eXtended Color Cell Compression -- A Runtime-efficient Compression Scheme for Software Video

Multimedia applications require a compression and decompression scheme for digital video. The standardized and widely used techniques JPEG and MPEG provide very good compression ratios, but are computationally quite complex and demanding. We propose to use an extension to the much simpler Color Cell Compression scheme as an alternative. Our extension includes the use of variable block sizes, the reuse of color index values from previously encoded blocks, and Huffman encoding of the stream of blocks. We present experimental results showing that our scheme provides much better runtime performance than MPEG, at the cost of a slightly inferior compression ratio. It is thus especially suited for software videos in high-speed networks

Innovating together for just and green urban transitions: Stories from Urban ReLeaf Cities

Nature-based solutions in urban environments can provide cooling effects, decrease air pollution, and improve mental health, amongst others important ecosystem services and health-related benefits. Ambitious plans, such as the pledge to plant 3 billion trees in the EU, the European Green Deal, or the Green City Accord support this direction. Their implementation, however, requires transformative changes on the ground to overcome business as usual approaches. The Urban ReLeaf project delivers change by bringing public authorities and citizen groups together to shape green infrastructure actions in their cities. Six pilot cities co-create citizen-centric innovations for the democratisation of urban greenspace monitoring and the wider policy making process in pursuit of urban climate resilience. This poster showcases the stories of the six cities and their approaches to participatory, and data-driven decision making. Athens is undergoing a greening transformation with a new, citizen-powered tree registry providing critical data for better management of greenspaces. Cascais engages citizens in sharing perceptions and thermal comfort levels while using greenspaces to validate the effectiveness of its parks. Meanwhile in Dundee, a city facing increasing grey infrastructure in deprived areas, actions to enhance the accessibility of greenspaces are co-developed with citizens and stakeholders. Mannheim has a heat action plan to safeguard its most vulnerable residents but has identified critical data gaps. Citizen observations of trees and thermal comfort, when integrated with official data streams, will aid the delivery of climate adaptation measures. Riga engages diverse audiences to address concerns about air pollution and greenspace usage, to ensure better informed policies. Finally, in Utrecht, data on temperature, humidity and heat stress, collected by and for citizens, will help them reduce the urban heat island effect and shape effective mitigation strategies

Face or building superiority in peripheral vision reversed by task requirements

Peripheral vision has been the topic of few studies compared with central vision. Nevertheless, given that visual information covers all the visual field and that relevant information can originate from highly eccentric positions, the understanding of peripheral vision abilities for object perception seems essential. The poorer resolution of peripheral vision would first suggest that objects requiring large-scale feature integration such as buildings would be better processed than objects requiring finer analysis such as faces. Nevertheless, task requirements also determine the information (coarse or fine) necessary for a given object to be processed. We therefore investigated how task and eccentricity modulate object processing in peripheral vision. Three experiments were carried out requiring finer or coarser information processing of faces and buildings presented in central and peripheral vision. Our results showed that buildings were better judged as identical or familiar in periphery whilst faces were better categorised. We conclude that this superiority for a given stimulus in peripheral vision results (a) from the available information, which depends on the decrease of resolution with eccentricity, and (b) from the useful information, which depends on both the task and the semantic category

Serpina3n attenuates granzyme B-mediated decorin cleavage and rupture in a murine model of aortic aneurysm

Granzyme B (GZMB) is a proapoptotic serine protease that is released by cytotoxic lymphocytes. However, GZMB can also be produced by other cell types and is capable of cleaving extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. GZMB contributes to abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) through an extracellular, perforin-independent mechanism involving ECM cleavage. The murine serine protease inhibitor, Serpina3n (SA3N), is an extracellular inhibitor of GZMB. In the present study, administration of SA3N was assessed using a mouse Angiotensin II-induced AAA model. Mice were injected with SA3N (0–120 μg/kg) before pump implantation. A significant dose-dependent reduction in the frequency of aortic rupture and death was observed in mice that received SA3N treatment compared with controls. Reduced degradation of the proteoglycan decorin was observed while collagen density was increased in the aortas of mice receiving SA3N treatment compared with controls. In vitro studies confirmed that decorin, which regulates collagen spacing and fibrillogenesis, is cleaved by GZMB and that its cleavage can be prevented by SA3N. In conclusion, SA3N inhibits GZMB-mediated decorin degradation leading to enhanced collagen remodelling and reinforcement of the adventitia, thereby reducing the overall rate of rupture and death in a mouse model of AAA

Alteration of proliferation and apoptotic markers in normal and premalignant tissue associated with prostate cancer

BACKGROUND: Molecular markers identifying alterations in proliferation and apoptotic pathways could be particularly important in characterizing high-risk normal or pre-neoplastic tissue. We evaluated the following markers: Ki67, Minichromosome Maintenance Protein-2 (Mcm-2), activated caspase-3 (a-casp3) and Bcl-2 to determine if they showed differential expression across progressive degrees of intraepithelial neoplasia and cancer in the prostate. To identify field effects, we also evaluated whether high-risk expression patterns in normal tissue were more common in prostates containing cancer compared to those without cancer (supernormal), and in histologically normal glands adjacent to a cancer focus as opposed to equivalent glands that were more distant. METHODS: The aforementioned markers were studied in 13 radical prostatectomy (RP) and 6 cystoprostatectomy (CP) specimens. Tissue compartments representing normal, low grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (LGPIN), high grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN), as well as different grades of cancer were mapped on H&E slides and adjacent sections were analyzed using immunohistochemistry. Normal glands within 1 mm distance of a tumor focus and glands beyond 5 mm were considered "near" and "far", respectively. Randomly selected nuclei and 40 × fields were scored by a single observer; basal and luminal epithelial layers were scored separately. RESULTS: Both Ki-67 and Mcm-2 showed an upward trend from normal tissue through HGPIN and cancer with a shift in proliferation from basal to luminal compartment. Activated caspase-3 showed a significant decrease in HGPIN and cancer compartments. Supernormal glands had significantly lower proliferation indices and higher a-casp3 expression compared to normal glands. "Near" normal glands had higher Mcm-2 indices compared to "far" glands; however, they also had higher a-casp3 expression. Bcl-2, which varied minimally in normal tissue, did not show any trend across compartments or evidence for field effects. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate that proliferation and apoptosis are altered not only in preneoplastic lesions but also in apparently normal looking epithelium associated with cancer. Luminal cell expression of Mcm-2 appears to be particularly promising as a marker of high-risk normal epithelium. The role of apoptotic markers such as activated caspase-3 is more complex, and might depend on the proliferation status of the tissue in question

A Novel Gene Signature for Molecular Diagnosis of Human Prostate Cancer by RT-qPCR

Prostate cancer (CaP) is one of the most relevant causes of cancer death in Western Countries. Although detection of CaP at early curable stage is highly desirable, actual screening methods present limitations and new molecular approaches are needed. Gene expression analysis increases our knowledge about the biology of CaP and may render novel molecular tools, but the identification of accurate biomarkers for reliable molecular diagnosis is a real challenge. We describe here the diagnostic power of a novel 8-genes signature: ornithine decarboxylase (ODC), ornithine decarboxylase antizyme (OAZ), adenosylmethionine decarboxylase (AdoMetDC), spermidine/spermine N(1)-acetyltransferase (SSAT), histone H3 (H3), growth arrest specific gene (GAS1), glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) and Clusterin (CLU) in tumour detection/classification of human CaP. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The 8-gene signature was detected by retrotranscription real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) in frozen prostate surgical specimens obtained from 41 patients diagnosed with CaP and recommended to undergo radical prostatectomy (RP). No therapy was given to patients at any time before RP. The bio-bank used for the study consisted of 66 specimens: 44 were benign-CaP paired from the same patient. Thirty-five were classified as benign and 31 as CaP after final pathological examination. Only molecular data were used for classification of specimens. The Nearest Neighbour (NN) classifier was used in order to discriminate CaP from benign tissue. Validation of final results was obtained with 10-fold cross-validation procedure. CaP versus benign specimens were discriminated with (80+/-5)% accuracy, (81+/-6)% sensitivity and (78+/-7)% specificity. The method also correctly classified 71% of patients with Gleason score<7 versus > or =7, an important predictor of final outcome. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The method showed high sensitivity in a collection of specimens in which a significant portion of the total (13/31, equal to 42%) was considered CaP on the basis of having less than 15% of cancer cells. This result supports the notion of the "cancer field effect", in which transformed cells extend beyond morphologically evident tumour. The molecular diagnosis method here described is objective and less subjected to human error. Although further confirmations are needed, this method poses the potential to enhance conventional diagnosis

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

Peer reviewe

Neuro-cognitive mechanisms of conscious and unconscious visual perception: From a plethora of phenomena to general principles

Psychological and neuroscience approaches have promoted much progress in elucidating the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie phenomenal visual awareness during the last decades. In this article, we provide an overview of the latest research investigating important phenomena in conscious and unconscious vision. We identify general principles to characterize conscious and unconscious visual perception, which may serve as important building blocks for a unified model to explain the plethora of findings. We argue that in particular the integration of principles from both conscious and unconscious vision is advantageous and provides critical constraints for developing adequate theoretical models. Based on the principles identified in our review, we outline essential components of a unified model of conscious and unconscious visual perception. We propose that awareness refers to consolidated visual representations, which are accessible to the entire brain and therefore globally available. However, visual awareness not only depends on consolidation within the visual system, but is additionally the result of a post-sensory gating process, which is mediated by higher-level cognitive control mechanisms. We further propose that amplification of visual representations by attentional sensitization is not exclusive to the domain of conscious perception, but also applies to visual stimuli, which remain unconscious. Conscious and unconscious processing modes are highly interdependent with influences in both directions. We therefore argue that exactly this interdependence renders a unified model of conscious and unconscious visual perception valuable. Computational modeling jointly with focused experimental research could lead to a better understanding of the plethora of empirical phenomena in consciousness research

Self-assembly of collagen fibers. Influence of fibrillar alignment and decorin on mechanical properties.

Collagen is the primary structural element in extracellular matrices. In the form of fibers it acts to transmit forces, dissipate energy, and prevent premature mechanical failure in normal tissues. Deformation of collagen fibers involves molecular stretching and slippage, fibrillar slippage, and, ultimately, defibrillation. Our laboratory has developed a process for self-assembly of macroscopic collagen fibers that have structures and mechanical properties similar to rat tail tendon fibers. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of subfibrillar orientation and decorin incorporation on the mechanical properties of collagen fibers. Self-assembled collagen fibers were stretched 0-50% before cross-linking and then characterized by microscopy and mechanical testing. Results of these studies indicate that fibrillar orientation, packing, and ultimate tensile strength can be increased by stretching. In addition, it is shown that decorin incorporation increases ultimate tensile strength of uncross-linked fibers. Based on the observed results it is hypothesized that decorin facilitates fibrillar slippage during deformation and thereby improves the tensile properties of collagen fibers