Canine and Feline Testicular Preservation

The increased interest in breeding dogs and cats and their use as models for other canids and felids demand research to improve reproductive techniques. Among them, testicular cryopreservation stands out. Testicular cryopreservation enables the maintenance of reproductive capacity and allows the establishment of germplasm banks for several species of commercial value or at risk of extinction. Furthermore, it enables the transport of genetic material among different regions. It is noteworthy that this biotechnology represents the only possibility of preserving the fertility of prepubertal animals that have died, so it has great importance in the propagation of the genetic material of animals. The spermatogonia present in the testes can be cultivated in vitro and the sperm obtained can be used in artificial reproduction programs. Although advances have been achieved with the use of testicular fragments to obtain viable and functional germ cells, the establishment of protocols that can be used in clinical routine have not been concluded yet. The testicular cryopreservation process can be carried out through techniques such as slow freezing, fast freezing and vitrification. However, the protocols used for the canine and feline species are still in the experimental phase. Given the importance of the topic, the aim of this review is to draw a profile of the subject approaching the main works on testicular cryopreservation in dogs and cats.

Consequences of COVID-19 on my experiment of gene overexpression in beans

<p>My name is Salma Meléndez and I am currently a graduate in Agrogenomic Sciences. In March 2020, when COVID-19 was detected in Mexico, I was in my eighth semester of my undergraduate degree. At that time, he had an experiment of overexpression of a gene in bean roots, in order to explore its function during symbiosis with rhizobial bacteria. Unfortunately, the laboratory and the entire campus canceled their face-to-face activities in order to reduce the risk of contagion. An alternative was to take the experimental plants to my house to give the proper care, however, the situation became difficult as I did not have the space or the required conditions at home. On the other hand, other research centers with which we had collaboration agreements also canceled access, such is the case of the Optical Research Center, where we used the confocal microscope to detect subcellular location of proteins. The closure of institutions allowed me to write theoretical parts of my thesis, however, the experimental phase was definitely affected for at least six months. The experiment with the plants was almost completely lost. In the subsequent months I had the opportunity to re-enter my institution; however, under strict conditions and on staggered days, which made certain measurements that require daily continuity difficult. Currently, the laboratory is not as it used to look, full of colleagues sharing results and difficulties, exchanging advice and even certain materials. I think the pandemic has pushed us to do our work more individually and slowly. Consequently, my degree was delayed and transferred from 2020 to 2021. There are still many challenges to overcome, although activities have not been fully restored, science does not stop and we have found a way to face it, slowly but surely.</p>

Characterization and development perspectives of “Baby Kiwi “(Actinidia arguta Planch.) Culture in Georgia

The article presenta general description and development opportunities of “Baby Kiwi “(Actinidia arguta Planch,), one of the species of exotic fruit (Actinidia Lindl.), which is still in the experimental phase in Georgia and is an important topic in terms of the fruit assortment. The research has been carried out in collection orchard located in one of the leading regions of fruit-growing of Georgia - Shida (Inner) Kartli (vil. Jighaura, Saguramo Mtskheta municipality) and belonging to LEPL Scientific-Research Center of Agriculture (SRCA) in 2019-2020. The research aims at study of “Baby Kiwi “(Actinidia arguta Planch,) varieties ( Waik and Kens Reddy ) with the purpose of further propagation in Shida kartli itself and also in various fruit growing regions of Georgia. The following agronomic and biological characteristics were studied according to the cultivars: calendar periods of phenological phases; pomological description of fruits, their chemical analysis and productivity.

Prospects of Extracellular Vesicles in Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

The diagnostic and therapeutic potential of extracellular vesicles (EVs) has been recognised in many fields of medicine for several years. More recently, it has become a topic of increasing interest in otorhinolaryngology, head and neck surgery (ORL-HNS). With this narrative review, we have aspired to determine different aspects of those nanometrically sized theranostic particles, which seem to have promising potential as biomarkers in some of the most common diseases of the ORL-HNS by being available via less invasive diagnostic methods. At the same time, a better understanding of their activity provides us with new possibilities for developing specific target treatments. So far, most research has been oriented towards the role of EVs in the progression of head and neck cancer, notably head and neck squamous cell cancer. Nonetheless, some of this research has focused on chronic diseases of the ears, nose and paranasal sinuses. However, most research is still in the preclinical or experimental phase. It therefore requires a further and more profound understanding of EV content and behaviour to utilise their nanotheranostic capacities to their fullest potential.

Improving Text-to-Code Generation with Features of Code Graph on GPT-2

Code generation, as a very hot application area of deep learning models for text, consists of two different fields: code-to-code and text-to-code. A recent approach, GraphCodeBERT uses code graph, which is called data flow, and showed good performance improvement. The base model architecture of it is bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), which uses the encoder part of a transformer. On the other hand, generative pre-trained transformer (GPT)—another multiple transformer architecture—uses the decoder part and shows great performance in the multilayer perceptron model. In this study, we investigate the improvement of code graphs with several variances on GPT-2 to refer to the abstract semantic tree used to collect the features of variables in the code. Here, we mainly focus on GPT-2 with additional features of code graphs that allow the model to learn the effect of the data stream. The experimental phase is divided into two parts: fine-tuning of the existing GPT-2 model, and pre-training from scratch using code data. When we pre-train a new model from scratch, the model produces an outperformed result compared with using the code graph with enough data.

Pressure stress modeling on expanded polystyrene materials using genetic programming

In the production of expanded polystyrene, the standards are very high in terms of thermal, fire, dimensional, and mechanical characteristics, because each of the characteristics is a condition for achieving quality that allows competitiveness in the market. To ensure high-quality products, it is necessary to achieve optimal performance and product quality through carefully adjusted input parameters of production. Since the production of expanded polystyrene is specific in several ways, an experimental study was conducted in which the basic parameters affecting product quality were detected and through which a series of experiments were performed to prove product quality. Experimental research for this work was conducted on three types of expanded polystyrene samples whose purpose is to insulate floors exposed to pressure. The samples were made of the same material of different densities and aging times for which the pressure stress at a deformation of 10% was tested. After the experimental phase, the modeling of the output parameters was performed. Modeling involved the development of a model that describes a given problem and the obtained modeled values were analyzed and compared with the experimental one. The modeling method used genetic programming using the GPdotNET software package. The goal of modeling with the GpdotNET tool is to obtain a realistic model that would give the value of the compression stress at a deformation of 10% as an output variable in materials made of expanded polystyrene.