Modeling the functional genomics of autism using human neurons.

Human neural progenitors from a variety of sources present new opportunities to model aspects of human neuropsychiatric disease in vitro. Such in vitro models provide the advantages of a human genetic background combined with rapid and easy manipulation, making them highly useful adjuncts to animal models. Here, we examined whether a human neuronal culture system could be utilized to assess the transcriptional program involved in human neural differentiation and to model some of the molecular features of a neurodevelopmental disorder, such as autism. Primary normal human neuronal progenitors (NHNPs) were differentiated into a post-mitotic neuronal state through addition of specific growth factors and whole-genome gene expression was examined throughout a time course of neuronal differentiation. After 4 weeks of differentiation, a significant number of genes associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are either induced or repressed. This includes the ASD susceptibility gene neurexin 1, which showed a distinct pattern from neurexin 3 in vitro, and which we validated in vivo in fetal human brain. Using weighted gene co-expression network analysis, we visualized the network structure of transcriptional regulation, demonstrating via this unbiased analysis that a significant number of ASD candidate genes are coordinately regulated during the differentiation process. As NHNPs are genetically tractable and manipulable, they can be used to study both the effects of mutations in multiple ASD candidate genes on neuronal differentiation and gene expression in combination with the effects of potential therapeutic molecules. These data also provide a step towards better understanding of the signaling pathways disrupted in ASD

Product recognition in store shelves as a sub-graph isomorphism problem

The arrangement of products in store shelves is carefully planned to maximize sales and keep customers happy. However, verifying compliance of real shelves to the ideal layout is a costly task routinely performed by the store personnel. In this paper, we propose a computer vision pipeline to recognize products on shelves and verify compliance to the planned layout. We deploy local invariant features together with a novel formulation of the product recognition problem as a sub-graph isomorphism between the items appearing in the given image and the ideal layout. This allows for auto-localizing the given image within the aisle or store and improving recognition dramatically.Comment: Slightly extended version of the paper accepted at ICIAP 2017. More information @project_page --> http://vision.disi.unibo.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=111&catid=7

Physiotherapy rehabilitation for osteoporotic vertebral fracture (PROVE) : study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Background: Osteoporosis and vertebral fracture can have a considerable impact on an individual’s quality of life. There is increasing evidence that physiotherapy including manual techniques and exercise interventions may have an important treatment role. This pragmatic randomised controlled trial will investigate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of two different physiotherapy approaches for people with osteoporosis and vertebral fracture, in comparison to usual care. Methods/Design: Six hundred people with osteoporosis and a clinically diagnosed vertebral fracture will be recruited and randomly allocated to one of three management strategies, usual care (control - A), an exercise-based physiotherapy intervention (B) or a manual therapy-based physiotherapy intervention (C). Those in the usual care arm will receive a single session of education and advice, those in the active treatment arms (B + C) will be offered seven individual physiotherapy sessions over 12 weeks. The trial is designed as a prospective, adaptive single-blinded randomised controlled trial. An interim analysis will be completed and if one intervention is clearly superior the trial will be adapted at this point to continue with just one intervention and the control. The primary outcomes are quality of life measured by the disease specific QUALLEFO 41 and the Timed Loaded Standing test measured at 1 year. Discussion: There are a variety of different physiotherapy packages used to treat patients with osteoporotic vertebral fracture. At present, the indication for each different therapy is not well defined, and the effectiveness of different modalities is unknown

Holographic representation of local bulk operators

The Lorentzian AdS/CFT correspondence implies a map between local operators in supergravity and non-local operators in the CFT. By explicit computation we construct CFT operators which are dual to local bulk fields in the semiclassical limit. The computation is done for general dimension in global, Poincare and Rindler coordinates. We find that the CFT operators can be taken to have compact support in a region of the complexified boundary whose size is set by the bulk radial position. We show that at finite N the number of independent commuting operators localized within a bulk volume saturates the holographic bound.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figure

Comments on the black hole information problem

String theory provides numerous examples of duality between gravitational theories and unitary gauge theories. To resolve the black hole information paradox in this setting, it is necessary to better understand how unitarity is implemented on the gravity side. We argue that unitarity is restored by nonlocal effects whose initial magnitude is suppressed by the exponential of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Time-slicings for which effective field theory is valid are obtained by demanding the mutual back-reaction of quanta be small. The resulting bounds imply that nonlocal effects do not lead to observable violations of causality or conflict with the equivalence principle for infalling observers, yet implement information retrieval for observers who stay outside the black hole.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, revtex, v2 figure added and some improvements to presentatio

Re-identification of c. 15 700 cal yr BP tephra bed at Kaipo Bog, eastern North Island: implications for dispersal of Rotorua and Puketarata tephra beds.

A 10 mm thick, c. 15 700 calendar yr BP (c. 13 100 14C yr BP) rhyolitic tephra bed in the well-studied montane Kaipo Bog sequence of eastern North Island was previously correlated with Maroa-derived Puketarata Tephra. We revise this correlation to Okataina-derived Rotorua Tephra based on new compositional data from biotite phenocrysts and glass. The new correlation limits the known dispersal of Puketarata Tephra (sensu stricto, c. 16 800 cal yr BP) and eliminates requirements to either reassess its age or to invoke dual Puketarata eruptive events. Our data show that Rotorua Tephra comprises two glass-shard types: an early-erupted low-K2O type that was dispersed mostly to the northwest, and a high-K2O type dispersed mostly to the south and southeast, contemporary with late-stage lava extrusion. Late-stage Rotorua eruptives contain biotite that is enriched in FeO compared with biotite from Puketarata pyroclastics. The occurrence of Rotorua Tephra in Kaipo Bog (100 km from the source) substantially extends its known distribution to the southeast. Our analyses demonstrate that unrecognised syn-eruption compositional and dispersal changes can cause errors in fingerprinting tephra deposits. However, the compositional complexity, once recognised, provides additional fingerprinting criteria, and also documents magmatic and dispersal processes

Constructing local bulk observables in interacting AdS/CFT

Local operators in the bulk of AdS can be represented as smeared operators in the dual CFT. We show how to construct these bulk observables by requiring that the bulk operators commute at spacelike separation. This extends our previous work by taking interactions into account. Large-N factorization plays a key role in the construction. We show diagrammatically how this procedure is related to bulk Feynman diagrams.Comment: 41 pages, LaTeX. v2: reference correcte

Appearance-based localization for mobile robots using digital zoom and visual compass

This paper describes a localization system for mobile robots moving in dynamic indoor environments, which uses probabilistic integration of visual appearance and odometry information. The approach is based on a novel image matching algorithm for appearance-based place recognition that integrates digital zooming, to extend the area of application, and a visual compass. Ambiguous information used for recognizing places is resolved with multiple hypothesis tracking and a selection procedure inspired by Markov localization. This enables the system to deal with perceptual aliasing or absence of reliable sensor data. It has been implemented on a robot operating in an office scenario and the robustness of the approach demonstrated experimentally

Clinical Psychologists Training and Supervising IAPT Therapists to Work with Long-term Conditions and Medically Unexplained Symptoms: A Service Development Project

An IAPT service and a clinical health psychology team piloted a service development providing Step 2 and Step 3 services for individuals with long-term health conditions. Results indicate that such services may be offered with access to specialist training and supervision