LKB1 is essential for the proliferation of T-cell progenitors and mature peripheral T cells

The serine/threonine kinase LKB1 has a conserved role in Drosophila and nematodes to co-ordinate cell metabolism. During T lymphocyte development in the thymus, progenitors need to synchronize increased metabolism with the onset of proliferation and differentiation to ensure that they can meet the energy requirements for development. The present study explores the role of LKB1 in this process and shows that loss of LKB1 prevents thymocyte differentiation and the production of peripheral T lymphocytes. We find that LKB1 is required for several key metabolic processes in T-cell progenitors. For example, LKB1 controls expression of CD98, a key subunit of the l-system aa transporter and is also required for the pre-TCR to induce and sustain the regulated phosphorylation of the ribosomal S6 subunit, a key regulator of protein synthesis. In the absence of LKB1 TCR-β-selected thymocytes failed to proliferate and did not survive. LBK1 was also required for survival and proliferation of peripheral T cells. These data thus reveal a conserved and essential role for LKB1 in the proliferative responses of both thymocytes and mature T cells

Test measurements by Eötvös torsion balance and gravimeters

After more than 40 years of interruption new field observations have been made by an E-54 type torsion balance (TB)in the Csepel-island. These TB measurements were accompanied by a detailed gravimetric survey of each station with LCR gravimeters. Both vertical (VG) and horizontal (HG) gravity gradients were determined at each TB station for VG interpolation and reliability tests. Vertical gradient of gravity cannot be measured directly by the Eötvös TB. However, we successfully interpolated VG differences in the network of TB measurements following the idea originally due to Haalck. Reliability tests by comparing HG and VG gravimetric and TB measurements were also performed. Our recent paper discusses first results of these TB and gravimetric measurements which are scheduled to be continued in the future as well

Byproduct Formation of Chlorination and Chlorine Dioxide Oxidation in Drinking Water Treatment: Their Formation Mechanisms and Health Effects

Increasing water scarcity caused by population growth, climate change, pollution from natural and anthropogenic sources, etc. is likely to impact the occurrence of water-associated infectious diseases. Nowadays, access to clean and safe water is a growing concern worldwide. Therefore, disinfection of drinking water is a vital step in public treatment systems as it ensures the removal of various contaminants, including pathogenic microorganisms (protozoa, viruses, bacteria, and intestinal parasites) that give rise to waterborne diseases. Nevertheless, undesirable disinfection byproducts (DBPs) are formed during disinfection as a result of reactions between chemical disinfectants and natural organic matter (NOM), and/or anthropogenic contaminants, and/or bromide/iodide that are present in the raw water. The chemical complexity and heterogeneity of matters in the raw water makes the characterization and the mechanism of DBPs formation quite difficult and ambiguous regardless of the previous hundreds of studies on DBPs generation. As chlorination is still the most economic and most often used disinfection method, and beside chlorination, the application of chlorine dioxide is becoming more widespread, this paper investigates the possible DBPs generated using chlorine and chlorine dioxide with highlighting their adverse health effects. It overviews the reactions of those disinfectants with inorganic and organic compounds. It is important to note that in order to better understand the performance of disinfectants in water treatment, further investigations on the mechanisms of them with inorganic and organic compounds found in water are critically needed

Gazdaságos pénz-beosztó fűtésszabályzó

Az eddig megalkotott fűtésvezérlők szépen szabályoznak, pontosan tartva a helyiség hőmérsékletét, csak egy dolgot nem figyelnek, a pénztárcánkat. Mindenki szereti a meleg otthont, csak az anyagi lehetőségeiket nem veszik figyelembe és a hó végén ki nem fizetett számlák után a kikapcsolt közműszolgáltatás miatt várnak kínos hideg napok a „meleg” családi fészekre ami, ekkor már nem is olyan barátságos. Ezen segít a „pénz-beosztó” fűtésvezérlő. Mi is ez? Mennyiben más ez, mit az eddigiek? A fűtésre szánt pénzünket igyekszik beosztani helyettünk a lehető legjobban, figyelembe véve azokat a szempontokat, amiket megadunk. Egy biztos, nem lépi túl a beállított havi fűtési költséget. Eredmény: a havi fűtés költsége előre kiszámítható, és a lakásunk is elég meleg lesz ennek megfelelően. Még egy fontos szempont: ami gazdaságos az környezetkímélő is egyben

Optimization of Breakpoint Chlorination Technologies for Drinking Water Treatment: a Hungarian Case Study

Ammonium ion is one of the major pollutants found in drinking water sources in Hungary, especially in deep aquifers. under oxidative conditions, ammonium can transform into nitrite ions in the water system, posing potential health risks. In Hungary mostly biological process or breakpoint chlorination are used to eliminate ammonium ion from raw water during the drinking water treatment process. When breakpoint chlorination is applied, harmful by-products are formed. Trihalomethanes concentrations have long been regulated in Hungary, therefore during the design and optimization of the breakpoint technologies trihalomethane concentrations have been considered. However, haloacetic acids (HAA5) and chlorate ion have been recently regulated in accordance with EU Directive 2020/2184. Chlorate is a by-product that appears in treated water when sodium hypochlorite is used in breakpoint chlorination.Experiments were carried out at four Hungarian case study areas to determine the optimal strategy for breakpoint chlorination: applying higher chlorine dosages with lower contact times, or lower chlorine dosages with higher contact times. The investigations concluded that the preferable dosing strategy is to use lower chlorine concentrations and longer contact times. This approach reduces chemical demand (cost-effective) and has a neutral effect on THMs formation. it can be concluded that when the raw water contains ammonium ion concentrations above 0.5 mg/l, the use of sodium hypochlorite may raise concerns due to elevated chlorate ion levels in the treated water, particularly during summer. Further research is required to expand the optimization strategy, considering not only ammonium and trihalomethane concentrations but also chlorate concentrations

Spacecraft potential control for Double Star

International audienceThe spacecraft potential of Double Star TC-1 is positive in large parts of the orbits due to the photo-effect from solar EUV irradiation. These positive potentials typically disturb low energy plasma measurements on board. The potential can be reduced, and thereby the particle measurements improved, by emitting a positive ion beam. This method has successfully been applied on several other spacecraft and it has also been chosen for TC-1. The instrument TC-1/ASPOC is a derivative of the Cluster/ASPOC instruments, from which it has inherited many features. The paper describes the adaptations and further developments made for the ion emitters and the electronics. The instrument performs very well and can support higher beam currents than on Cluster. The expected significant improvement of the low energy particle measurements on board was indeed observed. The modifications of the electron distributions are analysed for a one-time interval when the spacecraft was located in the magnetosheath. The change in the potential due to the ion beam was determined, and first studies of the 3-D electron distributions in response to the spacecraft potential control have been performed, which indicate that the method works as expected

A Fast and Scalable Computational Topology Framework for the Euler Characteristic

The Euler characteristic (EC) is a powerful topological descriptor that can be used to quantify the shape of data objects that are represented as fields/manifolds. Fast methods for computing the EC are required to enable processing of high-throughput data and real-time implementations. This represents a challenge when processing high-resolution 2D field data (e.g., images) and 3D field data (e.g., video, hyperspectral images, and space-time data obtained from fluid dynamics and molecular simulations). In this work, we present parallel algorithms (and software implementations) to enable fast computations of the EC for 2D and 3D fields using vertex contributions. We test the proposed algorithms using synthetic data objects and data objects arising in real applications such as microscopy, 3D molecular dynamics simulations, and hyperspectral images. Results show that the proposed implementation can compute the EC a couple of orders of magnitude faster than ${\tt GUDHI}$ (an off-the-shelf and state-of-the art tool) and at speeds comparable to ${\tt CHUNKYEuler}$ (a tool tailored to scalable computation of the EC). The vertex contributions approach is flexible in that it compute the EC as well as other topological descriptors such as perimeter, area, and volume (${\tt CHUNKYEuler}$ can only compute the EC). Scalability with respect to memory use is also addressed by providing low-memory versions of the algorithms; this enables processing of data objects beyond the size of dynamic memory. All data and software needed for reproducing the results are shared as open-source code