Visiual Detection for Robot Movement

There are various kinds of robots in the world. It is known that it helps human works to be done easily and quickly. Less men power is needed as well. Robots can also be identified as machines which include motors, gears, sensors etc. The world nowadays has become modernize because of the existing robots and machines. It is approximately 70% of the industries uses robots and machines to operate their factories. This way, it is much efficient and reliable to use machines which can operate in 24 hours a day. However for this project, it is about a robot which can help human to do small tasks such as delivering papers from one place to another without the help of a human. Therefore in this paper, it is about explaining the mechanism of the robot arm. The hardware that were used are three motors, a touch sensor, an IR sensor, a mini camera on the tip of the arm, and a Mindstorm LEGO Robot Main Controller to program the robot arm together with a laptop to process the image

Approximating Mexican highways with slime mould

Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a single cell visible by unaided eye. During its foraging behavior the cell spans spatially distributed sources of nutrients with a protoplasmic network. Geometrical structure of the protoplasmic networks allows the plasmodium to optimize transport of nutrients between remote parts of its body. Assuming major Mexican cities are sources of nutrients how much structure of Physarum protoplasmic network correspond to structure of Mexican Federal highway network? To find an answer undertook a series of laboratory experiments with living Physarum polycephalum. We represent geographical locations of major cities by oat flakes, place a piece of plasmodium in Mexico city area, record the plasmodium's foraging behavior and extract topology of nutrient transport networks. Results of our experiments show that the protoplasmic network formed by Physarum is isomorphic, subject to limitations imposed, to a network of principle highways. Ideas and results of the paper may contribute towards future developments in bio-inspired road planning

Interaction Between Convection and Pulsation

This article reviews our current understanding of modelling convection dynamics in stars. Several semi-analytical time-dependent convection models have been proposed for pulsating one-dimensional stellar structures with different formulations for how the convective turbulent velocity field couples with the global stellar oscillations. In this review we put emphasis on two, widely used, time-dependent convection formulations for estimating pulsation properties in one-dimensional stellar models. Applications to pulsating stars are presented with results for oscillation properties, such as the effects of convection dynamics on the oscillation frequencies, or the stability of pulsation modes, in classical pulsators and in stars supporting solar-type oscillations.Comment: Invited review article for Living Reviews in Solar Physics. 88 pages, 14 figure

Occurrence and impact of delayed cerebral ischemia after coiling and after clipping in the International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial (ISAT)

Delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) is an important cause of poor outcome after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). We studied differences in incidence and impact of DCI as defined clinically after coiling and after clipping in the International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial. We calculated odds ratios (OR) for DCI for clipping versus coiling with logistic regression analysis. With coiled patients without DCI as the reference group, we calculated ORs for poor outcome at 2 months and 1 year for coiled patients with DCI and for clipped patients without, and with DCI. With these ORs, we calculated relative excess risk due to Interaction (RERI). Clipping increased the risk of DCI compared to coiling in the 2,143 patients OR 1.24, 95% confidence interval (95% CI 1.01–1.51). Coiled patients with DCI, clipped patients without DCI, and clipped patients with DCI all had higher risks of poor outcome than coiled patients without DCI. Clipping and DCI showed no interaction for poor outcome at 2 months: RERI 0.12 (95% CI −1.16 to 1.40) or 1 year: RERI −0.48 (95% CI −1.69 to 0.74). Only for patients treated within 4 days, coiling and DCI was associated with a poorer outcome at 1 year than clipping and DCI (RERI −2.02, 95% CI −3.97 to −0.08). DCI was more common after clipping than after coiling in SAH patients in ISAT. Impact of DCI on poor outcome did not differ between clipped and coiled patients, except for patients treated within 4 days, in whom DCI resulted more often in poor outcome after coiling than after clipping

On negative results when using sentiment analysis tools for software engineering research

Recent years have seen an increasing attention to social aspects of software engineering, including studies of emotions and sentiments experienced and expressed by the software developers. Most of these studies reuse existing sentiment analysis tools such as SentiStrength and NLTK. However, these tools have been trained on product reviews and movie reviews and, therefore, their results might not be applicable in the software engineering domain. In this paper we study whether the sentiment analysis tools agree with the sentiment recognized by human evaluators (as reported in an earlier study) as well as with each other. Furthermore, we evaluate the impact of the choice of a sentiment analysis tool on software engineering studies by conducting a simple study of differences in issue resolution times for positive, negative and neutral texts. We repeat the study for seven datasets (issue trackers and Stack Overflow questions) and different sentiment analysis tools and observe that the disagreement between the tools can lead to diverging conclusions. Finally, we perform two replications of previously published studies and observe that the results of those studies cannot be confirmed when a different sentiment analysis tool is used

Cyclophilin E Functions as a Negative Regulator to Influenza Virus Replication by Impairing the Formation of the Viral Ribonucleoprotein Complex

The nucleoprotein (NP) of influenza A virus is a multifunctional protein that plays a critical role in the replication and transcription of the viral genome. Therefore, examining host factors that interact with NP may shed light on the mechanism of host restriction barriers and the tissue tropism of influenza A virus. Here, Cyclophilin E (CypE), a member of the peptidyl-propyl cis-trans isomerase (PPIase) family, was found to bind to NP and inhibit viral replication and transcription.In the present study, CypE was found to interact with NP but not with the other components of the viral ribonucleoprotein complex (vRNP): PB1, PB2, and PA. Mutagenesis data revealed that the CypE domain comprised of residues 137–186 is responsible for its binding to NP. Functional analysis results indicated that CypE is a negative regulator in the influenza virus life cycle. Furthermore, knock-down of CypE resulted in increased levels of three types of viral RNA, suggesting that CypE negatively affects viral replication and transcription. Moreover, up-regulation of CypE inhibited the activity of influenza viral polymerase. We determined that the molecular mechanism by which CypE negatively regulates influenza virus replication and transcription is by interfering with NP self-association and the NP-PB1 and NP-PB2 interactions.CypE is a host restriction factor that inhibits the functions of NP, as well as viral replication and transcription, by impairing the formation of the vRNP. The data presented here will help us to better understand the molecular mechanisms of host restriction barriers, host adaptation, and tissue tropism of influenza A virus

A multi-stage genome-wide association study of bladder cancer identifies multiple susceptibility loci.

We conducted a multi-stage, genome-wide association study of bladder cancer with a primary scan of 591,637 SNPs in 3,532 affected individuals (cases) and 5,120 controls of European descent from five studies followed by a replication strategy, which included 8,382 cases and 48,275 controls from 16 studies. In a combined analysis, we identified three new regions associated with bladder cancer on chromosomes 22q13.1, 19q12 and 2q37.1: rs1014971, (P = 8 × 10⁻¹²) maps to a non-genic region of chromosome 22q13.1, rs8102137 (P = 2 × 10⁻¹¹) on 19q12 maps to CCNE1 and rs11892031 (P = 1 × 10⁻⁷) maps to the UGT1A cluster on 2q37.1. We confirmed four previously identified genome-wide associations on chromosomes 3q28, 4p16.3, 8q24.21 and 8q24.3, validated previous candidate associations for the GSTM1 deletion (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹) and a tag SNP for NAT2 acetylation status (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹), and found interactions with smoking in both regions. Our findings on common variants associated with bladder cancer risk should provide new insights into the mechanisms of carcinogenesis

Isolation and characterization of a novel 2-sec-butylphenol-degrading bacterium Pseudomonas sp. strain MS-1

A novel bacterium capable of utilizing 2-sec-butylphenol as the sole carbon and energy source, Pseudomonas sp. strain MS-1, was isolated from freshwater sediment. Within 30 h, strain MS-1 completely degraded 1.5 mM 2-sec-butylphenol in basal salt medium, with concomitant cell growth. A pathway for the metabolism of 2-sec-butylphenol by strain MS-1 was proposed on the basis of the identification of 3 internal metabolites—3-sec-butylcatechol, 2-hydroxy-6-oxo-7-methylnona-2,4-dienoic acid, and 2-methylbutyric acid—by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis. Strain MS-1 degraded 2-sec-butylphenol through 3-sec-butylcatechol along a meta-cleavage pathway. Degradation experiments with various alkylphenols showed that the degradability of alkylphenols by strain MS-1 depended strongly on the position (ortho ≫ meta = para) of the alkyl substitute, and that strain MS-1 could degrade 2-alkylphenols with various sized and branched alkyl chain (o-cresol, 2-ethylphenol, 2-n-propylphenol, 2-isopropylphenol, 2-sec-butylphenol, and 2-tert-butylphenol), as well as a dialkylphenol (namely, 6-tert-butyl-m-cresol)

Variants of the Matrix Metalloproteinase-2 but not the Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 genes significantly influence functional outcome after stroke

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Multiple lines of evidence suggest that genetic factors contribute to stroke recovery. The matrix metalloproteinases -2 (MMP-2) and -9 (MMP-9) are modulators of extracellular matrix components, with important regulatory functions in the Central Nervous System (CNS). Shortly after stroke, MMP-2 and MMP-9 have mainly damaging effects for brain tissue. However, MMPs also have a beneficial activity in angiogenesis and neurovascular remodelling during the delayed neuroinflammatory response phase, thus possibly contributing to stroke functional recovery.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the present study, the role of <it>MMP-2 </it>and <it>MMP-9 </it>genetic variants in stroke recovery was investigated in 546 stroke patients. Functional outcome was assessed three months after a stroke episode using the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), and patients were classified in two groups: good recovery (mRS ≤ 1) or poor recovery (mRS>1). Haplotype tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the <it>MMP-2 </it>(N = 21) and <it>MMP-9 </it>(N = 4) genes were genotyped and tested for association with stroke outcome, adjusting for significant non-genetic clinical variables.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Six SNPs in the <it>MMP-2 </it>gene were significantly associated with stroke outcome (0.0018<<it>P </it>< 0.0415), two of which survived the Bonferroni correction for multiple testing. In the subset of ischemic stroke patients, association of five of these SNPs remained positive (0.0042<<it>P </it>< 0.0306). No significant associations were found for the <it>MMP-9 </it>gene.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results presented strongly indicate that <it>MMP-2 </it>genetic variants are an important mediator of functional outcome after stroke.</p