Symmetry breaking and the emergence of self-organized patterns is the hallmark of complexity. Here, we demonstrate that a sessile drop, containing titania powder particles with negligible ...self-propulsion, exhibits a transition to collective motion leading to self-organized flow patterns. This phenomenology emerges through a novel mechanism involving the interplay between the chemical activity of the photocatalytic particles, which induces Marangoni stresses at the liquid-liquid interface, and the geometrical confinement provided by the drop. The response of the interface to the chemical activity of the particles is the source of a significantly amplified hydrodynamic flow within the drop, which moves the particles. Furthermore, in ensembles of such active drops long-ranged ordering of the flow patterns within the drops is observed. We show that the ordering is dictated by a chemical communication between drops, i.e., an alignment of the flow patterns is induced by the gradients of the chemicals emanating from the active particles, rather than by hydrodynamic interactions.
Plasma glycine level is low in patients with obesity or diabetes and the improvement of insulin resistance increases plasma glycine concentration. In prospective studies, hypoglycinemia at baseline ...predicts the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and higher serum glycine level is associated with decreased risk of incident type 2 diabetes. Consistently, plasma glycine concentration is lower in the lean offspring of parents with type 2 diabetes compared to healthy subjects. Among patients with type 2 diabetes, hypoglycinemia occurs before clinical manifestations of the disease, but the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying glycine deficit and its potential clinical repercussions are unclear. Glycine participates in several metabolic pathways, being required for relevant human physiological processes. Humans synthesize glycine from glyoxylate, glucose (via serine), betaine and likely from threonine and during the endogenous synthesis of L-carnitine. Glycine conjugates bile acids and other acyl moieties producing acyl-glycine derivatives. The glycine cleavage system catalyzes glycine degradation to carbon dioxide and ammonium while tetrahydrofolate is converted into 5,10-methylene-tetrahydrofolate. Glycine is utilized to synthesize serine, sarcosine, purines, creatine, heme group, glutathione, and collagen. Glycine is a major quantitative component of collagen. In addition, the role of glycine maintaining collagen structure is critical, as glycine residues are required to stabilize the triple helix of the collagen molecule. This quality of glycine likely contributes to explain the occurrence of medial arterial calcification and the elevated cardiovascular risk associated with diabetes and chronic kidney disease, as emerging evidence links normal collagen content with the initiation and progression of vascular calcification in humans.
•Roo in the Oviedo lines presents the same variants found in the reference genome.•The transposition of roo adapts to the “transposon model” with several active copies.•The shallow phylogenetic tree ...of sequences denotes a rapid turnover of roo elements.
Retrotransposon roo is one of the most active elements in Drosophila melanogaster. The level of nucleotide diversity between copies of roo is very low but structural variation in the 5'-UTR is considerable. Transposition of roo at high frequency (around 5 × 10−2 per generation) has been shown previously in the set of mutation accumulation lines named Oviedo. Here we isolated thirteen individual insertions by inverse PCR and sequenced the 5' end of the elements (between 1663 and 2039 nt) including the LTR, the 5'-UTR and a fragment of 661 nucleotides from the ORF, to study whether the new transposed copies come from a unique variant (the master copy model) or different elements are able to move (the transposon model). The elements in the Oviedo lines presented the same structural variants as the reference genome. Different structural variants were active, a behaviour compatible with the “transposon model” in which the copies localized in multiple sites in the genome are able to transpose. At the level of sequence, the copies of roo in our lines are highly similar to the elements in the reference genome. The phylogenetic tree shows a shallow diversification with unsupported nodes denoting that all the elements currently active are very young. This observation together with the great polymorphism in insertion sites implies a rapid turnover of the elements.
We present the fourth Fermi Large Area Telescope catalog (4FGL) of γ-ray sources. Based on the first eight years of science data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope mission in the energy range ...from 50 MeV to 1 TeV, it is the deepest yet in this energy range. Relative to the 3FGL catalog, the 4FGL catalog has twice as much exposure as well as a number of analysis improvements, including an updated model for the Galactic diffuse γ-ray emission, and two sets of light curves (one-year and two-month intervals). The 4FGL catalog includes 5064 sources above 4 significance, for which we provide localization and spectral properties. Seventy-five sources are modeled explicitly as spatially extended, and overall, 358 sources are considered as identified based on angular extent, periodicity, or correlated variability observed at other wavelengths. For 1336 sources, we have not found plausible counterparts at other wavelengths. More than 3130 of the identified or associated sources are active galaxies of the blazar class, and 239 are pulsars.
Given their large surface area and versatile chemical reactivity, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are regarded as the basis of new pharmacological complexes. In this study, SWCNTs are ...chemically functionalized with fluorescein, folic acid, and capecitabine, a drug that is commonly used against colorectal cancer. These functionalized SWCNTs are dispersed in water by taking advantage of their synergistic interaction with type-II nanocrystalline cellulose (II-NCC), and the resulting colloidal system is tested in vitro on both normal (differentiated) and cancerous (proliferative) human colon cells (Caco-2). The functionalized SWCNT/II-NCC hybrids show a higher activity than the reference (capecitabine) against the Caco-2 cancer cell line. However, this effect appears to be intrinsically associated with the SWCNT/II-NCC complex, particularly boosted by fluorescein, as the presence of capecitabine is not required. In addition, confocal microscopy fluorescence imaging using cell cultures highlights the enormous potential of this nanohybrid platform for colon cancer theranostics.
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•A nanohybrid material made of comprising carbon nanotubes and nanocellulose has been explored studied.•The sSurface functionalization of nanotubes turns converts it this material into a theranostic platform.•In vitro tests with human colon cells (normal and cancer behaviours types) were conducted.•Only the nanohybrid with type-II nanocellulose selectively kills colon cancer cells.•The sSurface attachment of a chemotherapy drug has no additional therapeutic effects.
We present an extension of the direct-binary-search algorithm for designing high-efficiency multi-wavelength diffractive optics that reconstruct in the Fresnel domain. A fast computation method for ...solving the optimization problem is proposed. Examples of three-wavelength diffractive optics with over 90% diffraction efficiency are presented. These diffractive optical elements reconstruct three distinct image patterns when probed using the design wavelengths. Detailed parametric and sensitivity studies are conducted, which provide insight into the diffractive optic's performance when subject to different design conditions as well as common systematic and fabrication errors.
Plant functional strategies are usually accomplished through the simultaneous expression of different traits, and hence their correlations should be promoted by natural selection. The adaptive value ...of correlations among leaf functional traits, however, has not been assessed in natural populations.
We estimated intraspecific variation in leaf functional traits related to the primary metabolism and anti-herbivore defence in a population of Turnera velutina. We analysed whether natural selection favoured the expression of individual traits, particular combinations of traits or leaf phenotypic integration
Patterns of covariation among traits were related to water and nitrogen economy, and were similar among genotypes, but the magnitude of their phenotypic integration differed by 10-fold. Although families did not differ in the mean values of leaf functional traits, directional selection favoured low nitrogen content and low chemical defence, high content of chlorophyll, sugar in extrafloral nectar and trichome density. Families with higher phenotypic integration among leaf traits grew faster and produced more flowers.
We suggest that the coordinated expression of leaf traits has an adaptive value, probably related to optimisation in the expression of traits related to water conservation and nitrogen acquisition.
The Hubble constant H0 and matter density m of the universe are measured using the latest γ-ray attenuation results from Fermi-LAT and Cerenkov telescopes. This methodology is based upon the fact ...that the extragalactic background light supplies opacity for very high energy photons via photon-photon interaction. The amount of γ-ray attenuation along the line of sight depends on the expansion rate and matter content of the universe. This novel strategy results in a value of km s−1 Mpc−1 and . These estimates are independent and complementary to those based on the distance ladder, cosmic microwave background (CMB), clustering with weak lensing, and strong lensing data. We also produce a joint likelihood analysis of our results from γ-rays and those from more mature methodologies, excluding the CMB, yielding a combined value of H0 = 66.6 1.6 km s−1 Mpc−1 and m = 0.29 0.02.
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