Programming robots to perform complex tasks is a very expensive job. Traditional path planning and control are able to generate point to point collision free trajectories, but when the tasks to be performed are complex, traditional planning and control become complex tasks. This study focused on robotic operations in logistics, specifically, on picking objects in unstructured areas using a mobile manipulator configuration. The mobile manipulator has to be able to place its base in a correct place so the arm is able to plan a trajectory up to an object in a table. A deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach was selected to solve this type of complex control tasks. Using the arm planner’s feedback, a controller for the robot base is learned, which guides the platform to such a place where the arm is able to plan a trajectory up to the object. In addition the performance of two DRL algorithms ((Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG)) and (Proximal Policy Optimisation (PPO)) is compared within the context of a concrete robotic task. Full article

The observation that some aspects of amoeba-fungal interactions resemble animal phagocytic cell-fungal interactions, together with the finding that amoeba passage can enhance the virulence of some pathogenic fungi, has stimulated interest in the amoeba as a model system for the study of fungal virulence. Amoeba provide a relatively easy and cheap model system where multiple variables can be controlled for the study of fungi-protozoal (amoeba) interactions. Consequently, there have been significant efforts to study fungal–amoeba interactions in the laboratory, which have already provided new insights into the origin of fungal virulence as well as suggested new avenues for experimentation. In this essay we review the available literature, which highlights the varied nature of amoeba-fungal interactions and suggests some unsolved questions that are potential areas for future investigation. Overall, results from multiple independent groups support the ‘amoeboid predator–fungal animal virulence hypothesis’, which posits that fungal cell predation by amoeba can select for traits that also function during animal infection to promote their survival and thus contribute to virulence. Full article

District heating systems have an important role in increasing the efficiency of the heating and cooling sector, especially when coupled to combined heat and power plants. However, in the transition towards decarbonization, current systems show some challenges for the integration of Renewable Energy Sources and Waste Heat. In particular, a crucial aspect is represented by the operating temperatures of the network. This paper analyzes two different approaches for the decrease of operation temperatures of existing networks, which are often supplying old buildings with a low degree of insulation. A simulation model was applied to some case studies to evaluate how a low-temperature operation of an existing district heating system performs compared to the standard operation, by considering two different approaches: (1) a different control strategy involving nighttime operation to avoid the morning peak demand; and (2) the partial insulation of the buildings to decrease operation temperatures without the need of modifying the heating system of the users. Different temperatures were considered to evaluate a threshold based on the characteristics of the buildings supplied by the network. The results highlight an interesting potential for optimization of existing systems by tuning the control strategies and performing some energy efficiency operation. The network temperature can be decreased with a continuous operation of the system, or with energy efficiency intervention in buildings, and distributed heat pumps used as integration could provide significant advantages. Each solution has its own limitations and critical parameters, which are discussed in detail. Full article

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. The five-year survival rate for men diagnosed with localized PCa is nearly 100%, yet for those diagnosed with aggressive PCa, it is less than 30%. The pleiotropic cytokine Interleukin-24 (IL-24) has been shown to specifically kill PCa cells compared to normal cells when overexpressed in both in vitro and in vivo studies. Despite this, the mechanisms regulating IL-24 in PCa are not well understood. Since specific microRNAs (miRNAs) are dysregulated in PCa, we used miRNA target prediction algorithm tools to identify miR-4719 and miR-6556-5p as putative regulators of IL-24. This study elucidates the expression profile and role of miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p as regulators of IL-24 in PCa. qRT-PCR analysis shows miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p overexpression significantly decreases the expression of IL-24 in PCa cells compared to the negative control. Compared to the indolent PCa and normal prostate epithelial cells, miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p are significantly overexpressed in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) cell lines, indicating that their gain may be an early event in PCa progression. Moreover, miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p are significantly overexpressed in the CRPC cell line of African-American males (E006AA-hT) compared to CRPC cell lines of Caucasian males (PC-3 and DU-145), indicating that miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p may also play a role in racial disparity. Lastly, the inhibition of expression of miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p significantly increases IL-24 expression and inhibits proliferation and migration of CRPC cell lines. Our findings indicate that miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p may regulate CRPC progression through the targeting of IL-24 expression and may be biomarkers that differentiate between indolent and CRPC. Strategies to inhibit miR-4719 and miR-6756-5p expression to increase IL-24 in PCa may have therapeutic efficacy in aggressive PCa. Full article

Chitooligosaccharides (CHOS) have gained increasing attention because of their important biological activities. Enhancing the efficiency of CHOS production essentially requires screening of novel chitosanase with unique characteristics. Therefore, a rapid and efficient one-step affinity purification procedure plays important roles in screening native chitosanases. In this study, we report the design and synthesis of affinity resin for efficient purification of native chitosanases without any tags, using chitodisaccharides (CHDS) as an affinity ligand, to couple with Sepharose 6B via a spacer, cyanuric chloride. Based on the CHDS-modified affinity resin, a one-step affinity purification method was developed and optimized, and then applied to purify three typical glycoside hydrolase (GH) families: 46, 75, and 80 chitosanase. The three purified chitosanases were homogeneous with purities of greater than 95% and bioactivity recovery of more than 40%. Moreover, we also developed a rapid and efficient affinity purification procedure, in which tag-free chitosanase could be directly purified from supernatant of bacterial culture. The purified chitosanases samples using such a procedure had apparent homogeneity, with more than 90% purity and 10–50% yield. The novel purification methods established in this work can be applied to purify native chitosanases in various scales, such as laboratory and industrial scales. Full article

Obesity is an excessive fat accumulation that could lead to complications like metabolic syndrome. There are reports on gut microbiota and metabolic syndrome in relation to dietary, host genetics, and other environmental factors; however, it is necessary to explore the role of the gut microbiota metabolic pathways in populations like Mexicans, where the prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndrome is high. This study identify alterations of the gut microbiota in a sample of healthy Mexican women (CO), women with obesity (OB), and women with obesity plus metabolic syndrome (OMS). We studied 67 women, characterizing their anthropometric and biochemical parameters along with their gut bacterial diversity by high-throughput DNA sequencing. Our results indicate that in OB or OMS women, Firmicutes was the most abundant bacterial phylum. We observed significant changes in abundances of bacteria belonging to the Ruminococcaceae, Lachnospiraceae, and Erysipelotrichaceae families and significant enrichment of gut bacteria from 16 different taxa that might explain the observed metabolic alterations between the groups. Finally, the predicted functional metagenome of the gut microbiota found in each category shows differences in metabolic pathways related to lipid metabolism. We demonstrate that Mexican women have a particular bacterial gut microbiota characteristic of each phenotype. There are bacteria that potentially explain the observed metabolic differences between the groups, and gut bacteria in OMS and OB conditions carry more genes of metabolic pathways implicated in lipid metabolism. Full article

Recently, the multi-bit flip-flop (MBFF) technique was introduced as a method for reducing the power consumption and chip area of integrated circuits (ICs) during the physical implementation stage of their development process. From the perspective of the consumer, the main requirements for such an optimization method are high performance, low power usage and small area (PPA). Therefore, any new optimization technique should improve at least one, if not all, of these requirements. This paper proposes a new low-power methodology, applying a MBFF merging solution during the physical implementation of an IC to achieve better power consumption and area reduction. The aim of this study is to prove the benefit of this methodology on the power saving capability of the system while demonstrating that the proposed methodology does not have a negative impact on the circuit performance and design routability. The experimental results show that MBFF merging of 76% can be achieved and preserved throughout the entire physical implementation process, from cell placement to the final interconnection routing, without impacting the system’s performance or routability. Moreover, the clock wirelength, nets and buffers needed to balance the clock network were reduced by 11.98%, 3.82% and 9.16%, respectively. The reduction of the clock tree elements led to a reduction of the power consumption of the clock nets, registers and cells by 22.11%, 20.84% and 12.38%, respectively. The total power consumption of the design was reduced by 2.67%. Full article

Using an experimental approach, we investigate income distribution among heterogeneous subjects exploiting a Common Pool Resource (CPR). The CPR experiments are conducted in continuous time and under different treatments, including combinations of communication and monitoring. While many studies have focused on how real-life income inequality affects cooperation and resource use among groups, here we examine the relationship between individuals’ cooperative traits, harvest inequalities, and institutional arrangements. We found that: (1) When combined with monitoring, communication decreases harvest inequality—that is, harvest is more equally distributed among individuals in all treatments; and (2) the cooperative trait of individuals significantly predicts harvest inequality. The relative proportion of non-cooperators and cooperators (i.e., the cooperative dependency ratio) drives the within-session harvest distribution—as the cooperative dependency ration increases, the income distribution becomes increasingly unequal, leading to a downward spiral of resource overexploitation and scarcity. Finally, our results suggest that harvest and income inequalities are contingent to resource abundance, because under this regime, non-cooperators exert the greatest amount effort—thus leading to resource scarcity and income inequalities. Full article

Food intake plays a pivotal role in human growth, constituting 45% of the global economy and wellbeing in general. The consumption of a balanced diet is essential for overall good health, and a lack of equilibrium can lead to malnutrition, prenatal death, obesity, osteoporosis and bone fractures, coronary heart diseases (CHD), idiopathic hypercalciuria, diabetes, and many other conditions. CHD, osteoporosis, malnutrition, and obesity are extensively discussed in the literature, although there are fragmented findings in the realm of kidney stone diseases (KSD) and their correlation with food intake. KSD associated with hematuria and renal failure poses an increasing threat to healthcare infrastructures and the global economy, and its emergence in the Indian population is being linked to multi-factorial urological disorder resulting from several factors. In this realm, epidemiological, biochemical, and macroeconomic situations have been the focus of research, even though food intake is also of paramount importance. Hence, in this article, we review the corollary associations with the consumption of diverse foods and the role that these play in KSD in an Indian context. Full article

Thanks to the unprecedented success of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), its successive mission GRACE Follow-On (GFO) has been in orbit since May 2018 to continue measuring the Earth’s mass transport. In order to possibly enhance GFO in terms of mass transport estimates, four orbit configurations of future polar-type gravity mission (FPG) (with the same payload accuracy and orbit parameters as GRACE, but differing in orbit inclination) are investigated by full-scale simulations in both standalone and jointly with GFO. The results demonstrate that the retrograde orbit modes used in FPG are generally superior to prograde in terms of gravity field estimation in the case of a joint GFO configuration. Considering the FPG’s independent capability, the orbit configurations with 89- and 91-degree inclinations (namely FPG-89 and FPG-91) are further analyzed by joint GFO monthly gravity field models over the period of one-year. Our analyses show that the FPG-91 basically outperforms the FPG-89 in mass change estimates, especially at the medium- and low-latitude regions. Compared to GFO & FPG-89, about 22% noise reduction over the ocean area and 17% over land areas are achieved by the GFO & FPG-91 combined model. Therefore, the FPG-91 is worthy to be recommended for the further orbit design of FPGs. Full article

Two experiments were conducted using Dorper × thin-tailed Han crossbred ewes. In experiment 1, eighteen ewes were randomly assigned to two dietary treatments (a basal diet, or the same basal diet supplemented with 2.0 g tea saponin (TS)/head/day) to investigate the effects of TS supplementation on nutrient digestibility and methane emissions. In experiment 2, six ewes with ruminal cannulae were assigned to the same two dietary treatments as in experiment 1 to investigate the effects of TS supplementation on rumen fermentation and microbial flora. TS supplementation increased the apparent digestibility of organic matter (OM) (p = 0.001), nitrogen (N) (p = 0.036), neutral detergent fibre (NDF) (p = 0.001), and acid detergent fibre (ADF) (p < 0.001). Urinary N (p = 0.001) and fecal N (p = 0.036) output were reduced, and N retention (p = 0.001) and nitrogen retention/nitrogen intake (p = 0.001) were increased. Supplementary TS did not decrease absolute methane emissions (p = 0.519) but decreased methane emissions scaled to metabolic bodyweight by 8.80% (p = 0.006). Ammonia levels decreased (p < 0.001) and total volatile fatty acid levels increased (p = 0.018) in response to TS supplementation. The molar proportion of propionate increased (p = 0.007), whereas the acetate:propionate ratio decreased (p = 0.035). Supplementation with TS increased the population of Fibrobacter succinogenes (p = 0.019), but the population of protozoans tended to decrease (p = 0.054). Supplementation with TS effectively enhanced the apparent digestibility of OM, N, NDF, and ADF, and decreased methane emissions scaled to metabolic bodyweight. Full article