Evolution and Population Structures of Prevalent Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Taiwan

Global methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains were dominated by few genetic lineages, suggesting their inherent advantage of competitive fitness. The information of genome evolution and population structures of prevalent MRSA strains can help gain a better understanding of the success of the pandemic clones. Whole-genome sequencing was performed in 340 MRSA isolates belonging to three prevalent lineages, including ST59 (129 isolates), ST239/241 (140 isolates), and ST5 (71 isolates), collected from 1996 to 2016 in Taiwan. The time-scaled phylogeny and evolutionary pathways were estimated by Bayesian analysis using Markov chain Monte Carlo. The toxome, resistome, and plasmids were characterized by screening the raw reads with a public database. ST59, ST239/241, and ST5 MRSA were estimated to emerge in 1974, 1979, and 1995, respectively, in Taiwan. ST59 evolved through two major pathways, generating two subclones in 1980 and 1984. Both ST59 subclones remained prevalent in the healthcare and community environments in late 2010s. ST239/241 diverged into three subclones, respectively, in 1989, 1993, and 1995. The 1995-emerging ST239 subclone predominated after 2000 by replacing two previous early subclones. ST5 could be subdivided into two clades within 3 years of introduction, but no substantial difference of genomic profiles was identified in the strains of distinct clades. Each of the three pandemic MRSA lineages harbored its own specific toxome, resistome, and plasmids. The frequently identified genetic diversities between the subclones of the same lineage were genes mediating immune evasion, leukocidins, enterotoxins, and resistance to aminoglycosides. In conclusion, MRSA ST59 and ST239/241 emerged in the 1970s and evolved drastically during 1980 and 1995, resulting in three successful subclones prevailing in Taiwan. ST5 was introduced late in 1995 without a significant genetic drift during 20 years of evolution.

Vision System Experimentation in Furniture Industrial Environment

The integration of devices that support manufacturing activities and the interaction of workers with these devices in production plants, leads to potential benefits in the industrial environment. Problems, bottlenecks and improvement opportunities throughout production times need to be detected, analyzed and prioritized in order to select the most suitable solutions and address them properly. The integration of particular devices supports the manufacturing process and prevents the need for contingency planning; it also increases the quality of the produced goods, which leads to higher customer confidence and satisfaction. The scope of this article focuses on the development and experimentation of a vision system for the recognition of product components in order to support the classification of such items by the users working in a particular area of the production line. Even if the proposed solution presents a low level of human interaction and innovation, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate how the proposed classification system brings valuable benefits to the overall manufacturing process in a traditional furniture environment, with the inherent advantage that workers can perform this task in a more guided and riskless manner. The Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) approach was adopted to measure the benefits of the solution, which are described in article.

Chamber-Specific Protein Expression during Direct Cardiac Reprogramming

Forced expression of core cardiogenic transcription factors can directly reprogram fibroblasts to induced cardiomyocyte-like cells (iCMs) in vitro and in vivo. This cardiac reprogramming approach provides a proof of concept for induced heart regeneration by converting a fibroblast fate to a cardiomyocyte fate. However, it remains elusive whether chamber-specific cardiomyocytes can be generated by cardiac reprogramming. Therefore, we assessed the ability of the cardiac reprogramming approach for chamber specification in vitro and in vivo. We found that in vivo cardiac reprogramming post-myocardial infarction exclusively induces a ventricular-like phenotype, while a major fraction of iCMs generated in vitro failed to determine their chamber identities. Our results suggest that in vivo cardiac reprogramming may have an inherent advantage of generating chamber-matched new cardiomyocytes as a potential heart regenerative approach.

ROLLED ALLOYS 188

Rolled Alloys 188 is a cobalt-based superalloy with a unique combination of high temperature strength and oxidation resistance, along with adequate ductility even after prolonged exposure to the 760–870 °C (1400–1600 °F) temperature range. Cobalt alloys have an inherent advantage over the nickel-based grades in high temperature creep. Rolled Alloys 188 is solid solution strengthened by a 14% tungsten addition, and further strengthened by M6C and M23C6 carbides. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, elasticity, and tensile properties. It also includes information on forming, heat treating, machining, and joining. Filing Code: Co-136. Producer or source: Rolled Alloys Inc.

Interactome analysis of C. elegans synapses by TurboID-based proximity labeling

Proximity labeling provides a powerful in vivo tool to characterize the proteome of sub-cellular structures and the interactome of specific proteins. Using the highly active biotin ligase TurboID, we optimize a proximity labeling protocol for C. elegans. We use this protocol to characterise the proteomes of the worm's gut, muscle, skin, and nervous system. We express TurboID exclusively in the pair of AFD neurons and show we can identify known and previously unknown proteins expressed selectively in AFD. We knock TurboID into the endogenous elks-1 gene, which encodes a presynaptic active zone protein. We identify many known ELKS-1 interacting proteins as well as previously uncharacterised synaptic proteins. Versatile vectors, and the inherent advantage of C. elegans for biochemistry, make proximity labeling a valuable addition to the nematode's armory.

On the data synergy effect of large-sample multi-physics catchment modeling with machine learning

<p>Watersheds in the world are often perceived as being unique from each other, requiring customized study for each basin. Models uniquely built for each watershed, in general, cannot be leveraged for other watersheds. It is also a customary practice in hydrology and related geoscientific disciplines to divide the whole domain into multiple regimes and study each region separately, in an approach sometimes called regionalization or stratification. However, in the era of big-data machine learning, models can learn across regions and identify commonalities and differences. In this presentation, we first show that machine learning can derive highly functional continental-scale models for streamflow, evapotranspiration, and water quality variables. Next, through two hydrologic examples (soil moisture and streamflow), we argue that unification can often significantly outperform stratification, and systematically examine an effect we call data synergy, where the results of the DL models improved when data were pooled together from characteristically different regions and variables. In fact, the performance of the DL models benefited from some diversity in training data even with similar data quantity. However, allowing heterogeneous training data makes eligible much larger training datasets, which is an inherent advantage of DL. We also share our recent developments in advancing hydrologic deep learning and machine learning driven parameterization.</p>

Chamber Specification During Direct Cardiac Reprogramming

Forced expression of core cardiogenic transcription factors can directly reprogram fibroblasts to induced cardiomyocyte-like cells (iCMs) in vitro and in vivo. This cardiac reprogramming approach provides a proof of concept for induced heart regeneration by converting a fibroblast fate to a cardiomyocyte fate. However, it remains elusive whether chamber-specific cardiomyocytes can be generated by cardiac reprogramming. Therefore, we assessed the ability of the cardiac reprogramming approach for chamber specification in vitro and in vivo. We found that in vivo cardiac reprogramming post-myocardial infarction exclusively generates ventricular-like iCMs, while a major fraction of iCMs generated in vitro fail to determine their chamber identities. Our results indicate that in vivo cardiac reprogramming may have an inherent advantage of generating chamber-matched new cardiomyocytes as a potential heart regenerative approach.

Optimal Team Composition: Diversity to Foster Implicit Team Incentives

We study optimal team design. In our model, a principal assigns either heterogeneous agents to a team (a diverse team) or homogenous agents to a team (a specialized team) to perform repeated team production. We assume that specialized teams exhibit a productive substitutability (e.g., interchangeable efforts with decreasing returns to total effort), whereas diverse teams exhibit a productive complementarity (e.g., cross-functional teams). Diverse teams have an inherent advantage in fostering desirable implicit/relational incentives that team members can provide to each other (tacit cooperation). In contrast, specialization both complicates the provision of cooperative incentives by altering the punishment agents can impose on each other for short expected career horizons and fosters undesirable implicit incentives (tacit collusion) for long expected horizons. As a result, expected compensation is first decreasing and then increasing in the discount factor for specialized teams, while expected compensation is always decreasing in the discount factor for diverse teams. We use our results to develop empirical implications about the association between team tenure and team composition, pay-for-performance sensitivity, and team culture. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting.

Investigation of Mechanical Properties for Titanium Alloy TI-6AL-4V-SS316

Titanium and its alloys are being extensively research and are applied relatively in different field of dentistry in since 1970s. Inherent advantage like high strength, ductility, Low modules of plasticity, high corrosion resistance as titanium alloy (Ti 6A 4V ELI –SS316). It is also light weight and highly tolerant to damage by other the alloy content. It is iron are mixing so forming the corrosion resistance and magnetism effect. So to add aluminum, vanadium and carbon content increases and iron content was decrease the various percentage for metal matrix composite(MMC) methods and stainless steel ss316 add by using stir casting method, and to check the hardness test, corrosion test and chemical specification and mechanical properties of the materials. To avoid the bone cells loss and bone desorption. It has superior biocompatibility making it easy to gratin and attach to bone all which being accepted by the human body.

The Rise of Dominant Firms: The Role of Chance

The principal explanations in the existing economics literature for the formation of concentrated markets are intellectual property-related entry barriers, economies of scale, and network effects. In each of these explanations, a few firms have an inherent advantage, allowing them to maintain their dominance. Our study’s objective is to show that even when all firms are equally situated, an industry can evolve from a competitive to an oligopolistic structure purely as a result of random chance. We create a stylized model where firms are identical at inception, with none having any competitive advantage. In each period, a firm’s profit is random with zero mean. The randomness of profits is hypothesized to stem from demand uncertainty and production cost fluctuations. Simulation results show that, solely as a result of chance, a competitive industry transitions to a market structure where only a handful dominate. The antitrust implications of our paper pertain to the causes of oligopoly formation. Notwithstanding that in some cases oligopolies can arise as a result of anticompetitive behavior of firms, we show that market concentration can also occur as a benign, natural consequence of evolution of an industry characterized by firms with uncertain profits.