Optimal synchronization to a limit cycle.

In the absence of external forcing, all trajectories on the phase plane of the van der Pol oscillator tend to a closed, periodic trajectory-the limit cycle-after infinite time. Here, we drive the van der Pol oscillator with an external time-dependent force to reach the limit cycle in a given finite time. Specifically, we are interested in minimizing the non-conservative contribution to the work when driving the system from a given initial point on the phase plane to any final point belonging to the limit cycle.

drive synovial hyperplasia and arthritis by targeting cell cycle inhibitors and chromatin remodeling components.

miRNAs constitute fine-tuners of gene expression and are implicated in a variety of diseases spanning from inflammation to cancer. miRNA expression is deregulated in rheumatoid arthritis (RA); however, their specific role in key arthritogenic cells such as the synovial fibroblast (SF) remains elusive. Previous studies have shown that expression is upregulated in RA SFs.

Kinetic glass transition in granular gases and nonlinear molecular fluids.

In this paper, we investigate, both analytically and numerically, the emergence of a kinetic glass transition in two different model systems: a uniformly heated granular gas and a molecular fluid with nonlinear drag. Despite the profound differences between these two physical systems, their behavior in thermal cycles share strong similarities, which stem from the relaxation time diverging algebraically at low temperatures for both systems. When the driving intensity--for the granular gas-or the bath temperature-for the molecular fluid-is decreased to sufficiently low values, the kinetic temperature of both systems becomes "frozen" at a value that depends on the cooling rate through a power law with the same exponent.

ADAM: a robotic companion for enhanced quality of life in aging populations.

One of the major problems of today's society is the rapid aging of its population. Life expectancy is increasing, but the quality of life is not. Faced with the growing number of people who require cognitive or physical assistance, new technological tools are emerging to help them.

Information in feedback ratchets.

Feedback control uses the state information of the system to actuate on it. The information used implies an effective entropy reduction of the controlled system, potentially increasing its performance. How to compute this entropy reduction has been formally shown for a general system and has been explicitly computed for spatially discrete systems.

Does Lidocaine Shorten Seizure Duration in Electroconvulsive Therapy?

Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective short-term treatment for schizophrenia and depression, amongst other disorders. Lidocaine is typically added to reduce pain from intravenous propofol injection. However, depending on the dose used in the ECT setting, it can shorten seizure duration.

Buckling in a rotationally invariant spin-elastic model.

Scanning tunneling microscopy experiments have revealed a spontaneous rippled-to-buckled transition in heated graphene sheets, in absence of any mechanical load. Several models relying on a simplified picture of the interaction between elastic and internal, electronic, degrees of freedom have been proposed to understand this phenomenon. Nevertheless, these models are not fully consistent with the classical theory of elasticity, since they do not preserve rotational invariance.

Driving rapidly while remaining in control: classical shortcuts from Hamiltonian to stochastic dynamics.

Stochastic thermodynamics lays down a broad framework to revisit the venerable concepts of heat, work and entropy production for individual stochastic trajectories of mesoscopic systems. Remarkably, this approach, relying on stochastic equations of motion, introduces time into the description of thermodynamic processes-which opens the way to fine control them. As a result, the field of finite-time thermodynamics of mesoscopic systems has blossomed.

Sensor Fusion for Social Navigation on a Mobile Robot Based on Fast Marching Square and Gaussian Mixture Model.

Mobile robot navigation has been studied for a long time, and it is nowadays widely used in multiple applications. However, it is traditionally focused on two-dimensional geometric characteristics of the environments. There are situations in which robots need to share space with people, so additional aspects, such as social distancing, need to be considered.

A Multirobot System in an Assisted Home Environment to Support the Elderly in Their Daily Lives.

The increasing isolation of the elderly both in their own homes and in care homes has made the problem of caring for elderly people who live alone an urgent priority. This article presents a proposed design for a heterogeneous multirobot system consisting of (i) a small mobile robot to monitor the well-being of elderly people who live alone and suggest activities to keep them positive and active and (ii) a domestic mobile manipulating robot that helps to perform household tasks. The entire system is integrated in an automated home environment (AAL), which also includes a set of low-cost automation sensors, a medical monitoring bracelet and an Android application to propose emotional coaching activities to the person who lives alone.

Thermal versus entropic Mpemba effect in molecular gases with nonlinear drag.

Loosely speaking, the Mpemba effect appears when hotter systems cool sooner or, in a more abstract way, when systems further from equilibrium relax faster. In this paper, we investigate the Mpemba effect in a molecular gas with nonlinear drag, both analytically (by employing the tools of kinetic theory) and numerically (direct simulation Monte Carlo of the kinetic equation and event-driven molecular dynamics). The analysis is carried out via two alternative routes, recently considered in the literature: first, the kinetic or thermal route, in which the Mpemba effect is characterized by the crossing of the evolution curves of the kinetic temperature (average kinetic energy), and, second, the stochastic thermodynamics or entropic route, in which the Mpemba effect is characterized by the crossing of the distance to equilibrium in probability space.

Optimal Control of Uniformly Heated Granular Fluids in Linear Response.

We present a detailed analytical investigation of the optimal control of uniformly heated granular gases in the linear regime. The intensity of the stochastic driving is therefore assumed to be bounded between two values that are close, which limits the possible values of the granular temperature to a correspondingly small interval. Specifically, we are interested in minimising the connection time between the non-equilibrium steady states (NESSs) for two different values of the granular temperature by controlling the time dependence of the driving intensity.

Strong nonexponential relaxation and memory effects in a fluid with nonlinear drag.

We analyze the dynamical evolution of a fluid with nonlinear drag, for which binary collisions are elastic, described at the kinetic level by the Enskog-Fokker-Planck equation. This model system, rooted in the theory of nonlinear Brownian motion, displays a really complex behavior when quenched to low temperatures. Its glassy response is controlled by a long-lived nonequilibrium state, independent of the degree of nonlinearity and also of the Brownian-Brownian collisions rate.

Lung tumor MHCII immunity depends on in situ antigen presentation by fibroblasts.

A key unknown of the functional space in tumor immunity is whether CD4 T cells depend on intratumoral MHCII cancer antigen recognition. MHCII-expressing, antigen-presenting cancer-associated fibroblasts (apCAFs) have been found in breast and pancreatic tumors and are considered to be immunosuppressive. This analysis shows that antigen-presenting fibroblasts are frequent in human lung non-small cell carcinomas, where they seem to actively promote rather than suppress MHCII immunity.

Col6a1/CD201 mesenchymal cells regulate intestinal morphogenesis and homeostasis.

Intestinal mesenchymal cells encompass multiple subsets, whose origins, functions, and pathophysiological importance are still not clear. Here, we used the Col6a1 mouse, which targets distinct fibroblast subsets and perivascular cells that can be further distinguished by the combination of the CD201, PDGFRα and αSMA markers. Developmental studies revealed that the Col6a1 mouse also targets mesenchymal aggregates that are crucial for intestinal morphogenesis and patterning, suggesting an ontogenic relationship between them and homeostatic PDGFRα telocytes.

Taming the Time Evolution in Overdamped Systems: Shortcuts Elaborated from Fast-Forward and Time-Reversed Protocols.

Using a reverse-engineering approach on the time-distorted solution in a reference potential, we work out the external driving potential to be applied to a Brownian system in order to slow or accelerate the dynamics, or even to invert the arrow of time. By welding a direct and time-reversed evolution toward a well chosen common intermediate state, we analytically derive a smooth protocol to connect two arbitrary states in an arbitrarily short amount of time. Not only does the reverse-engineering approach proposed in this Letter contain the current-rather limited-catalog of explicit protocols, but it also provides a systematic strategy to build the connection between arbitrary states with a physically admissible driving.

Electrodeposition of Hybrid Magnetostrictive/Magnetoelectric Layered Systems.

The potential use of electrodeposition to synthesize a hybrid magnetostrictive/magnetoelectric layered system is shown in this paper. By appropriately adjusting pH, growth potential, and electrolyte composition, it is possible to achieve thin films in which magnetoelectric oxide GaFeO (GFO) is formed in close contact with magnetostrictive metallic FeGa alloy. X-ray diffractometry shows the formation of FeGa as well as GFO and Fe oxides.

Augmenting the Standard Operating Procedures of Health and Air Quality Stakeholders With NASA Resources.

The combination of air quality (AQ) data from satellites and low-cost sensor systems, along with output from AQ models, have the potential to augment high-quality, regulatory-grade data in countries with in situ monitoring networks and provide much needed AQ information in countries without them, including Low and Moderate Income Countries (LMICs). We demonstrate the potential of free and publicly available USA National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) resources, which include capacity building activities, satellite data, and global AQ forecasts, to provide cost-effective, and reliable AQ information to health and AQ professionals around the world. We provide illustrative case studies that highlight how global AQ forecasts along with satellite data may be used to characterize AQ on urban to regional scales, including to quantify pollution concentrations, identify pollution sources, and track the long-range transport of pollution.

Linear response in the uniformly heated granular gas.

We analyze the linear response properties of the uniformly heated granular gas. The intensity of the stochastic driving fixes the value of the granular temperature in the nonequilibrium steady state reached by the system. Here, we investigate two specific situations.

Use of health services among long-term breast cancer survivors in Spain: longitudinal study based on real-world data.

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate health service utilization in Spain among long-term breast cancer survivors and to compare it with that among women with no history of breast cancer.

Methods: Study based on the SURBCAN cohort includes a sample of long-term breast cancer survivors and a sample of women without breast cancer from 5 Spanish regions. Healthcare utilization was assessed through primary care, hospital visits, and tests during the follow-up period (2012 to 2016) by using electronic health records.

Fibroblastic reticular cell lineage convergence in Peyer's patches governs intestinal immunity.

Fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs) determine the organization of lymphoid organs and control immune cell interactions. While the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying FRC differentiation in lymph nodes and the splenic white pulp have been elaborated to some extent, in Peyer's patches (PPs) they remain elusive. Using a combination of single-cell transcriptomics and cell fate mapping in advanced mouse models, we found that PP formation in the mouse embryo is initiated by an expansion of perivascular FRC precursors, followed by FRC differentiation from subepithelial progenitors.

The mesenchymal context in inflammation, immunity and cancer.

Mesenchymal cells are mesoderm-derived stromal cells that are best known for providing structural support to organs, synthesizing and remodeling the extracellular matrix (ECM) and regulating development, homeostasis and repair of tissues. Recent detailed mechanistic insights into the biology of fibroblastic mesenchymal cells have revealed they are also significantly involved in immune regulation, stem cell maintenance and blood vessel function. It is now becoming evident that these functions, when defective, drive the development of complex diseases, such as various immunopathologies, chronic inflammatory disease, tissue fibrosis and cancer.

Finite-time adiabatic processes: Derivation and speed limit.

Obtaining adiabatic processes that connect equilibrium states in a given time represents a challenge for mesoscopic systems. In this paper, we explicitly show how to build these finite-time adiabatic processes for an overdamped Brownian particle in an arbitrary potential, a system that is relevant at both the conceptual and the practical level. This is achieved by jointly engineering the time evolutions of the binding potential and the fluid temperature.

Unfolding innate mechanisms in the cancer microenvironment: The emerging role of the mesenchyme.

Innate mechanisms in the tumor stroma play a crucial role both in the initial rejection of tumors and in cancer promotion. Here, we provide a concise overview of the innate system in cancer and recent advances in the field, including the activation and functions of innate immune cells and the emerging innate properties and modulatory roles of the fibroblastic mesenchyme. Novel insights into the diverse identities and functions of the innate immune and mesenchymal cells in the microenvironment of tumors should lead to improved anticancer therapies.

Evaluation of allometric scaling as a tool for extrapolation of the enrofloxacin dose in American black vultures .

Objective: To determine the pharmacokinetics of enrofloxacin after IV administration in American black vultures , to compare clearance of enrofloxacin in American black vultures with clearance of this fluoroquinolone in other avian species, and to evaluate whether allometric scaling is an appropriate tool for dose extrapolation in avian species.

Animals: 6 healthy adult American black vultures.

Procedures: Enrofloxacin concentrations were quantified by use of high-performance liquid chromatography.