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Imprinted genes control several cellular and metabolic processes in embryonic and adult tissues. In particular, paternally expressed gene-3 (Peg3) is active in the adult stem cell population and during muscle and neuronal lineage development. Here we have investigated the role of Peg3 in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and during the process of somatic cell reprogramming towards pluripotency. Our data show that Peg3 knockdown increases expression of pluripotency genes in ESCs and enhances reprogramming efficiency of both mouse embryonic fibroblasts and neural stem cells. Interestingly, we observed that altered activity of Peg3 correlates with major perturbations of mitochondrial gene expression and mitochondrial function, which drive metabolic changes during somatic cell reprogramming. Overall, our study shows that Peg3 is a regulator of pluripotent stem cells and somatic cell reprogramming. We thank Marie Victoire Neguembor, Martina Pesaresi and Sergi Angel Bonilla Pons for suggestions on the manuscript and Umberto Di Vicino for technical support. We thank Angelique di Domenico and the group of Antonella Consiglio for providing us the OPA1, DRP1 and VDAC1 antibodies. We thank Mari Carmen Ortells and the group of Bill Keyes for providing us the OXPHOS antibody. The pInducer10-mir-RUP-PheS plasmid was a gift from Stephen Elledge (Addgene plasmid # 44011). We are grateful for support from Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and FEDER funds (SAF2011-28580, BFU2014-54717-P, and BFU2015-71984-ERC to M.P.C.), Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya (2014 SGR1137 to M.P.C.), the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement CellViewer No 686637 (to M.P.C.), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, 'Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2013-2017 and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya (to M.P.C.), People Programme Marie Curie Actions of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013/, n° 290123 to I.T.), La Caixa international PhD fellowship (to F.S.), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovació FPI (to F.A.) and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación FPI-Severo Ochoa (to A.C.G).

A new technique to regenerate caper plants (Capparis spinosa L. subsp. rupestris) starting from flower explant is reported. In vitro plant regeneration was attempted using stigma, anthers and unfertilized ovules of unopened flowers collected in the field. Plant regeneration was achieved from unfertilized ovules on MS medium supplemented with 88 mM sucrose and 13 lM 6-benzyladenine (BA). New individuals obtained from unfertilized ovules were used as source material for micropropagation and multiple shoots were obtained on MS medium sup- plemented with the adeninic cytokinin BA and the auxin indole-3-butyric acid (IBA). Explants obtained in micro- propagation step were used for rooting step under several treatments. The best results (100% of rooted explants) were obtained when explants were dipped for 10 min in 50 lM IBA solution and successively maintained in growth regulator free medium. New plants were vigorous, of good quality and presented phenotypic characters similar to mother plants. Furthermore genetic stability of regenerants was verified through flow cytometric analysis and two different DNA-based techniques.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), consisting of a large number of nodes to detect ambient environment, are widely deployed in a predefined area to provide more sophisticated sensing, communication, and processing capabilities, especially concerning the maintenance when hundreds or thousands of nodes are required to be deployed over wide areas at the same time. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, by reading the low-cost passive tags installed on objects or people, has been widely adopted in the tracing and tracking industry and can support an accurate positioning within a limited distance. Joint utilization of WSN and RFID technologies is attracting increasing attention within the Internet of Things (IoT) community, due to the potential of providing pervasive context-aware applications with advantages from both fields. WSN-RFID convergence is considered especially promising in context-aware systems with indoor positioning capabilities, where data from deployed WSN and RFID systems can be opportunistically exploited to refine and enhance the collected data with position information. In this papera, we design and evaluate a hybrid system which combines WSN and RFID technologies to provide an indoor positioning service with the capability of feeding position information into a general-purpose IoT environment. Performance of the proposed system is evaluated by means of simulations and a small-scale experimental set-up. The performed analysis demonstrates that the joint use of heterogeneous technologies can increase the robustness and the accuracy of the indoor positioning systems.

We present experimental data and theoretical results for valence-band satellites in semiconductors, using the prototypical example of bulk silicon. In a previous publication we introduced a new approach that allows us to describe satellites in valence photoemission spectroscopy, in good agreement with experiment. Here we give more details; we show how the the spectra change with photon energy, and how the theory explains this behaviour. We also describe how we include several effects which are important to obtain a correct comparison between theory and experiment, such as secondary electrons and photon cross sections. In particular the inclusion of extrinsic losses and their dependence on the photon energy are key to the description of the energy dependence of spectra.