Sexual dimorphism in cervical vertebral canal measurements of human foetuses

Little is known about postembryonic development of the human vertebral canal. Cervical parts of vertebral canal in 30 normal human foetuses was exposed in coronal plane and were divided in groups 1 and 2 which correspond with 2nd and 3rd trimester of pregnancy respectively. Groups 1 and 2 included 18 and 12 foetuses respectively with equal number of males and females in each. Length of cervical part of spinal canal and transverse diameter with height at different vertebral levels were recorded. Sexual dimorphism was noticed in foetuses of third trimester only. Length of cervical canal and height of vertebral bodies were significantly more in males while transverse diameter was statistically high in females. Cervical part of vertebral canal in human fetuses displays sexual dimorphism. Males have narrower and longer spinal canal compared to females.Keywords: foetuses, cervical, vertebral canal, dimorphis

Modeling complex metabolic reactions, ecological systems, and financial and legal networks with MIANN models based on Markov-Wiener node descriptors

[Abstract] The use of numerical parameters in Complex Network analysis is expanding to new fields of application. At a molecular level, we can use them to describe the molecular structure of chemical entities, protein interactions, or metabolic networks. However, the applications are not restricted to the world of molecules and can be extended to the study of macroscopic nonliving systems, organisms, or even legal or social networks. On the other hand, the development of the field of Artificial Intelligence has led to the formulation of computational algorithms whose design is based on the structure and functioning of networks of biological neurons. These algorithms, called Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), can be useful for the study of complex networks, since the numerical parameters that encode information of the network (for example centralities/node descriptors) can be used as inputs for the ANNs. The Wiener index (W) is a graph invariant widely used in chemoinformatics to quantify the molecular structure of drugs and to study complex networks. In this work, we explore for the first time the possibility of using Markov chains to calculate analogues of node distance numbers/W to describe complex networks from the point of view of their nodes. These parameters are called Markov-Wiener node descriptors of order kth (Wk). Please, note that these descriptors are not related to Markov-Wiener stochastic processes. Here, we calculated the Wk(i) values for a very high number of nodes (>100,000) in more than 100 different complex networks using the software MI-NODES. These networks were grouped according to the field of application. Molecular networks include the Metabolic Reaction Networks (MRNs) of 40 different organisms. In addition, we analyzed other biological and legal and social networks. These include the Interaction Web Database Biological Networks (IWDBNs), with 75 food webs or ecological systems and the Spanish Financial Law Network (SFLN). The calculated Wk(i) values were used as inputs for different ANNs in order to discriminate correct node connectivity patterns from incorrect random patterns. The MIANN models obtained present good values of Sensitivity/Specificity (%): MRNs (78/78), IWDBNs (90/88), and SFLN (86/84). These preliminary results are very promising from the point of view of a first exploratory study and suggest that the use of these models could be extended to the high-throughput re-evaluation of connectivity in known complex networks (collation)

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Smart motion sensing for autonomous robots

Small autonomous robots require fast, compact, and low-power sensors for processing visual signals and safely navigating in their environment. We present a custom VLSI vision sensor with these characteristics that provides information on the scene contrast, local motion, and position of salient targets. The Tracker Motion Sensor (TMS) is a mixed signal vision system with focal-plane continuous time processing circuits that computes spatial and temporal derivatives for performing edge detection, and for measuring their velocity and direction. In addition, the TMS contains analog circuits that implement a model of selective attention that reports the position of visual targets in order of decreasing saliency. We describe the main circuit blocks and present measurements from the fabricated chip to show how it is an ideal sensor for robotic applications that must select and track moving targets

Compact analog temporal edge detector circuit with programmable adaptive threshold for neuromorphic vision sensors

This paper presents a low-power compact analog circuit for processing time varying signals. The proposed circuit implements temporal differentiation, amplification and rectification, i.e., separation of outputs into on and off pathways. It is based on a hysteretic differentiator circuit, commonly used in neuromorphic vision sensors to implement temporal edge detection. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the original circuit and identifies the source of the problems and limitations it has for processing real-world sensory signals. The steps required to solve this problem are presented as well as an extended circuit with tunable gain and adaptable threshold that allows thresholding of small temporal changes (noise) and high-pass filtering of large temporal changes. The new circuit proposed is particularly suited for focal plane implementation of both gradient based and token based motion algorithms that require robust detection of temporal discontinuities. The circuit has been designed and successfully integrated into a 64 × 1 test prototype motion chip, fabricated in standard 350 nm CMOS technology. The paper provides extensive experimental characterization results

Attentive motion sensor for mobile robotic applications

We present a compact vision sensor comprising a one-dimensional array of adaptive photo-receptors, spatio temporal feature extraction circuits, feature normalization circuits, and an attentional readout circuit that selects the most salient region in the feature map. The sensor comprises also digital input and output circuits for directly interfacing it to digital processing units, making it an ideal device for mobile robotic applications. We describe the sensor architecture and present experimental results measured from the fabricated chip. As we identified unexpected results from one of the computational stages, we compare the measured responses to circuit simulations and propose improvements for new revisions of the chip

Removal of Heavy Metals Using Hybrid Precursor Prepared from Agro Residue (Rice Husk)

Rice husk is an abundantly available waste material in all rice producing countries. In certain regions this low value agricultural by product is used as a fuel for parboiling paddy in rice mills, it produced 13-15MJ/kg of energy. The partially burned rice husk in turn contributes to more environmental pollution. This rice husk contains nearly 20 percent silica, can be made into adsorbent material, which is used, in environmental remediation. Developed countries have accepted and followed the concept of “no waste” and all such materials are termed as “new resources” for new material development through value addition. In the present study hybrid precursor, which contains both carbon and silicon, used for the removal of heavy toxic metals, such as lead, copper and zinc present in wastewater .The efficiency of the hybrid precursor in the removal of heavy metals is approximately 90%

Evaluation of thermal performance of heat exchanger unit for parabolic solar cooker for off-place cooking

745-748Different types of solar cookers developed for cooking are box type and concentrator type solar cookers. A parabolic concentrator type solar cooker has a wide range of applications like baking, roasting and distillation due to its unique property of producing a practically higher temperature of nearly 250°C and hence, it provides inconvenience to the user due to high amount of glare. The main objective of the present study is to incline cylindrical heat transfer fluid column as a heat transfer medium. The thermal performance of a parabolic solar cooker depends on inclined heat exchanger system of mild steel tube of length 157.5 cm and an internal radius 2.07 cm with heat transfer fluid (oil) of density 1075 kg/m³. Experiments are conducted for cooking of food at a normal day. The results show that inclined convective heat exchanger system can be used for off-place cooking. The optimization of the system design parameters is under investigation