CrossMedia: Supporting Collaborative Research of Media Retrieval

AbstractThe goal of our new e-science platform is to support collaborative research communities by providing a simple solution to jointly develop semantic- and media search algorithms on common and challenging datasets processed by novel feature extractors. Querying of nearest neighbor (NN) elements on large data collections is an important task for several information or content retrieval tasks. In the paper a flexible framework for research purposes is introduced for testing features, metrics, distances and indexing structures. The core part of the content based retrieval system is the LHI-tree, a disk-based index scheme for fast retrieval of multimodal features. Additionally, we compare LHI-tree to FLANN, an effective implementation of ANN search and show that LHI-tree gives similar list of retrieved images

Both Basal and Acute Restraint Stress-Induced c-Fos Expression Is Influenced by Age in the Extended Amygdala and Brainstem Stress Centers in Male Rats

The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) is the main regulator of the stress response. The key of the HPA is the parvocellular paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (pPVN) controlled by higher-order limbic stress centers. The reactivity of the HPA axis is considered to be a function of age, but to date, little is known about the background of this age-dependency. Sporadic literature data suggest that the stress sensitivity as assessed by semi-quantitation of the neuronal activity marker c-Fos may also be influenced by age. Here, we aimed at investigating the HPA activity and c-Fos immunoreactivity 2 h after the beginning of a single 60 min acute restraint stress in eight age groups of male Wistar rats. We hypothesized that the function of the HPA axis (i.e., pPVN c-Fos and blood corticosterone (CORT) level), the neuronal activity of nine stress-related limbic areas (i.e., magnocellular PVN (mPVN), medial (MeA), central (CeA), basolateral nuclei of the amygdala, the oval (ovBNST), dorsolateral (dlBNST), dorsomedial (dmBNST), ventral and fusiform (fuBNST) divisions of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST)), and two brainstem stress centers such as the centrally projecting Edinger-Westphal nucleus (cpEW) and dorsal raphe nucleus (DR) show age dependency in their c-Fos response. The somatosensory barrel cortex area (S1) was evaluated to test whether the age dependency is specific for stress-centers. Our results indicate that the stress-induced rise in blood CORT titer was lower in young age reflecting relatively low HPA activity. All 12 stress-related brain areas showed c-Fos response that peaked at 2 months of age. The magnitude of c-Fos immunoreactivity correlated negatively with age in seven regions (MeA, CeA, ovBNST, dlBNST, dmBNST, fuBNST and pPVN). Unexpectedly, the CeA, ovBNST and cpEW showed a considerable basal c-Fos expression in 1-month-old rats which decreased with age. The S1 showed a U-shaped age-related dynamics in contrast to the decline observed in stress centers. We conclude that the age- and brain area dependent dynamics in stress-induced neuronal activity pattern may contribute to the age dependance of the stress reactivity. Further studies are in progress to determine the neurochemical identity of neurons showing age-dependent basal and/or stress-induced c-Fos expression

Investigation of the inhibitory effects of the benzodiazepine derivative, 5-BDBD on P2X4 purinergic receptors by two complementary methods

BACKGROUND/AIMS ATP-gated P2X4 purinergic receptors (P2X4Rs) are cation channels with important roles in diverse cell types. To date, lack of specific inhibitors has hampered investigations on P2X4Rs. Recently, the benzodiazepine derivative, 5-BDBD has been proposed to selectively inhibit P2X4Rs. However, limited evidences are currently available on its inhibitory properties. Thus, we aimed to characterize the inhibitory effects of 5-BDBD on recombinant human P2X4Rs. METHODS We investigated ATP-induced intracellular Ca(2+) signals and whole cell ion currents in HEK 293 cells that were either transiently or stably transfected with hP2X4Rs. RESULTS Our data show that ATP (< 1 μM) stimulates P2X4R-mediated Ca(2+) influx while endogenously expressed P2Y receptors are not activated to any significant extent. Both 5-BDBD and TNP-ATP inhibit ATP-induced Ca(2+) signals and inward ion currents in a concentration-dependent manner. Application of two different concentrations of 5-BDBD causes a rightward shift in ATP dose-response curve. Since the magnitude of maximal stimulation does not change, these data suggest that 5-BDBD may competitively inhibit the P2X4Rs. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrate that application of submicromolar ATP concentrations allows reliable assessment of recombinant P2XR functions in HEK 293 cells. Furthermore, 5-BDBD and TNP-ATP have similar inhibitory potencies on the P2X4Rs although their mechanisms of actions are different

Quantitative impact of direct, personal feedback on hand hygiene technique

This study investigated the effectiveness of targeting hand hygiene technique using a new training device that provides objective, personal and quantitative feedback. One hundred and thirty-six healthcare workers in three Hungarian hospitals participated in a repetitive hand hygiene technique assessment study. Ultraviolet (UV)-labelled hand rub was used at each event, and digital images of the hands were subsequently taken under UV light. Immediate objective visual feedback was given to participants, showing missed areas on their hands. The rate of inadequate hand rubbing reduced from 50% to 15% (P < 0.001). However, maintenance of this reduced rate is likely to require continuous use of the electronic equipment

Behavior and event detection for annotation and surveillance

Visual surveillance and activity analysis is an active research field of computer vision. As a result, there are several different algorithms produced for this purpose. To obtain more robust systems it is desirable to integrate the different algorithms. To achieve this goal, the paper presents results in automatic event detection in surveillance videos, and a distributed application framework for supporting these methods. Results in motion analysis for static and moving cameras, automatic fight detection, shadow segmentation, discovery of unusual motion patterns, indexing and retrieval will be presented. These applications perform real time, and are suitable for real life applications

Biztonságkritikus diagnosztikai célú informatikai rendszerek kutatása = Safety critical diagnostic systems

A kutatás az elfogadott projekt tervnek megfelelően több egymáshoz kapcsolódó résztémát ölelt fel. Az elért eredményeket röviden ismertetjük a Szakmai Beszámolóban, az eredmények részletes leírása a megadott publikációkban található. Az elért eredmények tükröződnek a megjelentetett közlemények nagy számában, valamint a résztvevő kutatók előrehaladásában a tudományos ranglétrán. Jelen OTKA projektben résztvevők közül ketten PhD minősítést szereztek (Szilágyi László és Kovács Levente), egy résztvevő (Somogyi Péter) PhD eljárása folyamatban van és várhatóan ebben az évben lezárul. További négy résztvevő fejezte be sikeresen PhD tanulmányait (Kovács Katalin, Heckenast Tamás, Fördös Gergely, Szlávecz Ákos) és szerzett abszolutóriumot, ők aktívan dolgoznak a disszertációjuk elkészítésén. Az OTKA projekt témájához kötődve több kutatási és kutatásfejlesztési program indult. Két programot említünk, melyek a "Diagnosztika foton emissziós felvételek alapján" végzett kutatások kapcsán indultak, ezek: - Multi-modalitású képalkotó-rendszer sorozatgyártásra történő kifejlesztése orvos-biológiai kutatás és humán orvos-diagnosztika céljára (PETCT_06) - Különböző modalitású orvosi diagnosztikai tomográfiás berendezésekbe építhető teraflop kapacitású képrekonstrukciós rendszer kifejlesztése (TERATOMO) Az OTKA kutatási projekt tehát nemcsak a publikációkban közzétett kutatási eredményeket tekintve, hanem további mérhető szempontokat is figyelembe véve sikeresen zárult. | The reported project included several subtopics according to the original project plan. The details of the achieved results are published in the papers listed in the project report. Both the high number of the publications and the improvements of the participating researchers in their scientific carrier reflect the project results. Two researchers (Szilágyi László és Kovács Levente) from the project team received PhD degree during this research project, another participant (Somogyi Péter) started his PhD graduation and four other researchers (Kovács Katalin, Heckenast Tamás, Fördös Gergely, Szlávecz Ákos) finished successfully her/his PhD study. The successful OTKA project also helped us to initiate further research and R&D projects. Two examples are: - Development of multimodality imaging system for serial production dedicated to biomedical research and human diagnostic imaging - Development of a teraflop capacity image reconstruction system for various medical tomography devices used for diagnosis. Thus this OTKA research project has been successfully completed regarding the scientific results and other achievements as well