We report a new 3D microscopy technique that allows volumetric imaging of living samples at ultra-high speeds: Swept, confocally-aligned planar excitation (SCAPE) microscopy. While confocal and ...two-photon microscopy have revolutionized biomedical research, current implementations are costly, complex and limited in their ability to image 3D volumes at high speeds. Light-sheet microscopy techniques using two-objective, orthogonal illumination and detection require a highly constrained sample geometry, and either physical sample translation or complex synchronization of illumination and detection planes. In contrast, SCAPE microscopy acquires images using an angled, swept light-sheet in a single-objective, en-face geometry. Unique confocal descanning and image rotation optics map this moving plane onto a stationary high-speed camera, permitting completely translationless 3D imaging of intact samples at rates exceeding 20 volumes per second. We demonstrate SCAPE microscopy by imaging spontaneous neuronal firing in the intact brain of awake behaving mice, as well as freely moving transgenic
larvae.
Spain and Portugal have long been considered exceptions when it comes to the electoral success of radical right-wing parties in Europe. This scenario changed for both countries in 2019, with the ...extraordinary rise of Vox in Spain and the comparatively more modest election of one representative of Chega in Portugal. Their emergence - and the stark difference in the extents of their success - provides researchers with an ideal 'edge-case' and can be explained via a theoretical model that builds on and fuses previous explanatory models for radical right success. The Iberian cases demonstrate that radical right parties succeed when they (i) avoid the stigma of extremism, (ii) benefit from a gap in political supply on the right and (iii) cater to an unsatiated demand of voters on a salient sociocultural issue. While both countries had long been home to marginal far-right political forces, the stigma of extremism prevented them from being considered credible political alternatives. The appearance of new parties that emerged as a result of splits from the mainstream centre-right, in both cases reflecting a beleaguered political supply, gave the radical right an opportunity to avoid stigma, as we demonstrate through a news content analysis. However, whereas in Spain Vox could profit from both the Catalan independence challenge and the uptick in salience of immigration, which had previously been anomalously low in Iberia, Chega has not (yet) benefited from a similarly ripe political opportunity structure in Portugal.
Bathymetric changes have been experimentally shown to affect the occurrence of rogue waves. We recently derived a non-homogeneous correction to the spectral analysis, allowing us to describe the ...evolution of the rogue wave probability over a shoal. Here, we extend this work to the evolution of the excess kurtosis of the surface elevation, that plays a central role in estimating rare event probabilities. Furthermore, we provide an upper bound to the excess kurtosis. In intermediate and deep water regimes, a shoal does not affect wave steepness nor bandwidth significantly, so that the vertical asymmetry between crests and troughs, the excess kurtosis and the exceedance probability of wave height stay rather constant. In contrast, in shallower water, a sharp increase in wave steepness increases the vertical asymmetry, resulting in a growth of both the tail of the exceedance probability and the excess kurtosis.
Non-equilibrium evolution of wave fields, as occurring over sudden bathymetry variations, can produce rogue seas with anomalous wave statistics. We handle this process by modifying the Rayleigh ...distribution through the energetics of second-order theory and a non-homogeneous reformulation of the Khintchine theorem. The resulting probability model reproduces the enhanced tail of the probability distribution of unidirectional wave tank experiments. It also describes why the peak of rogue wave probability appears atop the shoal, and explains the influence of depth on variations in peak intensity. Furthermore, we interpret rogue wave likelihoods in finite depth through the $H$–$\sigma$ diagram, allowing a quick prediction for the effects of rapid depth change apart from the probability distribution.
The incidence of fungal infections has increased significantly, so contributing to morbidity and mortality. This is caused by an increase in antimicrobial resistance and the restricted number of ...antifungal drugs, which retain many side effects. Candida species are major human fungal pathogens that cause both mucosal and deep tissue infections. Recent evidence suggests that the majority of infections produced by this pathogen are associated with biofilm growth. Biofilms are biological communities with a high degree of organization, in which micro-organisms form structured, coordinated and functional communities. These biological communities are embedded in a self-created extracellular matrix. Biofilm production is also associated with a high level of antimicrobial resistance of the associated organisms. The ability of Candida species to form drug-resistant biofilms is an important factor in their contribution to human disease. The study of plants as an alternative to other forms of drug discovery has attracted great attention because, according to the World Health Organization, these would be the best sources for obtaining a wide variety of drugs and could benefit a large population. Furthermore, silver nanoparticles, antibodies and photodynamic inactivation have also been used with good results. This article presents a brief review of the literature regarding the epidemiology of Candida species, as well as their pathogenicity and ability to form biofilms, the antifungal activity of natural products and other therapeutic options.
Qualitative and quantitative measurements of motor performance are essential for characterizing perturbations of motor systems. Although several methods exist for analyzing specific motor tasks, few ...behavioral assays are readily available to researchers that provide a complete set of kinematic parameters in rodents.
Here we present MouseWalker, an integrated hardware and software system that provides a comprehensive and quantitative description of kinematic features in freely walking rodents. Footprints are visualized with high spatial and temporal resolution by a non-invasive optical touch sensor coupled to high-speed imaging. A freely available and open-source software package tracks footprints and body features to generate a comprehensive description of many locomotion features, including static parameters such as footprint position and stance patterns and dynamic parameters, such as step and swing cycle duration, and inter-leg coordination. Using this method, we describe walking by wild-type mice including several previously undescribed parameters. For example, we demonstrate that footprint touchdown occurs instantaneously by the entire paw with no obvious rostral-caudal or lateral-medial bias.
The readily available MouseWalker system and the large set of readouts it generates greatly increases the currently available toolkit for the analysis of wild type and aberrant locomotion in rodents.
We report on a quantitative analysis of relationships between the number of homicides, population size and ten other urban metrics. By using data from Brazilian cities, we show that well-defined ...average scaling laws with the population size emerge when investigating the relations between population and number of homicides as well as population and urban metrics. We also show that the fluctuations around the scaling laws are log-normally distributed, which enabled us to model these scaling laws by a stochastic-like equation driven by a multiplicative and log-normally distributed noise. Because of the scaling laws, we argue that it is better to employ logarithms in order to describe the number of homicides in function of the urban metrics via regression analysis. In addition to the regression analysis, we propose an approach to correlate crime and urban metrics via the evaluation of the distance between the actual value of the number of homicides (as well as the value of the urban metrics) and the value that is expected by the scaling law with the population size. This approach has proved to be robust and useful for unveiling relationships/behaviors that were not properly carried out by the regression analysis, such as Formula: see text the non-explanatory potential of the elderly population when the number of homicides is much above or much below the scaling law, Formula: see text the fact that unemployment has explanatory potential only when the number of homicides is considerably larger than the expected by the power law, and Formula: see text a gender difference in number of homicides, where cities with female population below the scaling law are characterized by a number of homicides above the power law.
The technical debt metaphor describes the effect of immature artifacts on software maintenance that bring a short-term benefit to the project in terms of increased productivity and lower cost, but ...that may have to be paid off with interest later. Much research has been performed to propose mechanisms to identify debt and decide the most appropriate moment to pay it off. It is important to investigate the current state of the art in order to provide both researchers and practitioners with information that enables further research activities as well as technical debt management in practice.
This paper has the following goals: to characterize the types of technical debt, identify indicators that can be used to find technical debt, identify management strategies, understand the maturity level of each proposal, and identify what visualization techniques have been proposed to support technical debt identification and management activities.
A systematic mapping study was performed based on a set of three research questions. In total, 100 studies, dated from 2010 to 2014, were evaluated.
We proposed an initial taxonomy of technical debt types, created a list of indicators that have been proposed to identify technical debt, identified the existing management strategies, and analyzed the current state of art on technical debt, identifying topics where new research efforts can be invested.
The results of this mapping study can help to identify points that still require further investigation in technical debt research.
Nearly every known exceedance probability distribution applied to rogue waves has shown disagreement with its peers, suggesting that the underlying phenomenon may be too complex to grasp within a ...single distribution. In recent studies, this view has been supported by the realisation that there is no distribution suitable for wide ranges of sea states, even though distributions can perform well in a limited and small number of conditions. Towards the better quantitative assessment of rogue wave occurrence, the present work focuses on the apparent discrepancy among the majority of previous works. Furthermore, on the grounds of the uneven distribution of rogue waves found in North Sea observations, a new exceedance probability distribution for rogue waves is introduced. The proposed distribution is a geometrical composition of some of the most popular simple models for waves while introducing additional algebraic structures. The model also obeys empirical physical bounds obtained from the analysis of nearly 350,000 waves from storms recorded in North sea and supports the qualitative analysis of rogue wave occurrence based on the interaction among three sea state parameters.
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