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The current difficulty in obtaining financial resources to acquire equipment for training personnel and the requirement of well-trained engineers in the industry looking toward sustainability, creates an opportunity to innovate in teaching tools, such as the proposed in this article, where a virtual world is projected, integrating the planning and design of a photovoltaic power plant (PV). The user can interact while immersed in the virtual scene as if the PV system were already installed, illustrating technical characteristics of selected equipment and its installation details, while the user is interacting with didactic activities focused on visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning. This paper summarizes an initiative within the teaching–learning context, which aims to show the advantages of using modern tools, such as virtual reality, to achieve teaching goals in a renewable energy course.

Selective harmonics elimination (SHE) is a widely applied control strategy in multilvel inverters for harmonics reduction. SHE is designed for the elimination of low-order harmonics while keeping the fundamental component equal to any previously specified amplitude. This paper proposes a novel bio-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm called Black Widow Optimization Algorithm (BWOA) for solving the SHE set of equations. BWOA mimics the spiders’ different movement strategies for courtship-mating, guaranteeing the exploration and exploitation of the search space. The optimization results show the reliability of BWOA compared to the state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms and show competitive results as a microalgorithm, opening its future application for an on-line optimization calculation in low requirement hardware.

A small prototype of a 5-level single-phase full H-bridge inverter for ocean current applications is presented. The inverter was designed applying level-shift control in pulse-width modulation (LS-PWM), and experimental tests were conducted using a variety of modulation subschemes, including in-phase disposition (IPD), alternate-phase opposition–disposition (APOD), and phase opposition–disposition (POD). The test results were examined for harmonic content and voltage total harmonic distortion (THDV). The results suggest that the inverter presents a viable solution with significant potential for the development of a larger three-phase inverter model that can be used to connect ocean current power sources to the electrical grid.

CF2 and Mef2 influence a variety of developmental muscle processes at distinct stages of development. Nevertheless, the exact nature of the CF2-Mef2 relationship and its effects on muscle building remain yet to be resolved. Here, we explored the regulatory role of CF2 in the Drosophila embryo muscle formation. To address this question and not having proper null CF2 mutants we exploited loss or gain of function strategies to study the contribution of CF2 to Mef2 transcription regulation and to muscle formation. Our data point to CF2 as a factor involved in the regulation of muscle final size and/or the number of nuclei present in each muscle. This function is independent of its role as a Mef2 collaborative factor in the transcriptional regulation of muscle-structural genes. Although Mef2 expression patterns do not change, reductions or increases in parallel in CF2 and Mef2 transcript abundance were observed in interfered and overexpressed CF2 embryos. Since CF2 expression variations yield altered Mef2 expression levels but with correct spatio-temporal Mef2 expression patterns, it can be concluded that only the mechanism controlling expression levels is de-regulated. Here, it is proposed that CF2 regulates Mef2 expression through a Feedforward Loop circuit.

Caenophidian snakes include the file snake genus Acrochordus and advanced colubroidean snakes that radiated mainly during the Neogene. Although caenophidian snakes are a well-supported clade, their inferred affinities, based either on molecular or morphological data, remain poorly known or controversial. Here, we provide an expanded molecular phylogenetic analysis of Caenophidia and use three non-parametric measures of support-Shimodaira-Hasegawa-Like test (SHL), Felsentein (FBP) and transfer (TBE) bootstrap measures-to evaluate the robustness of each clade in the molecular tree. That very different alternative support values are common suggests that results based on only one support value should be viewed with caution. Using a scheme to combine support values, we find 20.9% of the 1265 clades comprising the inferred caenophidian tree are unambiguously supported by both SHL and FBP values, while almost 37% are unsupported or ambiguously supported, revealing the substantial extent of phylogenetic problems within Caenophidia. Combined FBP/TBE support values show similar results, while SHL/TBE result in slightly higher combined values. We consider key morphological attributes of colubroidean cranial, vertebral and hemipenial anatomy and provide additional morphological evidence supporting the clades Colubroides, Colubriformes, and Endoglyptodonta. We review and revise the relevant caenophidian fossil record and provide a time-calibrated tree derived from our molecular data to discuss the main cladogenetic events that resulted in present-day patterns of caenophidian diversification. Our results suggest that all extant families of Colubroidea and Elapoidea composing the present-day endoglyptodont fauna originated rapidly within the early Oligocene-between approximately 33 and 28 Mya-following the major terrestrial faunal turnover known as the \"Grande Coupure\" and associated with the overall climate shift at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. Our results further suggest that the caenophidian radiation originated within the Caenozoic, with the divergence between Colubroides and Acrochordidae occurring in the early Eocene, at ~ 56 Mya.

Mitochondrial carrier homologs 1 (MTCH1) and 2 (MTCH2) are orphan members of the mitochondrial transporter family SLC25. Human MTCH1 is also known as presenilin 1‐associated protein, PSAP. MTCH2 is a receptor for tBid and is related to lipid metabolism. Both proteins have been recently described as protein insertases of the outer mitochondrial membrane. We have depleted Mtch in Drosophila and show here that mutant flies are unable to complete development, showing an excess of apoptosis during pupation; this observation was confirmed by RNAi in Schneider cells. These findings are contrary to what has been described in humans. We discuss the implications in view of recent reports concerning the function of these proteins.

Hematopoiesis is a complex process regulated by both cell intrinsic and cell extrinsic factors. Alterations in the expression of critical genes during hematopoiesis can modify the balance between stem cell differentiation and proliferation, and may ultimately give rise to leukemia and other diseases. AF10 is a transcription factor that has been implicated in the development of leukemia following chromosomal rearrangements between the AF10 gene and one of at least two other genes, MLL and CALM. The link between AF10 and leukemia, together with the known interactions between AF10 and hematopoietic regulators, suggests that AF10 may be important in hematopoiesis and in leukemic transformation. Here we show that AF10 is important for proper hematopoietic differentiation. The induction of hematopoietic differentiation in both human hematopoietic cell lines and murine total bone marrow cells triggers a decrease of AF10 mRNA and protein levels, particularly in stem cells and multipotent progenitors. Gain- and loss-of-function studies demonstrate that over- or under-expression of AF10 leads to apoptotic cell death in stem cells and multipotent progenitors. We conclude that AF10 plays a key role in the maintenance of multipotent hematopoietic cells.

The Southern Chiapas focus of onchocerciasis in Southern Mexico represents one of the major onchocerciasis foci in Latin America. All 559 endemic communities of this focus have undergone semi-annual mass treatment with ivermectin since 1998. In 50 communities of this focus, ivermectin frequency shifted from twice to four times a year in 2003; an additional 113 communities were added to the quarterly treatment regimen in 2009 to achieve a rapid suppression of transmission. In-depth epidemiologic and entomologic assessments were performed in six sentinel communities (which had undergone 2 rounds of ivermectin treatment per year) and three extra-sentinel communities (which had undergone 4 rounds of ivermectin treatment per year). None of the 67,924 Simulium ochraceum s.l. collected from this focus during the dry season of 2011 were found to contain parasite DNA when tested by polymerase chain reaction-enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (PCR-ELISA), resulting in an upper bound of the 95% confidence interval (95%-ULCI) of the infective rate in the vectors of 0.06/2,000 flies examined. Serological assays testing for Onchocerca volvulus exposure conducted on 4,230 children 5 years of age and under (of a total population of 10,280 in this age group) revealed that 2/4,230 individuals were exposed to O. volvulus (0.05%; one sided 95% confidence interval = 0.08%). The in-depth epidemiological and entomological findings from the Southern Chiapas focus meet the criteria for interruption of transmission developed by the international community.

We generalize the classic Fourier transform operator F p by using the Henstock–Kurzweil integral theory. It is shown that the operator equals the H K -Fourier transform on a dense subspace of L p , 1 < p ≤ 2 . In particular, a theoretical scope of this representation is raised to approximate the Fourier transform of functions on the mentioned subspace numerically. Besides, we show the differentiability of the Fourier transform function F p ( f ) under more general conditions than in Lebesgue’s theory. Additionally, continuity of the Fourier Sine transform operator into the space of Henstock-Kurzweil integrable functions is proved, which is similar in spirit to the already known result for the Fourier Cosine transform operator. Because our results establish a representation of the Fourier transform with more properties than in Lebesgue’s theory, these results might contribute to development of better algorithms of numerical integration, which are very important in applications.

We describe a severe form of congenital myasthenic syndrome (CMS) caused by two heteroallelic mutations: a nonsense and a missense mutation in the gene encoding agrin (AGRN). The identified mutations, Q353X and V1727F , are located at the N-terminal and at the second laminin G-like (LG2) domain of agrin, respectively. A motor-point muscle biopsy demonstrated severe disruption of the architecture of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), including: dispersion and fragmentation of endplate areas with normal expression of acetylcholinesterase; simplification of postsynaptic membranes; pronounced reduction of the axon terminal size; widening of the primary synaptic cleft; and, collection of membranous debris material in the primary synaptic cleft and in the subsynaptic cytoplasm. Expression studies in heterologous cells revealed that the Q353X mutation abolished expression of full-length agrin. Moreover, the V1727F mutation decreased agrin-induced clustering of the acetylcholine receptor (AChR) in cultured C2 muscle cells by >100-fold, and phosphorylation of the MuSK receptor and AChR beta subunit by ~tenfold. Surprisingly, the V1727F mutant also displayed increased binding to α-dystroglycan but decreased binding to a neural (z+) agrin-specific antibody. Our findings demonstrate that agrin mutations can associate with a severe form of CMS and cause profound distortion of the architecture and function of the NMJ. The impaired ability of V1727F agrin to activate MuSK and cluster AChRs, together with its increased affinity to α-dystroglycan, mimics non-neural (z−) agrin and are important determinants of the pathogenesis of the disease.