NANOG Reporter Cell Lines Generated by Gene Targeting in Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Background: Pluripotency and self-renewal of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is mediated by a complex interplay between extra- and intracellular signaling pathways, which regulate the expression of pluripotency-specific transcription factors. The homeodomain transcription factor NANOG plays a central role in maintaining hESC pluripotency, but the precise role and regulation of NANOG are not well defined. Methodology/Principal Findings: To facilitate the study of NANOG expression and regulation in viable hESC cultures, we generated fluorescent NANOG reporter cell lines by gene targeting in hESCs. In these reporter lines, the fluorescent reporter gene was co-expressed with endogenous NANOG and responded to experimental induction or repression of the NANOG promoter with appropriate changes in expression levels. Furthermore, NANOG reporter lines facilitated the separation of hESC populations based on NANOG expression levels and their subsequent characterization. Gene expression arrays on isolated hESC subpopulations revealed genes with differential expression in NANOG high and NANOG low hESCs, providing candidates for NANOG downstream targets hESCs. Conclusion/Significance: The newly derived NANOG reporter hESC lines present novel tools to visualize NANOG expression in viable hESCs. In future applications, these reporter lines can be used to elucidate the function and regulation of NANO

Risk based life-cycle planning for flood-resilient critical infrastructure

The paper presents a risk assessment model, developed in the project oVER-FLOw and further implemented in the project CROSScade, for determining the direct and indirect impacts of flooding hazards. As a consequence of flooding, transport infrastructure and flood protection systems can be significantly damaged and cause cascading effects on other infrastructure. To achieve flood resilient infrastructure, it is necessary to assess the vulnerability of critical assets in the affected area. The model uses novel vulnerability assessment methods for embankments and bridges exposed to different flood hazard scenarios allowing the asset owners to understand risk and performance of their infrastructure. Scarce financial resources are allocated on the critical assets allowing significant cost savings and avoiding the waste of non-renewable resources in strengthening large sections which have sufficient resilience. The consequence analysis is based on an improved quantification model for direct and indirect impacts of different flood hazard scenarios used for risk mapping of the affected area

Performance evaluation of wavelet SVD-based watermarking schemes for color images

Digital image watermarking techniques have enabled imperceptible information in images to be hidden to ensure the information can be extracted later from those images. For any watermarking scheme, there are four main requirements which are imperceptibility, Robustness, capacity and security. Recently, hybrid Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) based watermarking schemes in the transform domain have significantly gained a lot of attention. This is due to the characteristics of SVD and the wavelet. Most of these schemes were tested under different conditions using grey images only. However, due to the growth of digital technology and the huge use of the colour images, it is important to consider the colour images in the watermarking area. Three different SVD-based image watermarking schemes with different wavelet transforms are selected in this paper to be tested and evaluated for colour images. Two colour models are used to represent the colour images to perform the embedding and the extraction watermarking process to study these colour models’ performances and effectiveness in the watermarking area. These colour models are RGB and YCbCr. All these colour models’ channels are used as an embedding channel and then are evaluated under different attacks types. The experimental results of the selected Wavelet SVD-based watermarking schemes proved that the embedding in the RGB and YCbCr colour channels are achieved high imperceptibility. These colour channels also showed good robustness against different attacks such as cropping, cutting, rotation and JPEG compression

Risk based life-cycle planning for flood-resilient critical infrastructure

The paper presents a risk assessment model, developed in the project oVERFLOw and further implemented in the project CROSScade, for determining the direct and indirect impacts of flooding hazards. As a consequence of flooding, transport infrastructure and flood protection systems can be significantly damaged and cause cascading effects on other infrastructure. To achieve flood resilient infrastructure, it is necessary to assess the vulnerability of critical assets in the affected area. The model uses novel vulnerability assessment methods for embankments and bridges exposed to different flood hazard scenarios allowing the asset owners to understand risk and performance of their infrastructure. Scarce financial resources are allocated on the critical assets allowing significant cost savings and avoiding the waste of non-renewable resources in strengthening large sections which have sufficient resilience. The consequence analysis is based on an improved quantification model for direct and indirect impacts of different flood hazard scenarios used for risk mapping of the affected area.Geo-engineerin

Translation and Transcultural Validation of Migraine Screening Questionnaire (MS-Q)

Introduction: Between 30 to 59% of patients with migraine without aura are undiagnosed and improperly treated, because primary care physicians are either too busy or unfamiliar with criteria for diagnosing migraine. Aim: The aim of our study was to translate the Migraine Screen Questionnaire (MS-Q) to BHS (Bosnian/Croatian /Serbian) language and to test reliability and validity of the translation on a sample of primary care patients. Material and Methods: The study was designed as cross-sectional, multi centric, diagnostic accuracy trial of an instrument for screening patients who visit general practitioners, with an aim to reveal migraine without aura. The instrument was the MS-Q, originally written in English and validated in Spanish population, and in this study being translated to BHS language. Results: Translation of the MS-Q to BHS language showed good diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity 80.0% and specificity 87.2%) and reliability (Cohen kappa 0.648) for migraine without aura, with significant screening yield among previously undiagnosed patients of 72.7%. The study also confirmed high percentage of patients with hidden MWA (52.9%) revealed by the MS-Q and ICH criteria that would otherwise remain undiagnosed. Conclusion: The MS-Q translation to BHS language could be considered as valid and reliable clinical instrument for revealing migraine without aura, similar by its performance to original questionnaire. It has considerable screening yield, discovering majority of patients with previously undiagnosed migraine without aura, whose definite diagnosis should later on be confirmed by the attending physicians using the ICH criteria