Use of virtual reality in off-line robot programming

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3075204

Environment and shipping drive environmental DNA beta-diversity among commercial ports

The spread of nonindigenous species by shipping is a large and growing global problem that harms coastal ecosystems and economies and may blur coastal biogeographical patterns. This study coupled eukaryotic environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding with dissimilarity regression to test the hypothesis that ship-borne species spread homogenizes port communities. We first collected and metabarcoded water samples from ports in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. We then calculated community dissimilarities between port pairs and tested for effects of environmental dissimilarity, biogeographical region and four alternative measures of ship-borne species transport risk. We predicted that higher shipping between ports would decrease community dissimilarity, that the effect of shipping would be small compared to that of environment dissimilarity and shared biogeography, and that more complex shipping risk metrics (which account for ballast water and stepping-stone spread) would perform better. Consistent with our hypotheses, community dissimilarities increased significantly with environmental dissimilarity and, to a lesser extent, decreased with ship-borne species transport risks, particularly if the ports had similar environments and stepping-stone risks were considered. Unexpectedly, we found no clear effect of shared biogeography, and that risk metrics incorporating estimates of ballast discharge did not offer more explanatory power than simpler traffic-based risks. Overall, we found that shipping homogenizes eukaryotic communities between ports in predictable ways, which could inform improvements in invasive species policy and management. We demonstrated the usefulness of eDNA metabarcoding and dissimilarity regression for disentangling the drivers of large-scale biodiversity patterns. We conclude by outlining logistical considerations and recommendations for future studies using this approach.Fil: Andrés, Jose. Cornell University. Department Of Ecology And Evolutionary Biology;Fil: Czechowski, Paul. Cornell University. Department Of Ecology And Evolutionary Biology; . University of Otago; Nueva Zelanda. Helmholtz Institute for Metabolic, Obesity and Vascular Research; AlemaniaFil: Grey, Erin. University of Maine; Estados Unidos. Governors State University; Estados UnidosFil: Saebi, Mandana. University of Notre Dame; Estados UnidosFil: Andres, Kara. Cornell University. Department Of Ecology And Evolutionary Biology;Fil: Brown, Christopher. California State University Maritime Academy; Estados UnidosFil: Chawla, Nitesh. University of Notre Dame; Estados UnidosFil: Corbett, James J.. University of Delaware; Estados UnidosFil: Brys, Rein. Research Institute for Nature and Forest; BélgicaFil: Cassey, Phillip. University of Adelaide; AustraliaFil: Correa, Nancy. Ministerio de Defensa. Armada Argentina. Instituto Universitario Naval de la Ara. Escuela de Ciencias del Mar; Argentina. Ministerio de Defensa. Armada Argentina. Servicio de Hidrografía Naval; ArgentinaFil: Deveney, Marty R.. South Australian Research And Development Institute; AustraliaFil: Egan, Scott P.. Rice University; Estados UnidosFil: Fisher, Joshua P.. United States Fish and Wildlife Service; Estados UnidosFil: vanden Hooff, Rian. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality; Estados UnidosFil: Knapp, Charles R.. Daniel P. Haerther Center for Conservation and Research; Estados UnidosFil: Leong, Sandric Chee Yew. National University of Singapore; SingapurFil: Neilson, Brian J.. State of Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources; Estados UnidosFil: Paolucci, Esteban Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Pfrender, Michael E.. University of Notre Dame; Estados UnidosFil: Pochardt, Meredith R.. M. Rose Consulting; Estados UnidosFil: Prowse, Thomas A. A.. University of Adelaide; AustraliaFil: Rumrill, Steven S.. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; Estados UnidosFil: Scianni, Chris. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales. Instituto para el Estudio de la Biodiversidad de Invertebrados; Argentina. Marine Invasive Species Program; Estados UnidosFil: Sylvester, Francisco. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales. Instituto para el Estudio de la Biodiversidad de Invertebrados; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta; ArgentinaFil: Tamburri, Mario N.. University of Maryland; Estados UnidosFil: Therriault, Thomas W.. Pacific Biological Station; CanadáFil: Yeo, Darren C. J.. National University of Singapore; SingapurFil: Lodge, David M.. Cornell University. Department Of Ecology And Evolutionary Biology

Search for supersymmetry in events with one lepton and multiple jets in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Search for supersymmetry in the vector-boson fusion topology in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s} = 8 TeV

The first search for supersymmetry in the vector-boson fusion topology is presented. The search targets final states with at least two leptons, large missing transverse momentum, and two jets with a large separation in rapidity. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} =$ 8 TeV collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. The observed dijet invariant mass spectrum is found to be consistent with the expected standard model prediction. Upper limits are set on the cross sections for chargino and neutralino production with two associated jets, assuming the supersymmetric partner of the $\tau$ lepton to be the lightest slepton and the lightest slepton to be lighter than the charginos. For a so-called compressed-mass-spectrum scenario in which the mass difference between the lightest supersymmetric particle $\tilde{\chi}_1^0$ and the next lightest, mass-degenerate, gaugino particles $\tilde{\chi}_2^0$ and $\tilde{\chi}_1^{\pm}$ is 50 GeV, a mass lower limit of 170 GeV is set for these latter two particles