluation of an electro-pneumatic device for artificial capillary pulse generation used in a prospective study in animals for surgical neck wound healing

The paper examines the development and testing of an electro-pneumatic device for wound healing therapy after surgery in the neck area. The device generates air pressure values in a miniaturized cuff using electronic circuitry to drive an electro-valve and air compressor. The device works in two distinct modes: continuous pressure mode and pulsating pressure mode. The pressure value setting can vary from 3 to 11 mmHg, and the pulsating pressure mode's operating frequency range is approximately 0.1 to 0.3 Hz. Laboratory measurements were conducted to evaluate the device's correct functioning in both continuous and pulsating pressure modes. A four-day prospective study with animals (n = 10) was also conducted to evaluate neck wound healing therapy using the electro-pneumatic device. Out of the twelve histological parameters analysed to reveal the differences between the experimental and control wounds, only one demonstrated a significant difference. Out of the ten animals treated with the device, three showed a significant difference in terms of benefit after therapy. We can therefore conclude that the device potentially improves the wound healing process in the neck area if the pre-set air pressure value does not exceed 8 mmHg.Web of Science9art. no. 983

Genetic Stratigraphy of Key Demographic Events in Arabia

The issue of admixture in human populations is normally addressed by genome-wide (GW) studies, and several approaches have been developed to date admixture events [1,2,3,4,5]. Admixed populations bear chromosomes with segments of DNA from all contributing source groups, the size of which decreases over successive generations until recombination renders them undetectably short. Several algorithms attempt to date admixture events by inferring the size of the nuclear ancestry segments, and these can work well when dating recent episodes in human history, such as the sub-Saharan African input into the New World [6], but they fail to detect several known episodes that took place at earlier times, such as the African input into Iberia [1] and genetic exchanges across the Red Sea [7]. Simulations with the suite of methods available at the ADMIXTOOLS package indicated that these methods could detect admixture events as early as 500 generation ago, but real data did not allow the tracing of such old events [8]. A recent improved algorithm, called GLOBETROTTER, has been used to tackle the detection of the co-occurrence of several mixture events by decomposing each chromosome into a series of haplotypic chunks and then analysing each chunk independently [3], but the problem of detecting ancient events remains. Its application to the systematic screening of worldwide admixture events was able to reveal around 100 events, but all occurring over only the past 4,000 years [3

Genetic Structure of the Western and Eastern African Sahel/Savannah Belt and the Role of Nomadic Pastoralists as Inferred from the Variation of D-loop mtDNA sequences

The objective of this study is to provide deeper knowledge of the maternal genetic structure and demographic history of the human population of the dynamic Sahel/Savannah belt, the extensive region lying between the Sahara and tropical rainforests, spanning from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea coast. The study aims to confirm or disconfirm archaeological and linguistic data indicating that the region’s populations underwent diversification as a result of the spread of agropastoral food-producing subsistence lifestyles, over time dividing the region into separate areas of nomadic pastoralism on the one hand, and sedentary farming on the other. In order to perform both descriptive and coalescence analyses from the Sahel/Savannah belt’s entire region, including western and eastern rather than just central populations studied previously, we generated a new mtDNA dataset not only having almost 2,000 samples (875 of which were newly collected); but also encompassing whole mtDNA D-loop segment rather than only the previously studied HVS-1. While comparing our analyses with previous results from the Lake Chad Basin (central Sahel/Savannah Belt) we revealed similar intra-population diversity measures (i.e., lower values of measures in pastoralists than farmers). However, the new dataset pointed to significant differences in mating strategies between western as compared to the eastern pastoralists: our results suggest higher gene flow between the Arabic pastoralists and neighboring farmers in the eastern than between the Fulani pastoralists and their sedentary neighbors in the western part of the Sahel/Savannah Belt. The findings are discussed in the light of archaeological and linguistic data, allowing us to postulate that the genetic differentiation of Fulani pastoralists from the common western African agropastoral gene pool occurred at around the same time as the arrival of the Arabic pastoralists to eastern Africa. However, it seems that while the process of divergence of the Fulani pastoralists in the west was accompanied by a loss of Fulani females to other populations, the Arab pastoralists’ immigration to the Sahel/Savannah belt conversely resulted in some gain of local females into this Arab population

New Insights into the Lake Chad Basin Population Structure Revealed by High-Throughput Genotyping of Mitochondrial DNA Coding SNPs

BACKGROUND: Located in the Sudan belt, the Chad Basin forms a remarkable ecosystem, where several unique agricultural and pastoral techniques have been developed. Both from an archaeological and a genetic point of view, this region has been interpreted to be the center of a bidirectional corridor connecting West and East Africa, as well as a meeting point for populations coming from North Africa through the Saharan desert. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Samples from twelve ethnic groups from the Chad Basin (n = 542) have been high-throughput genotyped for 230 coding region mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (mtSNPs) using Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-Of-Flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. This set of mtSNPs allowed for much better phylogenetic resolution than previous studies of this geographic region, enabling new insights into its population history. Notable haplogroup (hg) heterogeneity has been observed in the Chad Basin mirroring the different demographic histories of these ethnic groups. As estimated using a Bayesian framework, nomadic populations showed negative growth which was not always correlated to their estimated effective population sizes. Nomads also showed lower diversity values than sedentary groups. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Compared to sedentary population, nomads showed signals of stronger genetic drift occurring in their ancestral populations. These populations, however, retained more haplotype diversity in their hypervariable segments I (HVS-I), but not their mtSNPs, suggesting a more ancestral ethnogenesis. Whereas the nomadic population showed a higher Mediterranean influence signaled mainly by sub-lineages of M1, R0, U6, and U5, the other populations showed a more consistent sub-Saharan pattern. Although lifestyle may have an influence on diversity patterns and hg composition, analysis of molecular variance has not identified these differences. The present study indicates that analysis of mtSNPs at high resolution could be a fast and extensive approach for screening variation in population studies where labor-intensive techniques such as entire genome sequencing remain unfeasible

Origin and spread of human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U7

Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup U is among the initial maternal founders in Southwest Asia and Europe and one that best indicates matrilineal genetic continuity between late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer groups and present-day populations of Europe. While most haplogroup U subclades are older than 30 thousand years, the comparatively recent coalescence time of the extant variation of haplogroup U7 (~16–19 thousand years ago) suggests that its current distribution is the consequence of more recent dispersal events, despite its wide geographical range across Europe, the Near East and South Asia. Here we report 267 new U7 mitogenomes that – analysed alongside 100 published ones – enable us to discern at least two distinct temporal phases of dispersal, both of which most likely emanated from the Near East. The earlier one began prior to the Holocene (~11.5 thousand years ago) towards South Asia, while the later dispersal took place more recently towards Mediterranean Europe during the Neolithic (~8 thousand years ago). These findings imply that the carriers of haplogroup U7 spread to South Asia and Europe before the suggested Bronze Age expansion of Indo-European languages from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region