iminished al levels, suggesting that al is a Notch target gene. This would be the pre dicted relationship in a lateral inhibition system, where a Notch al positive feedback loop would amplify the Notch activity differences between neighboring cells. Two additional transcription factors that have been previously shown to be involved in leg morphogenesis were found to promote Notch signaling, Bonus, a homologue of the vertebrate TIF1beta transcriptional cofactor, and crooked legs, a zinc finger pro tein. Notch signaling is known to play an important role in Drosophila leg development, and the recovery of these two transcription factors as modifiers of Notch induced E m3 expression suggests that bon and croI may function to modulate Notch target gene output in the developing leg.

We also identified the Drosophila orthologues of two mammalian proto oncogenes kayak, and c Myb, as positive regulators of Notch signaling. Although a direct functional Entinostat link between these proteins and Notch signaling has not been described, kayak has been shown to interact genetically with Hairless and c Myb genetically interacts with bon, a novel Notch modifier described above. In addition, our data reveals a synergistic relationship between the positive regulator of Ras signaling, 14 3 3��, and Notch. Once again, the pro tein interaction network shows extensive contacts between 14 3 3�� and the chromatin machinery, suggest ing a mechanism for modulating Notch target transcrip tion through Su mediated chromatin modifications.

Interactions between Notch and oncogenic pathways are of particular interest, as the involvement of Notch in cancer biology and stem cell maintenance is becoming increasingly apparent. An unexpected Notch target transcription modifier identified in the screen is the Notch target gene Tram track. We found that targeting of ttk with dsRNA resulted in reduced Notch activity. In contrast, ttk expression itself has been shown to increase in response to ectopic Notch activity. The RNAi treatment data suggest that ttk may function in a posi tive feedback mechanism to promote Notch activated transcription and the network analysis suggests that this interaction may be mediated by a direct contact with Notch itself. Conclusions A complementary, genome wide RNAi approach has revealed a subset of factors that modulate Notch target transcription that may not have been found by tradi tional genetic approaches.

For instance, pleiotropic effects combined with non saturating mutagenesis may have obscured the detection of some components in tra ditional genetic screens. Several novel modifiers were identified in this RNAi transcription based screen, and these factors will be further investigated for their precise roles in the regulation of Notch signaling during devel opment. In addition, the interaction network of these factors suggests that many may work through contacts with chromatin machinery components that are in turn directed to Notch target promoters by the tran

group, according to two oligo sequences both annotated to this gene, whereas ahrr was significantly but only 2. 8 fold up regulated in larvae from the correspond ing CDH group. Less coherent results were obtained for the transcripts showing the highest degree of down regulation. In the cod larvae exposed to the highest concentration of chemically dispersed oil, centromere protein i, DEAH box polypeptide 35, and timeless interacting protein showed the strongest down regulation. In cod larvae exposed to the highest concentration of mechanically dispersed oil, cell division cycle associated 7, hemopexin, and chromosome 6 open reading frame 58 showed the strongest down regulation re sponse. Again, based on the degree of transcription fold changes, the microarray data suggest that mechanically dispersed oil mediated a slightly stron ger response than chemically dispersed oil.

RT qPCR analysis In order to verify the microarray results, a set Dacomitinib of tran scripts were evaluated by RT qPCR. In general, the quantitative real time qPCR results were in line with the microarray data. Based on 9 quantified transcripts show ing significant effect analyzed with RT qPCR, the correl ation between the microarray data and RT qPCR was r 0. 99 for the CDH group and r 0. 98 for the MDH group. Figures 4 and 5 show the transcriptional levels of 16 genes quanti fied with RT qPCR. Of the evaluated transcripts, cyp1a showed to strongest response with a 64. 9 fold induction in larvae from the CDH group and a 61. 3 fold induction in larvae from the MDH group. In the medium exposure groups, cyp1a showed a 14.

1 fold in duction in larvae from the CDM group, and 18. 4 fold in duction in larvae from the MDM group. RT qPCR data for a set of evaluated transcripts and their significance are shown in Figure 2. Also cyp1b1 and cyp1c1 showed significant responses to dis persed oil exposure, with cyp1b1 showing a stronger re sponse than cyp1c1 in the two high exposure groups. The ahrr transcript was more strongly affected than the ahr2 transcript. The sig nificant up regulation of gst �� suggests that phase II metabolism was affected in the cod larvae, while altered transcription of p53 suggest that dis persed oil exposure may have mediated an effect on DNA integrity. No significant effects of oil exposure were observed on the growth marker igf or igfbp1.

Ferritin and hsp70 transcription was significantly up regulated by dispersed oil treatment, while mcm2 and cdca7 were significantly down regulated by the treatment. Functional pathway analysis Gene set enrichment analysis and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis was used for functional ana lyses of the transcriptional data. Additional file 3 shows the top ranked gene sets in larvae from all ex posure groups compared to the control group. Table 1 shows the GSEA gene sets significantly affected comparing the two high exposure groups directly. Only the top ranked gene sets are shown for each comparison. GSEA of the micro array data showed that most sig

pose tissue. Results Expression levels of a total of 2016 genes were signifi cantly altered by fasting and or insulin neutralization when compared to fed controls based on an FDR adjusted p value 0. 05. Sixty nine percent of these genes showed a fold change |1. 5|. The majority of changes in expression employed to validate differential expression based on the microarray data. Eleven genes were selected based on fold change or biological functions of interest. Differential expression under fasting versus fed conditions was validated for all genes except pre B cell leukemia homeobox 3. Ten of the eleven genes were also differentially expressed in insulin neutralized compared to fed birds based on QPCR.

Genes that were differentially expressed in at least one pairwise comparison were clustered to visualize the si milarities between groups and to determine if insulin neutralized expression profiles were more similar to fasted or to fed status. As shown in Figure 2A, samples within each of the GSK-3 three experimental groups clustered together. The dendrogram also showed that the fasting group was distant from fed and insulin neutralized groups, which were closer to each other. To further visualize relationships between treatments with regard to gene expression, distinct clusters of genes were extracted and submitted to gene set enrichment analysis to identify GO terms and pathways that were significantly overrepresented among genes contained in these clusters. Seven clusters repre sented four general patterns of similarities between treat ments.

Clusters 1, 3 and 4 consisted of genes with higher expression in fasting compared to both insulin neutralized and fed conditions, with insulin neutralized intermediate between fasted and fed. This set of genes was significantly enriched in GO terms related to protein and lipid catabolism and to cell signaling, including regulation of the stress sensitive NF��B cascade. These three clusters were also enriched in members of the KEGG path ways ubiquitin mediated proteolysis, sphingolipid meta bolism, PPAR signaling, fatty acid metabolism and the peroxisome. The rate limiting genes for fatty acid oxidation, along with fatty acid binding pro teins 5 and 6, are contained in these three clusters. Clusters 5 and 7 also contained genes with higher levels in fasted vs.

the other two groups, but with comparable expression levels between insulin neutralized and fed, and thus no clear effect of insulin loss. These two clusters were signifi were attributable to fasting, with 917 up regulated and 863 down regulated genes in fasted vs. fed adipose tis sue. Insulin neutralization altered expression of 92 genes, 72 of which were also differentially expressed with fasting. All genes that were affected by both treatments changed in the same direction. Real time RT PCR was cantly enriched in pathways related to signaling and metab olism, including enzyme linked receptor protein signaling pathway and in the KEGG pathways for glycer olipi

In addition to nanowalls, there were some tube-like structures formed with interconnected nanowalls, as seen in Figure 1(c,d). The ZnO nanowalls were approximately 1.3 ��m in length and approximately 60 nm in thickness.Figure 1.SEM images of ZnO nanowalls grown on a glass substrate by thermal evaporation: (a) top view, (b) cross-section, and high-magnification of the (c) nanowall and (d) tube-like structure.Figure 2 shows the XRD spectrum of the prepared ZnO nanowalls. All the diffraction peaks are indexed as a hexagonal wurtzite ZnO structure. A prominent (0002) growth direction indicates that the ZnO nanowalls preferentially grow along the c-axis orientation on the substrate.

A weak (101) peak is observed in the figure that originates from a few c-axis oriented ZnO nanowalls that grew at a small angle to the substrate, as indicat
In multi-echo imaging, different images of the same cross-section are acquired by changing certain scan parameters, e.g., the echo times for T2 weighted images or the repetition times for T1 weighted images. The objective is to obtain images (of the same cross-section) with varying tissue contrasts. The details about the physics and techniques for acquiring these multi-echo MR images are found in [1]. In this work, we address the reconstruction of the images from their partial K-space samples.Traditionally the K-space was obtained using full sampling on a uniform Cartesian grid. Each image was then reconstructed by applying the inverse Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Full sampling of the K-space is however time consuming.

Recent advances in Compressed Sensing (CS) allowed MRI researchers to reconstruct the MR images, almost perfectly, using partial, i.e., Anacetrapib not fully sampled, K-space scans [2,3]. Partial sampling of the K-space has the advantage of reducing the acquisition time. However, when the K-space is not fully sampled, the reconstruction problem becomes under-determined and prior information about the solution is needed for reconstructing the images.Compressive Sampling (CS)-based MRI reconstruction has used the prior information that the images are spatially redundant, specifically that they have a sparse representation in a transform domain such as wavelets [2,3] or finite-differencing [2]. The techniques developed for single-echo MR images (such as [2,3]) are applied to each of the multi-echo images separately in order to reconstruct them from their partial K-space scans.

However, this is not an optimal approach, and it was therefore argued in [4,5] that, since the multi-echo MR images are correlated, better reconstruction can be obtained when this correlation information is also exploited (along with the intra-image spatial redundancy). The reconstruction was formulated as a row-sparse Multiple Measurement Vector (MMV) recovery in [4] and as a group-sparsity vector recovery problem in [5].

To facilitate the transport of odorant laden flow to the antennules, many aquatic animals use flicking or fanning of their appendages [5,10]. This behavior is often described as ��sniffing��. A flicking motion often involves a fast down-stroke and a slower return-stroke, leading to entrapment of odorant molecules between the aesthetascs, which lowers the diffusion time of odorants to the aesthetasc surface and enables these animals to discretely sample their ambient environment [11,12].Figure 1.(A) The freshwater crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, with lateral antennule labeled. Grid in the background is 1 �� 1 cm; (B) Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of the lateral antennule with (a) chemosensory aesthetascs and (b) mechanosensory sensilla …

The odorant plumes encountered in the environment of these organisms are often turbulent and highly filamentous in nature [6,13]. Due to stirring by the turbulent motion of the fluid, the spatial and temporal distribution of odors is complex and filaments of high odor concentration are often adjacent to little or no odorants [13,14]. These distributions in odorants also change in response to variations in the ambient flow speed and bed roughness, where the variance in odorant fluctuations is reduced for rougher beds [15] and greater mean velocities [13]. Certain cues, such as correlations between the flow kinematics and odorant concentration that the animal sense through the chemoreceptors and mechanoreceptors, can provide valuable information regarding the plume source.

However, due to the high intermittency and temporal and spatial variability of the plume, this often reduces the ability of organisms, such as the blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, to successfully navigate to the source of an attractive odor [16].1.2. Sampling Rates and Tracking Strategies in CrustaceansThe frequency of flicking and sensitivity to odorants can alter the tracking strategy in the animals. Higher sampling frequency allows an Entinostat animal to sample a larger number of odorant filaments as it moves through the plume [13]. Blue crabs C. sapidus, spiny lobsters Panulirus argus and freshwater crayfish Procambarus clarkii all flick their antennules at a rate of approximately 3 Hz, but can vary between 0.5 and 4 Hz [13,17]. Although it was previously assumed that most odor tracking by animals occurred by responding to time-averaged concentration gradients in a plume [18], the speed at which plume-tracking maneuvers occur suggest that more instantaneous sensory feedbacks are being utilized [8,19], and that time-averaged concentrations converge too slowly to be useful to a foraging animal [20].

The phosphate buffer 0.1 M solutions of pH values between 4 and 8 were used for pH studies. The pH was measured using a commercial glass electrode and a pH-meter (model 9318, Hanna Instruments, Woonsocket, RL, USA) calibrated at the pH values of 4.00, 7.00 and 9.00.2.2. PANI Film PreparationAniline was purified by distilled under vacuum with vigorous stirring to prevent bumping. A PANI dispersion was prepared as a nanofibre using the methods described by Huang and Kaner [29]. The purified aniline (3.2 mmol or 0.3 g) was mixed with 1.0 M HCl acid solution (10 mL). Ammonium peroxydisulfate (0.8 mmol or 0.18 g) was mixed into another aliquot (10 mL) of the acid solution. The aniline-acid solution was added to the oxidant and the two solutions were rapidly mixed for 30 s and then allowed to react undisturbed overnight.

The following day, the polyaniline was washed with water and centrifuged. After three washings, the supernatant liquor with a pH of 3.3 and was strongly green in colour, indicating the presence of PANI particles. Before casting, any remaining particles larger than 1 ��m were removed by passing the dispersion through a 55-mm glass fiber filter (Whatman GFA, Kent, UK) attached to a vacuum source. The PANI dispersion was cast directly on a polystyrene substrate. Then the thin film of PANI on the polystyrene sheet were left overnight in the dark to dry after which individual 10 mm2 sections were cut. The ready film was then stored at 4 ��C. The film thickness was determined by SEM images to be 0.7 ��m.

The film thickness was routinely determined for film samples to make sure that the thickness was always within in the same order of magnitude. The PANI film of similar thickness (0.7 ��m) was selected and used for further experiments for good reproducibility of the PANI film fabrication.2.3. Enzyme ImmobilizationThe procedure used is the same in all cases. The PANI film was conditioned Carfilzomib at pH 7.0 by immersion in pH 7.0 0.1 M phosphate buffer, then afterwards, an AOX solution of appropriate concentration (10 ��L) was deposited on the PANI film, and left to dry 30 min. The PANI film with immobilised AOX was then stored at 4 ��C for further use.2.4. Biosensor ConstructionThe PANI film with immobilized AOX was constructed as a visual biosensor in the form of a dip stick test as shown in Figure 1, where the AOX/PANI film was connec
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder affecting more than 50 million people worldwide.

Epilepsy is characterized by sudden bursts of excessive electrical discharges in the brain [1]. Such abnormal firings, called seizures, often occur without warning and for no apparent reason. The unpredictable nature of seizure occurrences poses a challenge to the diagnosis of epilepsy, as well as causes a substantial burden to the physical, social and psychological states of a patient [2].

The social and environmental effects due to leakage are also a matter of concern. For example, up to 4 million holes are dug in the UK each year in order to install or repair buried service pipes and cables. Recently, a survey on the costs of this installation/repair work estimated that street works cost about ��7 bn in losses for the UK government income annually; ��5.5 bn are due to social costs and ��1.5 bn is due to damage [1].Acoustic techniques have been used for many years in the water industry to detect leaks [2], and more recently they have been applied to locate underground pipes [3] and blockages (sediment depositions) in pipe networks [4]. Correlation techniques have been in common use for water leak detection over the last 30 years [5].

In general, these techniques work well in metal pipes, but their effectiveness in plastic pipes is limited [6]. Thus, the specific problem of detecting leaks in plastic pipes using acoustics has recently been receiving increasing attention by the research community. There are two fundamental issues that affect leak detection in plastic pipes: the first is that there is considerably more uncertainty in the noise propagation speed for plastic pipes (which needs to be known a priori for acoustic methods to be effective); and the second, which is more important, is that leak noise does not propagate as far in plastic pipes as it does in metal pipes [7]. Hunaidi and Chu [8] have described the frequency content present in leak signals measured on a bespoke buried plastic pipe rig located in Canada. Gao et al.

[9] have also used the data collected from this rig to gain physical insight into the problems by comparing experimental results with predictions from simple models of the correlation function in plastic pipes due to leaks.Although there is a body of work in the literature on leak detection using acoustic methods in plastic water distribution pipes, for example [5�C14], apart from [11], there is no work in which there is a direct comparison between the effectiveness of correlation for leak detection using measurements of acoustic pressure, velocity or acceleration. Reference [11] describes a theoretical study on the different types of sensors and how they combine with the pipe to act as a filter of the leak noise.

The aim Batimastat of this paper is to validate these findings by carrying out an experimental study in a bespoke test rig in which simultaneous measurements using hydrophones (acoustic pressure), geophones (velocity) and accelerometers (acceleration) were made. Moreover, a quality measure for the data is proposed and tested experimentally as a metric of the prominence of the peak in the cross-correlation function related to the leak noise. Two sets of data are presented, one for a strong leak where there was good signal to noise ratio, and one for a weak leak where this was not the case.

Section IV describes the approach of energy-efficient organization, including sensor node awakening and dynamic routing scheme. Experimental results are provided by Section V. Finally, Section VI presents the conclusions of the paper.2.?PreliminariesThe two-dimension sensing field is filled with randomly deployed sensor nodes. Their positions are provided by a global positioning system (GPS). A sink node is located in the centre of the sensing field. Sensor nodes sense collaboratively within a specified sensing period [8]. As the historical target positions become available, the sink node can forecast the target position of the next sensing period.2.1. Multi-Sensor ModelIt is assumed that each sensor node equips two kinds of sensors, one pyroelectric infra-red (PIR) sensor and one omni-microphone sensor.

Sensor nodes obtain the bearing observations with the PIR sensors, while the range observations are produced by the omni-microphone sensors. For each sensor node, it is assumed that the two sensors have the same sensing range Rs. The coordinates of the sensor node and target are denoted by (xis,yis) and (xtarget, ytarget) respectively. Then the true bearing angle is calculated as:��it=arctanytarget?yisxtarget?xis(1)and the true range value is calculated as:rit=(xtarget?xis)2+(ytarget?yis)2(2)Both sensors have zero-mean and Gaussian error distribution. The standard deviation of bearing and range observations is �Ҧ� and ��r respectively.

The observations produced by the sensor node i are:��i=��it+w��(3)ri=rit+wr(4)where wb and wr are the corresponding Gaussian white noise.

2.2. Energy ModelFor Batimastat the scalability of energy consumption in WSN, all the components of the sensor node are supposed to be controlled by an operation system, such as micro Operating System (��OS) [1]. Thereby, shutting down or turning on any component is enabled by device drivers in the specified WSN application.During sensor node operation, four main parts of energy consumption source are considered: processing, sensing, reception and transmission. The processing energy is spent by the processor with memory. It is assumed that when the processor is active it has constant power consumption. The embedded sensors and A/D converter are adopted as there is any sensing task, and the corresponding power consumption is a constant.

For wireless communication, the reception and transmission energy is derived from the RF circuits.When the reception portion is turned on, the sensor node keeps listening to the wireless Drug_discovery channel or receiving data. For the transmission portion of RF circuits, the transmission amplifier has to achieve an acceptable magnification.

Figure 2 shows our experimental results with original outdoor MICA2 data in paper [9]. We select the top N ��nearest�� sequences instead of one sequence when searching the location sequence table. In this case, when N = 2, the minimal average localization error can be obtained.Figure 2.Localization errors due to N.In addition, we also notice that the localization errors for nodes near the border of the region are possibly rather large. For example, in Figure 3, when mobile node M falls into region F1, its coordinate will be estimated as the centroid of F1 if no measurement errors exist. In fact, the real position of M is closer to the centroid of region E1, even F2.Figure 3.Localization for marginal nodes.To reduce the average localization errors and improve the localization accuracy for marginal nodes, a new sequence-based localization method: N-best SBL, is presented.

The best N is first estimated by using random sampling based on a wireless channel fading model, and then the coordinate of the mobile target is obtained with weighted computing of top N sequences.3.?Anchor-Free Localization Method in C-WSN3.1. Coal mine wireless sensor networksTo execute our localization algorithm, first a C-WSN was constructed in underground mines based on the ZigBee technology. We deployed the sensor nodes, called Cicada, as end d
The use of wavelength measurement has a wide range of applications, varying from fiber-optic communication to biological purposes, such as DNA sequencing, including many engineering applications.

This increase of applications has provided motivation to improve all elements of the optical sensing chain, as well as the photodetector fabrication process, conditioning circuits and readout algorithms. In this sense, the most state-of-the-art BICMOS (combination of bipolar and CMOS technology) optical sensors involve a trade-off between implementation cost and readout accuracy.In general, the well known methods for either color identification or wavelength measurement use color filters. In principle three photodetectors are covered respectively by red, green and blue filters which increases both silicon surface and implementation cost due to the deposition of optical filters (nonstandard BICMOS processing) [1�C3]. In this perspective, the buried triple pn junctions (BTJ) structure, using BICMOS process (Figure 1), provides a promising alternative.

Unlike the GSK-3 conventional photodetectors the BTJ has three outputs according to captured light; hence three different spectral responses (Figure 2) carry the wavelength value. Different process parameters, such as doping profiles allow conceiving three bandpass filters curves adjusted, with a limited resolution, in blue, green and red areas [1]. Due to process parameters variations from one chip to another, the bandpass filters shape change significantly, and as a result, this lowers the readout accuracy.

They proved, based on a mathematical analysis, that the energy efficiency is maximized when the data packet is transmitted to the node that has the largest value after the multiplication of the PRR by the distance improvement. Therefore, PRR �� Distance Greedy Forwarding transmits data packets by multiplying the PRR between the sender node an
Plant stress adversely affects container seedling quality, productivity, and thus nursery profit margins. Early detection of seedling stress is of interest to nursery managers because it facilitates corrective changes to cultural practices before stress is well established and thus reduces the risk of financial loss [1].

Many nurseries visually monitor seedlings for stress symptoms during daily operations and periodic inventories, and some submit randomly selected tissue samples for nutrient analysis [2].

A possible alternative to visual plant health monitoring and tissue tests is the use of optical sensors that rely on light to assess the physiological status of plants either at the leaf or canopy level. Canopy, when compared to leaf level optical sensing, is more affected by confounding factors such as variation in biomass or soil background. However, optical sensors that operate at the canopy level have a considerably higher sampling efficiency.Passive optical sensors traditionally used for optical plant analysis require reference measurements to standardize spectral readings to ambient light conditions.

Since light conditions tend Batimastat to change frequently, passive optical sensors constantly require time-consuming reference measurements, limiting their operational use.

In addition, they are costly and may require special training [3]. A more cost-effective and user friendly alternative might be the use of rugged active ground optical remote sensing (AGORS) devices that are used in agriculture for variable-rate nitrogen management [4].Light emitting diodes in the AGORS devices actively emit modulated light and integrated photodetectors Drug_discovery measure only reflected light that has the sensor specific modulation frequency. Sunlight is not measured by the photodetectors since it is not modulated.

These technical properties of the AGORS devices allow them to take up to 100 spectral measurements per second, independent of ambient light conditions and without the need for time consuming spectral reference readings. Hence, AGORS devices could autonomously measure canopy reflectance from irrigation booms on-the-go, independent of light conditions (Figure 1). To objectively evaluate the physiological status of plants, AGORS relies on spectral indices that combine canopy reflectance values measured at different wavelengths.