Next Generation NASA Hazard Detection System Development

The SPLICE project is continuing NASAs efforts to develop precision landing GN&C technologies for future lander missions. One of those technologies is the next generation Hazard Detection (HD) System, which consists of a new HD Lidar and HD Algorithms. The HD System is a modular system that will be adapted to meet specific mission needs in the future. This paper presents the design approach, the nominal concept of operations for which the first prototype is being designed, and the expected performance of the system

Key Users and Box Office Analysis in an Interest Based Virtual Community

In recent years, with the growth of the Internet technology, the users of virtual community not only play the role of the information receiver but also a very important one to provide information. However, there is large amount of information aggregated daily and therefore information overloading has become a very serious problem. Under this situation, how to find information efficiently is also a very important issue. In this paper, we believe users in a virtual community may affect each other, especially those with high influence who have been called as Key Users. Therefore, we observe the biggest virtual community of movies on the Internet which is named IMDb (The Internet Movie Database). An architecture also has been proposed that combines Social Networks Analysis and the features of IMDb to discover those users who have high influence in the virtual community. We collected 17 months (January 2010 to May 2011) from IMDb including 17 366 users and 243 074 reviews. By applying the method we proposed, there are about 22 key users and 111 reviews were discovered. We also use the box office of the movies to justify our results

Long-term administration of olanzapine induces adiposity and increases hepatic fatty acid desaturation protein in female C57BL/6J mice

Objective(s): Weight gain and metabolic disturbances such as dyslipidemia, are frequent side effects of second-generation antipsychotics, including olanzapine. This study examined the metabolic effects of chronic olanzapine exposure. In addition, we investigated the hepatic fatty acid effects of olanzapine in female C57BL/6J mice fed a normal diet.Materials and Methods: Female C57BL/6J mice orally received olanzapine or normal saline for 7 weeks. The effects of long-term olanzapine exposure on body weight changes, food efficiency, blood glucose, triglyceride (TG), insulin, and leptin levels were observed. Hepatic TG and abdominal fat mass were investigated, and fat cell morphology was analyzed through histopathological methods. The levels of protein markers of fatty acid regulation in the liver, namely fatty acid synthase (FAS) and stearoyl-CoA desaturase-1 (SCD-1), were measured.Results: Olanzapine treatment increased the food intake of the mice as well as their body weight. Biochemical analyses showed that olanzapine increased blood TG, insulin, leptin, and hepatic TG. The olanzapine group exhibited increased abdominal fat mass and fat cell enlargement in abdominal fat tissue. Western blotting of the mouse liver revealed significantly higher (1.6-fold) levels of SCD-1 in the olanzapine group relative to the control group; by contrast, FAS levels in the two groups did not differ significantly.Conclusion: Enhanced lipogenesis triggered by increased hepatic SCD-1 activity might be a probable peripheral mechanism of olanzapine-induced dyslipidemia. Some adverse metabolic effects of olanzapine may be related to the disturbance of lipid homeostasis in the liver

Fak56 functions downstream of integrin alphaPS3betanu and suppresses MAPK activation in neuromuscular junction growth

Background: Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) functions in cell migration and signaling through activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascade. Neuronal function of FAK has been suggested to control axonal branching; however, the underlying mechanism in this process is not clear. Results: We have generated mutants for the Drosophila FAK gene, Fak56. Null Fak56 mutants display overgrowth of larval neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). Localization of phospho-FAK and rescue experiments suggest that Fak56 is required in presynapses to restrict NMJ growth. Genetic analyses imply that FAK mediates the signaling pathway of the integrin αPS3βν heterodimer and functions redundantly with Src. At NMJs, Fak56 downregulates ERK activity, as shown by diphospho-ERK accumulation in Fak56 mutants, and suppression of Fak56 mutant NMJ phenotypes by reducing ERK activity. Conclusion: We conclude that Fak56 is required to restrict NMJ growth during NMJ development. Fak56 mediates an extracellular signal through the integrin receptor. Unlike its conventional role in activating MAPK/ERK, Fak56 suppresses ERK activation in this process. These results suggest that Fak56 mediates a specific neuronal signaling pathway distinct from that in other cellular processes

Exposure and risk assessment of urinary trans, trans-Muconic acid in school-age children in the vicinity of a petrochemical complex in Central Taiwan

School-age children living near large petrochemical factories may be at high risk of exposure to benzene released during manufacturing processes. We aimed to investigate the urinary concentrations of trans, trans-muconic acid (t,t-MA) in school-age children living near a petrochemical complex and to estimate their cumulative risk of benzene exposure. We examined an established cohort (Taiwan Petrochemical Complex Cohort for Children, TPE3C) of school-age children (aged 6–13 years) who lived near large petrochemical factories in central Taiwan between October 2013 and September 2014. The cohort comprised 297 children from five elementary schools, namely S.-C. Branch (n = 63, school A, ~0.9 km), F.-A. (n = 51, school B, ~2.7 km), C.-T. (n = 63, school C, ~5.5 km), M.-L. (n = 54, school D, ~6.9 km), and L.-F. (n = 66, school E, ~8.6 km). We analyzed the urinary t,t-MA levels of each participant and estimated their daily intake of benzene. We also performed multiple regression analysis to investigate potential risk factors for a high urinary t,t-MA level in the study cohort. The median urinary t,t-MA levels and median estimated benzene daily intake of the children from each school were as follows: school A, 64.07 ng/mL, 11.13 μg/kg/day; school B, 61.01 ng/mL, 15.32 μg/kg/day; school C, 59.38 ng/mL, 14.81 μg/kg/day; school D, 42.35 ng/mL, 11.67 μg/kg/day; school E, undetected, 0.14 μg/kg/day. The distance between a school and a petrochemical complex (greater distance: β = −0.26, 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.52 to 0.00, p = 0.053), and the age of the children (older age: β = −3.44, 95% CI = −5.90 to −1.46, p < 0.001) were identified as potential risk factors. After confounders were adjusted for, the creatinine adjusted urinary t,t-MA levels of the school-age children tended to be lower when the distance between their school and a petrochemical complex was greater

The Antiinfective Effects of Velvet Antler of Formosan Sambar Deer (Cervus unicolor swinhoei) on Staphylococcus aureus-Infected Mice

We assayed the effects of velvet antler (VA) of Formosan sambar deer (Cervus unicolor swinhoei) and its extracts on the anti-infective activity against pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and in vivo in this study. In vitro data indicated that the VA extracts stimulated the proliferation of resting splenocytes and macrophages in a dose-dependent manner up to the highest concentration used (150 μg mL−1). The production of proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6, IL-12) by lipoteichoic acid was significantly suppressed after being cocultured with the VA extracts in a dose-dependent manner. Animal test in S. aureus-infected mice demonstrated that the numbers of bacteria determined in the kidneys and peritoneal lavage fluid of S. aureus-infected mice were significantly higher than those found in the same organs of mice pretreated with the VA samples. Moreover, the highly enhanced phagocytic activity of macrophages was further verified after in vitro treatment with the VA samples. The protective mechanisms of the VA samples might include an immune enhancer and an inflammatory cytokine suppressor

Correlation of Month of Birth and Socioeconomic Status with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Nationwide Study

The aim of this study was to investigate whether autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with birth in certain months in Taiwan, as has been found in other countries. A case–control study (1:4) matched according to sex and age was conducted. The study population comprised 4.3% of the population of Taiwan, using the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) from 1996 through 2008. Multiple logistic regressions were performed after adjusting for socioeconomic factors of urbanization level and income level. A total of 965 people with ASD and 3,860 controls were recruited. In comparison with a March birth, a higher risk of ASD was found for June and August births. After adjusting for level of urbanization and income, the risk of developing ASD was still higher for June, July, and August births over the year. There was higher risk of ASD in urban area when comparing with rural area. A higher risk of ASD was found in the highest income level. A higher risk of ASD was identified among children born in summer months, and a higher risk of ASD in urban area and high socioeconomic status suggested the presence of social-environmental causes of ASD

AV-SUPERB: A Multi-Task Evaluation Benchmark for Audio-Visual Representation Models

Audio-visual representation learning aims to develop systems with human-like perception by utilizing correlation between auditory and visual information. However, current models often focus on a limited set of tasks, and generalization abilities of learned representations are unclear. To this end, we propose the AV-SUPERB benchmark that enables general-purpose evaluation of unimodal audio/visual and bimodal fusion representations on 7 datasets covering 5 audio-visual tasks in speech and audio processing. We evaluate 5 recent self-supervised models and show that none of these models generalize to all tasks, emphasizing the need for future study on improving universal model performance. In addition, we show that representations may be improved with intermediate-task fine-tuning and audio event classification with AudioSet serves as a strong intermediate task. We release our benchmark with evaluation code and a model submission platform to encourage further research in audio-visual learning.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2024; Evaluation Code: https://github.com/roger-tseng/av-superb Submission Platform: https://av.superbbenchmark.or