Cytonuclear interplay in auto- and allopolyploids: a multifaceted perspective from the Festuca-Lolium complex.

Restoring cytonuclear stoichiometry is necessary after whole-genome duplication (WGD) and interspecific/intergeneric hybridization in plants. We investigated this phenomenon in auto- and allopolyploids of the Festuca-Lolium complex providing insights into the mechanisms governing cytonuclear interactions in early polyploid and hybrid generations. Our study examined the main processes potentially involved in restoring the cytonuclear balance after WGD comparing diploids and new and well-established autopolyploids. We uncovered that both the number of chloroplasts and the number of chloroplast genome copies were significantly higher in the newly established autopolyploids and grew further in more established autopolyploids. The increase in the copy number of the chloroplast genome exceeded the rise in the number of chloroplasts and fully compensated for the doubling of the nuclear genome. In addition, changes in nuclear and organelle gene expression were insignificant. Allopolyploid Festuca × Lolium hybrids displayed potential structural conflicts in parental protein variants within the cytonuclear complexes. While biased maternal allele expression has been observed in numerous hybrids, our results suggest that its role in cytonuclear stabilization in the Festuca × Lolium hybrids is limited. This study provides insights into the restoration of the cytonuclear stoichiometry, yet it emphasizes the need for future research to explore post-transcriptional regulation and its impact on cytonuclear gene expression stoichiometry. Our findings may enhance the understanding of polyploid plant evolution, with broader implications for the study of cytonuclear interactions in diverse biological contexts.

Separation of Heterotrophic Microalgae Crypthecodinium cohnii by Dielectrophoresis.

Microalgae constitute an abundant source of poly-unsaturated fatty acids which are applied in various biotechnological fields such as pharmaceuticals and food supplement. Separating microalgae cells with respect to their lipid content would establish a relevant at-line analytical technique. The present study demonstrates an electrical approach for the separation of the lipid-producing microalgae Crypthecodinium cohnii using the effect of dielectrophoresis (DEP) in a microfluidic flow cell. Microalgae were cultivated for 8 days, while cell growth was characterized by optical density, dry cell weight, glucose concentration and lipid content via fluorescence microscopy. The size distribution of cells during cultivation was thoroughly investigated, since the DEP force scales with cell volume, but also depends on lipid content via cell electrophysiological constants. Thus, the challenge was to deconvolute one separation effect from the other, while the electrical cell constants of C. cohnii are not known yet. The DEP-dependent separation was realized by slanted top-bottom electrodes with the flowing cell suspension between them. Turning on the voltage deflected the cells from their initial path as determined by the streaming and thus changed their direction of flow. The separation efficiency of DEP was tested for various electrical field strengths and its performance was determined by quantitative analysis of optical and fluorescence videos. It could be shown for all size groups that the most lipid-containing cells were always subject to DEP separation and that the method is thus not only suitable for process analysis, but also for strain selection of the most productive cell lines.

Deliberation and confidence change.

We argue that social deliberation may increase an agent's confidence and credence under certain circumstances. An agent considers a proposition H and assigns a probability to it. However, she is not fully confident that she herself is reliable in this assignment. She then endorses H during deliberation with another person, expecting him to raise serious objections. To her surprise, however, the other person does not raise any objections to H. How should her attitudes toward H change? It seems plausible that she should (i) increase the credence she assigns to H and, at the same time, (ii) increase the reliability she assigns to herself concerning H (i.e. her confidence). A Bayesian model helps us to investigate under what conditions, if any, this is rational.

Correction: Impact of elevated air temperature and drought on pollen characteristics of major agricultural grass species.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248759.].

Impact of elevated air temperature and drought on pollen characteristics of major agricultural grass species.

Grass pollen allergens are known to be one of the major triggers of hay fever with an increasing number of humans affected by pollen associated health impacts. Climate change characterized by increasing air temperature and more frequent drought periods might affect plant development and pollen characteristics. In this study a one-year (2017) field experiment was conducted in Bavaria, Germany, simulating drought by excluding rain and elevated air temperature by installing a heating system to investigate their effects primarily on the allergenic potential of eight selected cultivars of the two grass species timothy and perennial ryegrass. It could be shown for timothy that especially under drought and heat conditions the allergen content is significantly lower accompanied by a decrease in pollen weight and protein content. In perennial ryegrass the response to drought and heat conditions in terms of allergen content, pollen weight, and protein content was more dependent on the respective cultivar probably due to varying requirements for their growth conditions and tolerance to drought and heat. Results support recommendations which cultivars should be grown preferentially. The optimal choice of grass species and respective cultivars under changing climate conditions should be a major key aspect for the public health sector in the future.

Conditionals and testimony.

Conditionals and conditional reasoning have been a long-standing focus of research across a number of disciplines, ranging from psychology through linguistics to philosophy. But almost no work has concerned itself with the question of how hearing or reading a conditional changes our beliefs. Given that we acquire much-perhaps most-of what we believe through the testimony of others, the simple matter of acquiring conditionals via others' assertion of a conditional seems integral to any full understanding of the conditional and conditional reasoning. In this paper we detail a number of basic intuitions about how beliefs might change in response to a conditional being uttered, and show how these are backed by behavioral data. In the remainder of the paper, we then show how these deceptively simple phenomena pose a fundamental challenge to present theoretical accounts of the conditional and conditional reasoning - a challenge which no account presently fully meets.

Bayesian argumentation and the value of logical validity.

According to the Bayesian paradigm in the psychology of reasoning, the norms by which everyday human cognition is best evaluated are probabilistic rather than logical in character. Recently, the Bayesian paradigm has been applied to the domain of argumentation, in which the fundamental norms are traditionally assumed to be logical. Here, we present a major generalization of extant Bayesian approaches to argumentation that (a) utilizes a new class of Bayesian learning methods that are better suited to modeling dynamic and conditional inferences than standard Bayesian conditionalization, (b) is able to characterize the special value of logically valid argument schemes in uncertain reasoning contexts, (c) greatly extends the range of inferences and argumentative phenomena that can be adequately described in a Bayesian framework, and (d) undermines some influential theoretical motivations for dual function models of human cognition. We conclude that the probabilistic norms given by the Bayesian approach to rationality are not necessarily at odds with the norms given by classical logic. Rather, the Bayesian theory of argumentation can be seen as justifying and enriching the argumentative norms of classical logic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Grass pollen production and group V allergen content of agriculturally relevant species and cultivars.

Grass pollen is the main cause of hay fever and allergic asthma in warm temperate climates during summer. The aim of this study was to determine the content of group 5 major allergens in pollen grains of agriculturally important grass species/cultivars. For each cultivar flowering dates and pollen production of cut anthers were observed in the field and in a climate chamber, respectively. An ELISA was used to quantify the group 5 allergens (Phl p5) in pollen extracts which were gained from the grass species Kentucky bluegrass, perennial rye grass, timothy, cocksfoot, annual / Italian rye grass, hybrid rye grass and festulolium. The group 5 allergen content of species varied between 0.01 ng (Kentucky bluegrass) and 0.06 ng (timothy) per pollen grain. On cultivar level the pollen allergenic content differed up to 74-times within the selected grass species. Results from this study might be helpful for the reduction of allergen exposure coming from agriculture grass production e.g. by an adapted grass selection or by the cultivation of grasses with low allergenic content in plant breeding.

Voting, deliberation and truth.

There are various ways to reach a group decision on a factual yes-no question. One way is to vote and decide what the majority votes for. This procedure receives some epistemological support from the Condorcet Jury Theorem. Alternatively, the group members may prefer to deliberate and will eventually reach a decision that everybody endorses-a consensus. While the latter procedure has the advantage that it makes everybody happy (as everybody endorses the consensus), it has the disadvantage that it is difficult to implement, especially for larger groups. Besides, the resulting consensus may be far away from the truth. And so we ask: Is deliberation truth-conducive in the sense that majority voting is? To address this question, we construct a highly idealized model of a particular deliberation process, inspired by the movie Twelve Angry Men, and show that the answer is 'yes'. Deliberation procedures can be truth-conducive just as the voting procedure is. We then explore, again on the basis of our model and using agent-based simulations, under which conditions it is better epistemically to deliberate than to vote. Our analysis shows that there are contexts in which deliberation is epistemically preferable and we will provide reasons for why this is so.

VLSI Implementation of a 2.8 Gevent/s Packet-Based AER Interface with Routing and Event Sorting Functionality.

State-of-the-art large-scale neuromorphic systems require sophisticated spike event communication between units of the neural network. We present a high-speed communication infrastructure for a waferscale neuromorphic system, based on application-specific neuromorphic communication ICs in an field programmable gate arrays (FPGA)-maintained environment. The ICs implement configurable axonal delays, as required for certain types of dynamic processing or for emulating spike-based learning among distant cortical areas. Measurements are presented which show the efficacy of these delays in influencing behavior of neuromorphic benchmarks. The specialized, dedicated address-event-representation communication in most current systems requires separate, low-bandwidth configuration channels. In contrast, the configuration of the waferscale neuromorphic system is also handled by the digital packet-based pulse channel, which transmits configuration data at the full bandwidth otherwise used for pulse transmission. The overall so-called pulse communication subgroup (ICs and FPGA) delivers a factor 25-50 more event transmission rate than other current neuromorphic communication infrastructures.

Pyrrolyl substituted allenylidene complexes of ruthenium.

Pyrrolyl and indolyl substituted allenylidene complexes of ruthenium have been prepared from the trapping of cationic trans-[Cl(dppm)(2)Ru=C=C=C=CH(2)](+) with various pyrroles or N-methylindole. The reaction is rationalized as involving regioselective attack of the organometallic electrophile on the electron-rich heterocycle followed by proton migration to the terminal =CH(2) entity of the intermediate butenynyl substituted sigma-complex. Pyrrolyl substituted allenylidene complexes have spectroscopic and electrochemical properties intermediate between those of amino and aryl substituted congeners and can thus be regarded as vinylogous aminoallenylidene complexes. We present spectroscopic evidence that the pyrrole pi-system is efficiently incorporated into the metallabutatriene chromophore including resonance Raman spectroscopy. According to our results, the respective frontier orbitals are delocalized across the entire ClRuC(3)(pyrrolyl) entity which defies any classification of the individual redox events as metal or ligand centered redox processes. This issue has been specifically addressed by spectroelectrochemistry. The structure of the 1-methylindole-3-yl complex has been determined by X-ray crystallography. Bond parameters along the ruthenium-allenylidene chain are intermediate between those of amino and aryl substituted congeners and support our conclusions drawn from the spectroscopic results. While still electron rich, pyrrolyl substituted allenylidene complexes are easily deprotonated to their conjugate bases, which are substituted butenynyl complexes. This has been exemplified with the tetrahydroindole derived complex 3f.