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\"Dick Grayson is his name. Heroism is his one true calling. To heed that call, he's worn many faces. He was the first Robin and a replacement Batman, a superspy and a dead man walking. But the greatest of the masks he's worn into battle against evil is the one he created himself--the one he's just won a hard-fought battle to reclaim. He's Nightwing. And he's returned to reclaim the streets of the cities he loves. From Gotham City to his adopted home of Blèudhaven, Nightwing is taking the war on crime personally--and he's taking it right to the enemy: The all-powerful Court of Owls and their rogue agent Raptor. The old foes out for his blood and the new serial killer framing him for crimes he didn't commit. Even his mentor, the Dark Knight, and his longtime love interest Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, won't stand in his way. Now more than ever, the night belongs to Nightwing!\"-- Provided by publisher.

A theoretical and computational framework for the study and engineering of light–matter interactions is reviewed in here. The framework rests on the invariance properties of electromagnetism, and is formalized in a Hilbert space whose conformally invariant scalar product provides connections to physical quantities, such as the energy or momentum of a given field, or the outcome of measurements. The light–matter interaction is modeled by the polychromatic scattering operator, which establishes a natural connection to a popular computational formalism, the transition matrix, or T‐matrix. This review contains a succinct yet comprehensive description of the main theoretical ideas, and illustrates some of the practical benefits of the approach. This is a review of an algebraic approach to light–matter interactions that is theoretically powerful and computationally friendly. Theoretical expressions can be developed and manipulated conveniently thanks to the generality of the basis on which the approach rests, and a compact notation. The tight connections to popular computational tools allow one to readily perform numerical calculations.

The aim is to describe the epidemiology of epilepsy surgery in children and adults in the United States. We performed a descriptive study of the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) for the year 2012 and the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) for the period 2010–2012, the largest all-payer databases on inpatient data in the USA. These databases estimate 97% of all inpatient hospital discharges in the USA. In the KID, 12,899 (0.2%) of admission records had brain surgery and 600 of the 4900 (12.2%) admissions with focal refractory epilepsy underwent epilepsy surgery. Epilepsy surgery occurred in 60% of Whites, 7% of Blacks, 15% of Hispanics, and 10% of other races. In the NIS, 99,650 (0.3%) of admission records had brain surgery and 1170 of the 9775 (12%) admissions with focal refractory epilepsy underwent epilepsy surgery. Epilepsy surgery occurred in 69% of Whites, 7% of Blacks, 9% of Hispanics, and 8% of other races. In both the KID and the NIS, lower socioeconomic status was mildly underrepresented in epilepsy surgery. In both pediatric and adult admissions, there was an overrepresentation of Whites and underrepresentation of Blacks, which persisted after stratifying by socioeconomic status. Females were underrepresented in epilepsy surgery, but gender disparities were partially explained by differences in socioeconomic status. Epilepsy surgery is not equally distributed across races in the USA and these differences are not fully attributable to differences in socioeconomic status. Racial disparities in epilepsy surgery similarly affect children and adults.

Beneficial root endophytes such as Trichoderma spp. can reduce infections by parasitic nematodes through triggering host defences. Little is currently known about the complex hormone signalling underlying the induction of resistance. In this study, we investigated whether Trichoderma modulates the hormone signalling network in the host to induce resistance to nematodes. We investigated the role and the timing of the jasmonic acid (JA)- and salicylic acid (SA)-regulated defensive pathways in Trichoderma-induced resistance to the root knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita. A split-root system of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) was used to study local and systemic induced defences by analysing nematode performance, defence gene expression, responsiveness to exogenous hormone application, and dependence on SA and JA signalling of Trichoderma-induced resistance. Root colonization by Trichoderma impeded nematode performance both locally and systemically at multiple stages of the parasitism, that is, invasion, galling and reproduction. First, Trichoderma primed SA-regulated defences, which limited nematode root invasion. Then, Trichoderma enhanced JA-regulated defences, thereby antagonizing the deregulation of JA-dependent immunity by the nematodes, which compromised galling and fecundity. Our results show that Trichoderma primes SA- and JA-dependent defences in roots, and that the priming of responsiveness to these hormones upon nematode attack is plastic and adaptive to the parasitism stage.

Nitrogen (N) fertilization has enhanced the forest land carbon (C) sink by increasing the amount of C stored in soils, possibly through reductions in decomposition. Established differences in nutrient acquisition strategies between trees that associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi have been shown to influence the magnitude of this N effect on decomposition and soil C stocks. However, N deposition is declining across many temperate North American forests and little is known about how mycorrhizal-associated strategies in trees may impact short-term recovery. To examine divergent nutrient acquisition responses to N between AM and ECM systems, we developed a conceptual framework based on the idea that N fertilization reduces the C cost of N acquisition. In this framework, under N fertilization, ECM trees shift from N mining to N foraging and AM trees shift from mycorrhizal foraging to root foraging. We expanded on this framework by hypothesizing that initial recovery occurs across a spectrum, where nutrient foraging strategies either (1) persist in their N fertilized state, (2) return to the ambient state, or (3) shift to a new steady state. We tested this framework by examining fine root biomass and morphology, mycorrhizal colonization, and soil enzyme activities in organic horizon, bulk mineral, and rhizosphere mineral soils in AM and ECM dominated plots during the last year of a ~ 30 year N fertilization experiment and 1-year after fertilization ceased at Bear Brook Watershed, in Maine USA. Overall, our results indicate that N fertilization disrupted the organic N mining nutrient economy of ECM trees by reducing fine root biomass and mycorrhizal colonization and altering root morphology to improve N foraging. In contrast, AM trees appeared to shift from mycorrhizal foraging toward root foraging by reducing mycorrhizal colonization while maintaining root biomass. While AM and ECM mycorrhizal colonization in the fertilized plots remained lower than the ambient plots during the year after fertilization ceased, the rapid recovery of roots in fertilized ECM soils back to a level similar to those of the control soils was mirrored by ECM rhizosphere and organic horizon enzyme recovery. The ECM bulk mineral and all of the AM soil enzymes activities remained at their N fertilized levels. Although these are short-term recovery responses, our results suggest that the recovery of enzyme activities in the majority of ECM soil fractions, but not the AM soils may destabilize stored soil C in ECM stands that decades of N deposition have enhanced.

The loading of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from soils to inland waters and ultimate transport to the ocean is a critical flux pathway in the terrestrial biosphere carbon cycle. Fires can significantly affect this flux through biogeochemical processes related to oxidation and mobilization of DOC in the soil. Therefore, in order to accurately estimate and model terrestrial carbon storage and export to the marine environment, we need to better understand the effects of fire on DOC flux. In this analysis, we compiled available observational data sets from seven watersheds across the conterminous United States generally spanning the years 1999-2019. We used these data sets to examine the effects of fire on riverine DOC concentration draining a watershed to study both the immediate impacts and the post-fire recovery patterns. Our results suggest that these fires result in an immediate decrease in riverine DOC concentration draining the watershed by 26 ± 15%, and the time required for DOC concentrations to recover to pre-fire levels was estimated to be, on average, approximately 9 months. During recovery, DOC concentration was 24 ± 11% lower than the long-term average for the watershed. In addition, the larger the proportion of the watershed that burned, the greater the concentration decrease and the longer the time period for post-fire recovery.

We introduce a definition of the electromagnetic chirality of an object and show that it has an upper bound. Reciprocal objects attain the upper bound if and only if they are transparent for all the fields of one polarization handedness (helicity). Additionally, electromagnetic duality symmetry, i.e., helicity preservation upon interaction, turns out to be a necessary condition for reciprocal objects to attain the upper bound. We use these results to provide requirements for the design of such extremal objects. The requirements can be formulated as constraints on the polarizability tensors for dipolar objects or on the material constitutive relations for continuous media. We also outline two applications for objects of maximum electromagnetic chirality: a twofold resonantly enhanced and background-free circular dichroism measurement setup, and angle-independent helicity filtering glasses. Finally, we use the theoretically obtained requirements to guide the design of a specific structure, which we then analyze numerically and discuss its performance with respect to maximal electromagnetic chirality.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the educational landscape worldwide. One year after the disease outbreak, blended learning, which combines distance and face-to-face learning, became an alternative to fully online learning to address the demands of ensuring students’ health and education. Physical education teachers faced an additional challenge, given the experiential nature of their subject, but research on teachers’ perspectives is scarce. This study aims to explore high school physical education teachers’ perceptions of the potential, advantages, and disadvantages of the blended learning model of instruction. An online survey was used to register the views of 174 Spanish high school physical education teachers (120 men and 54 women). The main findings revealed that physical education teachers considered that blended learning, compared with full face-to-face learning, implied a work overload, worsened social relationships, and did not help to increase students’ motivation. Likewise, most teachers considered the physical activity performed by students during the blended learning period as being lower than usual. Furthermore, teachers reported that the students from lower-income families were the ones that experienced a lack of technological means the most. These results may guide both present and future policies and procedures for blended physical education. More research is needed to analyze the usefulness of blended learning in high school physical education.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbioses are mutualistic associations between soil fungi and most vascular plants. The symbiosis significantly affects the host physiology in terms of nutrition and stress resistance. Despite the lack of host range specificity of the interaction, functional diversity between AM fungal species exists. The interaction is finely regulated according to plant and fungal characters, and plant hormones are believed to orchestrate the modifications in the host plant. Using tomato as a model, an integrative analysis of the host response to different mycorrhizal fungi was performed combining multiple hormone determination and transcriptional profiling. Analysis of ethylene-, abscisic acid-, salicylic acid-, and jasmonate-related compounds evidenced common and divergent responses of tomato roots to Glomus mosseae and Glomus intraradices, two fungi differing in their colonization abilities and impact on the host. Both hormonal and transcriptional analyses revealed, among others, regulation of the oxylipin pathway during the AM symbiosis and point to a key regulatory role for jasmonates. In addition, the results suggest that specific responses to particular fungi underlie the differential impact of individual AM fungi on plant physiology, and particularly on its ability to cope with biotic stresses.

Abstract As actors of global carbon cycle, Agaricomycetes (Basidiomycota) have developed complex enzymatic machineries that allow them to decompose all plant polymers, including lignin. Among them, saprotrophic Agaricales are characterized by an unparalleled diversity of habitats and lifestyles. Comparative analysis of 52 Agaricomycetes genomes (14 of them sequenced de novo) reveals that Agaricales possess a large diversity of hydrolytic and oxidative enzymes for lignocellulose decay. Based on the gene families with the predicted highest evolutionary rates—namely cellulose-binding CBM1, glycoside hydrolase GH43, lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase AA9, class-II peroxidases, glucose–methanol–choline oxidase/dehydrogenases, laccases, and unspecific peroxygenases—we reconstructed the lifestyles of the ancestors that led to the extant lignocellulose-decomposing Agaricomycetes. The changes in the enzymatic toolkit of ancestral Agaricales are correlated with the evolution of their ability to grow not only on wood but also on leaf litter and decayed wood, with grass-litter decomposers as the most recent eco-physiological group. In this context, the above families were analyzed in detail in connection with lifestyle diversity. Peroxidases appear as a central component of the enzymatic toolkit of saprotrophic Agaricomycetes, consistent with their essential role in lignin degradation and high evolutionary rates. This includes not only expansions/losses in peroxidase genes common to other basidiomycetes but also the widespread presence in Agaricales (and Russulales) of new peroxidases types not found in wood-rotting Polyporales, and other Agaricomycetes orders. Therefore, we analyzed the peroxidase evolution in Agaricomycetes by ancestral-sequence reconstruction revealing several major evolutionary pathways and mapped the appearance of the different enzyme types in a time-calibrated species tree.