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Identification of genetic variations is a central part of population and quantitative genomics studies based on high-throughput sequencing data. Even though popular variant callers such as Bcftools mpileup and GATK HaplotypeCaller were developed nearly 10 years ago, their performance is still largely unknown for non-human species. Here, we showed by benchmark analyses with a simulated insect population that Bcftools mpileup performs better than GATK HaplotypeCaller in terms of recovery rate and accuracy regardless of mapping software. The vast majority of false positives were observed from repeats, especially for GATK HaplotypeCaller. Variant scores calculated by GATK did not clearly distinguish true positives from false positives in the vast majority of cases, implying that hard-filtering with GATK could be challenging. These results suggest that Bcftools mpileup may be the first choice for non-human studies and that variants within repeats might have to be excluded for downstream analyses., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The drawbacks of common anodes in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and hybrid supercapacitors (HSCs), such as the high voltage plateau of Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 (1.55 V vs. Li/Li + ) and the moderate capacity of graphite (372 mAh-g -1 ), have established a need for better materials. Conversion materials, and in particular iron oxide and CaFe 2 O 4 (CFO), have amassed recent attention as potential anode replacements. In this study, we evaluate the material and electrochemical effects of the solution combustion synthesis (SCS) of porous CFO across novel fuel-to-oxidizer ratios and calcination temperatures. We demonstrate that nearly doubling the amount of fuel used during synthesis increases capacities between 120 and 150% at high current densities (~ 1000 mA-g -1 ) and across 500 additional charging-discharging cycles, an effect brought on in part by enhanced compositional purity in these samples. However, in order to ensure long-term cyclic stability, it is necessary to also calcine porous CFO to 900 °C to enhance crystallite size, particle size and spacing, and compositional purity., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

One of the ways to mitigate the world energy crisis is to harvest clean and green energy from waste-heat, which is abundant, ubiquitous, and free. Energy harvesting of this waste-heat is one of the most encouraging methods to capture freely accessible electrical energy. Ferroelectric materials can be used to harvest energy for low power electronic devices, as they exhibit switchable polarization, excellent piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties. The most important characteristic of ferroelectric materials, in the context of energy harvesting, is their ability to generate electric power from a time-dependent temperature change. In this work, we grew highly c-axis oriented heterostructures of BaZr 0.2 Ti 0.8 O 3 (barium zirconium titanate, BZT)/Ba 0.7 Ca 0.3 TiO 3 (barium calcium titanate, BCT) on SrRuO 3 (strontium ruthenate, SRO) and deposited on SrTiO 3 (strontium titanate, STO) single crystalline substrate using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. We investigated the structural, electrical, dielectric, and pyroelectric properties of the above-mentioned fabricated heterostructures. The wide range of θ-2θ X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns only shows (00l) reflection peaks of heterostructures and the substrate which confirmed that the films are highly c-axis oriented. We are also capable to convert the low-grade waste-heat into electrical energy by measuring various temperature-dependent ferroelectric hysteresis loops of our nanostructure films via pyroelectric Ericsson cycles and the structures show an energy conversion density ~ 10,970 kJ/m 3 per cycle. These devices exhibit a large pyroelectric current density of ~ 25 mA/m 2 with 11.8 °C of temperature fluctuation and the corresponding pyroelectric coefficient of 3425 μC/m 2 K. Our research findings suggest that these lead-free relaxor-ferroelectric heterostructures might be the potential candidates to harvest electrical energy from waste low-grade thermal energy.

This study aimed to investigate whether the single nucleotide polymorphism C677T (rs1801133) of the methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene was associated with the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) and circulating homocysteine (Hcy) levels in Tunisian population. 310 angiografically diagnosed CAD patients and 210 controls were enrolled in this study. The MTHFR C677T (rs1801133) polymorphism was genotyped, and the Hcy concentrations were measured. The severity of CAD was evaluated using the Gensini scoring system. Compared to the CC genotype, the TT genotype confers a higher risk for CAD severity with an OR = 9.07 and 95% CI = 3.78-21.8. The T allele was the predisposing allele for CAD and that it was probably associated with CAD severity. The area under the ROC curve for Hcy was 0.764 (95% CI 0.660 to 0.868, p = 0.001). The receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) for Hcy showed its useful prediction of CAD. Hcy levels were not significantly associated with CAD severity expressed by Gensini Score (GS). The MTHFR C677T (rs1801133) polymorphism influences circulating Hcy levels. The MTHFR C677T polymorphism and hyperhomocysteinemia could have an important role in the prediction of the presence and not the severity expressed by GS of CAD.

The metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) closest to room temperature of 68-70 °C as shown by vanadium oxide (VO 2 ), compared with other transition metal oxides, makes it a potential candidate for smart window coating. We have successfully fabricated a potential smart window device after the optimum design of a multilayered thin film structure made out of transparent conducting oxide (aluminum doped zinc oxide) and pure VO 2 using pulsed laser deposition technique. This comprehensive study is based on two different configurations for multi-layered structure approach, with the intention to reduce the transition temperature, as well as to maintain the MIT properties that would strengthen the potential of the structure to be used for a smart window device. By creating a multi-layered structure, we were able to create a low powered device that can operate less than 15 V that leads to significant decline in the infrared transmission by a magnitude of over 40% and provided sufficient heat to trigger the MIT at a temperature around 60 °C, which is almost 10 °C lower than its bulk counterpart. This finding would positively impact the research on VO 2 thin films, not only as smart windows but also for numerous other applications like bolometers, infrared detectors, Mott transistors and many more.

Large area highly crystalline MoS 2 and WS 2 thin films were successfully grown on different substrates using radio-frequency magnetron sputtering technique. Structural, morphological and thermoelectric transport properties of MoS 2, and WS 2 thin films have been investigated systematically to fabricate high-efficient thermal energy harvesting devices. X-ray diffraction data revealed that crystallites of MoS 2 and WS 2 films are highly oriented in 002 plane with uniform grain size distribution confirmed through atomic force microscopy study. Surface roughness increases with substrate temperature and it plays a big role in electron and phonon scattering. Interestingly, MoS 2 films also display low thermal conductivity at room temperature and strongly favors achievement of higher thermoelectric figure of merit value of up to 1.98. Raman spectroscopy data shows two distinct MoS 2 vibrational modes at 380 cm -1 for E 1 2g and 410 cm -1 for A 1g . Thermoelectric transport studies further demonstrated that MoS 2 films show p-type thermoelectric characteristics, while WS 2 is an n-type material. We demonstrated high efficient pn-junction thermoelectric generator device for waste heat recovery and cooling applications.

We grew lead-free BaZr 0.2 Ti 0.8 O 3 (BZT)/Ba 0.7 Ca 0.3 TiO 3 (BCT) epitaxial heterostructures and studied their structural, dielectric, ferroelectric and energy density characteristics. The BZT/BCT epitaxial heterostructures were grown on SrRuO 3 (SRO) buffered SrTiO 3 (STO) single crystal substrate by optimized pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. These high-quality nanostructures exhibit high dielectric permittivity (∼1300), slim electric field-dependent polarization (P-E) curve with high saturation polarization (∼100 µC/cm 2 ) and low remnant polarization (∼20 µC/cm 2 ) through interface engineering to develop new lead-free ferroelectric system for energy storage devices. We observe an ultrahigh discharge and charge energy densities of 42.10 and 97.13 J/cm 3 , respectively, with high efficiency, which might be highly promising for both high power and energy storage electrical devices.