New Descriptor for Glomerulus Detection in Kidney Microscopy Image

Glomerulus detection is a key step in histopathological evaluation of microscopy images of kidneys. However, the task of automatic detection of glomeruli poses challenges due to the disparity in sizes and shapes of glomeruli in renal sections. Moreover, extensive variations of their intensities due to heterogeneity in immunohistochemistry staining are also encountered. Despite being widely recognized as a powerful descriptor for general object detection, the rectangular histogram of oriented gradients (Rectangular HOG) suffers from many false positives due to the aforementioned difficulties in the context of glomerulus detection. A new descriptor referred to as Segmental HOG is developed to perform a comprehensive detection of hundreds of glomeruli in images of whole kidney sections. The new descriptor possesses flexible blocks that can be adaptively fitted to input images to acquire robustness to deformations of glomeruli. Moreover, the novel segmentation technique employed herewith generates high quality segmentation outputs and the algorithm is assured to converge to an optimal solution. Consequently, experiments using real world image data reveal that Segmental HOG achieves significant improvements in detection performance compared to Rectangular HOG. The proposed descriptor and method for glomeruli detection present promising results and is expected to be useful in pathological evaluation

Cytotoxic T lymphocytes: Sniping cancer stem cells

Cancer stem cells (CSCs)/cancer-initiating cells (CICs) are characterized as a small population of cancer cells that have high tumor-initiating ability. CSCs/CICs are resistant to several cancer therapies, and eradication of CSCs/CICs is essential to cure cancer. How can we eradicate CSCs/CICs? Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) might be a promising answer

Topology conserving gauge action and the overlap-Dirac operator

We apply the topology conserving gauge action proposed by Luescher to the four-dimensional lattice QCD simulation in the quenched approximation. With this gauge action the topological charge is stabilized along the hybrid Monte Carlo updates compared to the standard Wilson gauge action. The quark potential and renormalized coupling constant are in good agreement with the results obtained with the Wilson gauge action. We also investigate the low-lying eigenvalue distribution of the hermitian Wilson-Dirac operator, which is relevant for the construction of the overlap-Dirac operator.Comment: 27pages, 11figures, accepted versio

Minimal orbits of the isotropy groups of symmetric spaces of compact type

AbstractLet M be a compact symmetric space, and K the isotropy subgroup of the group of all isometries of M at a point o of M . We consider two actions of K , namely the natural action of K on M and the linear isotropy action of K on the tangent space ToM . In both cases, we show that in each category of orbits of the “same type” under K there exists a unique minimal one

New Bifunctional Antioxidants : In tramolecular Synergistic Effects between Benzofuranol and Thiopropionate Group, Part II

The antioxidant activities of benzofuranols and chromanols with methyl, methyl thiomethyl and thiopropionate groups were evaluated for the oxidation of tetralin at 61 and 140℃. The antioxidants tested showed almost the same behaviour for the oxidation of tetralin initiated by an azo initiator at 61℃. However, benzofuranol and chromanol with a thiopropionate group at the meta position of the OH group were shown to improve antioxidant activity at high temperature to a greater extent than the methyl and methyl thiomethyl groups