Balancing noise and plasticity in gene expression

Coupling the control of expression stochasticity (noise) with the capacity to expression change (plasticity) can constrain gene function and limit adaptation. Which factors contribute then to modulate this coupling? Transcription re-initiation is generally associated with coupling and this is commonly related to strong chromatin regulation. We alternatively show how strong regulation can however lead to plasticity uncorrelated to noise. The character of the regulation is also relevant, with plastic but noiseless genes usually subjected to broad expression activation whereas plastic and noisy genes experience targeted repression. This differential action is similarly noticed in how histones influence these genes. In contrast, we find that translational mechanisms are the ones separating noise from plasticity in low-plastic genes, a pattern associated with the simplicity of their expression regulation. Neighboring genome architecture as modifier appears then only effective in highly plastic genes. This poses ultimately an interesting paradox between intergenic distances and modulation, with short intergenic distances both associated and not associated with noise at different plasticity levels. Balancing the coupling among different types of expression variability appears thus as a potential shaping force of genome architecture and regulation

High efficiency compression for object detection

Image and video compression has traditionally been tailored to human vision. However, modern applications such as visual analytics and surveillance rely on computers seeing and analyzing the images before (or instead of) humans. For these applications, it is important to adjust compression to computer vision. In this paper we present a bit allocation and rate control strategy that is tailored to object detection. Using the initial convolutional layers of a state-of-the-art object detector, we create an importance map that can guide bit allocation to areas that are important for object detection. The proposed method enables bit rate savings of 7% or more compared to default HEVC, at the equivalent object detection rate.Comment: The paper is published in IEEE ICASSP 18

Search Process and Probabilistic Bifix Approach

An analytical approach to a search process is a mathematical prerequisite for digital synchronization acquisition analysis and optimization. A search is performed for an arbitrary set of sequences within random but not equiprobable L-ary data. This paper derives in detail an expression for probability distribution function, from which other statistical parameters - expected value and variance - can be obtained. The probabilistic nature of (cross-) bifix indicators is shown and application examples are outlined, ranging beyond the usual telecommunication field.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Adelaide, Australia, September 4-9, 200

Can you tell a face from a HEVC bitstream?

Image and video analytics are being increasingly used on a massive scale. Not only is the amount of data growing, but the complexity of the data processing pipelines is also increasing, thereby exacerbating the problem. It is becoming increasingly important to save computational resources wherever possible. We focus on one of the poster problems of visual analytics -- face detection -- and approach the issue of reducing the computation by asking: Is it possible to detect a face without full image reconstruction from the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) bitstream? We demonstrate that this is indeed possible, with accuracy comparable to conventional face detection, by training a Convolutional Neural Network on the output of the HEVC entropy decoder

Planting Adventist Communities of Faith Among Muslims in Unentered Areas of the Balkans

Problem The purpose of this research was to develop and equip the church for the implementation of a workable strategy for reaching a large population of about eight million secular Muslims in the Balkans who have never been systematically confronted with the gospel. Method This study describes the history, culture, and religion of the Balkans, analyzes socioeconomic and political developments of its Muslim population, examines methods of evangelism and suggests a strategy based on sound biblical and missiological principles for work among the Balkan Muslims. Results The outcome of this project will be the development of a contextualized method for evangelizing secular Muslims in the Balkans, and the establishment of an Adventist Muslim Relations Initiatives. Contextualized Bible studies for secular Muslims will be produced. Change agents will be trained and prepared to form Bible study groups and establish contextualized Adventist communities of faith. Sensitivity among Adventists towards people of other faiths will be enhanced through awareness seminars. The initial project will continue for at least five years. Conclusions The proposed strategy has been designed for work in unentered areas of the Balkans. It uses cultural elements to communicate the gospel especially among Muslim populations

Fusing Aerial Multispectral Imagery and High-Resolution Photography

Aerial remote sensing is useful for spotting indicators in the survey of mine-suspected areas and minefields. Because the detection of landmines in the soil and under the vegetation cover is not yet practical, the minefield indicators and their electromagnetic signatures provide means for detection of the mine-suspected areas and minefields. The minefield indicators can be natural (e.g., vegetation cover) over a large spatial extent, or else artificial or man-made (e.g., trenches, bunkers, demolished objects) over a small spatial extent. The dimensions of artificial minefield indicators require use of multi-spectral sensors and aerial images with spatial resolution below one meter. Due to a mixture of natural and artificial minefield indicators, aerial survey should provide wide-area coverage, with very high spatial and spectral resolution. Two different approaches were applied to resolve this conflict. One approach used very high spatial resolution sensors (in the range of five to 10 cm), four wavelengths (green [G], red [R], near infrared [NIR] and thermal infrared), and image acquisition at low heights above terrain (starting with 30 m). Due to a large number of images, a serious problem was mosaicking and fusing the images acquired by used sensors (spatial accuracy and matching the radiometry). Another approach used three different sensors: multispectral line scanner (12 channels), synthetic aperture radar (Experimental SAR, four wavelengths) and photogrammetric camera RMK (color infrared photography [CIR], [G], [R] and [NIR]). Both cases used digital sensors, while aerial photography was used in one of them, but only as an auxiliary source of ground truth and contextual information