Super-Resolution Microscopy to Study Interorganelle Contact Sites

Interorganelle membrane contact sites (MCS) are areas of close vicinity between the membranes of two organelles that are maintained by protein tethers. Recently, a significant research effort has been made to study MCS, as they are implicated in a wide range of biological functions, such as organelle biogenesis and division, apoptosis, autophagy, and ion and phospholipid homeostasis. Their composition, characteristics, and dynamics can be studied by different techniques, but in recent years super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (SRFM) has emerged as a powerful tool for studying MCS. In this review, we first explore the main characteristics and biological functions of MCS and summarize the different approaches for studying them. Then, we center on SRFM techniques that have been used to study MCS. For each of the approaches, we summarize their working principle, discuss their advantages and limitations, and explore the main discoveries they have uncovered in the field of MCS.     

Qualitative effects of knowledge rules and user feedback in probabilistic data integration

In data integration efforts, portal development in particular, much development time is devoted to entity resolution. Often advanced similarity measurement techniques are used to remove semantic duplicates or solve other semantic conflicts. It proves impossible, however, to automatically get rid of all semantic problems. An often-used rule of thumb states that about 90% of the development effort is devoted to semi-automatically resolving the remaining 10% hard cases. In an attempt to significantly decrease human effort at data integration time, we have proposed an approach that strives for a ‘good enough’ initial integration which stores any remaining semantic uncertainty and conflicts in a probabilistic database. The remaining cases are to be resolved with user feedback during query time. The main contribution of this paper is an experimental investigation of the effects and sensitivity of rule definition, threshold tuning, and user feedback on the integration quality. We claim that our approach indeed reduces development effort—and not merely shifts the effort—by showing that setting rough safe thresholds and defining only a few rules suffices to produce a ‘good enough’ initial integration that can be meaningfully used, and that user feedback is effective in gradually improving the integration quality.     

Integrating public transportation in personalised electronic tourist guides

Personalised electronic tourist guides (PETs) are mobile hand-held devices able to create tourist routes matching tourists' preferences. Transportation information has been identified as one of the most appreciated functionalities of a PET. We model the tourist planning problem, integrating public transportation, as the time-dependent team orienteering problem with time windows (TD-TOPTW) in order to allow PETs to create personalised tourist routes in real-time. We develop and compare two different approaches to solve the TD-TOPTW. Experimental results for the city of San Sebastian show that both approaches are able to obtain routes in real-time.     

Proteomic Characterization of Plasma Rich in Growth Factors and Undiluted Autologous Serum

Over the last three decades, there has been special interest in developing drugs that mimic the characteristics of natural tears for use it in the treatment of several ocular surface disorders. Interestingly, the composition of blood plasma is very similar to tears. Therefore, different blood-derived products like autologous serum (AS) and plasma rich in growth factors (PRGF) have been developed for the treatment of diverse ocular pathologies. However, scarce studies have been carried out to analyze the differences between both types of blood-derived products. In the present study, blood from three healthy donors was drawn and processed to obtain AS and PRGF eye drops. Then, human corneal stromal keratocytes (HK) were treated with PRGF or undiluted AS. Proteomic analysis was carried out to analyze and characterize the differential protein profiles between PRGF and AS, and the differentially expressed proteins in HK cells after PRGF and AS treatment. The results obtained in the present study show that undiluted AS induces the activation of different pathways related to an inflammatory, angiogenic, oxidative stress and scarring response in HK cells regarding PRGF. These results suggest that PRGF could be a better alternative than AS for the treatment of ocular surface disorders.     

Silk Fibroin as Sustainable Advanced Material: Material Properties and Characteristics,Processing, and Applications

Biobased resources are proposed as next-generation materials for advanced application. Among them, silk fibroin, a protein-based material generally obtained from Bombyx mori cocoons, is considered to play an increasing role in the development of a more sustainable generation of devices. In this review, the silk fibroin molecular structure and its original properties are presented, together with a wide overview of the available modifications and processing methods to reach custom structural and functional variations.     

Evaluating order picking performance trade-offs by configuring main operating strategies in a retail distributor: A Design of Experiments approach

Warehouse design has become important due to its impact on service to customers and total logistics costs. Order picking is the key activity of a warehouse and an appropriate design will directly affect its overall performance. The increasing complexity of warehouses means that the main operating strategies such as storage location assignment, batching and routing need to be considered simultaneously. A Design of Experiment approach aided by Discrete Event Simulation could help to meet these new picking design process requirements, especially when various performance measures need to be compared. Some of the trade-offs that managers must keep in mind when designing order picking systems are shown, describing a single-case study carried out at a retail distributor.     

The Fort Collins commuter study: Variability in personal exposure to air pollutants by microenvironment

This study investigated the role of microenvironment on personal exposures to black carbon (BC), fine particulate mass (PM_2.5), carbon monoxide (CO), and particle number concentration (PNC) among adult residents of Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. Forty‐four participants carried a backpack containing personal monitoring instruments for eight nonconsecutive 24‐hour periods. Exposures were apportioned into five microenvironments: Home, Work, Transit, Eateries, and Other. Personal exposures exhibited wide heterogeneity that was dominated by within‐person variability (both day‐to‐day and between microenvironment variability). Linear mixed‐effects models were used to compare mean personal exposures in each microenvironment, while accounting for possible within‐person correlation. Mean personal exposures during Transit and at Eateries tended to be higher than exposures at Home, where participants spent the majority of their time. Compared to Home, mean exposures to BC in Transit were, on average, 129% [95% confidence interval: 101% 162%] higher and exposures to PNC were 180% [101% 289%] higher in Eateries.     

Efficient computation of the Zassenhaus formula

A new recursive procedure to compute the Zassenhaus formula up to high order is presented, providing each exponent in the factorization directly as a linear combination of independent commutators and thus containing the minimum number of terms. The recursion can be easily implemented in a symbolic algebra package and requires much less computational effort, both in time and memory resources, than previous algorithms. In addition, by bounding appropriately each term in the recursion, it is possible to get a larger convergence domain of the Zassenhaus formula when it is formulated in a Banach algebra.     

Undetected cardiogenic shock in patients with congestive heart failure presenting to the emergency department

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of lactic acid levels and continuous central venous oxygen saturation (central venous oximetry) to stratify and treat patients with acutely decompensated end-stage chronic congestive heart failure (CHF) presenting to the emergency department. This prospective, convenience, non-outcome study was performed at an urban tertiary care hospital. Patients with end-stage CHF with an ejection fraction <30% presenting in decompensated CHF were eligible for the study. Patients were assessed using the Killip classification and New York Heart Association criteria. After lactic acid levels were obtained, patients were managed according to a standardized protocol guided by central venous oximetry. The patients were divided into high lactic acid (n = 22), low lactic acid (n = 5), and control groups (stable patients presenting to a cardiology clinic, n = 17) for comparison. There was no statistical difference in vital signs, or Killip and New York Heart Association criteria among the 3 groups. Central venous oxygen saturation was significantly lower in the high lactic acid group (32 +/- 12%) than in the normal lactic acid (51 +/- 13%) and control groups (60 +/- 6%) (p < 0.001). After treatment there was a significant decrease in lactic acid (-3.65 +/- 3.65 mM/L) and an increase in central venous oxygen saturation (32 +/- 13%) in the high lactic acid group compared with the normal lactic acid group (p < 0.001). A significant subset of patients with decompensated end-stage CHF present to the emergency department in occult shock and are clinically indistinguishable from patients with mildly decompensated CHF and stable CHF. Once identified, these patients require aggressive alternative management and disposition. Further study is necessary to identify whether this intervention impacts morbidity, mortality, and health care resource consumption.