Modeling skull-face anatomical/morphological correspondence for craniofacial superimposition-based identification

Craniofacial superimposition (CFS) is a forensic identification technique which studies the anatomical and morphological correspondence between a skull and a face. It involves the process of overlaying a variable number of facial images with the skull. This technique has great potential since nowadays the wide majority of the people have photographs where their faces are clearly visible. In addition, the skull is a bone that hardly degrades under the effect of fire, humidity, temperature changes, etc. Three consecutive stages for the CFS process have been distinguished: the acquisition and processing of the materials; the skull-face overlay; and the decision making. This final stage consists of determining the degree of support for a match based on the previous overlays. The final decision is guided by different criteria depending on the anatomical relations between the skull and the face. In previous approaches, we proposed a framework for automating this stage at different levels taking into consideration all the information and uncertainty sources involved. In this study, we model new anatomical skull-face regions and we tackle the last level of the hierarchical decision support system. For the first time, we present a complete system which provides a final degree of craniofacial correspondence. Furthermore, we validate our system as an automatic identification tool analyzing its capabilities in closed (known information or a potential list of those involved) and open lists (little or no idea at first who may be involved) and comparing its performance with the manual results achieved by experts, obtaining a remarkable performance. The proposed system has been demonstrated to be valid for sortlisting a given data set of initial candidates (in 62,5% of the cases the positive one is ranked in the first position) and to serve as an exclusion method (97,4% and 96% of true negatives in training and test, respectively)

Principle of Maximum Entropy Applied to Rayleigh-B\'enard Convection

A statistical-mechanical investigation is performed on Rayleigh-B\'enard convection of a dilute classical gas starting from the Boltzmann equation. We first present a microscopic derivation of basic hydrodynamic equations and an expression of entropy appropriate for the convection. This includes an alternative justification for the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation. We then calculate entropy change through the convective transition choosing mechanical quantities as independent variables. Above the critical Rayleigh number, the system is found to evolve from the heat-conducting uniform state towards the convective roll state with monotonic increase of entropy on the average. Thus, the principle of maximum entropy proposed for nonequilibrium steady states in a preceding paper is indeed obeyed in this prototype example. The principle also provides a natural explanation for the enhancement of the Nusselt number in convection.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures; typos corrected; Eq. (66a) corrected to remove a double counting for $k_{\perp}=0$; Figs. 1-4 replace

Adipose tissue concentrations of non-persistent environmental phenols and local redox balance in adults from Southern Spain

The aim was to evaluate the associations of environmental phenol and paraben concentrations with the oxidative microenvironment in adipose tissue. This study was conducted in a subsample (n=144) of the GraMo cohort (Southern Spain). Concentrations of 9 phenols and 7 parabens, and levels of oxidative stress biomarkers were quantified in adipose tissue. Associations were estimated using multivariable linear regression analyses adjusted for potential confounders. Benzophenone-3 (BP-3) concentration was borderline associated with enhanced glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity [exp(β)=1.20, p=0.060] and decreased levels of reduced glutathione (GSH) [exp(β)=0.55, p=0.070]. Concentrations of bisphenol A (BPA) and methylparaben (MeP) were associated to lower glutathione reductase (GRd) activity [exp(β)=0.83, exp(β)=0.72, respectively], and BPA was borderline associated to increased levels of oxidized glutathione (GSSG) [exp(β)=1.73, p-value=0.062]. MeP was inversely associated to both hemeoxygenase-1 (HO-1) and superoxide dismustase (SOD) activity, as well as to the levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) [0.75 < exp(β) < 0.79]. Our results suggest that some specific non-persistent pollutants may be associated with a disruption of the activity of relevant antioxidant enzymes, in addition to the depletion of the glutathione stock. They might act as a tissue-specific source of free radicals, contributing to the oxidative microenvironment in the adipose tissue.This research was supported in part by research grants from the European Union Commission (H2020-EJP-HBM4EU and SOE1/P1/F0082), Biomedical Research Networking Center-CIBER de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), from the Institute of Health Carlos III, supported by European Regional Development Fund/FEDER (FIS-PI13/02406, FISPI14/ 00067, FIS-PI16/01820, FIS-PI16/01812, FIS-PI16/01858 and FIS-PI17/01743), and from the Consejería de Salud, Junta de Andalucía (PS-0506-2016). Funding for the equipment used was provided by Velux Fonden, Augustinus Fonden and Svend Andersen Fonden. The authors thank Kirsten og Freddy Johansens Fond and the International Centre for Research and Research Training in Endocrine Disruption of Male Reproduction and Child Health (EDMaRC, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University) for economic support. Dr. Juan Pedro Arrebola is under contract within Ramón y Cajal Program (Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad de España, RYC-2016-20155)

Identification of DNA hypermethylation of SOX9 in association with bladder cancer progression using CpG microarrays

CpG island arrays represent a high-throughput epigenomic discovery platform to identify global disease-specific promoter hypermethylation candidates along bladder cancer progression. DNA obtained from 10 pairs of invasive bladder tumours were profiled vs their respective normal urothelium using differential methylation hybridisation on custom-made CpG arrays (n=12 288 clones). Promoter hypermethylation of 84 clones was simultaneously shown in at least 70% of the tumours. SOX9 was selected for further validation by bisulphite genomic sequencing and methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction in bladder cancer cells (n=11) and primary bladder tumours (n=101). Hypermethylation was observed in bladder cancer cells and associated with lack of gene expression, being restored in vitro by a demethylating agent. In primary bladder tumours, SOX9 hypermethylation was present in 56.4% of the cases. Moreover, SOX9 hypermethylation was significantly associated with tumour grade and overall survival. Thus, this high-throughput epigenomic strategy has served to identify novel hypermethylated candidates in bladder cancer. In vitro analyses supported the role of methylation in silencing SOX9 gene. The association of SOX9 hypermethylation with tumour progression and clinical outcome suggests its relevant clinical implications at stratifying patients affected with bladder cancer

A maritime decision support system to assess risk in the presence of environmental uncertainties: the REP10 experiment

The aim of this work is to report on an activity carried out during the 2010 Recognized Environmental Picture experiment, held in the Ligurian Sea during summer 2010. The activity was the first at-sea test of the recently developed decision support system (DSS) for operation planning, which had previously been tested in an artificial experiment. The DSS assesses the impact of both environmental conditions (meteorological and oceanographic) and non-environmental conditions (such as traffic density maps) on people and assets involved in the operation and helps in deciding a course of action that allows safer operation. More precisely, the environmental variables (such as wind speed, current speed and significant wave height) taken as input by the DSS are the ones forecasted by a super-ensemble model, which fuses the forecasts provided by multiple forecasting centres. The uncertainties associated with the DSS's inputs (generally due to disagreement between forecasts) are propagated through the DSS's output by using the unscented transform. In this way, the system is not only able to provide a traffic light map (run/not run the operation), but also to specify the confidence level associated with each action. This feature was tested on a particular type of operation with underwater gliders: the glider surfacing for data transmission. It is also shown how the availability of a glider path prediction tool provides surfacing options along the predicted path. The applicability to different operations is demonstrated by applying the same system to support diver operations

Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction: A Typical/Concise Review

Nearly a recent century of work is divided to Nucleon-Nucleon (NN) interaction issue. We review some overall perspectives of NN interaction with a brief discussion about deuteron, general structure and symmetries of NN Lagrangian as well as equations of motion and solutions. Meanwhile, the main NN interaction models, as frameworks to build NN potentials, are reviewed concisely. We try to include and study almost all well-known potentials in a similar way, discuss more on various commonly used plain forms for two-nucleon interaction with an emphasis on the phenomenological and meson-exchange potentials as well as the constituent-quark potentials and new ones based on chiral effective field theory and working in coordinate-space mostly. The potentials are constructed in a way that fit NN scattering data, phase shifts, and are also compared in this way usually. An extra goal of this study is to start comparing various potentials forms in a unified manner. So, we also comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the models and potentials partly with reference to some relevant works and probable future studies.Comment: 85 pages, 5 figures, than the previous v3 edition, minor changes, and typos fixe

Increased accumulation of doxorubicin and doxorubicinol in cardiac tissue of mice lacking mdr1a P-glycoprotein

To gain more insight into the pharmacological role of endogenous P-glycoprotein in the metabolism of the widely used substrate drug doxorubicin, we have studied the plasma pharmacokinetics, tissue distribution and excretion of this compound in mdr1a(–/– and wild-type mice. Doxorubicin was administered as an i.v. bolus injection at a dose level of 5 mg kg−1. Drug and metabolite concentrations were determined in plasma, tissues, urine and faeces by high-performance liquid chromatography. In comparison with wild-type mice, the terminal half-life and the area under the plasma concentration–time curve of doxorubicin in it>mdr1a(–/–) mice were 1.6- and 1.2-fold higher respectively.The retention of both doxorubicin and its metabolite doxorubicinol in the hearts of mdr1a(–/–) mice was substantially prolonged. In addition, a significantly increased drug accumulation was observed in the brain and the liver of mdr1a(–/–) mice. The relative accumulation in most other tissues was not or only slightly increased. The differences in cumulative faecal and urinary excretion of doxorubicin and metabolites between both types of mice were small. These experiments demonstrate that the absence of mdr1a P-glycoprotein only slightly alters the plasma pharmacokinetics of oxorubicin. Furthermore, the substantially prolonged presence of both doxorubicin and doxorubicinol in cardiac tissue of mdr1a(–/–) mice suggests that a blockade of endogenous P-glycoprotein in patients, for example by a reversal agent, may enhance the risk of cardiotoxicity upon administration of doxorubicin. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Fuzzy Rule Iterative Feature Selection (FRIFS) with Respect to the Choquet Integral Apply to Fabric Defect Recognition

ISBN 0.7803.9489.5International audienceAn iterative method to select suitable features in an industrial fabric defect recognition context is proposed in this paper. It combines a global feature selection method based on the Choquet integral and a fuzzy linguistic rule classifier. The experimental study shows the wanted behaviour of this approach: the feature number decreases whereas the recognition rate increases. Thus, the number of generated fuzzy rules is reduced