Visual Field Analysis: A reliable method to score left and right eye use using automated tracking

Brain and behavioural asymmetries have been documented in various taxa. Many of these asymmetries involve preferential left and right eye use. However, measuring eye use through manual frame-by-frame analyses from video recordings is laborious and may lead to biases. Recent progress in technology has allowed the development of accurate tracking techniques for measuring animal behaviour. Amongst these techniques, DeepLabCut, a Python-based tracking toolbox using transfer learning with deep neural networks, offers the possibility to track different body parts with unprecedented accuracy. Exploiting the potentialities of DeepLabCut, we developed Visual Field Analysis, an additional open-source application for extracting eye use data. To our knowledge, this is the first application that can automatically quantify left–right preferences in eye use. Here we test the performance of our application in measuring preferential eye use in young domestic chicks. The comparison with manual scoring methods revealed a near perfect correlation in the measures of eye use obtained by Visual Field Analysis. With our application, eye use can be analysed reliably, objectively and at a fine scale in different experimental paradigms

Embryonic Exposure to Valproic Acid Impairs Social Predispositions of Newly-Hatched Chicks

This work was supported by a grant from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) Grant ERC-2011-ADG_20110406, Project No: 461 295517, PREMESOR to G.V. Support from Fondazione Caritro Grant Biomarker DSA [40102839] and PRIN 2015 (Neural bases of animacy detection, and their relevance to the typical and atypical development of the brain) to GV is also acknowledged

Machine-Readable Privacy Certificates for Services

Privacy-aware processing of personal data on the web of services requires managing a number of issues arising both from the technical and the legal domain. Several approaches have been proposed to matching privacy requirements (on the clients side) and privacy guarantees (on the service provider side). Still, the assurance of effective data protection (when possible) relies on substantial human effort and exposes organizations to significant (non-)compliance risks. In this paper we put forward the idea that a privacy certification scheme producing and managing machine-readable artifacts in the form of privacy certificates can play an important role towards the solution of this problem. Digital privacy certificates represent the reasons why a privacy property holds for a service and describe the privacy measures supporting it. Also, privacy certificates can be used to automatically select services whose certificates match the client policies (privacy requirements). Our proposal relies on an evolution of the conceptual model developed in the Assert4Soa project and on a certificate format specifically tailored to represent privacy properties. To validate our approach, we present a worked-out instance showing how privacy property Retention-based unlinkability can be certified for a banking financial service.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure

Spontaneous Learning of Visual Structures in Domestic Chicks

Effective communication crucially depends on the ability to produce and recognize structured signals, as apparent in language and birdsong. Although it is not clear to what extent similar syntactic-like abilities can be identified in other animals, recently we reported that domestic chicks can learn abstract visual patterns and the statistical structure defined by a temporal sequence of visual shapes. However, little is known about chicks’ ability to process spatial/positional information from visual configurations. Here, we used filial imprinting as an unsupervised learning mechanism to study spontaneous encoding of the structure of a configuration of different shapes. After being exposed to a triplet of shapes (ABC or CAB), chicks could discriminate those triplets from a permutation of the same shapes in different order (CAB or ABC), revealing a sensitivity to the spatial arrangement of the elements. When tested with a fragment taken from the imprinting triplet that followed the familiar adjacency-relationships (AB or BC) vs. one in which the shapes maintained their position with respect to the stimulus edges (AC), chicks revealed a preference for the configuration with familiar edge elements, showing an edge bias previously found only with temporal sequences

Patient profiles as an aim to optimize selection in the second line setting: the role of aflibercept

Aflibercept; Càncer colorectal; Perfil del pacientAflibercept; Cáncer colorrectal; Perfil del pacienteAflibercept; Colorectal cancer; Patient profileColorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. For metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients, it is recommended, as first-line treatment, chemotherapy (CT) based on doublet cytotoxic combinations of fluorouracil, leucovorin, and irinotecan (FOLFIRI) and fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin (FOLFOX). In addition to CT, biological (targeted agents) are indicated in the first-line treatment, unless contraindicated. In this context, most of mCRC patients are likely to progress and to change from first line to second line treatment when they develop resistance to first-line treatment options. It is in this second line setting where Aflibercept offers an alternative and effective therapeutic option, thought its specific mechanism of action for different patient’s profile: RAS mutant, RAS wild-type (wt), BRAF mutant, potentially resectable and elderly patients. In this paper, a panel of experienced oncologists specialized in the management of mCRC experts have reviewed and selected scientific evidence focused on Aflibercept as an alternative treatment

Thermoelectric transport perpendicular to thin film heterostructures using Monte Carlo technique

The Monte Carlo technique is used to calculate electrical as well as thermoelectric transport properties across thin film heterostructures. We study a thin InGaAsP barrier layer sandwiched between two InGaAs contact layers, when the barrier thickness is in 50nm-2000nm range. We found that with decreasing size, the effective Seebeck coefficient is increased substantially. The transition between pure ballistic thermionic transport and fully diffusive thermoelectric transport is also described

Microstructure and hard magnetic properties in bulk rods of Nd 60Fe 30Al 10 glass forming alloys

The Nd60Fe30Al10 alloy exhibits a large glass forming ability which allows to obtain relatively thick cast rods containing large volume fractions of amorphous phases. In this work the microstructure and the hard magnetic properties of as-cast rods are characterized. The alloy is processed by suction casting into a chilled copper mould to obtain cylinders 5 mm diameter and 50 mm length. This diameter is selected because it is an upper limit for this processing route, beyond which the hard properties largely deteriorate. A room temperature coercivity of 0.34 T is obtained. The sample microstructure is heterogeneous, with very different size scales near the surface and along the central zone. However, in both regions a large fraction of an amorphous ferromagnetic phase is observed; it is found that paramagnetic nanocrystalline phases, mainly Nd or Nd-rich particles embedded in the amorphous matrix, are somewhat coarser in the central zone. These larger nanocrystals, less efficient to pin domain walls, are proposed to be responsible for the lower coercive fields observed, as compared with those found in cylinders 1 to 3 mm diameter where no inhomogeneities are found. This conclusion is supported by microstructure, calorimetric and magnetic observations.Fil: Levingston, J. M.. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; ArgentinaFil: Valente, R.. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Ghilarducci, Ada Albertina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Fabietti, Luis Maria Rodolfo. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física. Sección Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola; ArgentinaFil: Salva, Horacio Ramon. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Bariloche); Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Urreta, S. E.. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentin