The Effects of Latency on 3D Interactive Data Visualizations

Interactive data visualizations must respond fluidly to user input to be effective, or so we assume. In fact it is unknown exactly how fast a visualization must run to present every facet within a dataset. An engineering team with limited resources is left with intuition and estimates to determine if their application performs sufficiently well. This thesis studies how latency affects users\u27 comprehension of data visualizations, specifically 3D geospatial visualizations with large data sets. Subjects used a climate visualization showing temperatures spanning from the 19th to the 21st century to answer multiple choice questions. Metrics like their eye movements, time per question, and test score were recorded. Unbeknownst to the participants the latency was toggled between questions, subjugating frame rendering times to intervals between 33 1/3 and 200 milliseconds. Analysis of eye movements and question completion time and accuracy fail to show that latency has an impact on how users explore the visualization or comprehend the data presented. User fixation times on overlaid 2D visualization tools however are impacted by latency, although the fixation times do not significantly differ over 3D elements. The finding speaks to how resilient users are in navigating and understanding virtual 3D environments --- a conclusion supported by previous studies about video game latency

On the Discussion About the Origin and Cultural Affiliation of the First Burial Mounds in the Steppes of Eastern Europe and Ciscaucasia

Introduction. The introduction outlines the problems of studying the early stage of mound construction in the steppe zone of Eastern Europe, shows the history and discussion character of their study. The methodology of the investigation was based on the developed principles of archaeological typology of funerary rites, features of the mutual occurrence of things in complexes, determination of the chronology of cultures by diagnostic types of things for the epoch, application of dates of radiocarbon definitions with verification of the latter by serial samples, not by single definitions. Materials and analysis. In the section “Localization and cultural affiliation of the oldest mounds” according to the burial rite and inventory of more than 40 mounds in the territory of the Lower Volga region, Ciscaucasia and Don, the cultural unity of the Berezhnovka type mounds with the Khvalynsky burial ground is traced. They are preceded the Yamnaya (Repin stage) culture (Pit grave culture). The first mounds date back to the time preceding the Maykop culture in the Ciscaucasia. The similar mounds are badly known to the west of the Dnieper. The most ancient mounds arose among the Eneolithic population of the eastern part of the Eastern European steppe. Later in the early Yamnaya period, this tradition is fixed in the west. In the section “Chronology of the emergence of the Kurgan tradition”, by analogy of rites and inventory established the relative chronology of the beginning of the mound construction in the cultural block Gumelnitsa-Karanovo VIVarna-Kojadermen-Tripolye ВI-BIBII, dating by the 5th millennium BC. Results. Due to the radiocarbon dating, the first barrows in Ciscaucasia arose no later than the middle of the 5th millennium BC. Contribution of authors in writing the article is associated with specialization of professor N.L. Morgunova with the problems of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age of the Volga region and the Volga-Urals, of professor S.N. Korenevskiy with study of mounds of the Eneolithic and Maikop culture of Ciscaucasia

Formation and Reactivity of Biogenic Iron Microminerals

The overall purpose of the project is to explore and quantify the processes that control the formation and reactivity of biogenic iron microminerals and their impact on the solubility of metal contaminants. The research addresses how surface components of bacterial cells, extracellular organic material, and the aqueous geochemistry of the DIRB microenvironment impacts the mineralogy, chemical state and micromorphology of reduced iron phases

Target-Speaker Voice Activity Detection: a Novel Approach for Multi-Speaker Diarization in a Dinner Party Scenario

Speaker diarization for real-life scenarios is an extremely challenging problem. Widely used clustering-based diarization approaches perform rather poorly in such conditions, mainly due to the limited ability to handle overlapping speech. We propose a novel Target-Speaker Voice Activity Detection (TS-VAD) approach, which directly predicts an activity of each speaker on each time frame. TS-VAD model takes conventional speech features (e.g., MFCC) along with i-vectors for each speaker as inputs. A set of binary classification output layers produces activities of each speaker. I-vectors can be estimated iteratively, starting with a strong clustering-based diarization. We also extend the TS-VAD approach to the multi-microphone case using a simple attention mechanism on top of hidden representations extracted from the single-channel TS-VAD model. Moreover, post-processing strategies for the predicted speaker activity probabilities are investigated. Experiments on the CHiME-6 unsegmented data show that TS-VAD achieves state-of-the-art results outperforming the baseline x-vector-based system by more than 30% Diarization Error Rate (DER) abs.Comment: Accepted to Interspeech 202

THE ROLE OF INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TROPHOBLASTDERIVED EXTRACELLULAR MICROVESICLES, IMMUNE CELLS AND ENDOTHELIUM IN PATHOGENESIS OF PRE-ECLAMPSIA

Pre-eclampsia is a multisystemic disease that occurs in the second half of pregnancy, being characterized by the development of hypertension and proteinuria. Pre-eclampsia is still one of the main causes of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. Pre-eclampsia is believed to be a result of complex interactions between maternal and placental factors. However, the exact pathophysiology of this syndrome remains unclear. Intercellular interactions are the basis of fetoplacental development in physiological pregnancy. A special mechanism of intercellular interactions is associated with the release of membranebound extracellular microvesicles by cells. Concentration and molecular composition of extracellular vesicles in biological fluids depend on the producer cell types, as well as the stimuli that trigger their formation. The studies of extracellular vesicles in pre-eclampsia focus on the particles produced by the cells of maternal cardiovascular system (endothelium, smooth muscle cells of blood vessels), and blood (erythrocytes, leukocytes, and platelets), like as by the cells of syncytiotrophoblast. Changed concentrations and molecular composition of these extracellular vesicles can contribute to the pathophysiology of pre-eclampsia, due to increased proinflammatory and procoagulant state occurring during pregnancy. This review focuses, firstly, on characteristics of the extracellular vesicles produced by syncytiotrophoblast, and possible role of their interaction with maternal immune cells, endothelial cells and platelets in the course of developing pre-eclampsia. Understanding the role of extracellular vesicles of syncytiotrophoblast in pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia could suggest an opportunity of providing these results for early and non-invasive diagnostics of placental disorders, as well as for predicting development of this disease

Importance of c-Type cytochromes for U(VI) reduction by Geobacter sulfurreducens

BACKGROUND: In order to study the mechanism of U(VI) reduction, the effect of deleting c-type cytochrome genes on the capacity of Geobacter sulfurreducens to reduce U(VI) with acetate serving as the electron donor was investigated. RESULTS: The ability of several c-type cytochrome deficient mutants to reduce U(VI) was lower than that of the wild type strain. Elimination of two confirmed outer membrane cytochromes and two putative outer membrane cytochromes significantly decreased (ca. 50–60%) the ability of G. sulfurreducens to reduce U(VI). Involvement in U(VI) reduction did not appear to be a general property of outer membrane cytochromes, as elimination of two other confirmed outer membrane cytochromes, OmcB and OmcC, had very little impact on U(VI) reduction. Among the periplasmic cytochromes, only MacA, proposed to transfer electrons from the inner membrane to the periplasm, appeared to play a significant role in U(VI) reduction. A subpopulation of both wild type and U(VI) reduction-impaired cells, 24–30%, accumulated amorphous uranium in the periplasm. Comparison of uranium-accumulating cells demonstrated a similar amount of periplasmic uranium accumulation in U(VI) reduction-impaired and wild type G. sulfurreducens. Assessment of the ability of the various suspensions to reduce Fe(III) revealed no correlation between the impact of cytochrome deletion on U(VI) reduction and reduction of Fe(III) hydroxide and chelated Fe(III). CONCLUSION: This study indicates that c-type cytochromes are involved in U(VI) reduction by Geobacter sulfurreducens. The data provide new evidence for extracellular uranium reduction by G. sulfurreducens but do not rule out the possibility of periplasmic uranium reduction. Occurrence of U(VI) reduction at the cell surface is supported by the significant impact of elimination of outer membrane cytochromes on U(VI) reduction and the lack of correlation between periplasmic uranium accumulation and the capacity for uranium reduction. Periplasmic uranium accumulation may reflect the ability of uranium to penetrate the outer membrane rather than the occurrence of enzymatic U(VI) reduction. Elimination of cytochromes rarely had a similar impact on both Fe(III) and U(VI) reduction, suggesting that there are differences in the routes of electron transfer to U(VI) and Fe(III). Further studies are required to clarify the pathways leading to U(VI) reduction in G. sulfurreducens

Анализ методов электронной компенсации опорного сигнала в целевом канале полуактивного когерентного бистатического DVB-T2 радара

This paper provides an overview of different electronic compensation methods of a reference signal. An algorithm for electronic compensation of the DVB-T2 direct signal in a semi-active coherent radar has been proposed. A filter that provides direct signal suppression of at least 50 dB has been developed. The results of experimental studies on the detection of low-speed target with low effective scattering surface in the presence of a powerful reference signal have been presented.В статье проанализированы различные методы электронной компенсации опорного сигнала в целевом канале. Предложен алгоритм электронной компенсации прямого сигнала DVB-T2 в полуактивном когерентном радаре. Разработан фильтр, обеспечивающий подавление прямого сигнала не менее 50 дБ. Представлены результаты экспериментальных исследований по обнаружению низкоскоростной цели с малой эффективной поверхностью рассеяния при наличии мощного опорного сигнала

Phenotypic and functional characteristics of endothelial cells: the <i>in vitro</i> effects of protein fractions from the lysate of natural killer-derived microvesicles

Microvesicles are membrane-derived formations ranging in size from 100 to 1000 nm, being produced by a variety of resting and activated cells. They can transfer their cargo to target cells, regulate physiological processes, and participate in the development of clinical disorders. Among the microvesicles of different origin, natural killers are of special interest. They represent a subpopulation of lymphocytes that eliminate aberrant cells, including virally infected and malignant cells, and participate in regulation of angiogenesis. By producing various stimuli and inhibitors of the latter process, natural killers are able to change functional activity of endothelial cells by means of microvesicle-mediated contacts. There are only scarce literature data on ability of the extracellular vesicles to influence endothelial functions, depending on the intrinsic balance of pro- and anti-angiogenic factors. Therefore, the aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of protein fractions derived from microvesicle lysate of the NK-92 natural killer cell line upon phenotype and functional characteristics of EA.hy926 endothelial cell line under in vitro experimental conditions. Using chromatographic micro-preparatory separation, twelve protein fractions (inducers) were obtained from the lysate. It was found that proliferation and migration of EA.hy926 cells after their cultivation with 10 of 12 protein fractions, were changed in different directions. These effects were dose-dependent, or remained unchanged, at distinct concentrations of active components in the fractions. The inducing factors from these fractions exerted predominantly stimulating effects on proliferation of the target cells, thus suggesting presence of proteins which are able of regulating endothelial functions. However, the size of residual area free of migrating endothelial cells treated by the inducers did not always correlate with the migration intensity and did not inversely correlate with the number of migrating cells. Moreover, it was found that the obtained protein fractions had no effect upon expression of CD54 (ICAM-1), CD34, CD31 (PECAM-1) and CD119 (IFNγR1) receptors by EA.hy926 cells. The data obtained confirm an involvement of microvesicles in communications between natural killer cells and endothelial cells, and presume different participation modes of microvesicle-derived effector proteins in the angiogenesis machinery