Back to the Origins: Background and Perspectives of Grapevine Domestication

Domestication is a process of selection driven by humans, transforming wild progenitors into domesticated crops. The grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.), besides being one of the most extensively cultivated fruit trees in the world, is also a fascinating subject for evolutionary studies. The domestication process started in the Near East and the varieties obtained were successively spread and cultivated in different areas. Whether the domestication occurred only once, or whether successive domestication events occurred independently, is a highly debated mystery. Moreover, introgression events, breeding and intense trade in the Mediterranean basin have followed, in the last thousands of years, obfuscating the genetic relationships. Although a succession of studies has been carried out to explore grapevine origin and different evolution models are proposed, an overview of the topic remains pending. We review here the findings obtained in the main phylogenetic and genomic studies proposed in the last two decades, to clarify the fundamental questions regarding where, when and how many times grapevine domestication took place. Finally, we argue that the realization of the pan-genome of grapes could be a useful resource to discover and track the changes which have occurred in the genomes and to improve our understanding about the domestication.     

Conditional t-SNE: more informative t-SNE embeddings

Machine Learning - Dimensionality reduction and manifold learning methods such as t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) are frequently used to map high-dimensional data into a...     

Surface Reconstruction Engineering with Synergistic Effect of Mixed-Salt Passivation Treatment toward Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

Surface passivation treatment is a widely used strategy to resolve trap-mediated nonradiative recombination toward high-efficiency metal-halide perovskite photovoltaics. However, a lack of passivation with mixture treatment has been investigated, as well as an in-depth understanding of its passivation mechanism. Here, a systematic study on a mixed-salt passivation strategy of formamidinium bromide (FABr) coupled with different F-substituted alkyl lengths of ammonium iodide is demonstrated. It is obtained better device performance with decreasing chain length of the F-substituted alkyl ammonium iodide in the presence of FABr. Moreover, they unraveled a synergistic passivation mechanism of the mixed-salt treatment through surface reconstruction engineering, where FABr dominates the reformation of the perovskite surface via reacting with the excess PbI₂. Meanwhile, ammonium iodide passivates the perovskite grain boundaries both on the surface and top perovskite bulk through penetration. This synergistic passivation engineer results in a high-quality perovskite surface with fewer defects and suppressed ion migration, leading to a champion efficiency of 23.5% with mixed-salt treatment. In addition, the introduction of the moisture resisted F-substituted groups presents a more hydrophobic perovskite surface, thus enabling the decorated devices with excellent long-term stability under a high humid atmosphere as well as operational conditions.     

Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors as Multitarget Ligands: New Players in Alzheimer's Disease Drug Discovery?

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) are responsible for controlling gene expression by modulating the acetylation status of histone proteins. Furthermore, they modulate the activity of cytoplasmic non-histone proteins. Due to the involvement of HDACs in neurodevelopment, memory formation, and cognitive processes, HDACIs have been suggested as innovative agents for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Given their mechanisms of action and the complex nature of AD, HDACIs have been proposed for the design of novel multitarget ligands (MTLs). To this aim, the fragment responsible for HDAC inhibition has been coupled with other structures that are able to provide additional biological actions, such as antioxidant activity or the inhibition of phosphodiesterase 5, transglutaminase 2, and glycogen synthase kinase 3β. Herein we discuss recent efforts to design HDACI-based MTLs as potential disease-modifying entities.     

Robust vectorization method for electrical circuit drawings using component morphology

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Decomposition and representation of electrical circuit drawings to a suitable vector form has widespread applications related to data compression, storage,...     

The efficiency and comparison of novel techniques for cell wall disruption in astaxanthin extraction from Haematococcus pluvialis

The efficiency of various techniques pulsed electric field (PEF), ultrasound (US), high‐pressure microfluidisation (HPMF), hydrochloric acid (HCl) and ionic liquids (ILs) for cell wall disruption in astaxanthin extraction from Haematococcus pluvialis was compared. The results indicated that ILs, HCl and HPMF treatment were shown the most efficient for cell disruption with more than 80% astaxanthin recovery. While the cell wall integrity of H. pluvialis cyst cell was less affected by US and PEF treatment. It was found that imidazolium‐based ILs showed the greater potential for cell disruption than pyridinium‐based and ammonium‐based ILs. Among all the ILs examined, 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium chloride ([Bmim] Cl) exhibited efficient cell disruption and capability of astaxanthin recovery at mild condition (pretreatment with 40% IL aqueous solution at 40 °C, followed by extraction with methanol at 50 °C) without extensive energy consumption and special facility requirement. In addition, recyclability of ILs was excellent.     

Extraction of Distinguished Hyperbolic Trajectories for 2D Time-Dependent Vector Field Topology

This paper does two main contributions to 2D time-dependent vector field topology. First, we present a technique for robust, accurate, and efficient extraction of distinguished hyperbolic trajectories (DHT), the generative structures of 2D time-dependent vector field topology. It is based on refinement of initial candidate curves. In contrast to previous approaches, it is robust because the refinement converges for reasonably close initial candidates, it is accurate due to its adaptive scheme, and it is efficient due to its high convergence speed. Second, we provide a detailed evaluation and discussion of previous approaches for the extraction of DHTs and time-dependent vector field topology in general. We demonstrate the utility of our approach using analytical flows, as well as data from computational fluid dynamics.