Neonicotinoids are effective insecticides used on many important arable and horticultural crops. They are nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists which disrupt the function of insect neurons and ...cause paralysis and death. In addition to direct mortality, there are numerous sublethal effects of low doses of neonicotinoids on bees. We hypothesize that some of these large array of effects could be a consequence of epigenetic changes in bees induced by neonicotinoids. We compared whole methylome (BS-seq) and RNA-seq libraries of the brains of buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris workers exposed to field-realistic doses of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid to libraries from control workers. We found numerous genes which show differential expression between neonicotinoid-treated bees and control bees, but no differentially methylated cytosines in any context. We found CpG methylation to be focused mainly in exons and associated with highly expressed genes. We discuss the implications of our results for future legislation.
Many natural shapes have most of their characterizing features concentrated over a few regions in space. For example, humans and animals have distinctive head shapes, while inorganic objects like ...chairs and airplanes are made of well‐localized functional parts with specific geometric features. Often, these features are strongly correlated – a modification of facial traits in a quadruped should induce changes to the body structure. However, in shape modelling applications, these types of edits are among the hardest ones; they require high precision, but also a global awareness of the entire shape. Even in the deep learning era, obtaining manipulable representations that satisfy such requirements is an open problem posing significant constraints. In this work, we address this problem by defining a data‐driven model upon a family of linear operators (variants of the mesh Laplacian), whose spectra capture global and local geometric properties of the shape at hand. Modifications to these spectra are translated to semantically valid deformations of the corresponding surface. By explicitly decoupling the global from the local surface features, our pipeline allows to perform local edits while simultaneously maintaining a global stylistic coherence. We empirically demonstrate how our learning‐based model generalizes to shape representations not seen at training time, and we systematically analyze different choices of local operators over diverse shape categories.
Paraoxonase-1 (PON1) activity has been associated with improvement in ovarian function in early postpartum dairy cows and improved in vitro embryo development. The aim of the current study was to ...evaluate the potential association among PON1 activity and follicular growth, diameter of the preovulatory follicle and pregnancy per artificial insemination (AI) service in cattle. In Experiment 1, cows (n=33) were subjected to an estradiol-progesterone based protocol to control time of ovulation. Starting on Day 8 of the protocol, follicular growth and serum PON1 activity were monitored. Cows were separated according to the occurrence of ovulation into two groups: Ovulatory (Ov; n=22) and Anovulatory (Anov; n=11). The serum activity of PON1 was not different between Ov and Anov cows (P=0.94). In addition, using a regression model there was no effect of serum PON1 activity on the diameter of dominant follicle (r2=0.00; P=0.99). In Experiment 2, cows (n=193) were submitted to the same hormonal protocol as in Experiment 1. On the day of the timed artificial insemination (TAI), the diameter of dominant follicle was evaluated and blood samples were collected for analysis of PON1 activity. According to the serum PON1 activity, cows were divided into three groups: Low (<70U/mL), Medium (70–90U/mL) or High (>90U/mL) PON1 activity. The overall pregnancy rate was 62.7% (121/193), with no difference among PON1 activity groups. Additionally, using a regression model there was no effect of serum PON1 activity on the diameter of the preovulatory follicle (r2=0.03; P=0.65) and pregnancy rate (r2=0.005; P=0.94). The results of this study indicate that there is no effect of serum PON1 activity on the diameter of preovulatory follicle or establishment of pregnancy in cows submitted to time of ovulation synchronization protocols.
A multi-element tissue-equivalent proportional counter (TEPC), based on a single gas electron multiplier (GEM) foil of standard geometry, has been constructed with 16 cylindrical sensitives volumes. ...In this article, the design of this novel counter is described and first microdosimetric measurements are presented. To study the response of the GEM-TEPC to both low and high linear energy transfer radiation fields, the microdosimetric spectra due to a 137Cs gamma-ray source and to fast neutrons from 7Li(d,n)8Be reaction have been measured using pure propane gas at low pressure, in order to simulate a tissue site of about 1 µm equivalent size. The comparison with spectra measured with a spherical TEPC and with a mini-TEPC demonstrates promising properties for application of the GEM-TEPC for microdosimetric applications.
A short description of the muon tomography demonstrator at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro near Padua, Italy, is given and the principal achievements owing to the data collected at that ...experimental facility are presented. In particular, the feasibility studies for several applications based on the muon-tomographic technology, within national and European projects, are discussed. The experimental problems and the procedures used to improve the performance are underlined. In addition, new activities and the related detector optimization are illustrated.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Cosmic-ray muography'.
The feasibility of fully floating high voltage (HV) generation was demonstrated producing a prototype of a modular HV system. The primary power source is provided by a high efficiency semiconductor ...power cell illuminated by a laser system ensuring the floating nature of each module. The HV is then generated by dc-dc conversion and a HV multiplier. The possibility of series connection among modules was verified.
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