In Darwin’s Garden: an evolutionary exploration of augmented reality in practice

This book is part of the Springer Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series and will be published under Springer's Open Access policy.This chapter discusses the rapid developments in augmented reality and mixed reality technologies, from a practitioner’s perspective of making the augmented reality sculptural work In Darwin’s Garden. From its conception in 2012, to its exhibition at Carbon Meets Silicon II in 2017, the advances in augmented reality technology led to an interplay between the goal of the creators and the technological realisation of that vision. The art, design and technology involved, generated a reactive process that was mired in external influences as the accessibility to augmented reality became commercially valuable and subsequently restricted. This chapter will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand more about the possibilities, technologies and processes involved in realising mixed reality practice and about the commercial culture that supports it

Arm-leg pressure gradients on late follow-up after coarctation repair: Possible causes and implications

Seventeen years after coarctation repair, 36 patients were studied by magnetic resonance imaging and exercise testing to measure residual anatomical stenosis and hormonal response to exercise, and to evaluate their effect on arm-leg gradients and on exercise hypertension. The systolic arm pressure, leg pressure and arm-leg gradient were measured at rest and during exercise. Active renin and catecholamines were measured in the plasma at rest and after peak exercise. On magnetic resonance imaging 18 patients had residual stenosis of less than 30% (group I) and 18 had residual stenosis of equal to or more than 30% (group II). At peak exercise, the arm pressure was 235 (133-296) mmHg in group I and 241 (157-286) mmHg in group II (ns), the leg pressure was 138 (111-173) mmHg in group I and 114 (75-154)mmHg in group II (P=0·002). The adrenalin increase from rest to exercise was 32·7 ± 9·1 pg . ml −1 in the patients with exercise hypertension and 3·1 ± 4·7 pg. ml−1 in the patients who remained normotensive during exercise (P=0·02). In conclusion, residual anatomical stenosis leads to a pressure drop in the legs, which influences the arm-leg gradient. Arm hypertension is not related to anatomical narrowing but to interaction of enhanced sympathetic nerve activity and structural and functional abnormality of the precoarctation vessels. (Eur Heart J 1996; 17: 1572-1575

Late energy injection and cosmological constraints in axino dark matter scenarios

Taking into account effects of late energy injection, we examine big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraints on axino dark matter scenarios with long-lived charged sleptons. We calculate 4-body slepton decays into the axino, a lepton, and a quark–antiquark pair since they govern late hadronic energy injection and associated BBN constraints. For supersymmetric hadronic axion models, we present the obtained hadronic BBN constraints and show that they can be more restrictive than the ones associated with catalyzed BBN via slepton-bound-state formation. From the BBN constraints on hadronic and electromagnetic energy release, we find new upper limits on the Peccei–Quinn scale

Phenomenology of Mirror Fermions in the Littlest Higgs Model with T-Parity

Little Higgs models are an interesting alternative to explain electroweak symmetry breaking without fine-tuning. Supplemented with a discrete symmetry (T-parity) constraints from electroweak precision data are naturally evaded and also a viable dark matter candidate is obtained. T-parity implies the existence of new (mirror) fermions in addition to the heavy gauge bosons of the little Higgs models. In this paper we consider the effects of the mirror fermions on the phenomenology of the littlest Higgs model with T-parity at the LHC. We study the most promising production channels and decay chains for the new particles. We find that the mirror fermions have a large impact on the magnitude of signal rates and on the new physics signatures. Realistic background estimates are given.Comment: 13 p

An immediate-late gene expression module decodes ERK signal duration

The RAF-MEK-ERK signalling pathway controls fundamental, often opposing cellular processes such as proliferation and apoptosis. Signal duration has been identified to play a decisive role in these cell fate decisions. However, it remains unclear how the different early and late responding gene expression modules can discriminate short and long signals. We obtained both protein phosphorylation and gene expression time course data from HEK293 cells carrying an inducible construct of the proto-oncogene RAF By mathematical modelling, we identified a new gene expression module of immediate-late genes (ILGs) distinct in gene expression dynamics and function. We find that mRNA longevity enables these ILGs to respond late and thus translate ERK signal duration into response amplitude. Despite their late response, their GC-rich promoter structure suggested and metabolic labelling with 4SU confirmed that transcription of ILGs is induced immediately. A comparative analysis shows that the principle of duration decoding is conserved in PC12 cells and MCF7 cells, two paradigm cell systems for ERK signal duration. Altogether, our findings suggest that ILGs function as a gene expression module to decode ERK signal duration

Relationships between Root Pathogen Resistance, Abundance and Expression of Pseudomonas Antimicrobial Genes, and Soil Properties in Representative Swiss Agricultural Soils

Strains of Pseudomonas that produce antimicrobial metabolites and control soilborne plant diseases have often been isolated from soils defined as disease-suppressive, i.e., soils, in which specific plant pathogens are present, but plants show no or reduced disease symptoms. Moreover, it is assumed that pseudomonads producing antimicrobial compounds such as 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (DAPG) or phenazines (PHZ) contribute to the specific disease resistance of suppressive soils. However, pseudomonads producing antimicrobial metabolites are also present in soils that are conducive to disease. Currently, it is still unknown whether and to which extent the abundance of antimicrobials-producing pseudomonads is related to the general disease resistance of common agricultural soils. Moreover, virtually nothing is known about the conditions under which pseudomonads express antimicrobial genes in agricultural field soils. We present here results of the first side-by-side comparison of 10 representative Swiss agricultural soils with a cereal-oriented cropping history for (i) the resistance against two soilborne pathogens, (ii) the abundance of Pseudomonas bacteria harboring genes involved in the biosynthesis of the antimicrobials DAPG, PHZ, and pyrrolnitrin on roots of wheat, and (iii) the ability to support the expression of these genes on the roots. Our study revealed that the level of soil disease resistance strongly depends on the type of pathogen, e.g., soils that are highly resistant to Gaeumannomyces tritici often are highly susceptible to Pythium ultimum and vice versa. There was no significant correlation between the disease resistance of the soils, the abundance of Pseudomonas bacteria carrying DAPG, PHZ, and pyrrolnitrin biosynthetic genes, and the ability of the soils to support the expression of the antimicrobial genes. Correlation analyses indicated that certain soil factors such as silt, clay, and some macro- and micronutrients influence both the abundance and the expression of the antimicrobial genes. Taken together, the results of this study suggests that pseudomonads producing DAPG, PHZ, or pyrrolnitrin are present and abundant in Swiss agricultural soils and that the soils support the expression of the respective biosynthetic genes in these bacteria to various degrees. The precise role that these pseudomonads play in the general disease resistance of the investigated agricultural soils remains elusive

Radiative Leptonic Decays of Heavy Mesons

We compute the photon spectrum and the rate for the decays $B(D)\to l\nu_l\gamma$ These photonic modes constitute a potentially large background for the purely leptonic decays which are used to extract the heavy meson decay constants. While the rate for D\to l\n\g is small, the radiative decay in the $B$ meson case could be of comparable magnitude or even larger than B\to\m\n. This would affect the determination of $f_B$ if the $\tau$ channel cannot be identified. We obtain theoretical estimates for the photonic rates and disscuss their possible experimental implications.Comment: 12 pages, RevTex, 3 uuencoded figures include

Comparison of the roll-plate and sonication techniques in the diagnosis of microbial ureteral stent colonisation: results of the first prospective randomised study

Background: Microbial ureteral stent colonisation (MUSC) is one leading risk factor for complications associated with ureteral stent placement. As MUSC remains frequently undetected by standard urine cultures, its definitive diagnosis depends on microbiological investigation of the stent. However, a standard reference laboratory technique for studying MUSC is still lacking. Materials and methods: A total of 271 ureteral stents removed from 199 consecutive patients were investigated. Urine samples were obtained prior to device removal. Stents were divided into four parts. Each part was separately processed by the microbiology laboratory within 6h. Ureteral stents were randomly allocated to roll-plate or sonication, respectively, and analysed using standard microbiological techniques. Demographic and clinical data were prospectively collected using a standard case-report form. Results: Overall, roll-plate showed a higher detection rate of MUSC compared with sonication (35 vs. 28%, p<0.05) and urine culture (35 vs. 8%, p<0.05). No inferiority of Maki's technique was observed even when stents were stratified according to indwelling time below or above 30days. Compared with roll-plate, sonication commonly failed to detect Enterococcus spp., coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) and Enterobacteriaceae. In addition, sonication required more hands-on time, more equipment and higher training than roll-plate in the laboratory. Conclusions: This prospective randomised study demonstrates the superiority of Maki's roll-plate technique over sonication in the diagnosis of MUSC and that urine culture is less sensitive than both methods. The higher detection rate, simplicity and cost-effectiveness render roll-plate the methodology of choice for routine clinical investigation as well as basic laboratory researc

Phenomenology of neutral heavy leptons

We continue our previous work on the flavour-conserving leptonic decays of the Z boson with neutral heavy leptons (NHL's) in the loops by considering box, vertex, and self-energy diagrams for the muon decay. By inclusion of these loops (they contribute to the input parameter M_W) we can probe the full parameter space spanned by the so-called flavour-conserving mixing parameters ee_(mix), \mu\mu_(mix), \tau\tau_(mix) in a superstring-inspired model of neutrino mass. We compare the results of our analysis with the existing work in this field and conclude that flavour-conserving decays have certain advantages over traditionally considered flavour-violating ones.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. D, 30 pages, 9 figures (ps), REVTE

Single-cell RNA-sequencing of herpes simplex virus 1-infected cells connects NRF2 activation to an antiviral program

Herpesvirus infection initiates a range of perturbations in the host cell, which remain poorly understood at the level of individual cells. Here, we quantify the transcriptome of single human primary fibroblasts during the first hours of lytic infection with HSV-1. By applying a generalizable analysis scheme, we define a precise temporal order of early viral gene expression and propose a set-wise emergence of viral genes. We identify host cell genes and pathways relevant for infection by combining three different computational approaches: gene and pathway overdispersion analysis, prediction of cell-state transition probabilities, as well as future cell states. One transcriptional program, which correlates with increased resistance to infection, implicates the transcription factor NRF2. Consequently, Bardoxolone methyl and Sulforaphane, two known NRF2 agonists, impair virus production, suggesting that NRF2 activation restricts viral infection. Our study provides insights into early stages of HSV-1 infection and serves as a general blueprint for the investigation of heterogeneous cell states in virus infection