Two sets of teeth (diphyodonty) characterise extant mammals but not reptiles, as they generate many replacement sets (polyphyodonty). The transition in long‐extinct species from many sets to only two ...has to date only been reported in Jurassic eucynodonts. Specimens of the Late Triassic brasilodontid eucynodont Brasilodon have provided anatomical and histological data from three lower jaws of different growth stages. These reveal ordered and timed replacement of deciduous by adult teeth. Therefore, this diphyodont dentition, as contemporary of the oldest known dinosaurs, shows that Brasilodon falls within a range of wide variations of typically mammalian, diphyodont dental patterns. Importantly, these three lower jaws represent distinct ontogenetic stages that reveal classic features for timed control of replacement, by the generation of only one replacement set of teeth. This data shows that the primary premolars reveal a temporal replacement pattern, importantly from directly below each tooth, by controlled regulation of tooth resorption and regeneration. The complexity of the adult prismatic enamel structure with a conspicuous intra‐structural Schmelzmuster array suggests that, as in the case of extant mammals, this extinct species would have probably sustained higher metabolic rates than reptiles. Furthermore, in modern mammals, diphyodonty and prismatic enamel are inextricably linked, anatomically and physiologically, to a set of other traits including placentation, endothermy, fur, lactation and even parental care. Our analysis of the osteodental anatomy of Brasilodon pushes back the origin of diphyodonty and consequently, its related biological traits to the Norian (225.42 ± 0.37 myr), and around 25 myr after the End‐Permian mass extinction event.
Until 2010, our knowledge of the uterine microbiome in cows that developed uterine disease relied almost exclusively on culture-dependent studies and mostly included cows with clinical endometritis ...(i.e., with purulent uterine discharge). Those studies consistently found a strong positive correlation between Trueperella pyogenes and clinical endometritis, whereas other pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Fusobacterium necrophorum, Prevotella melaninogenica, and Bacteroides spp. were also commonly cocultured. In contrast, Streptococcus spp., Staphylococcus spp., and Bacillus spp. were usually isolated from healthy cows. Starting in 2010, culture-independent studies using PCR explored the microbiome of cows with metritis and clinical endometritis, and observed that E. coli was a pioneer pathogen that predisposed cows to infection with F. necrophorum, which was strongly associated with metritis, and to infection with T. pyogenes, which was strongly associated with clinical endometritis. Starting in 2011, culture-independent studies using metagenomic sequencing expanded our knowledge of the uterine microbiome. It has been shown that cows have bacteria in the uterus even before calving, they have an established uterine microbiome within 20 min of calving, and that the microbiome structure is identical between cows that develop metritis and healthy cows until 2 d postpartum, after which the bacterial structure of cows that developed metritis deviates in favor of greater relative abundance of Bacteroidetes and Fusobacteria and lesser relative abundance of Proteobacteria and Tenericutes. The shift in the uterine microbiome in cows that develop metritis is characterized by a loss of heterogeneity and a decrease in bacterial richness. At the genus level, Bacteroides, Porphyromonas, and Fusobacterium have the strongest association with metritis. At the species level, we observed that Bacteroides pyogenes, Porphyromonas levii, and Helcococcus ovis were potential emerging uterine pathogens. Finally, we have shown that the hematogenous route is a viable route of uterine infection with uterine pathogens. Herein, we propose that metritis is associated with a dysbiosis of the uterine microbiota characterized by decreased richness, and an increase in Bacteroidetes and Fusobacteria, particularly Bacteroides, Porphyromonas, and Fusobacterium.
•Araçá has excellent flavor and high potential to the agri-food sector.•Fruits have good nutritional properties, with high vitamin C content.•Araçá is a source of gallic and ellagic acids ...derivatives.•Biological activity is related with phytochemical compounds.•Promising agri-food and pharmaceutical applications.
Psidium cattleianum Sabine, commonly known as araçá, is a Brazilian native fruit, which is very juicy, with sweet to sub acid pulp and a spicy touch. The fruit can be eaten fresh or processed into juice, jellies and ice creams. Araçás are source of vitamin C, minerals, fatty acids, polysaccharides, volatile compounds, carotenoids and phenolic compounds, which can provide nutrients and phytochemical agents with different biological functions. Different pharmacological studies demonstrate that P. cattleianum exerts antioxidant, antidiabetic, anticarcinogenic, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and antiaging effects. Thus, this article aims to review the chemical composition and biological effects reported for araçá fruit in the last years.
This article proposes an enhanced coarray transformation model (EDCTM) and a mixed greedy maximum likelihood algorithm called list-based maximum likelihood orthogonal matching pursuit (LBML-OMP) for ...direction-of-arrival estimation with nonuniform linear arrays (NLAs). The proposed EDCTM approach obtains improved estimates when Khatri-Rao product-based models are used to generate difference coarrays under the assumption of uncorrelated sources. In the proposed LBML-OMP technique, for each iteration a set of candidates is generated based on the correlation-maximization between the dictionary and the residue vector. LBML-OMP then chooses the best candidate based on a reduced-complexity asymptotic maximum likelihood decision rule. Simulations show the improved results of EDCTM over existing approaches and that LBML-OMP outperforms existing sparse recovery algorithms as well as spatial smoothing multiple signal classification with NLAs.
In this work, decision feedback (DF) detection algorithms based on multiple processing branches for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing systems are proposed. The proposed detector ...employs multiple cancellation branches with receive filters that are obtained from a common matrix inverse and achieves a performance close to the maximum likelihood detector (MLD). Constrained minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receive filters designed with constraints on the shape and magnitude of the feedback filters for the multi-branch MMSE DF (MB-MMSE-DF) receivers are presented. An adaptive implementation of the proposed MB-MMSE-DF detector is developed along with a recursive least squares-type algorithm for estimating the parameters of the receive filters when the channel is time-varying. A soft-output version of the MB-MMSE-DF detector is also proposed as a component of an iterative detection and decoding receiver structure. A computational complexity analysis shows that the MB-MMSE-DF detector does not require a significant additional complexity over the conventional MMSE-DF detector, whereas a diversity analysis discusses the diversity order achieved by the MB-MMSE-DF detector. Simulation results show that the MB-MMSE-DF detector achieves a performance superior to existing suboptimal detectors and close to the MLD, while requiring significantly lower complexity.
This paper presents cost-effective low-rank techniques for designing robust adaptive beamforming (RAB) algorithms. The proposed algorithms are based on the exploitation of the cross-correlation ...between the array observation data and the output of the beamformer. First, we construct a general linear equation considered in large dimensions whose solution yields the steering vector mismatch. Then, we employ the idea of the full orthogonalization method (FOM), an orthogonal Krylov subspace based method, to iteratively estimate the steering vector mismatch in a reduced-dimensional subspace, resulting in the proposed orthogonal Krylov subspace projection mismatch estimation (OKSPME) method. We also devise adaptive algorithms based on stochastic gradient (SG) and conjugate gradient (CG) techniques to update the beamforming weights with low complexity and avoid any costly matrix inversion. The main advantages of the proposed low-rank and mismatch estimation techniques are their cost-effectiveness when dealing with high-dimension subspaces or large sensor arrays. Simulations results show excellent performance in terms of the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the beamformer among all the compared RAB methods.
This work develops robust diffusion recursive least-squares algorithms to mitigate the performance degradation often experienced in networks of agents in the presence of impulsive noise. The first ...algorithm minimizes an exponentially weighted least-squares cost function subject to a time-dependent constraint on the squared norm of the intermediate update at each node. A recursive strategy for computing the constraint is proposed using side information from the neighboring nodes to further improve the robustness. We also analyze the mean-square convergence behavior of the proposed algorithm. The second proposed algorithm is a modification of the first one based on the dichotomous coordinate descent iterations. It has a performance similar to that of the former, however, its complexity is significantly lower especially when input regressors of agents have a shift structure and it is well suited to practical implementation. Simulations show the superiority of the proposed algorithms over previously reported techniques in various impulsive noise scenarios.
Schistosomiasis remains a serious health issue nowadays for an estimated one billion people in 79 countries around the world. Great efforts have been made to identify good vaccine candidates during ...the last decades, but only three molecules reached clinical trials so far. The reverse vaccinology approach has become an attractive option for vaccine design, especially regarding parasites like
spp. that present limitations for culture maintenance. This strategy also has prompted the construction of multi-epitope based vaccines, with great immunological foreseen properties as well as being less prone to contamination, autoimmunity, and allergenic responses. Therefore, in this study we applied a robust immunoinformatics approach, targeting
transmembrane proteins, in order to construct a chimeric antigen. Initially, the search for all hypothetical transmembrane proteins in GeneDB provided a total of 584 sequences. Using the PSORT II and CCTOP servers we reduced this to 37 plasma membrane proteins, from which extracellular domains were used for epitope prediction. Nineteen common MHC-I and MHC-II binding epitopes, from eight proteins, comprised the final multi-epitope construct, along with suitable adjuvants. The final chimeric multi-epitope vaccine was predicted as prone to induce B-cell and IFN-γ based immunity, as well as presented itself as stable and non-allergenic molecule. Finally, molecular docking and molecular dynamics foresee stable interactions between the putative antigen and the immune receptor TLR 4. Our results indicate that the multi-epitope vaccine might stimulate humoral and cellular immune responses and could be a potential vaccine candidate against schistosomiasis.
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