Adaptive IIR Filters for Single Interference Suppression in a BPSK DS CDMA System In Rayleigh Fading Channel

In this paper, effect of a single narrow-band interference (NBI) on bit error rate (BER) performance for a binary phase shift  keying  (BPSK)  synchronous  direct-sequence  code-division  multiple  access  (DS  CDMA)  communication system operating  in  a  frequency  nonselective  Rayleigh  fading  channel  is  analyzed.  Second-order  adaptive  infinite  impulse response  (IIR)  notch  filters  with  plain  gradient  algorithm  (GA)  for  suppression  of  NBI  in  the  DS  CDMA system  are proposed. A general closed-form BER expression for the DS CDMA system with NBI suppression second order adaptive IIR  notch  filters  is  derived  based  on  the  standard Gaussian  approximation  (SGA)  method.  BER  expressions  are  then derived  for  the  allpass  filter-based  adaptive  IIR  notch  filter  and  adaptive  IIR  notch  filter  with  constrained  poles  and zeros,  the  two  structures  that  are  commonly  found  in  literature.  It  is  observed  that  both  adaptive  IIR  notch  filter structures  exhibit  comparable  BER  performance.  Extensive  computer  simulation  results  are  presented  to verify  the accuracy and limitations of the analysis

Occlusion Handler Density Networks for 3D Multimodal Joint Location of Hand Pose Hypothesis

Predicting the pose parameters during the hand pose estimation (HPE) process is an ill-posed challenge. This is due to severe self-occluded joints of the hand. The existing approaches for predicting pose parameters of the hand, utilize a single-value mapping of an input image to generate final pose output. This way makes it difficult to handle occlusion especially when it comes from the multimodal pose hypothesis. This paper introduces an effective method of handling multimodal joint occlusion using the negative log-likelihood of a multimodal mixture-of-Gaussians through a hybrid hierarchical mixture density network (HHMDN). The proposed approach generates multiple feasible hypotheses of 3D poses with visibility, unimodal and multimodal distribution units to locate joint visibility. The visible features are extracted and fed into the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) layer of the HHMDN for feature learning. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is proved on ICVL, NYU, and BigHand public hand pose datasets. The imperative results show that the proposed method in this paper is effective as it achieves a visibility error of 30.3mm, which is less error compared to many state-of-the-art approaches that use different distributions of visible and occluded joints

Reconstruction of east–west deep water exchange in the low latitude Atlantic Ocean over the past 25,000 years

Radiogenic neodymium isotopes have been used as a water mass mixing proxy to investigate past changes in ocean circulation. Here we present a new depth transect of deglacial neodymium isotope records measured on uncleaned planktic foraminifera from five cores spanning from 3300 to 4900 m on the Mauritanian margin, in the tropical eastern Atlantic as well as an additional record from 4000 m on the Ceara Rise in the equatorial western Atlantic. Despite being located under the Saharan dust plume, the eastern Atlantic records differ from the composition of detrital inputs through time and exhibit similar values to the western Atlantic foraminiferal Nd across the deglaciation. Therefore we interpret the foraminiferal values as recording deep water Nd isotope changes. All six cores shift to less radiogenic values across the deglaciation, indicating that they were bathed by a lower proportion of North Atlantic Deep Water during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) relative to the Holocene. The eastern Atlantic records also show that a neodymium isotope gradient was present during the LGM and during the deglaciation, with more radiogenic values observed at the deepest sites. A homogeneous water mass observed below 3750 m in the deepest eastern Atlantic during the LGM is attributed to the mixing of deep water by rough topography as it passes from the western Atlantic through the fracture zones in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This implies that during the LGM the low latitude deep eastern Atlantic was ventilated from the western Atlantic via advection through fracture zones in the same manner as occurs in the modern ocean. Comparison with carbon isotopes indicates there was more respired carbon in the deep eastern than deep western Atlantic during the LGM, as is also seen in the modern Atlantic Ocean

Upregulation of the cell-cycle regulator RGC-32 in Epstein-Barr virus-immortalized cells

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple human tumours of lymphoid and epithelial origin. The virus infects and immortalizes B cells establishing a persistent latent infection characterized by varying patterns of EBV latent gene expression (latency 0, I, II and III). The CDK1 activator, Response Gene to Complement-32 (RGC-32, C13ORF15), is overexpressed in colon, breast and ovarian cancer tissues and we have detected selective high-level RGC-32 protein expression in EBV-immortalized latency III cells. Significantly, we show that overexpression of RGC-32 in B cells is sufficient to disrupt G2 cell-cycle arrest consistent with activation of CDK1, implicating RGC-32 in the EBV transformation process. Surprisingly, RGC-32 mRNA is expressed at high levels in latency I Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) cells and in some EBV-negative BL cell-lines, although RGC-32 protein expression is not detectable. We show that RGC-32 mRNA expression is elevated in latency I cells due to transcriptional activation by high levels of the differentially expressed RUNX1c transcription factor. We found that proteosomal degradation or blocked cytoplasmic export of the RGC-32 message were not responsible for the lack of RGC-32 protein expression in latency I cells. Significantly, analysis of the ribosomal association of the RGC-32 mRNA in latency I and latency III cells revealed that RGC-32 transcripts were associated with multiple ribosomes in both cell-types implicating post-initiation translational repression mechanisms in the block to RGC-32 protein production in latency I cells. In summary, our results are the first to demonstrate RGC-32 protein upregulation in cells transformed by a human tumour virus and to identify post-initiation translational mechanisms as an expression control point for this key cell-cycle regulator

The Dyad Symmetry Element of Epstein-Barr Virus Is a Dominant but Dispensable Replication Origin

OriP, the latent origin of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), consists of two essential elements: the dyad symmetry (DS) and the family of repeats (FR). The function of these elements has been predominantly analyzed in plasmids transfected into transformed cells. Here, we examined the molecular functions of DS in its native genomic context and at an ectopic position in the mini-EBV episome. Mini-EBV plasmids contain 41% of the EBV genome including all information required for the proliferation of human B cells. Both FR and DS function independently of their genomic context. We show that DS is the most active origin of replication present in the mini-EBV genome regardless of its location, and it is characterized by the binding of the origin recognition complex (ORC) allowing subsequent replication initiation. Surprisingly, the integrity of oriP is not required for the formation of the pre-replicative complex (pre-RC) at or near DS. In addition we show that initiation events occurring at sites other than the DS are also limited to once per cell cycle and that they are ORC-dependent. The deletion of DS increases initiation from alternative origins, which are normally used very infrequently in the mini-EBV genome. The sequence-independent distribution of ORC-binding, pre-RC-assembly, and initiation patterns indicates that a large number of silent origins are present in the mini-EBV genome. We conclude that, in mini-EBV genomes lacking the DS element, the absence of a strong ORC binding site results in an increase of ORC binding at dispersed sites

The respiratory virome and exacerbations in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Introduction Exacerbations are major contributors to morbidity and mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and respiratory bacterial and viral infections are an important trigger. However, using conventional diagnostic techniques, a causative agent is not always found. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) allows analysis of the complete virome, but has not yet been applied in COPD exacerbations. Objectives To study the respiratory virome in nasopharyngeal samples during COPD exacerbations using mNGS. Study design 88 nasopharyngeal swabs from 63 patients from the Bergen COPD Exacerbation Study (2006-2010) were analysed by mNGS and in-house qPCR for respiratory viruses. Both DNA and RNA were sequenced simultaneously using an Illumina library preparation protocol with in-house adaptations. Results By mNGS, 24/88 samples tested positive. Sensitivity and specificity, as compared with PCR, were 96% and 98% for diagnostic targets (23/24 and 1093/1120, respectively). Additional viral pathogens detected by mNGS were herpes simplex virus type 1 and coronavirus OC43. A positive correlation was found between Cq value and mNGS viral normalized species reads (log value) (p = 0.002). Patients with viral pathogens had lower percentages of bacteriophages (p<0.001). No correlation was found between viral reads and clinical markers. Conclusions The mNGS protocol used was highly sensitive and specific for semi-quantitative detection of respiratory viruses. Excellent negative predictive value implicates the power of mNGS to exclude any pathogenic respiratory viral infectious cause in one test, with consequences for clinical decision making. Reduced abundance of bacteriophages in COPD patients with viral pathogens implicates skewing of the virome during infection, with potential consequences for the bacterial populations, during infection

Action to protect the independence and integrity of global health research

Storeng KT, Abimbola S, Balabanova D, et al. Action to protect the independence and integrity of global health research. BMJ GLOBAL HEALTH. 2019;4(3): e001746

Recommendations for the introduction of metagenomic high-throughput sequencing in clinical virology, part I: Wet lab procedure

Metagenomic high-throughput sequencing (mHTS) is a hypothesis-free, universal pathogen detection technique for determination of the DNA/RNA sequences in a variety of sample types and infectious syndromes. mHTS is still in its early stages of translating into clinical application. To support the development, implementation and standardization of mHTS procedures for virus diagnostics, the European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV) Network on Next-Generation Sequencing (ENNGS) has been established. The aim of ENNGS is to bring together professionals involved in mHTS for viral diagnostics to share methodologies and experiences, and to develop application recommendations. This manuscript aims to provide practical recommendations for the wet lab procedures necessary for i