Simple models of the chemical field around swimming plankton

Background. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, and we recently reported human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles showing strong associations with cervical neoplasia risk and protection. HLA ligands are recognized by killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) expressed on a range of immune cell subsets, governing their proinflammatory activity. We hypothesized that the inheritance of particular HLA-KIR combinations would increase cervical neoplasia risk. Methods. Here, we used HLA and KIR dosages imputed from single-nucleotide polymorphism genotype data from 2143 cervical neoplasia cases and 13 858 healthy controls of European decent. Results. The following 4 novel HLA alleles were identified in association with cervical neoplasia, owing to their linkage disequilibrium with known cervical neoplasia-associated HLA-DRB1 alleles: HLA-DRB3*9901 (odds ratio [OR], 1.24; P = 2.49 × 10−9), HLA-DRB5*0101 (OR, 1.29; P = 2.26 × 10−8), HLA-DRB5*9901 (OR, 0.77; P = 1.90 × 10−9), and HLA-DRB3*0301 (OR, 0.63; P = 4.06 × 10−5). We also found that homozygosity of HLA-C1 group alleles is a protective factor for human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16)-related cervical neoplasia (C1/C1; OR, 0.79; P = .005). This protective association was restricted to carriers of either KIR2DL2 (OR, 0.67; P = .00045) or KIR2DS2 (OR, 0.69; P = .0006). Conclusions. Our findings suggest that HLA-C1 group alleles play a role in protecting against HPV16-related cervical neoplasia, mainly through a KIR-mediated mechanism

Simple models of the chemical field around swimming plankton

International audienceThe chemical field around swimming plankton depends on the swimming style and speed of the organism and the processes affecting uptake or exudation of chemicals by the organism. Here we present a simple model for the flow field around a neutrally buoyant self-propelled organism at low Reynolds number, and numerically calculate the chemical field around the organism. We show how the concentration field close to the organism and the mass transfer rates vary with swimming speed and style for Dirichlet (diffusion limited transport) boundary conditions. We calculate how the length of the chemical wake, defined as being the distance at which the chemical field drops to 10% of the surface concentration of the organism when stationary, varies with swimming speed and style for both Dirichlet and Neumann (production limited) boundary conditions. For Dirichlet boundary conditions, the length of the chemical wake increases with increasing swimming speed, and the self-propelled organism displays a significantly longer wake than the towed-body model. For the Neumann boundary conditions the converse is true; because swimming enhances the transport of the chemical away from the organism, the surface concentration of chemical is reduced and thus the wake length is reduced

Painterly rendering techniques: A state-of-the-art review of current approaches

In this publication we will look at the different methods presented over the past few decades which attempt to recreate digital paintings. While previous surveys concentrate on the broader subject of non-photorealistic rendering, the focus of this paper is firmly placed on painterly rendering techniques. We compare different methods used to produce different output painting styles such as abstract, colour pencil, watercolour, oriental, oil and pastel. Whereas some methods demand a high level of interaction using a skilled artist, others require simple parameters provided by a user with little or no artistic experience. Many methods attempt to provide more automation with the use of varying forms of reference data. This reference data can range from still photographs, video, 3D polygonal meshes or even 3D point clouds. The techniques presented here endeavour to provide tools and styles that are not traditionally available to an artist. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Characterizing and Improving Stability in Neural Style Transfer

Recent progress in style transfer on images has focused on improving the quality of stylized images and speed of methods. However, real-time methods are highly unstable resulting in visible flickering when applied to videos. In this work we characterize the instability of these methods by examining the solution set of the style transfer objective. We show that the trace of the Gram matrix representing style is inversely related to the stability of the method. Then, we present a recurrent convolutional network for real-time video style transfer which incorporates a temporal consistency loss and overcomes the instability of prior methods. Our networks can be applied at any resolution, do not re- quire optical flow at test time, and produce high quality, temporally consistent stylized videos in real-time

Charge Transfer and Charge Transport on the Double Helix

We present a short review of various experiments that measure charge transfer and charge transport in DNA. Some general comments are made on the possible connection between 'chemistry-style' charge transfer experiments that probe fluorescence quenching and remote oxidative damage and 'physics-style' measurements that measure transport properties as defined typically in the solid-state. We then describe measurements performed by our group on the millimeter wave response of DNA. By measuring over a wide range of humidity conditions and comparing the response of single strand DNA and double strand DNA, we show that the appreciable AC conductivity of DNA is not due to photon assisted hopping between localized states, but instead due to dissipation from dipole motion in the surrounding water helix.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure