252 research outputs found
An Adaptive Skin Detection Approach of Face Images with Unequal Luminance, Color Excursion, and Background Interference
Face detection and recognition are affected greatly by unequal luminance, color excursion and background interference. For improving skin detection rates of color face images in the presence of unequal luminance, color excursion and background interference, this paper proposes an approach for automatic skin detection. This approach globally corrects the color excursion using the X, Y, Z color components. Then it establishes a self-adaptive nonlinear amendment function using the a', b'and L' components, and locally corrects the R, G, B color components of row-column transformed sub-block images to balance the global luminance and color. Finally, it constructs an L'a'b'three-dimensional semi-supervised dual-probability skin model, based on which automatic skin detection can be realized. The experimental results demonstrated that this approach has great adaptability, a high detection rate and speed
Novel Non-Toxic Xylene Substitute (SBO) for Histology
Xylene has been generally used as a clearing and deparaffinizing agent in histology. Because of the potential toxic and flammable nature of xylene, its substitutes have been introduced into some laboratories. In this study, we introduced a novel, non-toxic xylene substitute (SBO), which was generated through a mixture of 86% of white oil No.2 and 14% of N-heptane. SBO had a high boiling point (188°C) and flash point (144°C) coupled with a scentless and decreased volatility. To compare the effectiveness of SBO and xylene in histology, a wide range of tissue samples from rats and human beings were processed in parallel in SBO and xylene, subjected to various staining procedures. Similar to the xylene-processed paraffin blocks, the SBO-processed counterparts were easy to section without any evidence of cell shrinkage. Assessment of the SBO-treated sections stained with hematoxylin-eosin revealed a good maintenance of cell morphology and structure, and a clear definition of the cytoplasm and the nucleus. Moreover, comparable good results were achieved between the SBO- and xylene-processed tissues in other histochemical and immunohistochemical stainings. Six-month clinical applications at one department of pathology supported the potentials of SBO as a xylene substitute. In conclusion, we suggest that SBO is a safe and efficient substitute of xylene and may probably replace xylene without losing valuable diagnostic information.Key words: SBO, clearing agent, xylene, histology, toxicit
PRIMA-1Met suppresses colorectal cancer independent of p53 by targeting MEK
This work was supported by Grant No. 81201779 (Hua Xiong) from the National Natural Science Youth Foundation; Grant No. 81502118 (Yanmei Zou) from the National Natural Science Youth Foundation; Grant No. 2014CFB250 (Yanmei Zou) from the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province; Grant No. 81372434 (Huihua Xiong) from the National Natural Science Foundation.PRIMA-1Met is the methylated PRIMA-1 (p53 reactivation and induction of massive apoptosis) and could restore tumor suppressor function of mutant p53 and induce p53 dependent apoptosis in cancer cells harboring mutant p53. However, p53 independent activity of PRIMA-1Met remains elusive. Here we reported that PRIMA-1Met attenuated colorectal cancer cell growth irrespective of p53 status. Kinase profiling revealed that mitogen-activated or extracellular signal-related protein kinase (MEK) might be a potential target of PRIMA-1Met. Pull-down binding and ATP competitive assay showed that PRIMA-1Met directly bound MEK in vitro and in cells. Furthermore, the direct binding sites of PRIMA-1Met were explored by using a computational docking model. Treatment of colorectal cancer cells with PRIMA-1Met inhibited p53-independent phosphorylation of MEK, which in turn impaired anchorage-independent cell growth in vitro. Moreover, PRIMA-1Met suppressed colorectal cancer growth in xenograft mouse model by inhibiting MEK1 activity. Taken together, our findings demonstrate a novel p53-independent activity of PRIMA-1Met to inhibit MEK and suppress colorectal cancer growth.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Autocorrelations of stellar light and mass at z~0 and ~1: From SDSS to DEEP2
We present measurements of projected autocorrelation functions w_p(r_p) for
the stellar mass of galaxies and for their light in the U, B and V bands, using
data from the third data release of the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey and the
final data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We investigate the
clustering bias of stellar mass and light by comparing these to projected
autocorrelations of dark matter estimated from the Millennium Simulations (MS)
at z=1 and 0.07, the median redshifts of our galaxy samples. All of the
autocorrelation and bias functions show systematic trends with spatial scale
and waveband which are impressively similar at the two redshifts. This shows
that the well-established environmental dependence of stellar populations in
the local Universe is already in place at z=1. The recent MS-based galaxy
formation simulation of Guo et al. (2011) reproduces the scale-dependent
clustering of luminosity to an accuracy better than 30% in all bands and at
both redshifts, but substantially overpredicts mass autocorrelations at
separations below about 2 Mpc. Further comparison of the shapes of our stellar
mass bias functions with those predicted by the model suggests that both the
SDSS and DEEP2 data prefer a fluctuation amplitude of sigma_8 0.8 rather than
the sigma_8=0.9 assumed by the MS.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices,
minor revisions in tex
The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with
new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical
evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of
galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for
planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of
SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release
includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap,
bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a
third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with
an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric
recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data
from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and
Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars
at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million
stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed
through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination
of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from
submitted version
The Ninth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) presents the first spectroscopic
data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This ninth data
release (DR9) of the SDSS project includes 535,995 new galaxy spectra (median
z=0.52), 102,100 new quasar spectra (median z=2.32), and 90,897 new stellar
spectra, along with the data presented in previous data releases. These spectra
were obtained with the new BOSS spectrograph and were taken between 2009
December and 2011 July. In addition, the stellar parameters pipeline, which
determines radial velocities, surface temperatures, surface gravities, and
metallicities of stars, has been updated and refined with improvements in
temperature estimates for stars with T_eff<5000 K and in metallicity estimates
for stars with [Fe/H]>-0.5. DR9 includes new stellar parameters for all stars
presented in DR8, including stars from SDSS-I and II, as well as those observed
as part of the SDSS-III Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and
Exploration-2 (SEGUE-2).
The astrometry error introduced in the DR8 imaging catalogs has been
corrected in the DR9 data products. The next data release for SDSS-III will be
in Summer 2013, which will present the first data from the Apache Point
Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) along with another year of
data from BOSS, followed by the final SDSS-III data release in December 2014.Comment: 9 figures; 2 tables. Submitted to ApJS. DR9 is available at
http://www.sdss3.org/dr
- …