Branched chain α-ketoacid dehydrogenase kinase 111–130, a T cell epitope that induces both autoimmune myocarditis and hepatitis in A/J mice

Introduction: Organ-specific autoimmune diseases are believed to result from immune responses generated against self-antigens specific to each organ. However, when such responses target antigens expressed promiscuously in multiple tissues, then the immune-mediated damage may be wide spread. Methods: In this report, we describe a mitochondrial protein, branched chain α-ketoacid dehydrogenase kinase (BCKDk) that can act as a target autoantigen in the development of autoimmune inflammatory reactions in both heart and liver. Results: We demonstrate that BCKDk protein contains at least nine immunodominant epitopes, three of which, BCKDk 71–90, BCKDk 111–130 and BCKDk 141–160, were found to induce varying degrees of myocarditis in immunized mice. One of these, BCKDk 111–130, could also induce hepatitis without affecting lungs, kidneys, skeletal muscles, and brain. In immunogenicity testing, all three peptides induced antigen-specific T cell responses, as verified by proliferation assay and/or major histocompatibility complex class II/IAk dextramer staining. Finally, the disease-inducing abilities of BCKDk peptides were correlated with the production of interferon-γ, and the activated T cells could transfer disease to naive recipients. Conclusions: The disease induced by BCKDk peptides could serve as a useful model to study the autoimmune events of inflammatory heart and liver diseases

New padding technique for coding of arbitrarily-shaped image/video segments

Object-based coding is becoming more and more important in today's multimedia applications. Shape-adaptive DCT (SA-DCT) provides a useful tool for coding of arbitrarily-shaped image/video segments which is indispensable to achieve object-based coding. In this paper, we introduce a new padding technique based on which the arbitrarily-shaped DCT can be implemented using normal N×N DCT. The new padding is carried out for each arbitrarily-shaped block in such a way that the number of non-zero coefficients after DCT is guaranteed to be no more than that of the original image data, thereby never expanding the data set in the DCT-domain. Arbitrarily-shaped DCT coding based on this padding technique is developed, and then analyzed and compared against some of the existing algorithms in terms of rate-distortion performance, computational complexity, and implementation cost

Method and apparatus for coding an image object of arbitrary shape

At the internet age, transmittal of video signal in digital form is very common. Among various video compression standards or processes established, Discrete cosine transform (DCT)- based block transform coding is one of the frequently used coding techniques for compression of still image. This method provides a compromise between energy packing ability and computation complexity. However, the existing shape-adaptive DCT (SA-DCT) method suffers from its non-regular structure and the non-existence of efficient implementation methods. Its hardware implementation requirement can make fabrication very costly. This invention offers a new method and apparatus based on which the arbitrarily-shaped transform coding can be accomplished using the regular N-point DCT/IDCT. The existing fast algorithms and/or available chipsets could be thus utilized directly. The new method consistently provides several dB improvement over the LPE padding that is recommended in MPEG-4, at just a minimal increase in computation requirement at the encoder side only. It has low computational complexity, slightly better encoding performance, and no requirement for depadding process at the decoder side. Last but not least, this method can be easily integrated into any object-based video/image control system that supports arbitrarily-shaped coding functionally

Biodesulfurization using Pseudomonas delafieldii in magnetic polyvinyl alcohol beads

Aims: To immobilize Pseudomonas delafieldii R-8 cells in magnetic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) beads for biodesulfurization