Histone Variants and Their Post-Translational Modifications in Primary Human Fat Cells

Epigenetic changes related to human disease cannot be fully addressed by studies of cells from cultures or from other mammals. We isolated human fat cells from subcutaneous abdominal fat tissue of female subjects and extracted histones from either purified nuclei or intact cells. Direct acid extraction of whole adipocytes was more efficient, yielding about 100 µg of protein with histone content of 60% –70% from 10 mL of fat cells. Differential proteolysis of the protein extracts by trypsin or ArgC-protease followed by nanoLC/MS/MS with alternating CID/ETD peptide sequencing identified 19 histone variants. Four variants were found at the protein level for the first time; particularly HIST2H4B was identified besides the only H4 isoform earlier known to be expressed in humans. Three of the found H2A potentially organize small nucleosomes in transcriptionally active chromatin, while two H2AFY variants inactivate X chromosome in female cells. HIST1H2BA and three of the identified H1 variants had earlier been described only as oocyte or testis specific histones. H2AFX and H2AFY revealed differential and variable N-terminal processing. Out of 78 histone modifications by acetylation/trimethylation, methylation, dimethylation, phosphorylation and ubiquitination, identified from six subjects, 68 were found for the first time. Only 23 of these modifications were detected in two or more subjects, while all the others were individual specific. The direct acid extraction of adipocytes allows for personal epigenetic analyses of human fat tissue, for profiling of histone modifications related to obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, as well as for selection of individual medical treatments

Prediction of the stresses around main and tail gates during top coal caving by 3D numerical analysis

The objective of this paper is to predict the stresses around the tail and main gates of Soma Eynez underground coal mine, located in Western part of Turkey. In the studied mine, the magnitude and the direction of stresses around the gateways frequently change due to a planned mining method, which is a combination of a fully mechanized traditional longwall and longwall top coal caving (LTCC) methods. In the mine, a 30-35 m thick coal seam is going to be produced by three slices. The upper slice will be produced by fully mechanized traditional longwall mining, whereas the remaining two slices will be exploited by the LTCC method. Although both traditional longwall and LTCC methods are widely used around the world, a mine using a combination of both is rare. This unique application presents special challenges for designing a support system, as the magnitude and the orientation of the stresses around the gateways change frequently. Due to the planned mining method, empirical and analytical methods cannot be used to assess the stresses around the gateways. Therefore, a three-dimensional finite difference technique is selected for mine scale stress analysis, and the results presented will be used in further stability analysis of tail and main gates

Electrophysiological findings in patients who received radiation therapy over the brachial plexus: A magnetic stimulation study

Clinical and electrophysiological findings of 47 asymptomatic females who received radiation therapy (RT) over their brachial plexus region are presented and compared with 8 radiation-induced brachial plexopathy (REP) and 4 neoplastic brachial plexopathy (NBP) patients. In the asymptomatic group, abnormal findings were more frequent in patients whose post-RT period was longer than 1 year. Flexor carpi radialis H reflex was delayed or absent in 19 patients (52%) in this subgroup of asymptomatic cases, as compared to only 2 (18%) of the patients with post-RT periods of less than 1 year. Magnetic cervical nerve root stimulation was performed in 16 asymptomatic cases, with the conclusion that there was no significant difference between the irradiated and non-irradiated sides with regard to latencies, amplitudes and areas of the muscle responses. In spite of this, muscle response amplitudes and areas on both sides were significantly lower than those obtained from healthy controls. It was postulated that this finding resulted from hypoexcitability to magnetic stimulation produced by slight nerve root damage. Any part of the brachial plexus could be affected in REP and NBP patients. Myokymic discharges were found at a high rate (87.5%) in REP group. Cervical magnetic nerve root stimulation may have a diagnostic value in these patients in localizing the nerve lesion over the brachial plexus. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd

Click'n'Cut: crowdsourced interactive segmentation with object candidates

This paper introduces Click'n'Cut, a novel web tool for interactive object segmentation addressed to crowdsourcing tasks. Click'n'Cut combines bounding boxes and clicks generated by workers to obtain accurate object segmentations. These segmentations are created by combining precomputed object candidates in a light computational fashion that allows an immediate response from the interface. Click'n'Cut has been tested with a crowdsourcing campaign to annotate a subset of the Berkeley Segmentation Dataset (BSDS). Results show competitive results with state of the art, especially in time to converge to a high quality segmentation. The data collection campaign included golden standard tests to detect cheaters

Gliosarcoma of the Optic Nerves 15 years After Radiation Treatment For Hypophyseal Adenoma

"Gliosarcoma is a very rare mixed tumor in the central nervous system, consisting of glial and malignant mesenchymal elements. Gliosarcoma is considered a subtype of glioblastoma and termed as primary gliosarcoma. Secondary gliosarcoma is detected at subsequent surgery for previously resected and irradiated glioblastoma multiforme. We describe an unusual case with vision loss due to gliosarcoma, probably radiotheraphy-induced,15 years after radiation treatment for hypophyseal adenoma.

Salt Iodization And Iodine Status Among Infants And Lactating Mothers In Papua New Guinea

Universal salt iodization is the most effective and sustainable intervention strategy for the prevention, control, and elimination of iodine deficiency. This cross-sectional study assessed the per capita consumption and availability of adequately iodised salt in households, and the iodine status of infants 7 - 120 days old and their lactating mothers in the National Capital District, Papua New Guinea. Salt samples were obtained from households selected by simple random sampling. The mean daily per capita consumption of salt was 5.6 ± 1.5g. The mean iodine content in salt from households and trade-stores was 33.38 ± 18.04ppm and 44.20 ± 12.10ppm, respectively. Adequately iodised salt was available in 94.48% of households and in 100% of trade-stores. The calculated mean daily per capita discretionary intake of iodine was 186.93ug, which is below the 250ug recommended for lactating mothers. Casual urine samples selected by simple random sampling were used to determine the iodine status of infants and mothers. Urinary iodine concentration (UIC) was estimated by Sandell-Kolthoff reaction. Mean age of infants was 46.9 ± 28.2 days (95% confidence-interval 41.3 - 52.5 days). Median UIC of infants and of their lactating mothers was 253.5ug/L (interquartile-range 165.3 - 363.0ug/L) and 124.5ug/L (interquartile-range 93.0 - 161.0ug/L), respectively, indicating that iodine deficiency is not of public health significance among infants and lactating mothers. Eighty percent of the infants were exclusively breast-fed and 20% were mixed-fed. The median UIC for the exclusively breast-fed and mixed-fed infants was 251.0ug/L (interquartile-range 177.0 - 338.6ug/L), and 290.0ug/L (interquartile-range 147.1 - 425.5ug/L), respectively, indicating optimal status of iodine nutrition. The UIC of exclusively breast-fed infants was significantly (P < 0.001) higher than the UIC of their mothers. Spearman’s correlation test showed weak non-significant linear relationship (r = 0.118, P = 0.297) between UIC of the exclusively breastfed-infants and their mothers. Despite success in the implementation of the universal salt iodization strategy in the National Capital District, mild to moderate status of iodine nutrition was prevalent in 33.8% of the exclusively breastfeeding-mothers, although their exclusively breastfed-infants were nourished with iodine. There is, therefore, a need to advocate strongly for increased dietary intake of iodine by lactating mothers. The findings strongly indicate the urgent need for an efficient, sustainable, and functional monitoring system to strengthen and improve on the achievements of the universal salt iodization strategy in National Capital District

Assessment of crowdsourcing and gamification loss in user-assisted object segmentation

International audienceThere has been a growing interest in applying human computation – particularly crowdsourcing techniques – to assist in the solution of multimedia, image processing, and computer vision problems which are still too difficult to solve using fully automatic algorithms, and yet relatively easy for humans. In this paper we focus on a specific problem – object segmentation within color images – and compare different solutions which combine color image segmentation algorithms with human efforts, either in the form of an explicit interactive segmentation task or through an implicit collection of valuable human traces with a game. We use Click’n’Cut, a friendly, web-based, interactive segmentation tool that allows segmentation tasks to be assigned to many users, and Ask’nSeek, a game with a purpose designed for object detection and segmentation. The two main contributions of this paper are: (i) We use the results of Click’n’Cut campaigns with different groups of users to examine and quantify the crowdsourcing loss incurred when an interactive segmentation task is assigned to paid crowd-workers, comparing their results to the ones obtained when computer vision experts are asked to perform the same tasks. (ii) Since interactive segmentation tasks are inherently tedious and prone to fatigue, we compare the quality of the results obtained with Click’n’Cut with the ones obtained using a (fun, interactive, and potentially less tedious) game designed for the same purpose. We call this contribution the assessment of the gamification loss, since it refers to how much quality of segmentation results may be lost when we switch to a game-based approach to the same task. We demonstrate that the crowdsourcing loss is significant when using all the data points from workers, but decreases substantially (and becomes comparable to the quality of expert users performing similar tasks) after performing a modest amount of data analysis and filtering out of users whose data are clearly not useful. We also show that – on the other hand – the gamification loss is significantly more severe: the quality of the results drops roughly by half when switching from a focused (yet tedious) task to a more fun and relaxed game environment