1,053 research outputs found
Variation in pattern of mystacial vibrissae in mice: A quantitative study of ICR stock and several inbred strains
We report on the variation in the pattern of mystacial vibrissae in ICR mice, of which one-half of the about 600 animals investigated showed one or more supernumerary whiskers (SWs). The SWs and their follicles—in all respects identical to the units of the standard pattern except for their smaller size—occurred at a restricted number of sites. In addition, a limited number of mice from two BALB/c strains were analyzed. Half of them also had one or more SWs, but mainly at one site. Mice of the C3H/HeJ and DBA/2J(a) strains were virtually without SWs, whereas animals from the NMRI strain were standard without exception. Nearly all animals of the C57BL/6J strain lacked between 1 and 4 vibrissae, always from one or two of the same adjacent sites. There was a slight overall predominance for the left side of the face to bear SWs and there was no clear-cut association with sex; the entire population was without obvious defects. The sites where extra or lacking whiskers occur are associated with the lines of fusion between the medial and the lateral nasal fold, and between the latter and the maxillary arch. Where tested, we always found a topologic equivalency between the pattern of the whisker follicles and the contralateral pattern of the "barrels”—multineuronal units in layer IV of the parietal cerebral cortex—whether the pattern was standard, "enriched,” or lacking in elements. The data presented in this paper provided a basis for several studies carried out subsequently on animals that are the offspring of those characterized here, studies suggesting that the occurrence of supernumerary and of lacking whiskers has a genetic basi
Selective breeding for variations in patterns of mystacial vibrissae of mice: Bilaterally symmetrical strains derived from ICR stock
The establishment of certain patterns of mystacial vibrlssae in mice has been the aim of an extensive breeding program carried on in this laboratory since 1977. In a companion paper we have reported on variations in this pattern in an outbred population of ICR mice. Starting with 21 ICR animals we bred, mostly by brother-sister mating, for 13 bilaterally symmetric patterns of mystacial vibrlssae characterized by the presence (or absence) of supernumerary whiskers (SWs). The strains are classified as follows: I, a mouse strain with the standard pattern; II, eight strains bred for the occurrence of SWs at a given site or sites; and III, four mouse strains bred for a maximal number of SWs in different regions of the whiskerpad. Commonly, SWs occur in regions that coincide with the zones of mergence between the three facial processes except for two class II strains in which we bred for SWs in the "straddler” row of vibrissae, and for one class III strain, In which we cultivated the tendency (that appeared late in our program) to have SWs at the crest of a facial process. For classes I and II we analyzed the results for about 18 generations in terms of "Improvement,” meaning an increase in the percentages of animals with the desired phenotype together with a decreased frequency of undesired SWs. For class III, success in breeding meant the increase of the mean number of the desired SWs. All results led to the same conclusion: there is a genetic basis for the occurrence of SWs. The side preference of a particular SW is not strain dependent. It disappears in those class I and II strains in which almost 100% of animals obtained the desired phenotype. The increase in number of SWs in one zone of mergence does not depend on the presence of SWs in the other. Where tested, we almost always found a representation of an SW in a topologically equivalent location within the "barrelfield” area of the somatosensory cerebral cortex. Except for some diseases early in the breeding program, and some side effects of inbreeding that were eliminated, the population was without obvious defects. Where tested, there was no correlation between the occurrence of SWs and sex. The observed variations in pattern of mystacial vibrlssae and their genetic background led us to propose a morphogenetic model for the formation of the pattern of mystacial vibrlssa
Classification of Quantitative Light-Induced Fluorescence Images Using Convolutional Neural Network
Images are an important data source for diagnosis and treatment of oral
diseases. The manual classification of images may lead to misdiagnosis or
mistreatment due to subjective errors. In this paper an image classification
model based on Convolutional Neural Network is applied to Quantitative
Light-induced Fluorescence images. The deep neural network outperforms other
state of the art shallow classification models in predicting labels derived
from three different dental plaque assessment scores. The model directly
benefits from multi-channel representation of the images resulting in improved
performance when, besides the Red colour channel, additional Green and Blue
colour channels are used.Comment: Full version of ICANN 2017 submissio
Variation in pattern of mystacial vibrissae in mice. A quantitative study of ICR stock and several inbred strains
We report on the variation in the pattern of mystacial vibrissae in ICR mice, of which one-half of the about 600 animals investigated showed one or more supernumerary whiskers (SWs). The SWs and their follicles--in all respects identical to the units of the standard pattern except for their smaller size--occurred at a restricted number of sites. In addition, a limited number of mice from two BALB/c strains were analyzed. Half of them also had one or more SWs, but mainly at one site. Mice of the C3H/HeJ and DBA/2J(a) strains were virtually without SWs, whereas animals from the NMRI strain were standard without exception. Nearly all animals of the C57BL/6J strain lacked between 1 and 4 vibrissae, always from one or two of the same adjacent sites. There was a slight overall predominance for the left side of the face to bear SWs and there was no clear-cut association with sex; the entire population was without obvious defects. The sites where extra or lacking whiskers occur are associated with the lines of fusion between the medial and the lateral nasal fold, and between the latter and the maxillary arch. Where tested, we always found a topologic equivalency between the pattern of the whisker follicles and the contralateral pattern of the "barrels"--multineuronal units in layer IV of the parietal cerebral cortex--whether the pattern was standard, "enriched," or lacking in elements. The data presented in this paper provided a basis for several studies carried out subsequently on animals that are the offspring of those characterized here, studies suggesting that the occurrence of supernumerary and of lacking whiskers has a genetic basis
Could recombinant insulin compounds contribute to adenocarcinoma progression by stimulating local angiogenesis?
Negative effects on the progression of adenocarcinomas by hyperinsulinaemia and the insulin analogue glargine (A21Gly,B31Arg,B32Arg human insulin) have recently been suggested. Most actions of this insulin analogue have hitherto been explained by direct stimulation of growth potential of neoplastic cells and by its IGF-1 related properties. However, insulin-stimulated angiogenesis could be an additional factor involved in tumour progression and clinical outcomes associated with cancer. Five types of human adenocarcinoma (breast, colon, pancreas, lung and kidney) were evaluated for the presence of insulin receptors (IRs) on angiogenic structures. In an in vitro angiogenesis assay, various commercially available insulin compounds were evaluated for their potential to increase capillary-like tube formation of human microvascular endothelial cells (hMVEC). Insulin compounds used were: human insulin, insulin lispro (B28Lys,B29Pro human insulin), insulin glargine and insulin detemir (B29Lys[e-tetradecanoyl],desB30 human insulin). Insulin receptors were found to be strongly expressed on the endothelium of microvessels in all evaluated adenocarcinomas, in addition to variable expression on tumour cells. Low or no detectable expression of IRs was seen on microvessels in extratumoral stroma. Incubation with commercially available insulin compounds increased capillary-like tube formation of hMVEC in vitro. Our results suggest that all tested insulin compounds may stimulate tumour growth by enhancing local angiogenesis. Future studies need to confirm the association between insulin therapy in type 2 diabetes and tumour progressio
Double in situ hybridization in combination with digital image analysis: A new approach to study interphase chromosome topography
Double in situ hybridization with mercurated and biotinylated chromosome specific DNA probes in combination with digital image analysis provides a new approach to compare the distribution of homologous and nonhomologous chromosome targets within individual interphase nuclei. Here we have used two DNA probes representing tandemly repeated sequences specific for the constitutive heterochromatin of the human chromosomes 1 and 15, respectively, and studied the relative arrangements of these chromosome targets in interphase nuclei of human lymphocytes, amniotic fluid cells, and fibroblasts, cultivated in vitro. We have developed a 2D-image analysis approach which allows the rapid evaluation of large numbers of interphase nuclei. Models to test for a random versus nonrandom distribution of chromosome segments are discussed taking into account the three-dimensional origin of the evaluated 2D-distribution. In all three human diploid cell types the measurements of target-target and target-center distances in the 2D-nuclear image revealed that the labeled segments of the two chromosomes 15 were distributed both significantly closer to each other and closer to the center of the nuclear image than the labeled chromosome 1 segments. This result can be explained by the association of nucleolus organizer regions on the short arm of chromosome 15 with nucleoli located more centrally in these nuclei and does not provide evidence for a homologous association per se. In contrast, evaluation of the interphase positioning of the two chromosome 1 segments fits the random expectation in amniotic fluid and fibroblast cells, while in experiments using lymphocytes a slight excess of larger distances between these homologous targets was occasionally observed. 2D-distances between the labeled chromosome 1 and 15 segments showed a large variability in their relative positioning. In conclusion our data do not support the idea of a strict and permanent association of these homologous and nonhomologous targets in the cell types studied so far
Quantifying Demonstration Quality for Robot Learning and Generalization
Learning from Demonstration (LfD) seeks to democratize robotics by enabling
diverse end-users to teach robots to perform a task by providing
demonstrations. However, most LfD techniques assume users provide optimal
demonstrations. This is not always the case in real applications where users
are likely to provide demonstrations of varying quality, that may change with
expertise and other factors. Demonstration quality plays a crucial role in
robot learning and generalization. Hence, it is important to quantify the
quality of the provided demonstrations before using them for robot learning. In
this paper, we propose quantifying the quality of the demonstrations based on
how well they perform in the learned task. We hypothesize that task performance
can give an indication of the generalization performance on similar tasks. The
proposed approach is validated in a user study (N = 27). Users with different
robotics expertise levels were recruited to teach a PR2 robot a generic task
(pressing a button) under different task constraints. They taught the robot in
two sessions on two different days to capture their teaching behaviour across
sessions. The task performance was utilized to classify the provided
demonstrations into high-quality and low-quality sets. The results show a
significant Pearson correlation coefficient (R = 0.85, p < 0.0001) between the
task performance and generalization performance across all participants. We
also found that users clustered into two groups: Users who provided
high-quality demonstrations from the first session, assigned to the
fast-adapters group, and users who provided low-quality demonstrations in the
first session and then improved with practice, assigned to the slow-adapters
group. These results highlight the importance of quantifying demonstration
quality, which can be indicative of the adaptation level of the user to the
task
Autonomous Person-Specific Following Robot
Following a specific user is a desired or even required capability for
service robots in many human-robot collaborative applications. However, most
existing person-following robots follow people without knowledge of who it is
following. In this paper, we proposed an identity-specific person tracker,
capable of tracking and identifying nearby people, to enable person-specific
following. Our proposed method uses a Sequential Nearest Neighbour with
Thresholding Selection algorithm we devised to fuse together an anonymous
person tracker and a face recogniser. Experiment results comparing our proposed
method with alternative approaches showed that our method achieves better
performance in tracking and identifying people, as well as improved robot
performance in following a target individual
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