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Mitochondria are dynamic organelles that undergo frequent remodeling to accommodate developmental needs. Here, we describe a striking organization of mitochondria into a large ball-like structure adjacent to the nucleus in premeiotic Drosophila melanogaster spermatocytes, which we term "mitoball". Mitoballs are transient structures that colocalize with the endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi bodies, and the fusome. We observed similar premeiotic mitochondrial clusters in a wide range of insect species, including mosquitos and cockroaches. Through a genetic screen, we identified that Milton, an adaptor protein that links mitochondria to microtubule-based motors, mediates mitoball formation. Flies lacking a 54 amino acid region in the C terminus of Milton completely lacked mitoballs, had swollen mitochondria in their spermatocytes, and showed reduced male fertility. We suggest that the premeiotic mitochondrial clustering is a conserved feature of insect spermatogenesis that supports sperm development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated Learning (FL) presents a decentralized approach to model training in the agri-food sector and offers the potential for improved machine learning performance, while ensuring the safety and privacy of individual farms or data silos. However, the conventional FL approach has two major limitations. First, the heterogeneous data on individual silos can cause the global model to perform well for some clients but not all, as the update direction on some clients may hinder others after they are aggregated. Second, it is lacking with respect to the efficiency perspective concerning communication costs during FL and large model sizes. This paper proposes a new technical solution that utilizes network pruning on client models and aggregates the pruned models. This method enables local models to be tailored to their respective data distribution and mitigate the data heterogeneity present in agri-food data. Moreover, it allows for more compact models that consume less data during transmission. We experiment with a soybean yield forecasting dataset and find that this approach can improve inference performance by 15.5% to 20% compared to FedAvg, while reducing local model sizes by up to 84% and the data volume communicated between the clients and the server by 57.1% to 64.7%. Our method demonstrates the potential to use efficient models that are more environmentally friendly to support the agri-food sector's transition to net zero. Future enhancements of this method could further optimize distributed learning in agri-food, enhancing sustainability and applicability. • We propose a new federated pruning learning method for yield forecasting. • Our method can be used to improve local inference performance. • The method reduces communication costs during training and model sizes. • Our method facilitates the on-edge implementation of ML models using sparse tensor. • The method is generalizable and works with different pruning policies and schedules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works in Political Geography have focused on the exercise of territorial sovereignty beyond land, emphasising the voluminousness and dynamism of material forces that condition how territory is governed. In comparison, works on modern territorial statehood in IR have generally overlooked the question of materiality. By combining the attentiveness to more-than-human materiality in Political Geography with IR's focus on the role of epistemic transformations in the history of the modern international system, this article proposes a more comprehensive understanding of territorial sovereignty and modern statehood as constituted by the technoscientific management of the territory's materiality. Using the development of atmospheric sciences in the 19th century as an example of science-state entanglement in the emergence of the modern international system, this article shows that the integration of atmospheric knowledge production with state and international governance produced the vertical dimension as a realm of governmental concern. Through a detailed case study of the development of atmospheric sciences in early 20th-century China and scientific ideas about China's climate, this article demonstrates how the scientific discovery of the vertical dimension reconfigures territorial sovereignty as sovereignty over volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on the origins of modern territoriality and the modernist conception of territory has largely been confined to Europe and its colonial histories. Few attempts have been made to understand modern territoriality from an alternative epistemic starting point. This article moves beyond critiques of Eurocentrism by examining the territorial metamorphosis of the Qing Empire to modern China. Like the United States and Russia, China has retained its early modern continental colonial possessions. In order to explain the territorialisation of the multi-ethnic Qing empire, this article engages empirically with cartographic and textual representations of China from Confucian literati scholars, European Jesuit cartographers and the Manchu imperial court from the 17th to the early 19th centuries. The empirical study shows that by the early 19th century, a new territorialised conception of 'China' closely resembling that of modern territoriality had emerged. This 'modern' and Sinocentric form of territoriality encompassed areas that were hitherto seen as foreign and non-Chinese. In opposition to the extant Eurocentric historiography, this article traces the emergence of modern territoriality in imperial China to a nexus of European cartographic techniques, Qing imperial conquests and the literati synthesis of Manchu imperial and Sinocentric forms of territoriality. By showing the deep historical processes and global entanglements behind the emergence of modern China as a territorial state, the article makes a case for a polycentric account of modern territoriality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inheritance of the mitochondrial genome does not follow the rules of conventional Mendelian genetics. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is present in many copies per cell and is inherited through the maternal germline. In addition, mutations in the mtDNA will give rise to heteroplasmy, the coexistence of different mtDNA variants within a single cell, whose levels can vary considerably between cells, organs or organisms. The inheritance and subsequent accumulation of deleterious variants are the cause of severe progressive mitochondrial disorders and play a role in many other conditions, including aging, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we discuss the processes that give rise to cell-to-cell variability in mtDNA composition, focussing on somatic mtDNA segregation and on less conventional sources of heteroplasmy: non-maternal inheritance and mtDNA recombination. Understanding how mtDNA variants and mutations emerge and evolve within an organism is of crucial importance to prevent and cure mitochondrial disease and can potentially impact more common aging-associated conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The California wildfires of October 2017 were one of the largest wildfires in the state's history. Using surface temperature, surface pressure, cloud liquid and ice water contents, precipitation data, and wind data, we explore possible reasons for the wildfires. It is found that the mean surface temperature in California has increased, while mean cloud water contents and mean precipitation in California has decreased over the past 39 years. Higher temperatures, higher surface pressures, lower cloud water contents, lower precipitation, enhanced surface Santa Ana winds, and enhanced sinking air have set up favorable meteorological conditions for stronger wildfires in California, such as the October 2017 wildfires. Furthermore, the CO2 data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 satellite have, for the first time, made it possible for us to quantitatively characterize the impact of wildfires on atmospheric CO2 in California, which revealed that atmospheric CO2 increased by 2 ppm after the October 2017 California wildfires. Analyses in this study can help us better understand the causes and impacts of wildfires. Key Points: Temporal variations of atmospheric variables are analyzed, which suggest that surface temperature increases while cloud water contents and precipitation decrease in the past 39 years in CaliforniaHigher temperatures, higher surface pressures, lower cloud water contents and precipitation, enhanced Santa Ana winds and sinking air have set up favorable meteorological conditions for stronger wildfires in CaliforniaWe provide the first quantitative characteristics of the impact of wildfires on atmospheric CO2, in which the concentration of CO2 is found to increase 2 ppm after the October 2017 California wildfires [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exact treatment of Markovian open quantum systems, when based on numerical diagonalization of the Liouville super-operator or averaging over quantum trajectories, is severely limited by Hilbert space size. Perturbation theory, standard in the investigation of closed quantum systems, has remained much less developed for open quantum systems where a direct application to the Lindblad master equation is desirable. We present such a perturbative treatment which will be useful for an analytical understanding of open quantum systems and for numerical calculation of system observables which would otherwise be impractical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Composite scintillators consisting of nanosize inorganic crystals embedded in an organic matrix have been actively pursued in recent years. One method of producing nanosize crystals is through wet milling; however, since milling is known to introduce defects, the light yield of the milled crystals must be characterized. In this work, a new method of characterizing the light yield of milled inorganic crystals will be explored and discussed; this method will take into account explicitly the concentration of the inorganic crystals and the difference in stopping power between the crystals and the solvent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The newly launched, June 2009, US High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program has rekindled a renewed interest in forecasting high-speed rail (HSR) ridership. The first step to the concerted effort by the federal, state, rail, and other related agencies to develop a nationwide HSR network is the development of credible approaches to forecast the ridership. This article presents a nested logit/simultaneous choice model to improve the demand forecast in the context of intercity travel. In addition to incorporating the interrelationship between trip generation and mode choice decisions, the simultaneous model also provides a platform for the same utility function flowing between both the decision-making processes. Using American Travel Survey data, supplemented by various mode parameters, the proposed model improves the forecast accuracy and confirms the significant impact of travel costs on both mode choice and trip generation. Furthermore, the cross elasticity of mode choice and trip generation related to travel costs and other modal characteristics may shed some light on transportation policies in the area of intercity travel, especially in anticipation of HSR development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Renal interstitial fibrosis is an important mechanism in the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) to end-stage kidney disease. However, we lack specific treatments to slow or halt renal fibrosis. Ribosome profiling identified upregulation of a secreted micropeptide, C4orf48 (Cf48), in mouse diabetic nephropathy. Cf48 RNA and protein levels were upregulated in tubular epithelial cells in human and experimental CKD. Serum Cf48 levels were increased in human CKD and correlated with loss of kidney function, increasing CKD stage, and the degree of active interstitial fibrosis. Cf48 overexpression in mice accelerated renal fibrosis, while Cf48 gene deletion or knockdown by antisense oligonucleotides significantly reduced renal fibrosis in CKD models. In vitro, recombinant Cf48 (rCf48) enhanced TGF-ß1-induced fibrotic responses in renal fibroblasts and epithelial cells independently of Smad3 phosphorylation. Cellular uptake of Cf48 and its profibrotic response in fibroblasts operated via the transferrin receptor. RNA immunoprecipitation-sequencing identified Cf48 binding to mRNA of genes involved in the fibrotic response, including Serpine1, Acta2, Ccn2, and Col4a1. rCf48 binds to the 3'UTR of Serpine1 and increases mRNA half-life. We identify the secreted Cf48 micropeptide as a potential enhancer of renal fibrosis that operates as an RNA-binding peptide to promote the production of extracellular matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Capsule Endoscopy Versus Colonoscopy for the Detection of Polyps and Cancer," by A. Van Gossum and colleagues in the 2009 issue of the "New England Journal of Medicine."

Presents a letter to the editor regarding the survival of people who were homozygous for the C282Y mutation among a cohort of French centenarians without treatment for hemochromatosis.

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by intracellular α-synuclein (α-Syn) deposition. Alternation of the α-Syn expression level in plasma or erythrocytes may be used as a potential PD biomarker. However, no studies have compared their prognostic value directly with the same cohort. Methods: The levels of α-Syn in plasma and erythrocytes, obtained from 45 PD patients and 45 control subjects, were measured with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Then, correlation and receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis were performed to characterize the predictive power of erythrocytic and plasma α-Syn. Results: Our results showed that α-Syn expression levels in both plasma and erythrocytes were significantly higher in PD patients than in control subjects (823.14 ± 257.79 vs. 297.10 ± 192.82 pg/mL, p < 0.0001 in plasma; 3,104.14 ± 143.03 vs. 2,944.82 ± 200.41 pg/mL, p < 0.001 in erythrocytes, respectively). The results of the ROC analysis suggested that plasma α-Syn exhibited better predictive power than erythrocytic α-Syn with a sensitivity of 80.0%, specificity of 97.7%, and a positive predictive value of 77.8%. The expression level of plasma α-Syn correlated well with the age of patients, H-Y stage, MoCA scale, and UPDRS motor scale. On the contrary, there was no correlation between erythrocytic α-Syn level and clinical parameters in this study. Conclusion: Our results suggest that plasma α-Syn could be a specific and sensitive potential diagnostic biomarker for PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and study aims Acetic acid chromoendoscopy (AAC) enhances the ability to correctly identify Barrett's neoplasia, and is increasingly used by both expert and nonexpert endoscopists. Despite its increasing use, there is no validated training strategy to achieve competence. The aims of our study were to develop a validated training tool in AAC-assisted lesion recognition, to assess endoscopists' baseline knowledge of AAC-assisted lesion recognition, and to evaluate the efficacy and impact of this training tool. Methods A validated assessment of 40 images and 20 videos was developed. A total of 13 endoscopists with experience of Barrett's endoscopy but no formal training in AAC were recruited to the study. Participants underwent: baseline assessment 1, online training, assessment 2, interactive seminar, assessment 3. Results Baseline assessment demonstrated a sensitivity of 83 % and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 83 %. The online training intervention significantly improved sensitivity to 95 % and NPV to 94 % (P < 0.01). Further improvement was seen after a 1-day interactive seminar including live cases, with sensitivity increasing to 98 % and NPV to 97 %. Conclusions The data demonstrate the need for training in AAC-assisted lesion recognition as baseline performance, even by Barrett's experts, was poor. The online training and testing tool for AAC for Barrett's neoplasia was successfully developed and validated. The training intervention improved performance of endoscopists to meet ASGE PIVI standards. The training tool increases the endoscopist's degree of confidence in the use of AAC. The training tool also leads to shift in attitudes of endoscopists from Seattle protocol towards AAC-guided biopsy protocol for Barrett's surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Ferritin, the major iron storage protein, has dual functions; it sequesters redox activity of intracellular iron and facilitates iron turn-over. Here we present high angle annular dark field (HAADF) images from individual hepatic ferritin cores within tissue sections, these images were obtained using spherical aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) under controlled electron fluence. HAADF images of the cores suggest a cubic morphology and a polycrystalline (ferrihydrite) subunit structure that is not evident in equivalent bright field images. By calibrating contrast levels in the HAADF images using quantitative electron energy loss spectroscopy, we have estimated the absolute iron content in any one core, and produced a three dimensional reconstruction of the average core morphology. The core is composed of up to eight subunits, consistent with the eight channels in the protein shell that deliver iron to the central cavity. We find no evidence of a crystallographic orientation relationship between core subunits. Our results confirm that the ferritin protein shell acts as a template for core morphology and within the core, small (∼2nm), surface-disordered ferrihydrite subunits connect to leave a low density centre and a high surface area that would allow rapid turn-over of iron in biological systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Superior thermal insulating cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) foams are generated. • Attenuation of thermal radiation with COC norbornene (NB) groups has been reported. • The effect of the COC NB content on cellular structures is investigated. • Supercritical fluid aided COC foams with tunable cellular structures are created. In the effort to alleviate climate change and energy consumption issues, thermally insulating polymeric foams can improve energy-management efficiency. To limit the transmission of infrared (IR) radiation through such foams, strong IR-shielding carbon particles are often incorporated to improve thermal insulation performance by blocking IR radiation. However, carbon particles can also dramatically increase solid phase conduction, which counteract efforts to further decrease thermal conductivity. Herein, we report a superior thermal insulation (~28.5 mW·m−1K−1) microcellular foam from ethylene-norbornene (NB) based cyclic olefin copolymers (COCs). Unlike the traditional carbon-filled approach, the incorporation of more NB segments (content from 33, 36, 51 and 58 mol %) in the COC structure greatly improved its ability to block thermal radiation without increasing its solid thermal conductivity. Using the supercritical CO 2 and n-butane as physical blowing agents, we fabricated COC foams with tunable morphology. The void fraction of the foams ranged from 50 to 92%, and they demonstrated a high degree of closed cell content (>98%). In COC foams with given cellular structures (e.g. void fraction of 90%, cell size of 100–200 μm and cell density of ~107 cells/cc), their total thermal conductivity decreases from 49.6 to 37.9 mW·m−1K−1 with increasing NB content from 33 to 58%, which is attributed to high-NB COC's strong ability to attenuate thermal radiation. Subsequently, a highly expanded COC microcellular foam with superior thermal conductivity was successfully developed by tuning both NB content and cellular structure. As a proof of concept, the incorporation of NB segments in COC foams can offer an effective way to shield thermal radiation, opening a new perspective in the development of thermal insulation foams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the article "Harnessing endogenous pathways and metabolites to treat or prevent neurodegenerative disease" by Todd E. Golde and colleagues is presented.