514 research outputs found
Sensor potency of the moonlighting enzyme-decorated cytoskeleton
Background: There is extensive evidence for the interaction of metabolic enzymes with the eukaryotic
cytoskeleton. The significance of these interactions is far from clear.
Presentation of the hypothesis: In the cytoskeletal integrative sensor hypothesis presented here, the cytoskeleton
senses and integrates the general metabolic activity of the cell. This activity depends on the binding to the
cytoskeleton of enzymes and, depending on the nature of the enzyme, this binding may occur if the enzyme is
either active or inactive but not both. This enzyme-binding is further proposed to stabilize microtubules and
microfilaments and to alter rates of GTP and ATP hydrolysis and their levels.
Testing the hypothesis: Evidence consistent with the cytoskeletal integrative sensor hypothesis is presented in the
case of glycolysis. Several testable predictions are made. There should be a relationship between post-translational
modifications of tubulin and of actin and their interaction with metabolic enzymes. Different conditions of cytoskeletal
dynamics and enzyme-cytoskeleton binding should reveal significant differences in local and perhaps global levels and
ratios of ATP and GTP. The different functions of moonlighting enzymes should depend on cytoskeletal binding.
Implications of the hypothesis: The physical and chemical effects arising from metabolic sensing by the cytoskeleton
would have major consequences on cell shape, dynamics and cell cycle progression. The hypothesis provides a
framework that helps the significance of the enzyme-decorated cytoskeleton be determined
Feedback Based Architecture for Reading Check Courtesy Amounts
In recent years, a number of large-scale applications continue to rely heavily on the use of paper as the
dominant medium, either on intra-organization basis or on inter-organization basis, including paper
intensive applications in the check processing application. In many countries, the value of each check is
read by human eyes before the check is physically transported, in stages, from the point it was presented
to the location of the branch of the bank which issued the blank check to the concerned account holder.
Such process of manual reading of each check involves significant time and cost. In this research, a new
approach is introduced to read the numerical amount field on the check; also known as the courtesy
amount field. In the case of check processing, the segmentation of unconstrained strings into individual
digits is a challenging task because one needs to accommodate special cases involving: connected or
overlapping digits, broken digits, and digits physically connected to a piece of stroke that belongs to a
neighboring digit. The system described in this paper involves three stages: segmentation, normalization,
and the recognition of each character using a neural network classifier, with results better than many other
methods in the literaratu
Handwritten Bank Check Recognition of Courtesy Amounts
In spite of rapid evolution of electronic techniques, a number of large-scale applications continue to rely on the use
of paper as the dominant medium. This is especially true for processing of bank checks. This paper examines the
issue of reading the numerical amount field. In the case of checks, the segmentation of unconstrained strings into
individual digits is a challenging task because of connected and overlapping digits, broken digits, and digits that are
physically connected to pieces of strokes from neighboring digits. The proposed architecture involves four stages:
segmentation of the string into individual digits, normalization, recognition of each character using a neural network
classifier, and syntactic verification. Overall, this paper highlights the importance of employing a hybrid architecture
that incorporates multiple approaches to provide high recognition rates
Non-standard errors in asset pricing:Mind your sorts
Non-standard errors capture variation due to differences in research design choices. We document large variation in design choices in the context of asset pricing factor models and find that the average ratio of the non-standard error to the standard error across factors exceeds one. Using NAN breakpoints instead of NYSE breakpoints improves the average Sharpe ratios the most, from 0.46 to 0.63. Other important design choices relate to excluding microcaps, industry-adjusting, and the rebalancing frequency, which highlights the need for researchers to clearly describe and motivate these choices.</p
Non-standard errors in asset pricing:Mind your sorts
Non-standard errors capture variation due to differences in research design choices. We document large variation in design choices in the context of asset pricing factor models and find that the average ratio of the non-standard error to the standard error across factors exceeds one. Using NAN breakpoints instead of NYSE breakpoints improves the average Sharpe ratios the most, from 0.46 to 0.63. Other important design choices relate to excluding microcaps, industry-adjusting, and the rebalancing frequency, which highlights the need for researchers to clearly describe and motivate these choices.</p
Could Multimedia approaches help Remote Sensing Analysis?
International audienceThe paper explores how multimedia approaches used in image understanding tasks could be adapted and used in remote sensing image analysis. Two approaches are investigated: the classical Bag of Visual Words (BoVW) approach and the Deep Learning approach. Tests are performed for the classification of the UC Merced Land Use Dataset which provide better results than the state of the art
Incremental dense multi-modal 3D scene reconstruction
Aquiring reliable depth maps is an essential prerequisite for accurate and incremental 3D reconstruction used in a variety of robotics applications. Depth maps produced by affordable Kinect-like cameras have become a de-facto standard for indoor reconstruction and the driving force behind the success of many algorithms. However, Kinect-like cameras are less effective outdoors where one should rely on other sensors. Often, we use a combination of a stereo camera and lidar, however, process the acquired data in independent pipelines which generally leads to sub-optimal performance since both sensors suffer from different drawbacks. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic model that efficiently exploits complementarity between different depth-sensing modalities for incremental dense scene reconstruction. Our model uses a piecewise planarity prior assumption which is common in both the indoor and outdoor scenes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on the KITTI dataset, and provide qualitative and quantitative results showing high-quality dense reconstruction of a number of scenes
Cell-cell communication enhances the capacity of cell ensembles to sense shallow gradients during morphogenesis
Collective cell responses to exogenous cues depend on cell-cell interactions.
In principle, these can result in enhanced sensitivity to weak and noisy
stimuli. However, this has not yet been shown experimentally, and, little is
known about how multicellular signal processing modulates single cell
sensitivity to extracellular signaling inputs, including those guiding complex
changes in the tissue form and function. Here we explored if cell-cell
communication can enhance the ability of cell ensembles to sense and respond to
weak gradients of chemotactic cues. Using a combination of experiments with
mammary epithelial cells and mathematical modeling, we find that multicellular
sensing enables detection of and response to shallow Epidermal Growth Factor
(EGF) gradients that are undetectable by single cells. However, the advantage
of this type of gradient sensing is limited by the noisiness of the signaling
relay, necessary to integrate spatially distributed ligand concentration
information. We calculate the fundamental sensory limits imposed by this
communication noise and combine them with the experimental data to estimate the
effective size of multicellular sensory groups involved in gradient sensing.
Functional experiments strongly implicated intercellular communication through
gap junctions and calcium release from intracellular stores as mediators of
collective gradient sensing. The resulting integrative analysis provides a
framework for understanding the advantages and limitations of sensory
information processing by relays of chemically coupled cells.Comment: paper + supporting information, total 35 pages, 15 figure
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