FhaA plays a key role in mycobacterial polar elongation and asymmetric growth.

Unlabelled: Mycobacteria, including pathogens like , exhibit unique growth patterns and cell envelope structures that challenge our understanding of bacterial physiology. This study sheds light on FhaA, a conserved protein in , revealing its pivotal role in coordinating cell envelope biogenesis and asymmetric growth. The elucidation of the FhaA interactome in living mycobacterial cells reveals its participation in the protein network orchestrating cell envelope biogenesis and cell elongation/division.

Nanobubble nucleation by pulsed laser illumination of colloidal gold nanoparticles.

This study expands upon a technique our team previously developed for generating nanobubbles on demand with a collimated pulsed laser beam. This work highlights how the controlled addition of gold nanoparticles enhances nanobubble generation efficiency in water, even at laser intensities well below the threshold for multiphoton ionization. Specifically, we investigated the influence of nanoparticles of three distinct sizes on the laser fluence threshold for bubble nucleation and the lifetime of the resultant nanobubbles.

A multi-organ map of the human immune system across age, sex and ethnicity.

Understanding tissue biology's heterogeneity is crucial for advancing precision medicine. Despite the centrality of the immune system in tissue homeostasis, a detailed and comprehensive map of immune cell distribution and interactions across human tissues and demographics remains elusive. To fill this gap, we harmonised data from 12,981 single-cell RNA sequencing samples and curated 29 million cells from 45 anatomical sites to create a comprehensive compositional and transcriptional healthy map of the healthy immune system.

Safety and Efficacy of Apitegromab in Patients With Spinal Muscular Atrophy Types 2 and 3: The Phase 2 TOPAZ Study.

Background And Objectives: Currently approved therapies for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) reverse the degenerative course, leading to better functional outcome, but they do not address the impairment arising from preexisting neurodegeneration. Apitegromab, an investigational, fully human monoclonal antibody, inhibits activation of myostatin (a negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth), thereby preserving muscle mass. The phase 2 TOPAZ trial assessed the safety and efficacy of apitegromab in individuals with later-onset type 2 and type 3 SMA.

Jetting bubbles observed by x-ray holography at a free-electron laser: internal structure and the effect of non-axisymmetric boundary conditions.

Unlabelled: In this work, we study the jetting dynamics of individual cavitation bubbles using x-ray holographic imaging and high-speed optical shadowgraphy. The bubbles are induced by a focused infrared laser pulse in water near the surface of a flat, circular glass plate, and later probed with ultrashort x-ray pulses produced by an x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL). The holographic imaging can reveal essential information of the bubble interior that would otherwise not be accessible in the optical regime due to obscuration or diffraction.

High-speed ultrasound imaging of bubbly flows and shear waves in soft matter.

In this methods paper, we explore the capabilities of high-speed ultrasound imaging (USI) to study fast varying and complex multi-phase structures in liquids and soft materials. Specifically, we assess the advantages and the limitations of this imaging technique through three distinct experiments involving rapid dynamics: the underwater flow induced by an external jet, the dissolution of sub-micron bubbles in water, and the propagation of shear waves in a soft elastic material. The phenomena were simultaneously characterized using optical microscopy and USI.

Laparoscopic onlay-flap ureteroplasty using cecal appendix.

Introduction: The management of ureteral strictures longer than 1-2 cm must be treated by major surgery (1, 2). The strictures located at the distal part of the ureter can be managed by a ureteral reimplantation using a psoas hitch or a Boari flap depending on its proximity to the bladder (3). Those located at the proximal ureter can be treated by a pyeloplasty (4).

Preparation of Mitotic Chromosomes with the Squash Technique.

Plant chromosomes are usually obtained from meristematic tissue of active root tips through the conventional squash method. Nevertheless, cytogenetic work usually implies a great effort and some modifications of standard procedures need to be evaluated. In this chapter, we describe our outline for handling chromosomes using the squash method.

Linguistic markers of autism spectrum conditions in narratives: A comprehensive analysis.

Narratives are regularly elicited as part of standardized assessments for autism spectrum conditions (ASC) such as the ADOS, but have rarely been utilized as linguistic data in their own right. We here aimed for a specific and comprehensive quantitative linguistic profile of such narratives across nominal, verbal, and clausal domains of grammatical organization, and error patterns. We manually transcribed and annotated narratives elicited from the ADOS from a sample of bilingual autistic Spanish-Catalan children ( = 18), matched with typically developing controls (n = 18) on vocabulary-based verbal IQ.

An Epithelioid Hemangioma Camouflaged As Radial Aneurysm.

Epithelioid hemangioma (EH) is an uncommon benign vascular lesion usually present as subcutaneous nodules in the head and neck area. Sometimes, these lesions can occur in the peripheral arteries, and when they do, they can be mistaken for aneurysmal dilatations of that respective vessel. We report a case of a 43-year-old male who underwent surgical recession of a radial aneurysm, which after anatomopathological examination, revealed an EH.

Clean production and characterization of nanobubbles using laser energy deposition.

We have demonstrated the production of laser bulk nanobubbles (BNB) with ambient radii typically below 500 nm. The gaseous nature of the nanometric objects was confirmed by a focused acoustic pulse that expands the gas cavities to a size that can be visualized with optical microscopy. The BNBs were produced on demand by a collimated high-energy laser pulse in a "clean" way, meaning that no solid particles or drops were introduced in the sample by the generation method.

Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements: Sensitivity to anger and fear predicts moral judgements, whereas sensitivity to disgust predicts aesthetic judgements.

Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root.

Bullet jet as a tool for soft matter piercing and needle-free liquid injection.

The collapse of a laser-induced vapor bubble near a solid boundary usually ends in a liquid jet. When the boundary is from a soft material the jetting may pierce the liquid-solid interface and result in the injection of liquid into it. A particular impulsive jet flow can be generated when a laser pulse is focused just below the free surface of a thin liquid layer covering a gelatin sample used as a surrogate of biological tissue.

Advances and limitations for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy.

Spinal muscular atrophy (5q-SMA; SMA), a genetic neuromuscular condition affecting spinal motor neurons, is caused by defects in both copies of the SMN1 gene that produces survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. The highly homologous SMN2 gene primarily expresses a rapidly degraded isoform of SMN protein that causes anterior horn cell degeneration, progressive motor neuron loss, skeletal muscle atrophy and weakness. Severe cases result in limited mobility and ventilatory insufficiency.

A Noniterative Supervised On-Chip Training Circuitry for Reservoir Computing Systems.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) is an exponentially growing field, mainly because of its wide range of applications to everyday life such as pattern recognition or time series forecasting. In particular, reservoir computing (RC) arises as an optimal computational framework suited for temporal/sequential data analysis. The direct on-silicon implementation of RCs may help to minimize power and maximize processing speed, that is especially relevant in edge intelligence applications where energy storage is considerably restricted.

Fully Parallel Stochastic Computing Hardware Implementation of Convolutional Neural Networks for Edge Computing Applications.

Edge artificial intelligence (AI) is receiving a tremendous amount of interest from the machine learning community due to the ever-increasing popularization of the Internet of Things (IoT). Unfortunately, the incorporation of AI characteristics to edge computing devices presents the drawbacks of being power and area hungry for typical deep learning techniques such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In this work, we propose a power-and-area efficient architecture based on the exploitation of the correlation phenomenon in stochastic computing (SC) systems.

The Nuclear 35S rDNA World in Plant Systematics and Evolution: A Primer of Cautions and Common Misconceptions in Cytogenetic Studies.

The ubiquitous presence of rRNA genes in nuclear, plastid, and mitochondrial genomes has provided an opportunity to use genomic markers to infer patterns of molecular and organismic evolution as well as to assess systematic issues throughout the tree of life. The number, size, location, and activity of the 35S rDNA cistrons in plant karyotypes have been used as conventional cytogenetic landmarks. Their scrutiny has been useful to infer patterns of chromosomal evolution and the data have been used as a proxy for assessing species discrimination, population differentiation and evolutionary relationships.

Interstitial -Type Telomeric Repeats in Asteraceae.

Tandem repeats of telomeric-like motifs at intra-chromosomal regions, known as interstitial telomeric repeats (ITR), have drawn attention as potential markers of structural changes, which might convey information about evolutionary relationships if preserved through time. Building on our previous work that reported outstanding ITR polymorphisms in the genus , we undertook a survey across 132 Asteraceae species, focusing on the six most speciose subfamilies and considering all the ITR data published to date. The goal was to assess whether the presence, site number, and chromosomal location of ITRs convey any phylogenetic signal.

Interstitial Telomeric-like Repeats (ITR) in Seed Plants as Assessed by Molecular Cytogenetic Techniques: A Review.

The discovery of telomeric repeats in interstitial regions of plant chromosomes (ITRs) through molecular cytogenetic techniques was achieved several decades ago. However, the information is scattered and has not been critically evaluated from an evolutionary perspective. Based on the analysis of currently available data, it is shown that ITRs are widespread in major evolutionary lineages sampled.

On-Demand Bulk Nanobubble Generation through Pulsed Laser Illumination.

We demonstrate the temporally and spatially controlled nucleation of bulk nanobubbles in water through pulsed laser irradiation with a collimated beam. Transient bubbles appear within the light exposed region once a tension wave passes through. The correlation between illumination and cavitation nucleation provides evidence that gaseous nanobubbles are nucleated in the liquid by a laser pulse with an intensity above 58  MW/cm^{2}.

The role of working memory capacity in evaluative judgments of liking and beauty.

Judgments of liking and beauty appear to be expressions of a common hedonic state, but they differ in how they engage cognitive processes. We hypothesised that beauty judgments place greater demands on limited executive resources than judgments of liking. We tested this hypothesis by asking two groups of participants to judge works of visual art for their beauty or liking while having to remember the location of 1, 3, or 5 dots in a 4 by 4 matrix.

Pump-probe X-ray holographic imaging of laser-induced cavitation bubbles with femtosecond FEL pulses.

Cavitation bubbles can be seeded from a plasma following optical breakdown, by focusing an intense laser in water. The fast dynamics are associated with extreme states of gas and liquid, especially in the nascent state. This offers a unique setting to probe water and water vapor far-from equilibrium.

Nanosecond timing and synchronization scheme for holographic pump-probe studies at the MID instrument at European XFEL.

Single-pulse holographic imaging at XFEL sources with 10 photons delivered in pulses shorter than 100 fs reveal new quantitative insights into fast phenomena. Here, a timing and synchronization scheme for stroboscopic imaging and quantitative analysis of fast phenomena on time scales (sub-ns) and length-scales (≲100 nm) inaccessible by visible light is reported. A fully electronic delay-and-trigger system has been implemented at the MID station at the European XFEL, and applied to the study of emerging laser-driven cavitation bubbles in water.

Single-pulse phase-contrast imaging at free-electron lasers in the hard X-ray regime.

X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have opened up unprecedented opportunities for time-resolved nano-scale imaging with X-rays. Near-field propagation-based imaging, and in particular near-field holography (NFH) in its high-resolution implementation in cone-beam geometry, can offer full-field views of a specimen's dynamics captured by single XFEL pulses. To exploit this capability, for example in optical-pump/X-ray-probe imaging schemes, the stochastic nature of the self-amplified spontaneous emission pulses, i.