Mapping grip force to motor networks.

There is ongoing debate about the role of cortical and subcortical brain areas in force modulation. In a whole-brain approach, we sought to investigate the anatomical basis of grip force whilst acknowledging interindividual differences in connectivity patterns. We tested if brain lesion mapping in patients with unilateral motor deficits can inform whole-brain structural connectivity analysis in healthy controls to uncover the networks underlying grip force. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and whole-brain voxel-based morphometry in chronic stroke patients (n=55) and healthy controls (n=67), we identified the brain regions in both grey and white matter significantly associated with grip force strength. The resulting statistical parametric maps (SPMs) provided seed areas for whole-brain structural covariance analysis in a large-scale community dwelling cohort (n=977) that included beyond volume estimates, parameter maps sensitive to myelin, iron and tissue water content. The SPMs showed symmetrical bilateral clusters of correlation between upper limb motor performance, basal ganglia, posterior insula and cortico-spinal tract. The covariance analysis with the seed areas derived from the SPMs demonstrated a widespread anatomical pattern of brain volume and tissue properties, including both cortical, subcortical nodes of motor networks and sensorimotor areas projections. We interpret our covariance findings as a biological signature of brain networks implicated in grip force. The data-driven definition of seed areas obtained from chronic stroke patients showed overlapping structural covariance patterns within cortico-subcortical motor networks across different tissue property estimates. This cumulative evidence lends face validity of our findings and their biological plausibility

Mining Social Interaction Data in Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds and massively multi-player online games are rich sources of information about large-scale teams and groups, offering the tantalizing possibility of harvesting data about group formation, social networks, and network evolution. However these environments lack many of the cues that facilitate natural language processing in other conversational settings and different types of social media. Public chat data often features players who speak simultaneously, use jargon and emoticons, and only erratically adhere to conversational norms. This chapter presents techniques for inferring the existence of social links from unstructured conversational data collected from groups of participants in the Second Life virtual world

Comparison of Microbiomes from Different Niches of Upper and Lower Airways in Children and Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis

Changes in the airway microbiome may be important in the pathophysiology of chronic lung disease in patients with cystic fibrosis. However, little is known about the microbiome in early cystic fibrosis lung disease and the relationship between the microbiomes from different niches in the upper and lower airways. Therefore, in this cross-sectional study, we examined the relationship between the microbiome in the upper (nose and throat) and lower (sputum) airways from children with cystic fibrosis using next generation sequencing. Our results demonstrate a significant difference in both α and β-diversity between the nose and the two other sampling sites. The nasal microbiome was characterized by a polymicrobial community while the throat and sputum communities were less diverse and dominated by a few operational taxonomic units. Moreover, sputum and throat microbiomes were closely related especially in patients with clinically stable lung disease. There was a high inter-individual variability in sputum samples primarily due to a decrease in evenness linked to increased abundance of potential respiratory pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Patients with chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection exhibited a less diverse sputum microbiome. A high concordance was found between pediatric and adult sputum microbiomes except that Burkholderia was only observed in the adult cohort. These results indicate that an adult-like lower airways microbiome is established early in life and that throat swabs may be a good surrogate in clinically stable children with cystic fibrosis without chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection in whom sputum sampling is often not feasible

A TaqI RFLP in the locus D9S29 on human chromosome 9.

Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The EU Project ORPHEUS: Object-based Broadcasting – for Next Generation Audio Experiences

Object-based media is a revolutionary approach for creating and deploying interactive, personalised, scalable and immersive content. This allows media objects to be assembled in novel ways to create new and enhanced user experiences. Orpheus will develop, implement and validate an object-based end-to-end media chain for audio content. The partners will lay the foundation for facilitating infinite combinations of audio objects in ways that are flexible and responsive to user, environmental and platform-specific factors. This includes innovative tools for capturing, mixing, monitoring, storing, archiving, distributing, playing out and rendering of object-based audio. To further foster the development of new capabilities in the European content creation industry, ORPHEUS is working on a reference architecture and guidelines on how to implement object-based audio chains. An overview of the project, the challenges and first results will be presented in this paper

A Hybrid 3D Audio Acquisition Approach forthe Recording of Spatial Audio Scenes

The present paper describes the conception and field trial of a recording system designed for three dimensional audio acquisition of complex acoustic scenes. In this regard, the pursued objective is to create audio signals which are generic enough in order to be used with highly diverse playback devices. Therefore, within the scope of the EU funded research project ROMEO, a hybrid audio recording system, based on familiar spatial recording techniques, was designed and implemented. The audio signals and metadata created by the system are versatile enough to be processed by and transmitted to various end user terminals, such as mobile devices, set-top boxes and tablet computers. A practical test recording at the bavarian broadcaster (BR) in Munich enabled a validation of the concept and at the same time provided audio testing material for the further ROMEO research work

Metabolic rates of vascular endothelial cells in vitro

Cultures of endothelial cells and cell lines of endothelial origin were maintained at confluence without medium exchange for a period of 72 h. During this time period the concentration of nutrients - amino acids and glucose - and metabolic waste products - lactate and ammonium - was determined as well as cell vitality and cell numbers. Metabolic rates were calculated and compared for the different cell lines. Surprisingly the primary cells showed significantly higher rates of glucose and glutamine consumption, respectively lactate production than the immortalized cell lines. Except for one tumorigenic cell line all cells showed a significant participation of transaminases in glutamine/ammonium metabolism. Furthermore it could be shown that in routine culture there was no depletion of nutrients or critical accumulation of ammonium or lactate over a culture period of 72 h

Confronting the winds: orientation and flight behaviour of roosting swifts, Apus apus.

Swifts, Apus apus, spend the night aloft and this offers an opportunity to test the degree of adaptability of bird orientation and flight to different ecological situations. We predicted the swifts' behaviour by assuming that they are adapted to minimize energy expenditure during the nocturnal flight and during a compensatory homing flight if they become displaced by wind. We tested the predictions by recording the swifts' altitudes, speeds and directions under different wind conditions with tracking radar; we found an agreement between predictions and observations for orientation behaviour, but not for altitude and speed regulation. The swifts orientated consistently into the head wind, with angular concentration increasing with increasing wind speed. However, contrary to our predictions, they did not select altitudes with slow or moderate winds, nor did they increase their airspeed distinctly when flying into strong head winds. A possible explanation is that their head-wind orientation is sufficient to keep nocturnal displacement from their home area within tolerable limits, leaving flight altitude to be determined by other factors (correlated with temperature), and airspeed to show only a marginal increase in strong winds. The swifts were often moving "backwards", heading straight into the wind but being overpowered by wind speeds exceeding their airspeed. The regular occurrence of such flights is probably uniquely associated with the swifts' remarkable habit of roosting on the wing