Visualization of affective information in music using chironomie

The purpose of this study is to visualize affective information that cannot be conveyed by symbolic notation alone, to enhance the musical experience of the hearing impaired. To represent the rhythm of music effectively and uniquely, we focused on Chironomie, which represents the structure of rhythm with emotional impression. In general, Chironomie is drawn by a curve corresponding to the score, which is determined by whether a short segment of the score represents one of two classes, Arsis or Thesis. First, we utilized the machine learning technique to classify Arsis and Thesis from the score as input. We conducted experiments to confirm the accuracy of the classification, and the usefulness of the estimated Chironomie in conveying the rhythm of music. In the latter experiment, four types of stimuli combining visual and sound information were used to confirm the effects of Chironome: score only, Chironomie only, score and Chironomie, and score and sound. Results showed that Chironomie has certain usefulness in conveying the rhythmic structure of a piece of music. This paper mainly focuses on evaluation experiments and discusses experimental and analytical methods under these experimental conditions

Abnormal localized [¹⁸F]FDG accumulation in a Hoffman 3D brain phantom caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia

The version of record of this article, first published in European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-024-06816-5.Hoffman 3D brain phantom was scanned to standardize the image quality in a clinical trial. Dynamic [¹⁸F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography ([¹⁸F]FDG PET), which started 15 min after being filled with [¹⁸F]FDG (25 MBq), revealed an abnormally increasing accumulation of [¹⁸F]FDG in the left occipital cortex region at one hour. This abnormal accumulation showed an increasing trend (Fig. 1A, B). The presence of bacteria was suggested by the culture of scrabbed samples taken from the corresponding region in the phantom, later confirmed to be Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (Fig. 1C). Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an aerobic Gram-negative rod with a single flagellum at one end. It is a facultative anaerobic bacterium that generates ATP (adenosine triphosphate) necessary for growth by aerobic respiration and grows by oxidative degradation of glucose in the presence of oxygen [1]. Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is a non-fermentative Gram-negative bacterium that consumes proteins and peptides rather than sugars and carbohydrates as carbon and nutrient sources [2]. There have been several reports on the uptakes of [¹⁸F]FDG [3, 4]. We concluded that the abnormal accumulation was caused by FDG-avid bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia.It is preferable to use degassed tap water rather than purified or distilled water to prevent the growth of bacteria. Hoffman 3D brain phantom should be disassembled and completely dried after the scan, especially for multicenter clinical trials

ニュウガン ジュツゼン カガク リョウホウ FECリョウホウ チュウ ニ モウマク ジョウミャク ヘイソクショウ ニ ヨル ヘンソクセイ ノ オウハン フシュ オ ハッショウシタ 1レイ

症例は60歳女性。検診で右乳癌が疑われ、精査により浸潤性乳管癌の診断となった。術前化学療法としてDTX療法(docetaxel)4サイクル終了後にFEC療法(5-FU+epirubicin+cyclophosphamide)を開始した。FEC療法2サイクル目投与中に、左眼の視力低下が出現し、翌日に左眼底に出血を伴う網膜静脈分枝閉塞症および嚢胞状黄斑浮腫を確認した。FEC療法を中止し、非ステロイド性抗炎症点眼薬(NSAIDS点眼薬)投与、抗血管内皮増殖因子抗体薬(抗VEGF抗体薬)の硝子体内注射による治療を開始した。その後も3か月毎に抗VEGF抗体薬投与を行ったところ、徐々に黄斑浮腫は改善、視力は治療開始 1 年後に回復した。これまでにタキサン系の抗癌剤で黄斑浮腫が出現した報告はあるが、FEC療法の副作用で黄斑浮腫が出現したとの報告はなく、本症例は希少な症例と考えられた。また、抗癌剤治療の際には眼副作用の予防、発症の早期検知、早期治療を心掛ける必要がある。The case is a 60-year-old woman. Right breast cancer was suspected during a medical checkup, and a close examination revealed a diagnosis of invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. After 4 cycles of DTX (docetaxel) as neoadjuvant chemotherapy, FEC (5-FU + epirubicin + cyclophosphamide) was started. During the second cycle of FEC therapy, vision loss in the left eye appeared, and the next day, branch retinal vein occlusion with hemorrhage and cystoid macular edema were observed in the left fundus. FEC therapy was discontinued, and treatment with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory eye drops (NSAIDS eye drops) and intravitreal injection of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor antibody drug (anti-VEGF antibody drug) was started. After administration of anti-VEGF antibody drug every 3 months, macular edema gradually improved and visual acuity was restored one year after the start of treatment. Although there have been reports of macular edema caused by taxane-type anticancer drugs, there have been no reports of macular edema as a side effect of FEC therapy, and this case was considered to be a rare one. In addition, it is necessary to keep in mind the prevention of ocular side effects, early detection of their onset, and early treatment when anticancer drug therapy is used.departmental bulletin pape

Sounds out of pläce? Score-independent detection of conspicuous mistakes in piano performances

This work has been accepted at the ISMIR 2023, 24rd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, at Milan, Italy. November 5-9, 2023.In piano performance, some mistakes stand out to listeners, whereas others may go unnoticed. Former research concluded that the salience of mistakes depended on factors including their contextual appropriateness and a listener’s degree of familiarity to what is being performed. A conspicuous error is considered to be an area where there is something obviously wrong with the performance, which a listener can detect regardless of their degree of knowledge of what is being performed. Analogously, this paper attempts to build a score-independent conspicuous error detector for standard piano repertoire of beginner to intermediate students. We gather three qualitatively different piano playing MIDI data: (1) 103 sight-reading sessions for beginning and intermediate adult pianists with formal music training, (2) 245 performances by presumably latebeginner to early-advanced pianists on a digital piano, and (3) 50 etude performances by an advanced pianist. The data was annotated at the regions considered to contain conspicuous mistakes. Then, we use a Temporal Convolutional Network to detect the sites of such mistakes from the piano roll. We investigate the use of two pre-training methods to overcome data scarcity: (1) synthetic data with procedurally-generated mistakes, and (2) training a part of the model as a piano roll auto-encoder. Experimental evaluation shows that the TCN performs at an F-measure of 0.78 without pretraining for sight-reading data, but the proposed pretraining steps improve the F-measure on performance and etude data, approaching the agreement between human raters on conspicuous error labels. Importantly, we report on the lessons learned from this pilot study, and what should be addressed to continue this research direction

Npas4 Regulates Mdm2 and thus Dcx in Experience-Dependent Dendritic Spine Development of Newborn Olfactory Bulb Interneurons

Sensory experience regulates the development of various brain structures, including the cortex, hippocampus, and olfactory bulb (OB). Little is known about how sensory experience regulates the dendritic spine development of OB interneurons, such as granule cells (GCs), although it is well studied in mitral/tufted cells. Here, we identify a transcription factor, Npas4, which is expressed in OB GCs immediately after sensory input and is required for dendritic spine formation. Npas4 overexpression in OB GCs increases dendritic spine density, even under sensory deprivation, and rescues reduction of dendrite spine density in the Npas4 knockout OB. Furthermore, loss of Npas4 upregulates expression of the E3-ubiquitin ligase Mdm2, which ubiquitinates a microtubule-associated protein Dcx. This leads to reduction in the dendritic spine density of OB GCs. Together, these findings suggest that Npas4 regulates Mdm2 expression to ubiquitinate and degrade Dcx during dendritic spine development in newborn OB GCs after sensory experience

Reassigning CI chondrite parent bodies based on reflectance spectroscopy of samples from carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu and meteorites

The carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu has been explored by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft to elucidate the actual nature of hydrous asteroids. Laboratory analyses revealed that the samples from Ryugu are comparable to unheated CI carbonaceous chondrites; however, reflectance spectra of Ryugu samples and CIs do not coincide. Here, we demonstrate that Ryugu sample spectra are reproduced by heating Orgueil CI chondrite at 300°C under reducing conditions, which caused dehydration of terrestrial weathering products and reduction of iron in phyllosilicates. Terrestrial weathering of CIs accounts for the spectral differences between Ryugu sample and CIs, which is more severe than space weathering that likely explains those between asteroid Ryugu and the collected samples. Previous assignments of CI chondrite parent bodies, i.e., chemically most primitive objects in the solar system, are based on the spectra of CI chondrites. This study indicates that actual spectra of CI parent bodies are much darker and flatter at ultraviolet to visible wavelengths than the spectra of CI chondrites.Spaceborne Instrumentatio

In mice with advanced leukemia, CTLs specific for the antigen expressed in leukemia cells were also expanded, but could not suppress disease progression.

<p>(A-C) Analysis of BM and spleen cells from mice with advanced MLL/AF9-OVA leukemia (A) Flow-cytometry analysis of the frequencies of GFP⁺ leukemia cells among the whole BM or spleen cells and the frequencies of H-2K^b/OVA tetramer-positive cells among CD8⁺ T cells. (B) Flow-cytometry analysis of cytokine production by CD8⁺ T cells in BM and spleen with or without SIINFEKL peptide stimulation. (C) Percentages of IFN-γ- and/or TNF-α-producing cells among CD8⁺ BM or spleen T cells, with or without SIINFEKL peptide stimulation (n = 3). *: p < 0.05 (D) Analysis of the expression of T-cell exhaustion–associated markers in H-2K^b/OVA tetramer-positive CD8⁺ T cells. BM cells from non-leukemic mice and mice with advanced leukemia were analyzed (n = 3 for each). Representative flow-cytometry analysis and bar graphs for mean fluorescence intensities (MFI) are shown. Dotted lines represent isotype controls.*: p < 0.05, N.S.: not statistically significant. (E) Analysis of the expression of H-2K^b, GFP, and the presentation of SIINFEKL peptide in leukemia cells that developed in wild-type or <i>Rag2</i>^-/- recipients. Representative flow-cytometry analysis and bar graphs for MFI are shown. Dotted lines represent isotype controls.</p