Functional Coupling of Slack Channels and P2X3 Receptors Contributes to Neuropathic Pain Processing

The sodium-activated potassium channel Slack (K_Na1.1, Slo2.2, or Kcnt1) is highly expressed in populations of sensory neurons, where it mediates the sodium-activated potassium current (I_KNa) and modulates neuronal activity. Previous studies suggest that Slack is involved in the processing of neuropathic pain. However, mechanisms underlying the regulation of Slack activity in this context are poorly understood. Using whole-cell patch-clamp recordings we found that Slack-mediated I_KNa in sensory neurons of mice is reduced after peripheral nerve injury, thereby contributing to neuropathic pain hypersensitivity. Interestingly, Slack is closely associated with ATP-sensitive P2X3 receptors in a population of sensory neurons. In vitro experiments revealed that Slack-mediated I_KNa may be bidirectionally modulated in response to P2X3 activation. Moreover, mice lacking Slack show altered nocifensive responses to P2X3 stimulation. Our study identifies P2X3/Slack signaling as a mechanism contributing to hypersensitivity after peripheral nerve injury and proposes a potential novel strategy for treatment of neuropathic pain.     

Single Cell Bioprinting with Ultrashort Laser Pulses

Tissue engineering requires the precise positioning of mammalian cells and biomaterials on substrate surfaces or in preprocessed scaffolds. Although the development of 2D and 3D bioprinting technologies has made substantial progress in recent years, precise, cell-friendly, easy to use, and fast technologies for selecting and positioning mammalian cells with single cell precision are still in need. A new laser-based bioprinting approach is therefore presented, which allows the selection of individual cells from complex cell mixtures based on morphology or fluorescence and their transfer onto a 2D target substrate or a preprocessed 3D scaffold with single cell precision and high cell viability (93–99% cell survival, depending on cell type and substrate). In addition to precise cell positioning, this approach can also be used for the generation of 3D structures by transferring and depositing multiple hydrogel droplets. By further automating and combining this approach with other 3D printing technologies, such as two-photon stereolithography, it has a high potential of becoming a fast and versatile technology for the 2D and 3D bioprinting of mammalian cells with single cell resolution.     

Dependences in Strategy Logic

Strategy Logic (SL) is a very expressive temporal logic for specifying and verifying properties of multi-agent systems: in SL, one can quantify over strategies, assign them to agents, and express LTL properties of the resulting plays. Such a powerful framework has two drawbacks: first, model checking SL has non-elementary complexity; second, the exact semantics of SL is rather intricate, and may not correspond to what is expected. In this paper, we focus on strategy dependences in SL, by tracking how existentially-quantified strategies in a formula may (or may not) depend on other strategies selected in the formula, revisiting the approach of [Mogavero et al., Reasoning about strategies: On the model-checking problem, 2014]. We explain why elementary dependences, as defined by Mogavero et al., do not exactly capture the intended concept of behavioral strategies. We address this discrepancy by introducing timeline dependences, and exhibit a large fragment of SL for which model checking can be performed in 2-EXPTIME under this new semantics.     

Extracting safe thread schedules from incomplete model checking results

Model checkers frequently fail to completely verify a concurrent program, even if partial-order reduction is applied. The verification engineer is left in doubt whether the program is safe and the effort toward verifying the program is wasted. We present a technique that uses the results of such incomplete verification attempts to construct a (fair) scheduler that allows the safe execution of the partially verified concurrent program. This scheduler restricts the execution to schedules that have been proven safe (and prevents executions that were found to be erroneous). We evaluate the performance of our technique and show how it can be improved using partial-order reduction. While constraining the scheduler results in a considerable performance penalty in general, we show that in some cases our approach—somewhat surprisingly—even leads to faster executions.

     

Chemical Ecology and Sociality in Aphids: Opportunities and Directions

Aphids have long been recognized as good phytochemists. They are small sap-feeding plant herbivores with complex life cycles that can involve cyclical parthenogenesis and seasonal host plant alternation, and most are plant specialists. Aphids have distinctive traits for identifying and exploiting their host plants, including the expression of polyphenisms, a form of discrete phenotypic plasticity characteristic of insects, but taken to extreme in aphids. In a relatively small number of species, a social polyphenism occurs, involving sub-adult “soldiers” that are behaviorally or morphologically specialized to defend their nestmates from predators. Soldiers are sterile in many species, constituting a form of eusociality and reproductive division of labor that bears striking resemblances with other social insects. Despite a wealth of knowledge about the chemical ecology of non-social aphids and their phytophagous lifestyles, the molecular and chemoecological mechanisms involved in social polyphenisms in aphids are poorly understood. We provide a brief primer on aspects of aphid life cycles and chemical ecology for the non-specialists, and an overview of the social biology of aphids, with special attention to chemoecological perspectives. We discuss some of our own efforts to characterize how host plant chemistry may shape social traits in aphids. As good phytochemists, social aphids provide a bridge between the study of insect social evolution sociality, and the chemical ecology of plant-insect interactions. Aphids provide many promising opportunities for the study of sociality in insects, and to understand both the convergent and novel traits that characterize complex sociality on plants.     

A cathode support structure for use in a magnetron oscillator experiment

A low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) material system has been used to develop a protype field emission cathode structure for use in an experimental magnetron oscillator. The structure is designed for used with 30 gated field emission array (GFEA) die electrically connected through silver metal traces and electrical vias. To approximate a cylinder, the cathode structure (48 mm long and 13.7 mm in diameter) is comprised of 10 faceted plates which cover the GFEA dies. Slits in the facet plates allow electron injection. The GFEA die (3 mm × 8 mm) are placed in axial columns of 3 and spaced azimuthally around a cylindrical support structure in a staggered configuration resulting in 10 azimuthal locations. LTCC manufacturing techniques were developed in order to fabricate the newly designed cathode with seven layers wrapped to form the cylinder with electrical traces and vias. Two different cathode wrapping techniques and two different via filling techniques were studied and compared. Two different facet plate manufacturing techniques were studied. Finally, four different support stand configurations for firing the cylindrical structure were also compared with a square post stand having the best circularity and linearity measurements of the fired structure.     

Field‐based robotic phenotyping of sorghum plant architecture using stereo vision

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is known as a major feedstock for biofuel production. To improve its biomass yield through genetic research, manually measuring yield component traits (e.g. plant height, stem diameter, leaf angle, leaf area, leaf number, and panicle size) in the field is the current best practice. However, such laborious and time‐consuming tasks have become a bottleneck limiting experiment scale and data acquisition frequency. This paper presents a high‐throughput field‐based robotic phenotyping system which performed side‐view stereo imaging for dense sorghum plants with a wide range of plant heights throughout the growing season. Our study demonstrated the suitability of stereo vision for field‐based three‐dimensional plant phenotyping when recent advances in stereo matching algorithms were incorporated. A robust data processing pipeline was developed to quantify the variations or morphological traits in plant architecture, which included plot‐based plant height, plot‐based plant width, convex hull volume, plant surface area, and stem diameter (semiautomated). These image‐derived measurements were highly repeatable and showed high correlations with the in‐field manual measurements. Meanwhile, manually collecting the same traits required a large amount of manpower and time compared to the robotic system. The results demonstrated that the proposed system could be a promising tool for large‐scale field‐based high‐throughput plant phenotyping of bioenergy crops.     

Developing English domestic occupancy profiles

ABSTRACT

Occupancy patterns are necessary to estimate energy demand and evaluate thermal comfort in households. Because of this, many European countries are developing representative domestic schedules to replace outdated criteria. This paper evaluates the state of knowledge of UK domestic occupancy patterns and develops new domestic occupancy profiles for England. The presented research (1) characterizes methods for collecting occupancy data and inferring patterns; (2) identifies and assesses the quality of categories of occupancy patterns used in building simulation; and (3) develops updated occupancy profiles. A systematic scoping review identified social and monitoring surveys as the most deployed data-collection methods. A systematic literature review also established that the occupancy categories most frequently used in UK building simulation are (a) a family with dependent children where the parents work full time; and (b) a retired elderly couple who spend most of their time indoors. The interview sample from the English Housing Survey 2014–15 was used to map household typologies. Results show that categories (a) and (b) combined amount to only 19% of England’s households, which suggest models are over-reliant on these groups. Considering this result, the paper develops occupancy patterns for England derived from 2015 UK Time Use Survey diaries for each household typology previously identified.     

Polar Lipids Reduce In Vitro Duodenal Lipolysis Rate of Oat Oil and Liquid Oat Base Products

Alternative ways for increased appetite control are today widely sought for due to the growing global health issues connected to obesity. In in vivo studies, oat has been proven an attractive candidate for inducing satiety. Oat is rich in polar lipids, of which the galactolipids are especially interesting, and a hypothesis is that these lipids play an important role for the ileal brake mechanism. In this study, the aim is to investigate the role of polar oat lipids on pancreatic lipolysis rate, using a pH-stat based in vitro digestion model of the duodenum. Lipolysis of oat oil, a mix of oat oil/rapeseed oil (RSO), as well as a liquid oat base (OB) simulating an oat drink with different polar lipid content are investigated, and compared with RSO as control. Increasing the polar lipid content of the product digested leads to a significantly decreased lipolysis rate, and this effect is even observed when mixing RSO with a low amount of oat oil (10%). The results support the hypothesis that polar lipids can delay lipolysis also in a complex, natural system like the liquid OB, and even a minor amount of oat lipids can have large effect on lipolysis rates. Practical applications: The number of studies connecting galactolipids with a decreasing effect on duodenal lipolysis is growing; however, the mechanism behind this phenomenon is still not clarified. Here, the same effect is seen in a complex, natural food system. These findings open up for interesting future food products, where inclusion of oat oil, even at low concentrations, can have a prolonging effect on satiety. Oat for human consumption is an increasing market, thanks to the positive health benefits oat has been connected to, in combination with the current trend toward climate-friendly plant-based options for meat and dairy products. It is believed that oat oil can be attractive as an ingredient in various food products, for example, protein bars and spreads. More studies are needed to confirm the results in vivo. However, a great potential is seen for the use of oat oil to enhance appetite control.     

Spurenstoffabtrennung mit keramischen Nanofiltrationsmembranen als Rotationsscheibenfilter

Reducing micropollutant pollution of water bodies is an important objective of water management and an integral part of environmental policy. Ceramic nanofiltration membranes were developed as multichannel membranes of increased membrane area and rotating disk filters. The membranes developed show retention of over 80 % for PEG 400. The membranes are currently being tested for the separation of micropollutants from wastewater contaminated with pharmaceuticals. With the help of a downstream oxidative process, the trace substances remaining in the permeate are degraded.