The search for mates and food is mediated by volatile chemicals. Insects sense food odorants and sex pheromones through odorant receptors (ORs) and pheromone receptors (PRs), which are expressed in olfactory sensory neurons. Investigating the receptive range of these receptors instructs the identification of behaviourally relevant chemicals. Studying orthologous receptors and their ligands across taxa affords insights into the role of chemical communication in reproductive isolation and phylogenetic divergence. The female sex pheromone of green budworm moth Hedya nubiferana (Lepidoptera, Totricidae) is a blend of two unsaturated acetates, only a blend of both elicits male attraction. Females also produce codlemone, which is the sex pheromone of another tortricid, codling moth Cydia pomonella. Codlemone also attracts green budworm moth males. Concomitantly, green budworm and codling moth males are attracted to the food plant volatile pear ester. A congruent behavioural response to the same pheromone and plant volatile in two tortricid species suggests co-occurrence of dedicated odorant receptors. In codling moth, one PR is tuned to both compounds, the sex pheromone codlemone and the plant volatile pear ester. Our phylogenetic analysis finds that green budworm moth expresses an orthologous PR gene. Shared ancestry, and high levels of amino acid identity and sequence similarity, in codling and green budworm moth PRs offers an explanation for parallel attraction of both species to the same compounds. A conserved olfactory channel for a sex pheromone and host plant volatile substantiates the alliance of social and habitat signals in insect chemical communication. Field attraction assays confirm that in silico investigations of odorant receptors afford powerful predictions for an efficient identification of behaviour-modifying semiochemicals, for an improved understanding of the mechanisms of host plant attraction in insect herbivores and for the further development of sustainable insect control.

Using computational alchemy, the authors demonstrate how catalyst discovery can be made faster and readily accessible. Starting from electronic structure results on one system, they give predictions for barriers and binding energies for variants of that system. This cashes in on the promise that computational alchemy allows for systematical screening of chemical spaces in pursuit of a design application. Their work is written in an hands-on explicit style including clear figures which render the work accessible to the broad audience for which it is relevant.I suggest to accept the article after minor revisions as outlined below.

The capacity of some yeasts to extract energy from single sugars, generating CO2 and ethanol (=fermentation), even in the presence of oxygen is known as the Crabtree effect. This phenomenon represents an important adaptation as it allowed the utilization of the ecological niche given by modern fruits, an abundant source of food that emerged in the terrestrial environment in the Cretaceous. However, identifying the evolutionary events that triggered fermentative capacity in Crabtree positive species is challenging, as microorganisms do not leave fossil evidence. Thus, key innovations should be inferred based only on traits measured under culture conditions. Here, we reanalyzed data form a common-garden experiment where several proxies of fermentative capacity were recorded in Crabtree positive and negative species, representing yeast’s phylogenetic diversity. In particular, we applied the “lasso-OU” algorithm which detects points of adaptive shifts, provided trait values representing a given performance measure. We tested whether multiple events or a single event explains the actual fermentative capacity of yeasts. According to the lasso-OU procedure, evolutionary changes in the three proxies of fermentative capacity that we considered (i.e., glycerol production, ethanol yield and respiratory quotient) are consistent with a single evolutionary episode (a whole-genomic duplication, WGD), instead of a series of small genomic rearrangements. Thus, the WGD appears as the key event behind the diversification of fermentative yeasts, which by increasing gene dosage and maximized their capacity of energy extraction for exploiting the new ecological niche provided by single sugars.

Mechanism of the oxidative nonpolar inversion reaction catalyzed by N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) to achieve benzoxazoles was investigated in very details. The reaction was revealed to occur through five processes, and for oxidation in the second process, two successive tautomerizations followed by oxidation were demonstrated to be more energetically favorable than the other two pathways. The rate-determining step was disclosed to be the oxidation by 3,3’-5,5’-tetra-tert-butyl-4,4’-diphenoquinone (DQ). Afterwards, mechanism calculations to the non-catalyzed reaction was conducted and it was revealed that the excessive exothermic property of the initial step should be the main reason for the extremely high barrier in the following step. While with participation of NHC, this unfavorable transformation can be deftly prevented according to the specific sequence and amount of reagents addition, and therefore to enable the reaction to occur under mild conditions.

Con il continuo incremento del consumismo e il culto della cura personale e fisica, negli ultimi anni sono sempre più ingenti le quantità di contaminanti emergenti riscontrati a valle degli impianti di trattamento delle acque reflue. In questo studio si è posta particolarmente attenzione sui metodi avanzati di degradazione (AOP) di prodotti farmaceutici, in particolare il diclofenac (DCF) è stato preso in esame. E' importante ridurre la presenza di tali contaminanti in ambiente marino in quanto essi causano effetti negativi sugli organismi acquatici, e indirettamente sull'uomo, anche a quantità molto basse ( 1 μg L-1 ).   Per rimuovere il DCF dagli effluenti sono state sviluppate tecniche innovative che combinano ossidazione e sonicazione in modo da riuscire a degradare il farmaco tramite l’uso dei radicali generati dalla decomposizione dell’ozono (ozonizzazione) e dall’ azione di onde acustiche (sonicazione). In particolare si è scoperto che dalla sinergia dei due trattamenti il tasso di rimozione del farmaco risulta ampiamente maggiore per durate del trattamento brevi.  

Naphthalene and tetralin hydrocracking behaviors were investigated over NiMo and CoMo catalysts. The results showed that CoMo catalyst with high concentration of S-edges could hydrosaturate more naphthalene to tetralin but exhibit lower yield of high-value light aromatics (carbon numbers less than 10) than NiMo catalyst. NiMo catalyst with high concentration of Mo-edges also presented a higher selectivity to convert naphthalene to cylanes than CoMo catalyst. Subsequently, the naphthalene and LCO hydrocracking performances were also investigated over different catalysts systems. It showed that the naphthalene hydrocracking conversion and the yield of light aromatics for CoMo-AY/NiMo-AY grading catalysts were higher than NiMo-AY/CoMo-AY grading catalysts at same condition. A stepwise reaction principle was proposed to explain the high-efficiency of CoMo-AY/NiMo-AY grading catalysts. Finally, the LCO hydrocracking evaluation results confirmed that CoMo-AY/NiMo-AY catalysts grading system with low carbon deposition and high stability was more efficient to convert LCO to high-octane gasoline.

A document by Faisal Ahmad. Click on the document to view its contents.

La presenza di un’ impianto industriale può generare una serie di impatti fra cui le emissioni di odore, che rappresentano una fra le maggiori cause di protesta della popolazione residente. Il punto fondamentale per la gestione degli odori è la misurazione oggettiva degli stessi; in quest’ambito, il naso elettronico è, probabilmente, la tecnologia con maggior potenziale per la misurazione continua degli odori ambientali. Con questo documento si vuole presentare una nuova tecnica per istruire i nasi elettronici, aumentandone le loro capacità, riducendo l’incertezza e aumentando l’affidabilità delle misurazioni. 

Objective: To investigate the incidence of structural and chromosomal abnormalities in cases of fetal oedema on early ultrasound prior to non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Tertiary obstetric ultrasound clinic in Melbourne, Australia. Population: Women undergoing pre-NIPT ultrasound examination from January 2013-November 2018 with fetal crown-rump length (CRL) of 28-43 mm. Methods: Cases of reported fetal oedema or increased nuchal thickness were included. Clinical information was collected from the clinic’s patient management database. Oedema was subclassified as isolated nuchal oedema (>2.2 mm) or generalised oedema/hydrops by two operators blinded to pregnancy outcomes. Main Outcome Measures: Incidence of chromosomal or structural defects following the detection of fetal oedema. Results: We identified 104 cases of reported fetal oedema with a CRL between 28-44 mm. Nuchal oedema and generalised oedema were present in 40 (38.5%) and 64 (61.5%) cases respectively. Outcomes were available in 93 cases (89.4%). Relevant chromosomal anomalies were identified in 21.5% (20/93), occurring in 12.1% (4/33) of the nuchal oedema and 26.7% (16/60) of the generalised oedema/hydrops cases. Structural anomalies with normal karyotype were found in an additional four (4.3%) cases. Miscarriage occurred in four (4.3%) cases and termination of pregnancy in 18 cases (19.4%). Oedema resolved by 11-13+6 weeks in 81.9% and these cases had less adverse outcomes than those with NT≥3.5 mm (10.9% vs 76.5%, p<0.001). Conclusions: Fetal oedema in early pregnancy is associated with a high incidence of structural or chromosomal abnormalities, and these rates increase with progressive severity.

We present an optical biosensor in this study which is based on the LC orientation as a function of the peptide concentration to detect amyloid-beta-42 (Aβ42) antigen-antibody binding events. These binding of Aβ42 peptide to an Aβ42 antibody which is on a Dimethyloctadecyl[3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl] ammonium chloride (DMOAP) occurs on an immobilized surface forming an immunocomplex. The disturbed orientation of LCs as a result of the binding of the formed immunocomplex observed using the polarized optical microscope. The microscopic and optical response of the LC-immunocomplex was determined as a function of decreasing Aβ42 peptide concentration. Aβ42 peptide concentrations as of 1000 pg/ml, 500 pg/ml, 200 pg/ml, 100 pg/ml, 50 pg/ml, 25 pg/ml, 20 pg/ml, 15 pg/ml, 10 pg/ml, 5 pg/ml, and 1 pg/ml, respectively were interacted with the optimum Aβ42 antibody concentration as of 25 µg/ml. There was a remarkable change in the reflection spectra of the samples with the decreasing Aβ42 peptide concentration. The concentration as low as 1 pg/ml of Aβ42 peptide was able to successfully detected in our system.

Gli odori rappresentano una delle cause di disturbo maggiormente avvertite, che desta preoccupazioni nella popolazione per la salute. Nonostante non siano stati dimostrati effetti diretti su di essa, le emissioni odorigene provocano un persistente fastidio alla popolazione residente nelle vicinanze degli impianti che le generano.                                                                     Le emissioni odorigene devono dunque essere caratterizzate, misurate e controllate, al fine di evitare impatti per la popolazione.La caratterizzazione e misura degli odori è ancor’oggi oggetto di studio e ricerca. Non esiste un metodo unico ed univocamente riconosciuto per la misura degli odori. Generalmente la soluzione adottata è quella del ricorso ad un insieme integrato di indagini e di tecniche, per riuscire ad ottenere il maggior numero di informazioni possibili.Il lavoro di tesi svolto si inserisce nell’ambito dello studio delle emissioni odorigene. La ricerca si è concentrata sullo studio ed analisi di tecniche innovative e strumentali di caratterizzazione e controllo delle emissioni odorigene, con applicazione ad un caso studio reale di trattamento e depurazione delle acque reflue. In particolare, sono stati investigati gli aspetti relativi alla influenza dell’applicazione delle diverse tecniche di Feature Extraction nell’elaborazione dei modelli predittivi di classificazione e quantificazione in continuo delle emissioni odorigene (OMM, Odour Monitoring Model) con sistema strumentale IOMS.L’obbiettivo principale di ricerca è l’ottimizzazione del sistema strumentale di monitoraggio in continuo delle emissioni odorigene (IOMS), mediante l’analisi e validazione in campo dei modelli di classificazione e quantificazione degli odori per un impianto di trattamento delle acque reflue in scala reale.

The turbulent characteristics of heat transfer and flow have been determined by applying the Van Driest model of the eddy diffusivity for water and ethylene glycol-based nanofluids. The properties of CuO, Al2O3 and SiO2 nanofluids in two base liquids viz., water and EG-water mixture with the ratio of 60:40 are considered for various concentrations and bulk temperature ranges. Based on the observations, it is concluded that numerical outcomes are validated with experimental measurements for heat transfer properties. It is monitored that SiO2 reaches a higher temperature gradient in comparison to CuO at a similar temperature and concentration in EG-water with the mixture of 60: 40. The gradients are greater for the EGW mixture compared to water-based nanofluids. However, the water-based nanofluids have higher heat transfer coefficients compared to EG-water nanofluid at identical flow velocities.

In this paper, we are defined the nonuniform non-stationary multiresolution analysis (NUNSMRA) on Sobolev space over local fields ($H^s(\mathbb{K})$) and with help of NUNSMRA orthonormal wavelets are constructed.

In the present paper we provide the conditions guaranteeing the generalization of so-called {\it diauxic} behaviour of solutions of ODEs. This behaviour was described by Monod in 1949 in the context of bacterial growth. Then a similar behaviour was observed and described referring to dynamic of CDK1 protein during cell cycle. The diauxic behaviour is described in terms of inflection points.

The modelling of data and prediction for the upcoming years or events are one of the main concerns of not only all countries but also companies, investors, manufacturers, and institutions. The scientists investigate on a relation among telecommunication, economic growth, and financial development using technical, economic, social events and data. Besides, the population changes affect balances in any aspect. Therefore, the prediction of the population for each country is prominent and essential for the other prediction. In this study, the dataset consists of the populations of the USA, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Turkey were used from 1960 until 2018. In our study, populations of countries are tried to be modelled, and the predictions are made for the upcoming years, using fractional calculus. The newly developed approach uses the data for the modelling by employing Least Squares method and fractional calculus.

In this paper, we investigate a fractional p-Laplacian system with different critical Sobolev-Hardy exponents. By variational methods and the Mountain-Pass lemma, positive minimizers of the related best Sobolev constants and the existence of positive solutions of the system are found.

In this paper, special attention is paid to developing a general method to calculate an exact solution for nonhomogeneous Burgers equations in one dimensional space. For this purpose, generalized Hopf-Cole method is using. Then, the model is transformed into the linear heat equation and separable nonlinear differential equation which allows us to calculate an exact solution. We also present exact solutions for differents models. Furthermore, to consolidate the theoretical calculation, we make numerical analysis, considering a finite element discretization in space on a viscous flow model. Then, we use a special tretment on the nonlinear term. Finally, we add a numerical simulation using a finite element code FreeFem++.

In this article, we provide a rigorous derivation of an asymptotic formula for the perturbation of eigenvalues associated to the Stokes eigenvalue problem with Dirichlet conditions and in the presence of small deformable inclusions. Taking advantage of the small sizes of the inclusions immersed in an incompressible Newtonian fluid having kinematic viscosity different from the background one, we show that our asymptotic formula can be expressed in terms of the eigenvalue in the absence of the inclusions and in terms of the so-called viscous moment tensor (VMT). We believe that our results are ambitious tools for determining the locations and/or shapes of small inhomogeneities by taking eigenvalue measurements.

In this article, the existence and uniqueness result for the solution of a singular third-order ordinary differential equation has been investigated on a semi-infinite domain [0,∞). Such differential equation arises in boundary layer flow near a stagnation point on a rough plate in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. A suitable similarity transformation is used to transform the governing partial differential equation into a nonlinear ordinary differential equation along with partial slip boundary conditions. The resulting equation with its boundary conditions contains two parameters: the magnetic parameter, M and the slip parameter, λ. Some properties of the velocity profiles such as monotonic behaviour and bounded are obtained before proceeding numerical results. Further, the asymptotic behaviour at the free boundary has also been discussed. The validation of the obtained solution has been done numerically by shifted Chebyshev collocation method. The velocity profiles are plotted to address the significance of the parameters. The results are also compared through the table with previous results and found remarkably good agreement.

Objectives (1) To develop a risk score for early-onset pre-eclampsia leading to delivery within one week from repeated marker determinations on pregnancies with an sFlt-1/PlGF ratio above 38, and (2) to compare it (i) with sFlt-1/PlGF ratio model and (ii) with the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio 655 cut-off. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting Oviedo, Spain. Sample 522 blood samples from 363 singleton pregnancies with clinical suspicion of pre-eclampsia between 27 and 34 weeks of gestation. Methods NT-proBNP, sFlt-1 and PlGF were combined using linear mixed models with random intercept based on 213 samples from 123 pregnancies with an sFlt-1/PlGF ratio above 38. Main outcome measures Early-onset pre-eclampsia diagnosis leading to delivery within one week from assessment. Results None of the 253 pregnancies with an sFlt-1/PlGF ratio of 38 or below developed early-onset pre-eclampsia. The prognostic prediction tool included sFlt-1 MoM, NT-proBNP and gestational age at time (GA) of repeated measurements. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) for early-onset pre-eclampsia diagnosis leading to delivery within one week was 88.247 (95% CI 0.822-0.934) for the prediction tool and 82.639 (95% CI 0.752-0.892) for the sFlt-1/PlGF + GA model (P=0.04). At an sFlt-1/PlGF ratio 655 cut-off the detection ratio was 31.9% (19.1-47.1) with false positive rate of 4.2% (1.7-8.5). With the same false positive rate, the detection rate with the prognostic prediction tool was 53.2% (38.1-67.9) (P=0.03). Conclusions A prediction tool derived from NT-proBNP, sFlt-1 MoM and gestational age linear mixed model provided clinically useful prediction of early-onset pre‐eclampsia prognosis when clinically suspected.

Biologists still strive to identify the ecological and evolutionary drivers of phytochemical variation that mediates biotic interactions. We hypothesized that plant species growing at sites characterized by high herbivore pressure would converge to produce highly toxic blends of secondary metabolites, independently of phylogenetic constraints. To address the role of shared evolutionary history and ecological niches in driving variation in plant phytochemistry, we combined targeted metabolomics, with insect herbivore bioassays on Cardamine species growing along the entire elevational gradient of the Alps. We observed that plant species cluster according to similar habitat-mediated plant-growth forms and chemical profiles, independently of phylogenetic relationship. We also showed that novel indices summarizing functional phytochemical diversity better explain plant resistance against chewing and sap-feeding herbivores than classic diversity indices. We conclude that the functional axis of phytochemical diversity should be integrated with the functional axis of plant growth forms to address convergence along large-scale ecological gradients.

Light heterogeneity can lead to the heterogeneity of morphological structure and physiological functions in different leaves. However, little attention has been paid to the effect of nonuniform illumination on morphological structure and photosynthetic performance between the two symmetrical portions along the main vein within individual leaves. This experiment was carried out by the method of combining site determination in the field and shading simulation in the phytotron using pima cotton which have cupping leaves. In the field, maximum net photosynthetic rate, leaf area, and leaf mass per area were positively correlated with daily photo irradiance (DPI), while the chlorophyll content related negatively with DPI. These results indicated that the heterogeneity of photosynthetic characteristics between two sides of along the main vein within individual leaves were related with its intercepted light energy. Further, the shading simulation experiments also verified this conclusion. Interestingly, compared to the both ambient leaves and individual shading leaves, the photosynthetic characteristics of both ambient leaves and shading leaves in shading half leaves were changed. Thus, we also discussed that the development of the photosynthetic characteristics in one side of the main vein in a leaf was systematically regulated by adjacent side.

The goal of this paper is to investigate the geometry of the warping function on a $n$-dimensional compact Legenderian warped product submanifold $M^n$ of Sasakian space form with free boundary. We establish sharp estimates to the squared norm of the second fundamental form and the Laplacian of the warping function. Besides, we provide some triviality results for $M^n$ by using the Ricci curvature along the gradient of the warping function. Taking the clue from the Bochner formula and second-order ordinary differential equation, we find the characterization for the base of $M^n$ via the first non-zero eigenvalue of the warping function and proved that it is isometric to Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^p$ or Euclidean sphere $\mathbb{S}^p$ under some extrinsic conditions.

The HWENO (Hermite weighted essentially non-oscillatory) schemes are high order, high-resolution methods suitable for conservation law and convection dominated simulations with possible discontinuous or sharp gradient solutions. In most of the literature, although there are many other numerical fluxes available, the Lax-Friedrichs numerical flux is used frequently due to its simplicity. In this paper, we will study an alternative finite difference HWENO method. The core of this method is that its numerical flux framework breaks the limitations of the traditional mathematical form of numerical flux and is suitable for many different forms of numerical flux. And we systematically investigate the performance of the HWENO method and present quantitative comparisons for hyperbolic conservation laws based on different numerical fluxes. The spatial terms are discretized by using finite difference HWENO scheme and the time terms are performed by using TVD Runge-Kutta method. The HWENO method is proposed based on the original WENO methodology for solving hyperbolic conservation laws. Therefore, the HWENO scheme is similar to the classic WENO scheme achieved by using numerical flux as a building block, and their performances are closely related to the properties of the numerical fluxes. Hence, we study the performance of HWENO method based on different numerical fluxes, including the first-order monotone fluxes and second-order TVD fluxes, with the objective of obtaining better performance for the conservation laws by choosing suitable numerical fluxes. The detailed discussion focuses on the one-dimensional system case, including the issues of CPU cost, accuracy, non-oscillatory property.