Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Solution-processed two-dimensional materials for next-generation photovoltaics

In the ever-increasing energy demand scenario, the development of novel photovoltaic (PV) technologies is considered to be one of the key solutions to fulfil the energy request. In this context, graphene and related two-dimensional (2D) materials (GRMs), including nonlayered 2D materials and 2D perovskites, as well as their hybrid systems, are emerging as promising candidates to drive innovation in PV technologies. The mechanical, thermal, and optoelectronic properties of GRMs can be exploited in different active components of solar cells to design next-generation devices. These components include front (transparent) and back conductive electrodes, charge transporting layers, and interconnecting/recombination layers, as well as photoactive layers. The production and processing of GRMs in the liquid phase, coupled with the ability to “on-demand” tune their optoelectronic properties exploiting wet-chemical functionalization, enable their effective integration in advanced PV devices through scalable, reliable, and inexpensive printing/coating processes. Herein, we review the progresses in the use of solution-processed 2D materials in organic solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, perovskite solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, and organic–inorganic hybrid solar cells, as well as in tandem systems. We first provide a brief introduction on the properties of 2D materials and their production methods by solution-processing routes. Then, we discuss the functionality of 2D materials for electrodes, photoactive layer components/additives, charge transporting layers, and interconnecting layers through figures of merit, which allow the performance of solar cells to be determined and compared with the state-of-the-art values. We finally outline the roadmap for the further exploitation of solution-processed 2D materials to boost the performance of PV devices.
Improving culture of care through maximising learning from observations and events: Addressing what is at fault

The term ‘culture of care’ in the context of using animals for scientific purpose describes the culture in organisations that provides support to staff to strive for continuous improvement in: • animal care and welfare; • support and recognition of staff involved in the animal care and use programme; • scientific quality; • openness and transparency. We developed a systematic process for reporting observations and events that have the potential to help with continuous learning, improving animal welfare and supporting staff. The process took learning from the safety, health and environment arena on accident prevention. The two key aspects were (a) the systematic logging of observations and events; and (b) the learning approach to following up on observations. Underpinning our systematic process is the ‘Learning from Observations and Events Log’. Reported observations and events can relate to positive practices, general observations as well as near misses. We created an environment to promote continuous improvement for both animals and staff by recognising, rewarding and sharing good practice, as well as where near misses are openly reported and learnt from. Supporting animal welfare, staff welfare, improving scientific quality and transparency are the four key pillars of a positive culture of care. We recognised early on that using a system and learning approach to follow up on observations and events rather than a people and blame approach was key to developing open reporting and a positive culture. In the systems approach, errors are consequences rather than causes, having their origins in systemic factors.
Mitochondria-localized AMPK responds to local energetics and contributes to exercise and energetic stress-induced mitophagy

Significance Here, we present unequivocal evidence of physical association of AMPK holoenzymes with mitochondrial reticulum (mitoAMPK) across multiple mouse tissues with evidence of conservation in human skeletal muscle and heart. We demonstrate that mitoAMPK is activated heterogeneously across the mitochondrial reticulum by mitochondrial energetic stress. Finally, we present evidence that suggests activation of mitoAMPK in skeletal muscle is required for mitophagy. We propose that mitoAMPK responds to mitochondrial microenvironment cues to maintain energetic homeostasis through mitochondrial quality control. Mitochondria form a complex, interconnected reticulum that is maintained through coordination among biogenesis, dynamic fission, and fusion and mitophagy, which are initiated in response to various cues to maintain energetic homeostasis. These cellular events, which make up mitochondrial quality control, act with remarkable spatial precision, but what governs such spatial specificity is poorly understood. Herein, we demonstrate that specific isoforms of the cellular bioenergetic sensor, 5′ AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPKα1/α2/β2/γ1), are localized on the outer mitochondrial membrane, referred to as mitoAMPK, in various tissues in mice and humans. Activation of mitoAMPK varies across the reticulum in response to energetic stress, and inhibition of mitoAMPK activity attenuates exercise-induced mitophagy in skeletal muscle in vivo. Discovery of a mitochondrial pool of AMPK and its local importance for mitochondrial quality control underscores the complexity of sensing cellular energetics in vivo that has implications for targeting mitochondrial energetics for disease treatment.
Desmin interacts with STIM1 and coordinates Ca2+ signaling in skeletal muscle

Stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1), the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) transmembrane protein, activates store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) in skeletal muscle and, thereby, coordinates Ca2+ homeostasis, Ca2+-dependent gene expression, and contractility. STIM1 occupies space in the junctional SR membrane of the triads and the longitudinal SR at the Z-line. How STIM1 is organized and is retained in these specific subdomains of the SR is unclear. Here, we identified desmin, the major type III intermediate filament protein in muscle, as a binding partner for STIM1 based on a yeast 2-hybrid screen. Validation of the desmin-STIM1 interaction by immunoprecipitation and immunolocalization confirmed that the CC1-SOAR domains of STIM1 interact with desmin to enhance STIM1 oligomerization yet limit SOCE. Based on our studies of desmin-KO mice, we developed a model wherein desmin connected STIM1 at the Z-line in order to regulate the efficiency of Ca2+ refilling of the SR. Taken together, these studies showed that desmin-STIM1 assembles a cytoskeletal-SR connection that is important for Ca2+ signaling in skeletal muscle.
Telomere length is associated with growth in children in rural Bangladesh

Background: Previously, we demonstrated that a water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional intervention improved linear growth and was unexpectedly associated with shortened childhood telomere length (TL) (Lin et al., 2017). Here, we assessed the association between TL and growth. Methods: We measured relative TL in whole blood from 713 children. We reported differences between the 10th percentile and 90th percentile of TL or change in TL distribution using generalized additive models, adjusted for potential confounders. Results: In cross-sectional analyses, long TL was associated with a higher length-for-age Z score at age 1 year (0.23 SD adjusted difference in length-for-age Z score [95% CI 0.05, 0.42; FDR-corrected p-value = 0.01]). TL was not associated with other outcomes. Conclusions: Consistent with the metabolic telomere attrition hypothesis, our previous trial findings support an adaptive role for telomere attrition, whereby active TL regulation is employed as a strategy to address ‘emergency states’ with increased energy requirements such as rapid growth during the first year of life. Although short periods of active telomere attrition may be essential to promote growth, this study suggests that a longer overall initial TL setting in the first 2 years of life could signal increased resilience against future telomere erosion events and healthy growth trajectories. Funding: Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Clinical trial number: NCT01590095
Polymyositis: does it really exist as a distinct clinical subset?

Purpose of review To summarize information on polymyositis; diagnosis, definitions, published data and opinions. Recent findings Polymyositis originally referred to inflammatory muscle diseases presenting with muscle weakness and inflammatory cell infiltrates on muscle tissue visible by microscopy. Over time and with improved technology to immunophenotype infiltrating inflammatory cells and characterize muscle fibres, the meaning of polymyositis changed and became more specific. There is ongoing controversy over the term polymyositis, with proponents for a strict definition based on histopathological and immunohistochemical features on muscle biopsies whereas others advocate for a broader clinical and histopathological phenotype. Over the past decades, the discovery of several myositis-specific autoantibodies together with distinct histopathological features have enabled the identification of new subsets previously labelled as polymyositis notably the antisynthetase syndrome and the immune-mediated necrotizing myopathies thus reducing the number of patients classified as polymyositis. Summary There are still a small number of patients among the idiopathic inflammatory myopathies that can be classified as polymyositis as discussed in this review but the entity is now considered relatively rare.
Conceptualizing Soft Balancing Beyond Cold War. What’s Changed, What Remains the Same?

This article is a systematic inquiry into the nature and role of soft balancing in the contemporary theory and practice of international relations. By wading into the contentious debate concerning the place and legitimacy of soft balancing, the article explores the theoretical prominence of the concept and adds methodological content to the study. Thus, the research produces a quantitative corpus-based and thematic analysis of the existing soft balancing literature to demarcate the boundary of the concept. This approach enables the author to enhance conventional theorization and not only identify the main gaps within the existing studies but go beyond the popular post-Cold War era discussion. Additionally, this article addresses the question of how soft balancing is distinguished from other concepts in the balance of power theory. Ultimately, the study reveals that despite its theoretical and empirical potential, the soft balancing research agenda remains underdeveloped, largely due to the limitation in the empirical content. Precisely, the empirical studies are limited to balance of power rhetoric akin to hard vs. soft and its implications for the United States’ hegemonic power.
Words beyond the Partial Deed: Prosocial Framing of a Partial-Trust Act Promotes Reciprocation between Strangers

Displaying partial trust in exchanges between strangers is a common practice, but it does not effectively promote reciprocation. This is an intriguing phenomenon that warrants investigations regarding social mechanisms that can promote reciprocation without changing the level of trust. We seek to examine, given a partial-trust act, whether framing the motive underlying the act as prosocial (mutually beneficial) can promote reciprocation in an exchange between strangers. Across three experiments in the United States, we found that trustor prosocial (vs. no-motive) framing can promote trustee reciprocation through trustee felt obligation and that this effect is particularly strong among trustees with a strong rather than weak exchange orientation. Concurrently, this prosocial framing effect can operate serially through trustee perceived invitation for exchange and felt obligation. Our findings help address the conundrum of promoting reciprocation without introducing deleterious uncertainty about social motives given a partial-trust act that is prevalent in exchanges at zero acquaintance.
Opening the Black Box of Benefits Management in the Context of Projects

Benefits management has recently gained in popularity but remains difficult to implement and conduct in organizations. Inspired by the practice perspective and building on an exploratory study, we reveal that defining benefits is a complex task, as the concept of benefit is understood in a variety of ways. We also expose the evolving nature of benefits management, highlighting that benefits management is far from a linear activity. Our study uncovers some of the social and political aspects of benefits management, which have up until now been neglected and may be connected to the challenges of this activity.
A Dynamic Capabilities Model of Innovation in Large Interfirm Projects

Large-scale projects often involve hundreds or even thousands of businesses. There are opportunities for these firms to produce innovations to solve problems and improve the project’s outcomes, but the time-bounded nature of the project and technical interdependencies also constrains innovation. Using quantitative analysis of data from firms in large oil and gas projects, we show that Teece’s sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring model of dynamic capabilities theorizes innovation in this interfirm project context. We also identify connections between these microfoundations that are not captured in Teece’s linear model, where sensing activities moderate the relationship between seizing activities and innovation.
Percutaneous coronary intervention outcomes in left main and multivessel disease: Navigating the patent minefield

• The optimal management approach of left main (LM) and equivalent coronary artery disease (CAD) has been consistently debated over the years. • There are limited data on clinical and anatomic conditions influencing outcomes after elective PCI of LM and multivessel CAD. • The complexity of CAD with the intention of achieving complete revascularization, frailty metrics, as well as patient's informed preference should be adequately considered in order to improve outcome even in high-risk percutaneous procedures.
Clues to reaction specificity in PLP‐dependent fold type I aminotransferases of monosaccharide biosynthesis

Novel functions can emerge in an enzyme family while conserving catalytic mechanism, motif or fold. Pyridoxal 5'‐phosphate‐dependent enzymes have evolved into seven fold‐types and catalyze diverse reactions using the same mechanism for the formation of external aldimine. Nucleotide sugar aminotransferases (which will be henceforth referred to as aminotransferases) belong to fold type I and mediate the biosynthesis of several monosaccharides. They use diverse substrates but are highly selective to the C3 or C4 carbon to which amine group is transferred. Profile hidden Markov models (HMMs) were able to identify aminotransferases but could not capture reaction specificity. A search for discriminating features led to the discovery of sequence motifs that are located near the pyranose binding site suggesting their role in imparting reaction specificity. Using a position weight matrix for this motif, we were able to assign reaction specificity to a large number of aminotransferases. Inferences from this analysis set way for future experiments that can shed light on mechanisms of functional diversification in nucleotide sugar aminotransferases of fold type I.
Speech Categorization Reveals the Role of Early-Stage Temporal-Coherence Processing in Auditory Scene Analysis

Temporal coherence of sound fluctuations across spectral channels is thought to aid auditory grouping and scene segregation. Although prior studies on the neural bases of temporal-coherence processing focused mostly on cortical contributions, neurophysiological evidence suggests that temporal-coherence-based scene analysis may start as early as the cochlear nucleus (i.e., the first auditory region supporting cross-channel processing over a wide frequency range). Accordingly, we hypothesized that aspects of temporal-coherence processing that could be realized in early auditory areas may shape speech understanding in noise. We then explored whether physiologically plausible computational models could account for results from a behavioral experiment that measured consonant categorization in different masking conditions. We tested whether within-channel masking of target-speech modulations predicted consonant confusions across the different conditions and whether predictions were improved by adding across-channel temporal-coherence processing mirroring the computations known to exist in the cochlear nucleus. Consonant confusions provide a rich characterization of error patterns in speech categorization, and are thus crucial for rigorously testing models of speech perception; however, to the best of our knowledge, they have not been used in prior studies of scene analysis. We find that within-channel modulation masking can reasonably account for category confusions, but that it fails when temporal fine structure cues are unavailable. However, the addition of across-channel temporal-coherence processing significantly improves confusion predictions across all tested conditions. Our results suggest that temporal-coherence processing strongly shapes speech understanding in noise and that physiological computations that exist early along the auditory pathway may contribute to this process. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Temporal coherence of sound fluctuations across distinct frequency channels is thought to be important for auditory scene analysis. Prior studies on the neural bases of temporal-coherence processing focused mostly on cortical contributions, and it was unknown whether speech understanding in noise may be shaped by across-channel processing that exists in earlier auditory areas. Using physiologically plausible computational modeling to predict consonant confusions across different listening conditions, we find that across-channel temporal coherence contributes significantly to scene analysis and speech perception and that such processing may arise in the auditory pathway as early as the brainstem. By virtue of providing a richer characterization of error patterns not obtainable with just intelligibility scores, consonant confusions yield unique insight into scene analysis mechanisms.
A cellular and molecular atlas reveals the basis of chytrid development

The chytrids (phylum Chytridiomycota) are a major early-diverging fungal lineage of ecological and evolutionary importance. Despite their importance, many fundamental aspects of chytrid developmental and cell biology remain poorly understood. To address these knowledge gaps, we combined quantitative volume electron microscopy and comparative transcriptome profiling to create an ‘atlas’ of the cellular and molecular basis of the chytrid life cycle, using the model chytrid Rhizoclosmatium globosum. From our developmental atlas, we show that zoospores exhibit a specialised biological repertoire dominated by inactive ribosome aggregates, and that lipid processing is complex and dynamic throughout the cell cycle. We demonstrate that the chytrid apophysis is a distinct subcellular structure characterised by high intracellular trafficking, providing evidence for division of labour in the chytrid cell plan, and show that zoosporogenesis includes ‘animal like’ amoeboid cell morphologies resulting from endocytotic cargo transport from the interstitial maternal cytoplasm. Taken together, our results reveal insights into chytrid developmental biology and provide a basis for future investigations into early-diverging fungal cell biology.
A DCL3 dicing code within Pol IV-RDR2 transcripts diversifies the siRNA pool guiding RNA-directed DNA methylation

In plants, selfish genetic elements including retrotransposons and DNA viruses are transcriptionally silenced by RNA-directed DNA methylation. Guiding the process are short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) cut by DICER-LIKE 3 (DCL3) from double-stranded precursors of ∼30 bp synthesized by NUCLEAR RNA POLYMERASE IV (Pol IV) and RNA-DEPENDENT RNA POLYMERASE 2 (RDR2). We show that Pol IV initiating nucleotide choice, RDR2 initiation 1-2 nt internal to Pol IV transcript ends and RDR2 terminal transferase activity collectively yield a code that influences which end of the precursor is diced and whether 24 or 23 nt siRNAs are generated from the Pol IV or RDR2-transcribed strands. By diversifying the size, sequence, and strand polarity of siRNAs derived from a given precursor, alternative patterns of DCL3 dicing allow maximal siRNA coverage at methylated target loci.
IL-10 receptor blockade delivered simultaneous with BCG vaccination sustains long term protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in mice

Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunization still remains the best vaccination strategy available to control the development of active tuberculosis (TB). Protection afforded by BCG vaccination gradually wanes over time and while booster strategies have promise, they remain under development. An alternative approach is to improve BCG efficacy through host-directed therapy. Building upon prior knowledge that blockade of interleukin-10 receptor 1 (IL-10R1) during early Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) infection improves and extends control of M.tb infection in mice, we employed a combined anti-IL-10R1/BCG vaccine strategy. A subcutaneous, single vaccination of BCG/αIL10-R1 increased the numbers of CD4+ and CD8+ central memory T cells, and reduced TH1 and TH17 cytokine levels in the lung for up to 7 weeks post vaccination. Subsequent M.tb challenge in mice showed both an early (4 week) and sustained long-term (47 week) control of infection, which was associated with increased survival. In contrast, protection of BCG/saline vaccinated mice waned 8 weeks post M.tb infection. Our findings demonstrate that a single and simultaneous vaccination with BCG/αIL10-R1 sustains long-term protection, identifying a promising approach to enhance and extend the current BCG mediated protection against TB.
An evolutionarily ancient Fatty Acid Desaturase is required for the synthesis of hexadecatrienoic acid, which is the main source of the bioactive jasmonate in Marchantia polymorpha

Jasmonates are fatty acid derived hormones that regulate multiple aspects of plant development, growth and stress responses. Bioactive jasmonates, defined as the ligands of the conserved COI1 receptor, differ between vascular plants and bryophytes (using jasmonoyl-L-isoleucine; JA-Ile and dinor-12-oxo-10,15(Z)-phytodienoic acid; dn-OPDA, respectively). Whilst the biosynthetic pathways of JA-Ile in the model vascular plant Arabidopsis thaliana have been elucidated, the details of dn-OPDA biosynthesis in bryophytes are still unclear. Here, we identify an ortholog of Arabidopsis Fatty Acid Desaturase 5 (AtFAD5) in the model liverwort Marchantia polymorpha and show that FAD5 function is ancient and conserved between species separated by more than 450 million years of independent evolution. Similar to AtFAD5, MpFAD5 is required for the synthesis of 7Z-hexadecenoic acid. Consequently, in Mpfad5 mutants the hexadecanoid pathway is blocked, dn-OPDA levels almost completely depleted and normal chloroplast development is impaired. Our results demonstrate that the main source of dn-OPDA in Marchantia is the hexadecanoid pathway and the contribution of the octadecanoid pathway, i.e. from OPDA, is minimal. Remarkably, despite extremely low levels of dn-OPDA, MpCOI1-mediated responses to wounding and insect feeding can still be activated in Mpfad5, suggesting that dn-OPDA is not the only bioactive jasmonate and COI1 ligand in Marchantia.