Discrete Effects Research Articles

Probabilistic forecasting of dynamic thermal line rating with temporal correlations

Dynamic Thermal Line Rating is a technology that optimizes the utility of overhead power transmission lines by dynamically adjusting the rating according to current ambient conditions. It is often applied in discrete time intervals (i.e., the rating is updated hourly or daily) based on a rating forecast for the next period. This paper examines the effects of temporal discretization on rating prediction, discusses the importance of temporal correlations, and proposes an approach to include these correlations in a rating prediction system. It demonstrates that predictions may be biased towards extreme values if temporal correlation is not taken into account. The proposed solution to this problem is a sampling algorithm based on iterative sampling from a chain graphical model to emulate the correlations as observed in real data. This results in a set of time series samples with well-calibrated joint probability between neighbouring variables. Therefore, these samples are usable in a Monte Carlo optimization of an objective function and yield good calibration overall. The experimental evaluation shows that the dynamic rating calculated through this sampling method permits the usage of the result at its face value without the need for further calibration. It also increases the average daily rating compared to the basic quantile selection method.

Occurrence, functionality and abundance of the TERT promoter mutations.

Telomere shortening at chromosomal ends due to the constraints of the DNA replication process acts as a tumor suppressor by restricting the replicative potential in primary cells. Cancers evade that limitation primarily through the reactivation of telomerase via different mechanisms. Mutations within the promoter of the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene represent a definite mechanism for the ribonucleic enzyme regeneration predominantly in cancers that arise from tissues with low rates of self-renewal. The promoter mutations cause a moderate increase in TERT transcription and consequent telomerase upregulation to the levels sufficient to delay replicative senescence but not prevent bulk telomere shortening and genomic instability. Since the discovery, a staggering number of studies have resolved the discrete aspects, effects and clinical relevance of the TERT promoter mutations. The promoter mutations link transcription of TERT with oncogenic pathways, associate with markers of poor outcome and define patients with reduced survivals in several cancers. In this review, we discuss the occurrence and impact of the promoter mutations and highlight the mechanism of TERT activation. We further deliberate on the foundational question of the abundance of the TERT promoter mutations and a general dearth of functional mutations within noncoding sequences, as evident from pan-cancer analysis of the whole-genomes. We posit that the favorable genomic constellation within the TERT promoter may be less than a common occurrence in other noncoding functional elements. Besides, the evolutionary constraints limit the functional fraction within the human genome, hence the lack of abundant mutations outside the coding sequences.

Variety of subphase emerging sequences, the frustration of three main phases, SmC_{A}^{*}, SmC^{*}, and SmA, and the long-range interlayer interactions.

Prompted by the existence of biaxial subphases 1/4, 2/5, and 3/7 [Phys. Rev. E 96, 012701 (2017)2470-004510.1103/PhysRevE.96.012701], we reconsidered the three-phase frustration and the resulting degeneracy lifting by combining the phase diagram of SmC_{A}^{*}, SmC^{*}, and SmA with the discrete flexoelectric effect. We systematically calculated the phase diagrams and tried to understand the overall picture of the phenomena by means of a simple and intuitively clear way in terms of minimal number of parameters. The treatment naturally explains the highly distorted helical structures of the biaxial subphases as well as the microscopic helical short-pitch of SmC_{α}^{*} which increases or decreases accordingly with rising temperature. The regular subphase emerging sequence is SmC_{A}^{*}(SmC_{α}^{*})-1/4-1/3-2/5-3/7-1/2-SmC^{*}(SmC_{α}^{*}), where the subphases other than 1/3 and 1/2 may or may not emerge. At the same time, we can see a variety of irregular sequences; in particular, any one of the biaxial subphases may singly emerge between SmC_{A}^{*}(SmC_{α}^{*}) and (SmC^{*})SmC_{α}^{*}. Moreover, the experimentally confirmed extraordinary subphase emerging sequence SmC^{*}-1/2-SmC_{α}^{*} appears for particular parameter values. Contrastingly to these affirmative aspects, some calculated results are contradictory to the previously reported experimental results: the change from SmC_{A}^{*} and SmC^{*} to SmC_{α}^{*} is always continuous, the 6-layer 2/3 subphase is not stabilized, and the subphase emerging sequence SmC_{A}^{*}-1/3-SmC^{*} does not appear. The causes of inconsistency and how to resolve them were discussed in comparisons with experimental findings.

Long-term ecological effects of two artificial forests on soil properties and quality in the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Afforestation is an essential process of ecological restoration, landscape reconstruction, and environmental improvement. While large-scale plantations have restored the fragile ecosystems of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, they have also changed local soil characteristics. A 30-year-old typical planted forest on the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was selected to determine the long-term ecological effects of artificial forests on the soil in this study. Physicochemical soil characteristics at varying soil depths and relative soil parameters, such as element stoichiometry and growing stock, were quantified on the different plantations. This soil quality information was used to construct an MDS-SQI Model. Our findings revealed that soil TN, TK, TP, and AP content was higher than pre-afforestation baseline values, while SOC and pH values were lower. Amounts of soil nutrients SOC, TN, TP, TK, AP, and AK, were positively correlated in the artificial forests. The ratio of soil C/N was higher and ratios C/P and N/P were lower in poplar than the Chinese pine plantation. The soil quality index values calculated from the MDS model were 0.31 and 0.40 for poplar and Chinese pine plantations in the top 30 cm and 0.55 and 0.46 in the 100 cm depth, respectively, which indicated that the two plantations had low-quality soil. LiDAR satellite imagery was used to estimate a growing stock of 7723 m3 and 435 m3 in the poplar and Chinese pine plantations. The results suggest that the artificial forest improves soil properties overall but that different stand forests have discrete effects on the soil environment.

Timing of growth affected broiler breeder feeding motivation and reproductive traits

The amount and timing of growth are important factors that affect age at first egg, body conformation, reproductive performance, and hunger in broiler breeders. To investigate the effect of growth pattern on feeding motivation and reproductive performance, 10 unique growth trajectories were designed with 2 levels of the amount of early growth and 5 levels of timing of growth around puberty. A 3-phase Gompertz model that described growth in phase 1 (prepubertal), phase 2 (pubertal), and phase 3 (postpubertal) was used to design the growth trajectories. Second growth phase inflection point (I2) was advanced by 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20% of the coefficient estimated from the breeder-recommended target BW. The growth trajectories were designed with 2 discrete levels of total gain in the prepubertal phase (g1); g1 was either the prepubertal phase gain coefficient, estimated from the breeder-recommended BW (Standard g1) target, or 10% higher (High g1). Forty females were randomly assigned to the growth trajectories using a precision feeding (PF) system. Analysis of covariance was conducted on dependent variables in ten 4-wk periods with g1 and periods as discrete fixed effects, I2 as a continuous fixed effect, and age as a random effect. Differences were reported at P ≤ 0.05. For every week of earlier I2, body weight at photostimulation (BWPS) increased by 126 g; BW at first egg (BWFE) increased by 94 g; 24 wk shank length increased by 0.038 and 1.495 mm in the Standard g1 and High g1 treatments; 24 wk body fat increased by 0.38%; pullets came to lay earlier by 0.49 d; egg weight (EW) increased by 0.27 g; egg production and egg mass (EM) increased by 0.33 egg/hen/d and 0.916 g/d in the High g1 treatment but decreased by 0.27 egg/hen/d and 0.29 g/d in the Standard g1 treatment, respectively. Increasing g1 reduced feeding motivation index by 1.6 and 0.8 visits/meal during rearing and laying phase, respectively. Earlier pubertal growth showed prominent effects on the reproductive performance.

The moderating effect of managerial discretion on blockchain technology and the firms’ innovation quality: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

Along with the flourishing development of digital technology, blockchain technology emerged and has been developed for a broad spectrum of applications. As an emerging digital technology, blockchain provides firms with new ways of creating and capturing value, new information exchange mechanisms and trading systems, as well as new organizational forms. In recent years, Some studies have noted that blockchain technology plays an imperative role in manufacturing firms' innovation quality. However, relevant research considering the effect of blockchain technology on innovation quality is still poorly elaborated. At the same time, we put forward that managerial discretion also has considerable implications for innovation. Given that blockchain technology is still in the experimental stage for business use, managers would rather adopt other technologies that bring profits in the short term than blockchain technology as far as their stakeholders' satisfaction is concerned. For this reason, managers with higher managerial discretion are more likely to leverage blockchain technology to facilitate innovation. Yet, little research has focused on the critical role of managerial discretion on firms’ innovation quality. Taking together the foregoing discussions, this paper is designed to analyze the impact of blockchain technology on innovation quality. We also divide managerial discretion into environmental discretion, organizational discretion, and additional discretion in the Chinese context, analyzing their moderating effects on the relationship between blockchain technology and innovation quality respectively. Further, relevant hypotheses are tested empirically using a panel data set of Chinese listed manufacturing firms involved in the blockchain business from 2012 to 2019. The findings are listed as follows: With an increasing expenditure on blockchain technology, firms' innovation quality exhibits an initially decreasing trend and then an increasing trend. Additionally, it is proved that environmental discretion, organizational discretion and additional discretion in the Chinese context all positively moderate the relationship between blockchain technology and firms' innovation quality.

Effects of Spatial Discretization in Lyα Line Radiation Transfer Simulations

Abstract We describe the addition of Lyα resonant line transfer to our dust continuum radiation transfer code SKIRT, verifying our implementation with published results for spherical problems and using some self-designed three-dimensional setups. We specifically test spatial discretization through various grid types, including hierarchical octree grids and unstructured Voronoi tessellations. We then use a radiation transfer postprocessing model for one of the spiral galaxies produced by the Auriga cosmological zoom simulations to investigate the effect of spatial discretization on the synthetic observations. We find that the calculated Lyα line profiles exhibit an extraordinarily strong dependence on the type and resolution of the spatial grid, rendering the results untrustworthy at best. We attribute this effect to the large gradients in the hydrogen density distribution over small distances, which remain significantly underresolved in the input model. We therefore argue that further research is needed to determine the required spatial resolution of a hydrodynamical simulation snapshot to enable meaningful Lyα line transfer postprocessing.

An Accurate P3M Algorithm for Gravitational Lensing Studies in Simulations

Abstract We present a two-dimensional particle–particle–particle-mesh (P3M) algorithm with an optimized Green’s function and adaptive softening length for gravitational lensing studies in N-body simulations. The analytical form of the optimized Green’s function G ˆ ( k ) is given. The softening schemes (S) are studied for both the particle-mesh (PM) and the particle–particle (PP) calculations in order for accurate force calculation and suppression of the particle discreteness effect. Our method is two orders of magnitude more accurate than the simple PM algorithm with the poor man’s Green’s function (∝ 1/k 2) at a scale of a few mesh cells or smaller. The force anisotropy is also much smaller than the conventional PM calculation. We can achieve a force accuracy better than 0.1% at all scales with our algorithm, which makes it an ideal (accurate and fast) algorithm for microlensing studies. When we apply the algorithm to computing weak and strong lensing quantities in N-body simulations, the errors are dominated by the Poisson noise caused by particle discreteness. The Poisson noise can be suppressed by smoothing out the particle distribution, which can be achieved by simply choosing an adaptive softening length in the PP calculation. We have presented a criterion to set the adaptive softening length. Our algorithm is also applicable to cosmological simulations. We provide a python implementation P3Mlens for this algorithm.

An Examination of Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Discretion and the Moderating Role of Supervisory Support: Evidence from the Field

This study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between the discretion of street-level bureaucrats and their willingness to implement as well as between discretion and client meaningfulness by testing street-level bureaucrat theory in a different context. The effect of discretion on willingness to implement and client meaningfulness may differ due to perceived supervisory support. Data from 241 bureaucrats (labor inspectors) in the Malaysian Ministry of Human Resources indicated that discretion significantly influences bureaucrats’ willingness to implement and client meaningfulness. Critically, the moderating role of perceived supervisory support augmented only the positive impact of discretion on client meaningfulness; for example, this relationship is more significant among bureaucrats who perceive high supervisory support. This study sheds new light on the notable role of supervisory support in ensuring that discretion enhances client meaningfulness and willingness to implement.

Kinetic boundary schemes of axisymmetric multi-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann model for microscale gas flows in microtube

Because of its mesoscopic nature and distinctive computing features, lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is shown as a promising tool to simulate microscale gas flows. However, studies on the microtube flows are rare, and some fundamental problems for LBM to such flows still remain unsolved. In this work, three widely used kinetic boundary schemes, i.e., combined bounce-back and specular-reflection scheme, combined Maxwell-diffusion and specular-reflection scheme, and combined Maxwell-diffusion and bounce-back scheme, for the axisymmetric lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) with multi-relaxation-time (MRT) are investigated. The discrete effects of the three boundary schemes in the axisymmetric MRT-LBE are observed by analyzing the micro-scale Hagen-Poiseuille flow, and the strategies of adjusting the parameters in the boundary schemes are put forward to implement the no-slip boundary condition and the second-order slip boundary condition. Some numerical tests are implemented to validate the proposed correction strategies for kinetic boundary schemes. Our analysis also shows that the kinetic boundary schemes of the axisymmetric Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) LBE cannot realize the no-slip boundary condition and are also inapplicable to microscale gas flows with even some moderate Knudsen numbers (). Therefore, the axisymmetric MRT-LBE is superior to the axisymmetric BGK-LBE in realizing both the no-slip and slip boundary conditions.

Structure and isotropy of lattice pressure tensors for multirange potentials.

We systematically analyze the tensorial structure of the lattice pressure tensors for a class of multiphase lattice Boltzmann models (LBM) with multirange interactions. Due to lattice discrete effects, we show that the built-in isotropy properties of the lattice interaction forces are not necessarily mirrored in the corresponding lattice pressure tensor. This finding opens a different perspective for constructing forcing schemes, achieving the desired isotropy in the lattice pressure tensors via a suitable choice of multirange potentials. As an immediate application, the obtained LBM forcing schemes are tested via numerical simulations of nonideal equilibrium interfaces and are shown to yield weaker and less spatially extended spurious currents with respect to forcing schemes obtained by forcing isotropy requirements only. From a general perspective, the proposed analysis yields an approach for implementing forcing symmetries, never explored so far in the framework of the Shan-Chen method for LBM. We argue this will be beneficial for future studies of nonideal interfaces.

Accelerated burn wound healing with photobiomodulation therapy involves activation of endogenous latent TGF-β1

The severity of tissue injury in burn wounds from associated inflammatory and immune sequelae presents a significant clinical management challenge. Among various biophysical wound management approaches, low dose biophotonics treatments, termed Photobiomodulation (PBM) therapy, has gained recent attention. One of the PBM molecular mechanisms of PBM treatments involves photoactivation of latent TGF-β1 that is capable of promoting tissue healing and regeneration. This work examined the efficacy of PBM treatments in a full-thickness burn wound healing in C57BL/6 mice. We first optimized the PBM protocol by monitoring tissue surface temperature and histology. We noted this dynamic irradiance surface temperature-monitored PBM protocol improved burn wound healing in mice with elevated TGF-β signaling (phospho-Smad2) and reduced inflammation-associated gene expression. Next, we investigated the roles of individual cell types involved in burn wound healing following PBM treatments and noted discrete effects on epithelieum, fibroblasts, and macrophage functions. These responses appear to be mediated via both TGF-β dependent and independent signaling pathways. Finally, to investigate specific contributions of TGF-β1 signaling in these PBM-burn wound healing, we utilized a chimeric TGF-β1/β3 knock-in (TGF-β1Lβ3/Lβ3) mice. PBM treatments failed to activate the chimeric TGF-β1Lβ3/Lβ3 complex and failed to improve burn wound healing in these mice. These results suggest activation of endogenous latent TGF-β1 following PBM treatments plays a key role in burn wound healing. These mechanistic insights can improve the safety and efficacy of clinical translation of PBM treatments for tissue healing and regeneration.

Theory-Driven or Theory-Informed? A Review of Behavioural Economics in Design

The design community has an increasing interest in behaviour change and applying it intentionally in design processes. At the same time, practitioners from diverse fields such as health and policy have embraced behavioural economics theory to inform behaviour change interventions. The success of behavioural economics—or nudge—theory can be explained by its visible results with small investments; however, its application is limited to discrete problems and long-term effects are unclear. Designers look for possibilities and desirable futures rather than discrete interventions based on science. This article is a critical review of behavioural economics theory and its limited application in designing products and systems that are expected to change human behaviours or lifestyles. A behavioural economics-driven design process only works for situations that are narrow and specific. In the majority of design projects, behavioural economics concepts are a reference that informs designers and some design activities like ideation.

Effect of grey-level discretization on texture feature on different weighted MRI images of diverse disease groups.

Many studies of MRI radiomics do not include the discretization method used for the analyses, which might indicate that the discretization methods used are considered irrelevant. Our goals were to compare three frequently used discretization methods (lesion relative resampling (LRR), lesion absolute resampling (LAR) and absolute resampling (AR)) applied to the same data set, along with two different lesion segmentation approaches. We analyzed the effects of altering bin widths or bin numbers for the three different sampling methods using 40 texture indices (TIs). The impact was evaluated on brain MRI studies obtained for 71 patients divided into three different disease groups: multiple sclerosis (MS, N = 22), ischemic stroke (IS, N = 22), cancer patients (N = 27). Two different MRI acquisition protocols were considered for all patients, a T2- and a post-contrast 3D T1-weighted MRI sequence. Elliptical and manually drawn VOIs were employed for both imaging series. Three different types of gray-level discretization methods were used: LRR, LAR and AR. Hypothesis tests were done among all diseased and control areas to compare the TI values in these areas. We also did correlation analyses between TI values and lesion volumes. In general, no significant differences were reported in the results when employing the AR and LAR discretization methods. It was found that employing 38 TIs introduced variation in the results when the number of bin parameters was altered, suggesting that both the degree and direction of monotonicity between each TI value and binning parameters were characteristic for each TI. Furthermore, while TIs were changing with altering binning values, no changes correlated to neither disease nor the MRI sequence. We found that most indices correlated weakly with the volume, while the correlation coefficients were independent of both diseases analyzed and MR contrast. Several cooccurrence-matrix based texture parameters show a definite higher correlation when employing the LRR discretization method However, with the best correlations obtained for the manually drawn VOI. Hypothesis tests among all disease and control areas (co-lateral hemisphere) revealed that the AR or LAR discretization techniques provide more suitable texture features than LRR. In addition, the manually drawn segmentation gave fewer significantly different TIs than the ellipsoid segmentations. In addition, the amount of TIs with significant differences was increasing with increasing the number of bins, or decreasing bin widths. Our findings indicate that the AR discretization method may offer the best texture analysis in MR image assessments. Employing too many bins or too large bin widths might reduce the selection of TIs that can be used for differential diagnosis. In general, more statistically different TIs were observed for elliptical segmentations when compared to the manually drawn VOIs. In the texture analysis of MR studies, studies and publications should report on all important parameters and methods related to data collection, corrections, normalization, discretization, and segmentation.

Numerical Accuracy of Advection Scheme Necessary for Large-Eddy Simulation of Planetary Boundary Layer Turbulence

AbstractRecently, large-eddy simulation (LES) has been increasingly employed in meteorological simulations because it is a promising method for turbulent parameterization. However, it is still difficult to affirm that the numerical accuracy required for a dynamical core is fully understood. In this study, we derived two theoretical criteria for the order of accuracy of the advection term in a typical situation of the atmospheric boundary layer, and demonstrate their validity by numerical experiments. In the targeted grid-spacing of O (10 m), we determined the required order of accuracy as follows: Based on the criterion of the numerical diffusion error, the upwind scheme must have at least seventh-order accuracy. The fourth-order central scheme is barely acceptable with fourth-order explicit diffusion, provided that its coefficient is one or two orders of magnitude smaller than the implicit diffusion coefficient of the third-order upwind scheme. Based on the criterion of numerical dispersion error, at minimum, the seventh or eighth order is required. The dispersion error was indirect for the energy spectra, although we expect it may affect the local turbulence mechanism. We also investigated the effects of temporal discretization for compressible models, and found that relatively lower-order time schemes are available up to the O(10 m) grid spacing if the time step is sufficiently small due to sound wave limitations. The importance of the derived criteria is that the required order of accuracy increases as the grid spacing decreases. This suggests that considerable care should be taken regarding the numerical error problem for future high-resolution LES.

Grav3CH_inv: A GUI-based MATLAB code for estimating the 3-D basement depth structure of sedimentary basins with vertical and horizontal density variation

This study presents a software tool Grav3CH_inv developed to estimate the three-dimensional depth structure of sedimentary basins from their gravity data through an iterative process. The algorithm linked to the developed code operates recursively both in the wavenumber domain and in the space domain based on a triple method combination. The modelling strategy allows considerations of the model space with an exponential increase in density with depth and also with density variations in the horizontal direction. The accuracy of computation of gravity anomalies in the FFT-based forward procedure is also increased by using the shift-sampling technique which minimizes discretization effects during transformations between the space and wavenumber domains. Given the observed gravity anomalies and the density design of the basin, the iterative procedure performs automatically until the goodness of the fit between the observed and modeled anomaly, either the root-mean-square error or the largest error is below its pre-assigned value. As an advantage, the computing time is acceptably short for such a kind of an modelling problem. The GUI-enabled interactive control functions of the Grav3CH_inv code allow users to set optional settings, style of outputs and export formats, and facilitate operations without requiring coding expertise to perform the relevant procedures of the algorithm. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed software is demonstrated by evaluating the synthetically produced gravity anomalies of various 3D basin models and also by analyzing an actual gravity data from the Los Angeles basin, California.

Model-based two-way clustering of second-level units in ordinal multilevel latent Markov models

In this paper, an ordinal multilevel latent Markov model based on separate random effects is proposed. In detail, two distinct second-level discrete effects are considered in the model, one affecting the initial probability vector and the other affecting the transition probability matrix of the first-level ordinal latent Markov process. To model these separate effects, we consider a bi-dimensional mixture specification that allows to avoid unverifiable assumptions on the random effect distribution and to derive a two-way clustering of second-level units. Starting from a general model where the two random effects are dependent, we also obtain the independence model as a special case. The proposal is applied to data on the physical health status of a sample of elderly residents grouped into nursing homes. A simulation study assessing the performance of the proposal is also included.

Selective filtering of excitatory inputs to nucleus accumbens by dopamine and serotonin

The detailed mechanisms by which dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) act in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) to influence motivated behaviors in distinct ways remain largely unknown. Here, we examined whether DA and 5-HT selectively modulate excitatory synaptic transmission in NAc medium spiny neurons in an input-specific manner. DA reduced excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) generated by paraventricular thalamus (PVT) inputs but not by ventral hippocampus (vHip), basolateral amygdala (BLA), or medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) inputs. In contrast, 5-HT reduced EPSCs generated by inputs from all areas except the mPFC. Release of endogenous DA and 5-HT by methamphetamine (METH) and (±)3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), respectively, recapitulated these input-specific synaptic effects. Optogenetic inhibition of PVT inputs enhanced cocaine-conditioned place preference, whereas mPFC input inhibition reduced the enhancement of sociability elicited by MDMA. These findings suggest that the distinct, input-specific filtering of excitatory inputs in the NAc by DA and 5-HT contribute to their discrete behavioral effects.

The global gene expression outline of the bovine blastocyst: reflector of environmental conditions and predictor of developmental capacity

BackgroundMorphological evaluation of embryos has been used to screen embryos for transfer. However, the repeatability and accuracy of this method remains low. Thus, evaluation of an embryo’s gene expression signature with respect to its developmental capacity could provide new opportunities for embryo selection. Since the gene expression outline of an embryo is considered as an aggregate of its intrinsic characteristics and culture conditions, we have compared transcriptome profiles of in vivo and in vitro derived blastocysts in relation to pregnancy outcome to unravel the discrete effects of developmental competence and environmental conditions on bovine embryo gene expression outlines. To understand whether the gene expression patterns could be associated with blastocyst developmental competency, the global transcriptome profile of in vivo (CVO) and in vitro (CVT) derived competent blastocysts that resulted in pregnancy was investigated relative to that of in vivo (NVO) and in vitro (NVT) derived blastocysts which did not establish initial pregnancy, respectively while to unravel the effects of culture condition on the transcriptome profile of embryos, the transcriptional activity of the CVO group was compared to the CVT group and the NVO group was compared to the NVT ones.ResultsA total of 700 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between CVO and NVO blastocysts. These gene transcripts represent constitutive regions, indel variants, 3′-UTR sequence variants and novel transcript regions. The majority (82%) of these DEGs, including gene clusters like ATP synthases, eukaryotic translation initiation factors, ribosomal proteins, mitochondrial ribosomal proteins, NADH dehydrogenase and cytochrome c oxidase subunits were enriched in the CVO group. These DEGs were involved in pathways associated with glycolysis/glycogenesis, citrate acid cycle, pyruvate metabolism and oxidative phosphorylation. Similarly, a total of 218 genes were differentially expressed between CVT and NVT groups. Of these, 89%, including TPT1, PDIA6, HSP90AA1 and CALM, were downregulated in the CVT group and those DEGs were overrepresented in pathways related to protein processing, endoplasmic reticulum, spliceasome, ubiquitone mediated proteolysis and steroid biosynthesis. On the other hand, although both the CVT and CVO blastocyst groups resulted in pregnancy, a total of 937 genes were differential expressed between the two groups. Compared to CVO embryos, the CVT ones exhibited downregulation of gene clusters including ribosomal proteins, mitochondrial ribosomal protein, eukaryotic translation initiation factors, ATP synthases, NADH dehydrogenase and cytochrome c oxidases. Nonetheless, downregulation of these genes could be associated with pre and postnatal abnormalities observed after transfer of in vitro embryos.ConclusionThe present study provides a detailed inventory of differentially expressed gene signatures and pathways specifically reflective of the developmental environment and future developmental capacities of bovine embryos suggesting that transcriptome activity observed in blastocysts could be indicative of further pregnancy success but also adaptation to culture environment.

Continuous and time-discrete non-Markovian system-reservoir interactions: Dissipative coherent quantum feedback in Liouville space

Based on tensor network realizations of path integrals reducing exponential memory scaling to polynomial efficiency and a Liouville space implementation of a time-discrete quantum memory, we investigate a quantum system simultaneously exposed to two structured reservoirs. For this purpose, we employ a numerically exact quasi-2D tensor network combining both diagonal and off-diagonal system-reservoir interactions with a twofold memory for continuous and discrete retardation effects. As a possible example, we study the non-Markovian dynamical interplay between discrete photonic feedback and structured acoustic phonon modes, resulting in emerging inter-reservoir correlations and long-living population trapping within an initially-excited two-level system.