Haptic Cushion: Automatic Generation of Vibro- tactile Feedback Based on Audio Signal for Immersive Interaction with Multimedia

This paper presents a haptic display providing audio-based vibrotactile feedback to enhance the immersive feeling of the user who interacts with multimedia content. The newly developed display has two main features, i) an automatic transformation algorithm and ii) a vibrotactile actuator. The proposed algorithm automatically transforms auditory signals into vibrotactile patterns in real-time by extracting principal frequencies from acoustic unit sequences and superposing vibration waves. The actuator was designed based on the structure of the voice coil linear motor to operate effectively over a wide range of vibration frequencies. Experiments were carried out to evaluate characteristics of the implemented system and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Locus-specific editing of histone modifications at endogenous enhancers using programmable TALE-LSD1 fusions

Mammalian gene regulation is dependent on tissue-specific enhancers that can act across large distances to influence transcriptional activity1-3. Mapping experiments have identified hundreds of thousands of putative enhancers whose functionality is supported by cell type–specific chromatin signatures and striking enrichments for disease-associated sequence variants4-11. However, these studies did not address the in vivo functions of the putative elements or their chromatin states and could not determine which genes, if any, a given enhancer regulates. Here we present a strategy to investigate endogenous regulatory elements by selectively altering their chromatin state using programmable reagents. Transcription activator–like (TAL) effector repeat domains fused to the LSD1 histone demethylase efficiently remove enhancer-associated chromatin modifications from target loci, without affecting control regions. We find that inactivation of enhancer chromatin by these fusion proteins frequently causes down-regulation of proximal genes, revealing enhancer target genes. Our study demonstrates the potential of ‘epigenome editing’ tools to characterize an important class of functional genomic elements

Efficient In Vivo Genome Editing Using RNA-Guided Nucleases

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems have evolved in bacteria and archaea as a defense mechanism to silence foreign nucleic acids of viruses and plasmids. Recent work has shown that bacterial type II CRISPR systems can be adapted to create guide RNAs (gRNAs) capable of directing site-specific DNA cleavage by the Cas9 nuclease in vitro. Here we show that this system can function in vivo to induce targeted genetic modifications in zebrafish embryos with efficiencies comparable to those obtained using ZFNs and TALENs for the same genes. RNA-guided nucleases robustly enabled genome editing at 9 of 11 different sites tested, including two for which TALENs previously failed to induce alterations. These results demonstrate that programmable CRISPR/Cas systems provide a simple, rapid, and highly scalable method for altering genes in vivo, opening the door to using RNA-guided nucleases for genome editing in a wide range of organisms

Efficient genome editing in zebrafish using a CRISPR-Cas system

In bacteria, foreign nucleic acids are silenced by clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)--CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems. Bacterial type II CRISPR systems have been adapted to create guide RNAs that direct site-specific DNA cleavage by the Cas9 endonuclease in cultured cells. Here we show that the CRISPR-Cas system functions in vivo to induce targeted genetic modifications in zebrafish embryos with efficiencies similar to those obtained using zinc finger nucleases and transcription activator-like effector nucleases

Duality and Braiding in Twisted Quantum Field Theory

We re-examine various issues surrounding the definition of twisted quantum field theories on flat noncommutative spaces. We propose an interpretation based on nonlocal commutative field redefinitions which clarifies previously observed properties such as the formal equivalence of Green's functions in the noncommutative and commutative theories, causality, and the absence of UV/IR mixing. We use these fields to define the functional integral formulation of twisted quantum field theory. We exploit techniques from braided tensor algebra to argue that the twisted Fock space states of these free fields obey conventional statistics. We support our claims with a detailed analysis of the modifications induced in the presence of background magnetic fields, which induces additional twists by magnetic translation operators and alters the effective noncommutative geometry seen by the twisted quantum fields. When two such field theories are dual to one another, we demonstrate that only our braided physical states are covariant under the duality.Comment: 35 pages; v2: Typos correcte

Heritable and Precise Zebrafish Genome Editing Using a CRISPR-Cas System

We have previously reported a simple and customizable CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) RNA-guided Cas9 nuclease (RGN) system that can be used to efficiently and robustly introduce somatic indel mutations in endogenous zebrafish genes. Here we demonstrate that RGN-induced mutations are heritable, with efficiencies of germline transmission reaching as high as 100%. In addition, we extend the power of the RGN system by showing that these nucleases can be used with single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides (ssODNs) to create precise intended sequence modifications, including single nucleotide substitutions. Finally, we describe and validate simple strategies that improve the targeting range of RGNs from 1 in every 128 basepairs (bps) of random DNA sequence to 1 in every 8 bps. Together, these advances expand the utility of the CRISPR-Cas system in the zebrafish beyond somatic indel formation to heritable and precise genome modifications