A
bstract
We compute correlation functions of chiral primary operators in
N
=
2
super-conformal theories at large
N
using a construction based on supersymmetric localization recently developed by ...Gerchkovitz et al. We focus on
N
=
4
SYM as well as on supercon-formal QCD. In the case of
N
=
4
we recover the free field theory results as expected due to non-renormalization theorems. In the case of superconformal QCD we study the planar expansion in the large
N
limit. The final correlators admit a simple generalization to a finite
N
formula which exactly matches the various small
N
results in the literature.
Grain crops are an important part of the human diet, accounting for a third of the consumed calories. Throughout human history, annual grain crops with high yields have been obtained through ...domestication. However, the “annual” characteristic brings associated a series of economic and environmental disadvantages, such as soil erosion or low soil resources use, that can be solved if the agriculture of annual varieties evolves towards perenniality. For this reason, there are numerous research groups dedicated to study and obtain perennial varieties of the most cultivated grain crops. In this review article, we have summarized the most important advances related to the subject, focusing on the domestication and hybridization of the most productive grains globally: wheat, rice, maize, rye and sorghum. We highlight their benefits for sustainable agriculture worldwide due to perennial grains may contribute to reducing erosion, acting avoiding carbon losses, reducing nutrient losses to waters or capturing nutrients deeper in soil when they are scarce, reducing farm costs and thus, increasing the effectiveness of agricultural grain crops. Despite perennial grain crops having disadvantages, they possess outstanding characteristics which make them resilient crops to deal with the imminent climate change. However, maintaining the perenniality trait without reducing genetic biodiversity is a great challenge of current scientific importance that must be deeply considered.
•Grain crops constitute an important part of the human diet.•Perennial grain crops can reduce environmental problems associated with annual crops.•There are breeding programs to breed perennial varieties of wheat, rice and maize.•The first perennial grain cultivars, such as Kernza, are being introduced in the market.
We find a general formula for the operator mixing on the S4 of chiral primary operators for the N=4 theory at large N in terms of Chebyshev polynomials. As an application, we compute the correlator ...of a chiral primary operator and a Wilson loop, reproducing an earlier result by Giombi and Pestun obtained from a two-matrix model proposal. Finally, we discuss a simple method to obtain correlators in general N=2 superconformal field theories in perturbation theory in terms of correlators of the N=4 theory.
Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) catalyses the reversible reaction of decarboxylation and phosphorylation of oxaloacetate (OAA) to generate phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) and CO2 playing mainly a ...gluconeogenic role in green algae. We found two PEPCK isoforms in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and we cloned, purified and characterised both enzymes. ChlrePEPCK1 is more active as decarboxylase than ChlrePEPCK2. ChlrePEPCK1 is hexameric and its activity is affected by citrate, phenylalanine and malate, while ChlrePEPCK2 is monomeric and it is regulated by citrate, phenylalanine and glutamine. We postulate that the two PEPCK isoforms found originate from alternative splicing of the gene or regulated proteolysis of the enzyme. The presence of these two isoforms would be part of a mechanism to finely regulate the biological activity of PEPCKs.
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii contains two phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) isoforms that are formed by alternative splicing or proteolysis of the N‐terminal region. Both proteins differ in their oligomerisation, kinetics and regulation by metabolites. The presence of two proteins with different properties would be a mechanism to regulate PEPCK localisation in algae and their function in carbon metabolism.
Fetal undernutrition is a risk factor for heart disease in both genders, despite the protection of women against hypertension development. Using a rat model of maternal undernutrition (MUN) we aimed ...to assess possible sex differences in the development of cardiac alterations and the implication of hypertension and cardiac oxidative stress.
Male and female offspring from rats fed ad libitum (control) or with 50% of the normal daily intake during the second half of gestation (MUN) were used. Heart weight/body weight ratio (HW/BW), hemodynamic parameters (anaesthetized rats) and plasma brain natriuretic peptide (BNP, ELISA) were assessed in 21-day, 6-month and 22-month old rats. Plasma testosterone (ELISA) and cardiac protein expression of enzymes related to reactive oxygen species synthesis (p22phox, xanthine-oxidase) and degradation (catalase, Cu/Zn-SOD, Mn-SOD, Ec-SOD) were evaluated in 21-day and 6-month old rats (Western Blot). Heart structure and function was studied at the age of 22 months (echocardiography).
At the age of 21 days MUN males exhibited significantly larger HW/BW and cardiac p22phox expression while females had reduced p22phox expression, compared to their respective sex-matched controls. At the age of 6-months, MUN males showed significantly larger blood pressure and cardiac xanthine-oxidase expression; MUN females were normotensive and had a lower cardiac expression of antioxidant enzymes, compared to their respective sex-matched controls. At the age of 22 months, both MUN males and females showed larger HW/BW and left ventricular mass and lower ejection fraction compared to sex-matched controls; only MUN males exhibited hypertension and a larger plasma BNP compared to aged male controls.
1) During perinatal life females exposed to fetal undernutrition are protected from cardiac alterations, but in ageing they exhibit ventricular hypertrophy and functional loss, like MUN males; 2) cardiac oxidative stress might be implicated in the observed heart alterations in both sexes and 3) the severity of cardiac damage might be greater in males due to hypertension.
Microorganisms play a key role in nutrient cycling in agriculture and can contribute to improve soil quality and enhance crop production. Thus, there is a need to identify the most suitable ...management practices which foster increases in soil microbial biomass and diversity. A meta-analysis was performed to assess changes in microbial abundance in agricultural soils affected by: (i) management practices (tillage, fertilization and crop diversification); and (ii) environmental factors, including climate characteristics and soil properties. The scope of the meta-analysis was to evaluate whether microbial abundances are affected or not by organic fertilization or no fertilization, crop diversification (intercropping and crop rotations) and conservation tillage (reduced tillage/no-tillage) as an alternative to intensive conventional monocultures in agriculture. Only papers showing data on phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs), providing indicators about soil microbial (total PLFA), fungal and bacterial biomass reached a critical mass to perform the meta-analysis. Therefore, soil microbial diversity could not be analyzed considering different management practices. Results showed that intercropping and crop rotations only significantly increased the abundance of fungi, with the corresponding increase in the fungal-to-bacterial ratio. Organic fertilization contributed to significant increases in bacterial and fungal abundance and total PLFA compared to mineral fertilization. Contrarily, the lack of fertilization negatively affected total PLFA, with no significant effect on bacterial and fungal abundances. Reduced tillage significantly increased total PLFA, fungal and bacterial abundances compared to conventional tillage, while no tillage had only a positive effect on fungi. Thus, as a general pattern, the adoption of sustainable management practices, mostly organic fertilization and reduced tillage, has overall positive effects on soil total microbial, fungal and bacterial abundance. These variables were not related to soil physicochemical properties and climatic factors, suggesting a positive global effect of sustainable management practices on soil microbial abundances. Thus, this study shows new insights by a meta-analysis of global studies about the effect of sustainable management practices on soil microbial abundances, needed for land-managers, policy-makers and farmers to select sustainable cropping systems that enhance microbial abundance.
•A meta-analysis was performed to assess microbial abundance in agricultural soils.•Sustainable management practices were assessed as alternative to conventional ones.•Only studies dealing with PLFAs provided indicators about soil microbial abundance.•Sustainable management practices had positive effects on soil microbial abundance.•Soil physicochemical properties and climatic factors did not affect the results.
•A novel combination of supramolecular solvents and nanostructured lipid carriers.•Astaxanthin from H. pluvialis powder is extracted, encapsulated and stabilized.•Spherical SUPRAS-NLCs of ∼100 nm ...were obtained.•Antioxidant and in vitro ROS scavenging properties are preserved and even enhanced.•A remarkable time stability of at least 180 d at 4 °C is guaranteed.
The interest of food industry to merchandise natural astaxanthin is growing up. However, it confronts scientific and technological challenges mainly related to its poor water solubility and chemical instability. Here, we present a new quick and efficient green process to simultaneously extract, encapsulate and stabilize astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis. The process is based on the hitherto unexplored combination of supramolecular solvents (SUPRAS), nanostructured liquids generated from amphiphiles through sequential self-assembly and coacervation, and nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs). These novel nanosystems were characterized by means of dynamic light scattering, AFM and cryoSEM, revealing spherical particles of ∼100 nm. Their antioxidant activity was measured by ORAC (20.6 ± 3.9 μM TE) and α-TEAC (2.92 ± 0.58 µM α-TE) assays and their in vitro capacity to inhibit ROS by DHE probe. Results showed that the SUPRAS-NLCs proposed yield high extraction and encapsulation efficiencies (71 ± 4%) in combination with a remarkable time stability (180 d, 4 °C).
The power system expansion and the integration of technologies, such as renewable generation, distributed generation, high voltage direct current, and energy storage, have made power system ...simulation challenging in multiple applications. The current computing platforms employed for planning, operation, studies, visualization, and the analysis of power systems are reaching their operational limit since the complexity and size of modern power systems results in long simulation times and high computational demand. Time reductions in simulation and analysis lead to the better and further optimized performance of power systems. Heterogeneous computing—where different processing units interact—has shown that power system applications can take advantage of the unique strengths of each type of processing unit, such as central processing units, graphics processing units, and field-programmable gate arrays interacting in on-premise or cloud environments. Parallel Heterogeneous Computing appears as an alternative to reduce simulation times by optimizing multitask execution in parallel computing architectures with different processing units working together. This paper presents a review of Parallel Heterogeneous Computing techniques, how these techniques have been applied in a wide variety of power system applications, how they help reduce the computational time of modern power system simulation and analysis, and the current tendency regarding each application. We present a wide variety of approaches classified by technique and application.
Therapeutic monitoring of drugs, particularly those with multiple metabolites, can be time-consuming and labor-intensive due to the need for different analytical methods depending on the specific ...metabolite or matrix of interest. In this study, we employed a heart-cutting 2D-LC separation method based on the coupling of reversed-phase and mixed-mode mechanisms to determine Favipiravir and surrogates of five main metabolites. This approach was applied to serum, plasma, urine, and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The method underwent validation to ensure its reliability. The findings highlight the potential of 2D-LC as a practical and efficient approach for therapeutic drug monitoring.
B4C-based composites are considered to be a practical option in order to overcome the major limitation of pure boron carbide ceramics, their poor sinterability, without a major degradation of ...mechanical properties. This work is focused on the analysis and comparison of the high-temperature creep of silicon carbide-reinforced B4C composites sintered with or without graphite. The mechanical tests, together with microstructural characterization, will allow clarifying the micromechanisms into play and will give insight into the capability of these composites to optimise the mechanical resistance of these materials. The results have shown that the presence of graphite plays a key role on the plasticity of B4C-based composites. In the absence of graphite, silicon carbide-reinforced B4C composites have similar plastic behaviour as pure boron carbide polycrystalline ceramics.
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