Search results for "adaptation"
showing 10 items of 1775 documents
Genome-wide adaptive complexes to underground stresses in blind mole rats Spalax
2014
The blind mole rat (BMR), Spalax galili, is an excellent model for studying mammalian adaptation to life underground and medical applications. The BMR spends its entire life underground, protecting itself from predators and climatic fluctuations while challenging it with multiple stressors such as darkness, hypoxia, hypercapnia, energetics and high pathonecity. Here we sequence and analyse the BMR genome and transcriptome, highlighting the possible genomic adaptive responses to the underground stressors. Our results show high rates of RNA/DNA editing, reduced chromosome rearrangements, an over-representation of short interspersed elements (SINEs) probably linked to hypoxia tolerance, degene…
Neuroglobin, cytoglobin, and myoglobin contribute to hypoxia adaptation of the subterranean mole rat Spalax.
2010
The subterranean mole rat Spalax is an excellent model for studying adaptation of a mammal toward chronic environmental hypoxia. Neuroglobin (Ngb) and cytoglobin (Cygb) are O 2 -binding respiratory proteins and thus candidates for being involved in molecular hypoxia adaptations of Spalax . Ngb is expressed primarily in vertebrate nerves, whereas Cygb is found in extracellular matrix-producing cells and in some neurons. The physiological functions of both proteins are not fully understood but discussed with regard to O 2 supply, the detoxification of reactive oxygen or nitrogen species, and apoptosis protection. Spalax Ngb and Cygb coding sequences are strongly conserved. However, mRNA and …
Effets aigus et chroniques de l’électrostimulation appliquée au niveau du nerf moteur : importance du retour afférent
2019
The aim of this thesis was to investigate the effects of electrical stimulation protocols favouring an indirect motor units’ (MU) recruitment via sensory axons activation and giving rise to extra force development, on the neuromuscular system. These protocols use wide pulse duration, low stimulation intensity, low and high stimulation frequencies and are applied over the motor nerve. The aim of the first study was to examine the effects of these protocols on the extent and origin of neuromuscular fatigue during an acute application. Results showed that for a similar impact on maximal force generating capacity, low stimulation frequencies limit force decreases during the stimulation trains a…
Innovation strategies geared toward the circular economy: A case study of the organic olive-oil industry
2018
Circular Economy (CE) focuses on the (re)design of processes and products aiming to minimize negative environmental impact, by reducing the use of non-renewable resources, increasing products durability, improving waste management and enhancing the market for secondary raw materials. In the management field very few contributions deal with the topic of CE as a model that firms can implement from a business model perspective. The aim of the present study is to describe, by using a case study in olive oil industry, how firms in practice adapt their business model towards CE paradigm and the influence of personal drivers and stakeholders in this adaptation. The findings reveal that circular ec…
Cellular, physiological, and molecular adaptive responses of Erwinia amylovora to starvation.
2013
Erwinia amylovora causes fire blight, a destructive disease of rosaceous plants distributed worldwide. This bacterium is a nonobligate pathogen able to survive outside the host under starvation conditions, allowing its spread by various means such as rainwater. We studied E. amylovora responses to starvation using water microcosms to mimic natural oligotrophy. Initially, survivability under optimal (28 °C) and suboptimal (20 °C) growth temperatures was compared. Starvation induced a loss of culturability much more pronounced at 28 °C than at 20 °C. Natural water microcosms at 20 °C were then used to characterize cellular, physiological, and molecular starvation responses of E. amylovora. Ch…
Dynamical attractors of memristors and their networks
2018
It is shown that the time-averaged dynamics of memristors and their networks periodically driven by alternating-polarity pulses may converge to fixed-point attractors. Starting with a general memristive system model, we derive basic equations describing the fixed-point attractors and investigate attractors in the dynamics of ideal, threshold-type and second-order memristors, and memristive networks. A memristor potential function is introduced, and it is shown that in some cases the attractor identification problem can be mapped to the problem of potential function minimization. Importantly, the fixed-point attractors may only exist if the function describing the internal state dynamics dep…
The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset
2023
Funder: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant
From deterministic cellular automata to coupled map lattices
2016
A general mathematical method is presented for the systematic construction of coupled map lattices (CMLs) out of deterministic cellular automata (CAs). The entire CA rule space is addressed by means of a universal map for CAs that we have recently derived and that is not dependent on any freely adjustable parameters. The CMLs thus constructed are termed real-valued deterministic cellular automata (RDCA) and encompass all deterministic CAs in rule space in the asymptotic limit $\kappa \to 0$ of a continuous parameter $\kappa$. Thus, RDCAs generalize CAs in such a way that they constitute CMLs when $\kappa$ is finite and nonvanishing. In the limit $\kappa \to \infty$ all RDCAs are shown to ex…
RNA viruses as complex adaptive systems
2004
RNA viruses have high mutation rates and so their populations exist as dynamic and complex mutant distributions. It has been consistently observed that when challenged with a new environment, viral populations adapt following hyperbolic-like kinetics: adaptation is initially very rapid, but then slows down as fitness reaches an asymptotic value. These adaptive dynamics have been explained in terms of populations moving towards the top of peaks on rugged fitness landscapes. Fitness fluctuations of varying magnitude are observed during adaptation. Often the presence of fluctuations in the evolution of physical systems indicates some form of self-organization, or where many components of the s…
A new method for linear affine self-calibration of stationary zooming stereo cameras
2012
This paper presents a simple, yet effective, method to recover the affine structure of a scene from a (stereo) pair of stationary zooming cameras. The proposed method solely relies on point correspondences across images and no knowledge about the scene whatsoever is required. Our method exploits implicit properties of the projective camera matrices of zooming cameras and allows to estimate the affine structure of a scene by solving a linear system of equations. The 3D reconstruction results obtained by using our method, on both real and simulated data, have remarkably validated its feasibility.