The Potential of Molecular Indicators of Plant Virus Infection: Are Plants Able to Tell Us They Are Infected?

To our knowledge, there are no reports that demonstrate the use of host molecular markers for the purpose of detecting generic plant virus infection. Two approaches involving molecular indicators of virus infection in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana were examined: the accumulation of small RNAs (sRNAs) using a microfluidics-based method (Bioanalyzer); and the transcript accumulation of virus-response related host plant genes, suppressor of gene silencing 3 (AtSGS3) and calcium-dependent protein kinase 3 (AtCPK3) by reverse transcriptase-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). The microfluidics approach using sRNA chips has previously demonstrated good linearity and good reproducibility, both within and between chips. Good limits of detection have been demonstrated from two-fold 10-point serial dilution regression to 0.1 ng of RNA. The ratio of small RNA (sRNA) to ribosomal RNA (rRNA), as a proportion of averaged mock-inoculation, correlated with known virus infection to a high degree of certainty. AtSGS3 transcript decreased between 14- and 28-days post inoculation (dpi) for all viruses investigated, while AtCPK3 transcript increased between 14 and 28 dpi for all viruses. A combination of these two molecular approaches may be useful for assessment of virus-infection of samples without the need for diagnosis of specific virus infection.

Epistemic Communities under Active Inference

The spread of ideas is a fundamental concern of today’s news ecology. Understanding the dynamics of the spread of information and its co-option by interested parties is of critical importance. Research on this topic has shown that individuals tend to cluster in echo-chambers and are driven by confirmation bias. In this paper, we leverage the active inference framework to provide an in silico model of confirmation bias and its effect on echo-chamber formation. We build a model based on active inference, where agents tend to sample information in order to justify their own view of reality, which eventually leads to them to have a high degree of certainty about their own beliefs. We show that, once agents have reached a certain level of certainty about their beliefs, it becomes very difficult to get them to change their views. This system of self-confirming beliefs is upheld and reinforced by the evolving relationship between agent's beliefs and its observations, which over time will continue to provide evidence for their ingrained ideas about the world. The epistemic communities that are consolidated by these shared beliefs, in turn, tend to produce perceptions of reality that reinforce those shared beliefs. We provide an active inference account of this community formation mechanism. We postulate that agents are driven by the epistemic value that they obtain from sampling or observing the behaviors of other agents. Inspired by digital social networks like Twitter, we build a generative model in which agents generate observable social claims or posts (e.g. `tweets') while reading the socially-observable claims of other agents, that lend support towards one of two mutually-exclusive abstract topics. Agents can choose which other agent they pay attention to at each timestep, and crucially who they attend to and what they choose to read influences their beliefs about the world. Agents also assess their local network’s perspective, influencing which kinds of posts they expect to see other agents making. The model was built and simulated simulated using the freely-available Python package pymdp. The proposed active inference model can reproduce the formation of echo-chambers over social networks, and gives us insight into the cognitive processes that lead to this phenomenon.

Notarization and Anti-Plagiarism: A New Blockchain Approach

In traditional notarization processes, the correctness of the activities between the parties is guaranteed by a central authority or guaranteeing institution. In this case, the authority is not able to quickly establish the originality of the content to be notarized, or at least to have a large degree of certainty without the use of automated systems. This paper presents a new notarization platform that uses blockchain technology and integrates advanced anti-plagiarism approaches able to effectively detect copyright violations of documents that users want to notarize. In addition, our proposal includes the use of models, methods, and techniques, through which a very high level of privacy and information security can be guaranteed.

Surgical Case-Mix and Discharge Decisions: Does Within-Hospital Coordination Matter?

How to Assess the Benefits of Coordination in Managing Hospital Resources In providing patient care, hospitals rely on multiple types of resources, such as operating rooms, recovery beds, labs, and diagnostic equipment, that are often controlled and managed as separate entities and by different decision makers. In “Surgical Case-Mix and Discharge Decisions: Does Within-Hospital Coordination Matter?” Hessam Bavafa, Lerzan Örmeci, Sergei Savin, and Vanitha Virudachalam focus on the interaction between “front-end’’ resources, such as operating rooms, and “backroom’’ resources, such as recovery beds, and compare hospital profitability under the fully coordinated, optimal approach to hospital resource management and under alternative decentralized approaches often encountered in practice. The paper identifies settings in which the benefits of coordination are likely to be high as well as settings in which those benefits are at best moderate. In a given hospital, only hospital managers are in a position to estimate with any degree of certainty potential costs of coordinated management of hospital resources, and the paper’s analysis of the benefits of coordination empowers hospital managers to make informed decisions on the desirability of replacing the often decentralized “status quo” by centralized resource management.

Gloss to the Resolution of the Supreme Court of 26 February 2021, III CZP 24/20 [on the Interpretation of the Will]

The resolution with gloss concerns the rules for interpreting a will. The Supreme Court stated in it that an interpretation of a will should be performed taking into account all circumstances, including those external to the will and using all means of evidence. The Supreme Court decided that it is the court adjudicating in the case for inheritance acquisition, assessing the evidence gathered in a specific case, that should assess whether it is actually possible to establish the will of the testator. The author of the gloss accepts the thesis of the resolution, but argues with the position of the Supreme Court contained in its justification that only the rules for evidence assessment constitute an instrument allowing one to establish the testator’s will. In the opinion of the author of the gloss the functional interpretation of Art. 948 of the Polish Civil Code (k.c.) indicates limits to the interpretation of the will. After all this is a process that renders it possible to determine the testator’s will in a manner that does not raise any doubts. Therefore, if the interpretation of the will of such fails to secure such a degree of certainty, even despite a positive assessment of the evidence gathered in the case, the court should state that the inheritance has been acquired under the Act.

NEW FINDS OF FLINT PLASTIC ART IN THE MOUNTAINOUS-FOREST TRANS-URALS

Публикация вводит в научный оборот две кремневые фигурки, обнаруженные в результате раскопок многослойного памятника Шайтанское 4-6 в Свердловской области. Анализ контекстов и аналогий позволяет с достаточной уверенностью атрибутировать их в рамках аятской культуры эпохи энеолита и рассматривать как свидетельства символической деятельности местного населения в IV-III тыс. до н. э. The paper introduces two flint figurines into scientific discourse, they were found during excavations of the multilayer Shaitanskoye 4-6 site in the Sverdlovsk region. Analysis of the contexts and analogies helps attribute these figurines to the Ayat culture of the Eneolithic with a high degree of certainty and consider them to be an evidence of symbolic activities of the local population in IV-III mill. BC.

Identification of disjunctive dislocations as one of the parameters for estimating a territory seismicity of North Sakhalin

The north of Sakhalin Island is characterized by frequent earthquakes and many disjunctive dislocations. One of the catastrophic earthquakes occurred in the settlement of Neftegorsk. The level of modern technologies makes it possible to track the change in environmental parameters accompanying dangerous natural processes with a high degree of certainty. The article proposes an interpretating technology for disjunctive dislocations detecting, which differs from the existing ones with the complex use and summation of satellite image data using image processing methods widely applied in “computer vision”. The study aims to compile and describe a map of discontinuous faults of the village of Neftegorsk, located in the northern part of Sakhalin Island, using the developed decoding technology and geophysical data. Methods: Identification methods used in the work: 1) methods of primary image processing (correction, transformation, resolution change, cropping, visualization); 2) a set of “contextual” and “autonomous” methods of lineament analysis, with the help of which a series of images is processed (canny, erosion, Hough’s algorithm); 3) methods for constructing maps of discontinuous faults (summation, sequential linking). Results. Using the developed technology, a map of discontinuous faults in the area of the Neftegorsk earthquake was constructed. The implementation of the technology makes it possible to provide the monitoring data on discontinuous faults to organizations that are engaged in seismic zoning, construction and operation of objects for various purposes, including mineral deposits.

Placental Microbiome: a Paradigm Shift or Flaw in the Methodology?

Rapid development of high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatics methods, together with a substantial reduction of their cost, have provided tremendous opportunities for studying the human microbiome. In recent years, much attention has been paid to studies of the microbiome of the upper reproductive tract of woman and the fetoplacental system, which have traditionally been considered sterile. Obtaining irrefutable evidence of the existence of the placental microbiome would enable us to believe with a high degree of certainty that microorganisms colonize the fetus already in the womb, which would have far-reaching consequences not only for medicine, but also for basic biology. This issue triggered a heated discussion among microbiologists, molecular biologists, obstetricians, and neonatologists. In the past few years, a number of studies have been published, both refuting and confirming the dogma, accepted for many decades, that the placenta and fetus are sterile during a healthy pregnancy. This literature review is a critical analysis of the results of studies into the placental microbiome. It provides arguments both for supporters of the hypothesis of the resident microbiota of the placenta and their opponents. Particular attention is paid to the methodological requirements for molecular studies of biological material with low microbial biomass, compliance with which is crucial for obtaining reliable results.

In Silico Prediction of Steroids and Triterpenoids as Potential Regulators of Lipid Metabolism

This review focuses on a rare group of steroids and triterpenoids that share common properties as regulators of lipid metabolism. This group of compounds is divided by the type of chemical structure, and they represent: aromatic steroids, steroid phosphate esters, highly oxygenated steroids such as steroid endoperoxides and hydroperoxides, α,β-epoxy steroids, and secosteroids. In addition, subgroups of carbon-bridged steroids, neo steroids, miscellaneous steroids, as well as synthetic steroids containing heteroatoms S (epithio steroids), Se (selena steroids), Te (tellura steroids), and At (astatosteroids) were presented. Natural steroids and triterpenoids have been found and identified from various sources such as marine sponges, soft corals, starfish, and other marine invertebrates. In addition, this group of rare lipids is found in fungi, fungal endophytes, and plants. The pharmacological profile of the presented steroids and triterpenoids was determined using the well-known computer program PASS, which is currently available online for all interested scientists and pharmacologists and is currently used by research teams from more than 130 countries of the world. Our attention has been focused on the biological activities of steroids and triterpenoids associated with the regulation of cholesterol metabolism and related processes such as anti-hyperlipoproteinemic activity, as well as the treatment of atherosclerosis, lipoprotein disorders, or inhibitors of cholesterol synthesis. In addition, individual steroids and triterpenoids were identified that demonstrated rare or unique biological activities such as treating neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s diseases with a high degree of certainty over 95 percent. For individual steroids or triterpenoids or a group of compounds, 3D drawings of their predicted biological activities are presented.

Optimising the quarantining and response sequence towards SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks on board cargo vessels

The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought significant impact onto the maritime activities worldwide, including disruption to global trade and supply chains. The ability to predict the evolution and duration of a COVID-19 outbreak on cargo vessels would inform a more nuanced response to the event and provide a more precise return-to-trade date. A SEIQ(H)R (Susceptibility-Exposed-Infected-Quarantine-(Hospitalisation)-Removed/Recovered) model is developed and fit-tested to simulate the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 on board cargo vessels of up to 60 crew. Due to specific living and working circumstances on board cargo vessels, instead of utilising the reproduction number, we consider the crew members from the same country to quantify the transmission of the disease. The performance of the model is verified using case studies based on data collected during COVID-19 outbreaks on three cargo vessels in Western Australia during 2020. The convergence between simulation results and the data verifies the performance of the model. The simulations show that the model can forecast the time taken for the transmission dynamics on each vessel to reach their equilibriums, providing informed predictions on the evolution of the outbreak, including hospitalisation rates and duration. The ability to model the evolution of an outbreak, both in duration and severity, is essential to predict outcomes and to plan for the best response strategy. At the same time, if offers a higher degree of certainty regarding the return to trade, which in turn is of significant importance to multiple stakeholders.