Rat leukocyte population dynamics predicts a window for intervention in aging.

Age-associated changes in human hematopoiesis have been mostly recapitulated in mouse models; but not much has been explored in rats, a physiologically closer model to humans. To establish whether rat hematopoiesis closely mirrors humans’, we examined the peripheral blood of rats throughout their lifespan. Significant age-associated changes showed distinctive population shifts predictive of age. A divergence between predicted versus chronological age changes was indicative of fragility; thus, these data may be a valuable tool to identify underlying diseases or as a surrogate predictor for intervention efficacy. Notably, several blood parameters and DNA methylation alterations defined specific leverage points during aging, supporting non-linear aging effects and highlighting a roadmap for interventions at these junctures. Overall, we present a simple set of rat blood metrics that can provide a window into their health and inform the implementation of interventions in a model system physiologically relevant for humans.

Bijections for Faces of the Shi and Catalan Arrangements

In 1986, Shi derived the famous formula $(n+1)^{n-1}$ for the number of regions of the Shi arrangement, a hyperplane arrangement in ${R}^n$. There are at least two different bijective explanations of this formula, one by Pak and Stanley, another by Athanasiadis and Linusson. In 1996, Athanasiadis used the finite field method to derive a formula for the number of $k$-dimensional faces of the Shi arrangement for any $k$. Until now, the formula of Athanasiadis did not have a bijective explanation. In this paper, we extend a bijection for regions defined by Bernardi to obtain a bijection between the $k$-dimensional faces of the Shi arrangement for any $k$ and a set of decorated binary trees. Furthermore, we show how these trees can be converted to a simple set of functions of the form $f: [n-1] \to [n+1]$ together with a marked subset of $\text{Im}(f)$. This correspondence gives the first bijective proof of the formula of Athanasiadis. In the process, we also obtain a bijection and counting formula for the faces of the Catalan arrangement. All of our results generalize to both extended arrangements.

Mapping borophene onto graphene: Quasi-exact solutions for guiding potentials in tilted Dirac cones

We show that if the solutions to the (2+1)-dimensional massless Dirac equation for a given 1D potential are known, then they can be used to obtain the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for the same potential, orientated at an arbitrary angle, in a tilted anisotropic 2D Dirac material. This simple set of transformations enables all the exact and quasi-exact solutions associated with 1D quantum wells in graphene to be applied to the confinement problem in tilted Dirac materials such as borophene. We also show that smooth electron waveguides in tilted Dirac materials can be used to manipulate the degree of valley polarization of quasiparticles travelling along a particular direction of the channel. We examine the particular case of the hyperbolic secant potential to model realistic top-gated structures for valleytronic applications.

Development and application of a vehicle safety rating score for public transport minibuses

Minibuses are widely used for public transport, particularly in developing countries, yet their safety levels are often poor. This study identified a simple set of active and passive safety measures and 566 minibuses in the United Arab Emirates were inspected. Most vehicles were without seat belts or head restraints and had inadequate seat attachment. Low rates of active and passive safety features were recorded. The safety rating system assigned weightings to each of the variables in the survey, based on an assessment of their approximate relative risk. Applied to the benchmarking sample, safety rating scores (out of 50) ranged from below 10 points for the least safe vehicles to around 40 points for the best. Many vehicles inspected scored below 20 points. The safety rating score provided a practical assessment of the safety of the UAE minibus vehicle fleet and could be adapted to other vehicle types. The study outcomes are helping to both justify a new minibus safety standard in the UAE aiming to significantly reduce death and serious injury among the many passengers using this service, as well as to begin the process of removing the least safe vehicles from the fleet.

“All the world’s a stage” – the Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) as enabling technology to overcome restrictions in online teaching

The Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio is a free software that enables tutors to overcome the typical restrictions of video conferencing software like MS Teams or Zoom. This paper develops from a real-life situation where the pandemic-induced move to online teaching has put severe restrictions on otherwise engaging teaching and student activities – specifically role-plays and use of props - hitherto run in the classroom. The goal is to demonstrate how OBS Studio was set-up and employed to overcome this situation. In doing so, the paper offers a simple set-up tutorial for two scenes against this background to show that using OBS Studio is straightforward and intuitive.

Fishing with Scissors: A Mnemonic for Thermodynamic Formula

Most of the branches of engineering and basic science require,to a different extent,the use of basic thermodynamic formulas relating state variables (temperature, T; pressure, P; volume, V; entropy, S) and thermodynamic potentials (internal energy, U; Helmholtz free energy, A; enthalpy, H; Gibbs free energy, G). The different interrelations among variables, their constrains, and dependencies make them particularly difficult to remember and understand. For students learning and for chemists and engineers needing to rapidly recall these thermodynamic relationships for problem solving and practical applications, a quick method to easily remember them would be most welcome. Herein, Fishing with scissors mnemonic is presented. The mnemonic is seen as Sun with rays. Thermodynamic potential terms (A, G, H, U) as alphabetic doubles are aligned in sun rays regions where as state variables (T, P, S, V) are at sun body. Following a simple set of rules in this mnemonic, a large range of thermodynamic equations can be easily recalled without direction or sign difficulties present in previously reported methods.

Basic Spatiotemporal Gait Variables of Young and Older Healthy Volunteers Walking Along a Novel Figure-of-8 Path

Background: Locomotion along curved trajectories requires fine coordination among body segments. Elderly people may adopt a cautious attitude when steering. A simple, expeditious, patient-friendly walking protocol can be a tool to help clinicians. We evaluated the feasibility of a procedure based upon a newly designed Figure-of-eight (nFo8) path and an easy measurement operation.Methods: Sixty healthy volunteers, aged from 20 to 86 years, walked three times at self-selected speed along a 20 m linear (LIN) and the 20 m nFo8 path. Number of steps, mean speed and walk ratio (step length/cadence) were collected. Data were analysed for the entire cohort and for the groups aged 20–45, 46–65, and >65 years.Results: There was no difference in mean LIN walking speed between the two younger groups but the oldest was slower. During nFo8, all groups were slower (about 16%) than during LIN. Cadence was not different across groups but lower during nFo8 in each group. Step length was about 8% shorter in the two younger groups and 14% shorter in the oldest during nFo8 compared to LIN. Walk ratio was the smallest in the oldest group for both LIN and nFo8.Conclusions: A complex nFo8 walking path, with fast and easy measurement of a simple set of variables, detects significant differences with moderate and large effects in gait variables in people >65 years. This challenging trajectory is more revealing than LIN. Further studies are needed to develop a quick clinical tool for assessment of gait conditions or outcome of rehabilitative treatments.

Fair Insurance Premium Rate in Connected SEIR Model under Epidemic Outbreak

In this paper, we aim to determine an optimal insurance premium rate for health-care in deterministic and stochastic SEIR models. The studied models consider two standard SEIR centres characterised by migration fluxes and vaccination of population. The premium is calculated using the basic equivalence principle. Even in this simple set-up, there are non-intuitive results that illustrate how the premium depends on migration rates, the severity of a disease and the initial distribution of healthy and infected individuals through the centres. We investigate how the vaccination program affects the insurance costs by comparing the savings in benefits with the expenses for vaccination. We compare the results of deterministic and stochastic models.

Methods for Classifying Abbreviations Document Names (Based on the Material of the Modern German Language)

The article offers options for the classification of abbreviations-documentary names on the basis of various characteristics. The following can be selected as the classification criteria: the number of components in an abbreviation, which affects its derivational potential; the structure of the abbreviation, i.e. the division of abbreviations into initial, syllabic and combined; the types of documents, for example: laws, regulations, agreements, et.; the classification on a thematic basis, i.e. in relation to the sphere of management and economics. This classification is mainly based on truncated components, which are more informative than initials. Among document names there are abbreviations consisting of purely German components and abbreviations that are borrowings or consisting of a combination of autochthonous and borrowed components. It is possible to classify documentary abbreviations by the presence of borrowings in their composition. The main attention in the article is paid to the classification by their place in the internal onomastic field. The names of documents used in the common European space and the names of documents with a narrower scope of distribution (Germany as a whole or in specific federal lands) are distinguished, which determines their entry into the nuclear or peripheral zone of the onomastic space. The presence of other onyms in the documentary names, among which toponyms, that characterize the effect of specific legal documents in a certain territory, occupy a special place. It is concluded that abbreviated document names represent a certain field of onomastics, the core of which are global document names, and that they represent a certain system, and not a simple set of abbreviated onyms.

Potential yield simulated by global gridded crop models: using a process-based emulator to explain their differences

How global gridded crop models (GGCMs) differ in their simulation of potential yield and reasons for those differences have never been assessed. The GGCM Intercomparison (GGCMI) offers a good framework for this assessment. Here, we built an emulator (called SMM for simple mechanistic model) of GGCMs based on generic and simplified formalism. The SMM equations describe crop phenology by a sum of growing degree days, canopy radiation absorption by the Beer–Lambert law, and its conversion into aboveground biomass by a radiation use efficiency (RUE). We fitted the parameters of this emulator against gridded aboveground maize biomass at the end of the growing season simulated by eight different GGCMs in a given year (2000). Our assumption is that the simple set of equations of SMM, after calibration, could reproduce the response of most GGCMs so that differences between GGCMs can be attributed to the parameters related to processes captured by the emulator. Despite huge differences between GGCMs, we show that if we fit both a parameter describing the thermal requirement for leaf emergence by adjusting its value to each grid-point in space, as done by GGCM modellers following the GGCMI protocol, and a GGCM-dependent globally uniform RUE, then the simple set of equations of the SMM emulator is sufficient to reproduce the spatial distribution of the original aboveground biomass simulated by most GGCMs. The grain filling is simulated in SMM by considering a fixed-in-time fraction of net primary productivity allocated to the grains (frac) once a threshold in leaves number (nthresh) is reached. Once calibrated, these two parameters allow for the capture of the relationship between potential yield and final aboveground biomass of each GGCM. It is particularly important as the divergence among GGCMs is larger for yield than for aboveground biomass. Thus, we showed that the divergence between GGCMs can be summarized by the differences in a few parameters. Our simple but mechanistic model could also be an interesting tool to test new developments in order to improve the simulation of potential yield at the global scale.