Occlusion handling in scene reconstruction from video

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On the needs and requirements arising from connected and automated driving

Future 5G systems have set a goal to support mission-critical Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications and they contribute to an important step towards connected and automated driving. To achieve this goal, the communication technologies should be designed based on a solid understanding of the new V2X applications and the related requirements and challenges. In this regard, we provide a description of the main V2X application categories and their representative use cases selected based on an analysis of the future needs of cooperative and automated driving. We also present a methodology on how to derive the network related requirements from the automotive specific requirements. The methodology can be used to analyze the key requirements of both existing and future V2X use cases

EPA guidance on physical activity as a treatment for severe mental illness: a meta-review of the evidence and Position Statement from the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), supported by the International Organization of Physical Therapists in Mental Health (IOPTMH)

Physical activity (PA) may be therapeutic for people with severe mental illness (SMI) who generally have low PA and experience numerous life style-related medical complications. We conducted a meta-review of interventions and their impact on health outcomes for people with SMI, including schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder. We searched major electronic databases until January 2018 for systematic reviews with/without meta-analysis that investigated PA for any SMI. We rated the quality of studies with the AMSTAR tool, grading the quality of evidence, and identifying gaps, future research needs and clinical practice recommendations. For MDD, consistent evidence indicated that PA can improve depressive symptoms versus control conditions, with effects comparable to those of antidepressants and psychotherapy. PA can also improve cardiorespiratory fitness and quality of life in people with MDD, although the impact on physical health outcomes was limited. There were no differences in adverse events versus control conditions. For MDD, larger effect sizes were seen when PA was delivered at moderate-vigorous intensity and supervised by an exercise specialist. For schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, evidence indicates that aerobic PA can reduce psychiatric symptoms, improves cognition and various subdomains, cardiorespiratory fitness, whilst evidence for the impact on anthropometric measures was inconsistent. There was a paucity of studies investigating PA in bipolar disorder, precluding any definitive recommendations. No cost effectiveness analyses in any SMI condition were identified. We make multiple recommendations to fill existing research gaps and increase the use of PA in routine clinical care aimed at improving psychiatric and medical outcomes

Oncoproteomic Analysis Reveals Co-Upregulation of RELA and STAT5 in Carboplatin Resistant Ovarian Carcinoma

Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal types of female malignancy. Although most patients are initially responsive to platinum-based chemotherapy, almost all develop recurrent chemoresistant tumors and succumb to their diseases. Elucidating the pathogenesis underlying drug resistance is fundamental to the development of new therapeutics, leading to improved clinical outcomes in these patients.We compared the proteomes of paired primary and recurrent post-chemotherapy ovarian high-grade serous carcinomas from nine ovarian cancer patients using CIEF/Nano-RPLC coupled with ESI-Tandem MS. As compared to their primary tumors, more than half of the recurrent tumors expressed higher levels of several proteins including CP, FN1, SYK, CD97, AIF1, WNK1, SERPINA3, APOD, URP2, STAT5B and RELA (NF-kappaB p65), which were also validated by quantitative RT-PCR. Based on shRNA screening for the upregulated genes in in vitro carboplatin-resistant cells, we found that simultaneous knockdown of RELA and STAT5B was most effective in sensitizing tumor cells for carboplatin treatment. Similarly, the NF-kappaB inhibitor, BMS-345541, and the STAT5 inhibitor, Dasatinib, significantly enhanced cell sensitivity to carboplatin. Moreover, both RELA and STAT5 are known to bind to the promoter region of Bcl-X, regulating its promoter activity. In this regard, augmented Bcl-xL expression was detected in carboplatin-resistant cells. Combined ectopic expression of RELA and STAT5B enhanced Bcl-xL promoter activity while treatment with BMS-345541 and Dasatinib decreased it. Chromatin immunoprecipitation of the Bcl-X promoter region using a STAT5 antibody showed induction of RELA and STAT5 DNA-binding segments both in naïve cells treated with a high concentration of carboplatin as well as in carboplatin-resistant cells.Proteomic analysis identified RELA and STAT5 as two major proteins associated with carboplatin resistance in ovarian tumors. Our results further showed that NF-kappaB and STAT5 inhibitor could sensitize carboplatin-resistant cells and suggest that such inhibitors can be used to benefit patients with carboplatin-resistant recurrent ovarian cancer

The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Anisotropy in the Gravitational-Wave Background

The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has reported evidence for the presence of an isotropic nanohertz gravitational wave background (GWB) in its 15 yr dataset. However, if the GWB is produced by a population of inspiraling supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) systems, then the background is predicted to be anisotropic, depending on the distribution of these systems in the local Universe and the statistical properties of the SMBHB population. In this work, we search for anisotropy in the GWB using multiple methods and bases to describe the distribution of the GWB power on the sky. We do not find significant evidence of anisotropy, and place a Bayesian $95\%$ upper limit on the level of broadband anisotropy such that $(C_{l>0} / C_{l=0}) < 20\%$. We also derive conservative estimates on the anisotropy expected from a random distribution of SMBHB systems using astrophysical simulations conditioned on the isotropic GWB inferred in the 15-yr dataset, and show that this dataset has sufficient sensitivity to probe a large fraction of the predicted level of anisotropy. We end by highlighting the opportunities and challenges in searching for anisotropy in pulsar timing array data.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures; submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters as part of Focus on NANOGrav's 15-year Data Set and the Gravitational Wave Background. For questions or comments, please email [email protected]

The NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set: Detector Characterization and Noise Budget

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are galactic-scale gravitational wave detectors. Each individual arm, composed of a millisecond pulsar, a radio telescope, and a kiloparsecs-long path, differs in its properties but, in aggregate, can be used to extract low-frequency gravitational wave (GW) signals. We present a noise and sensitivity analysis to accompany the NANOGrav 15-year data release and associated papers, along with an in-depth introduction to PTA noise models. As a first step in our analysis, we characterize each individual pulsar data set with three types of white noise parameters and two red noise parameters. These parameters, along with the timing model and, particularly, a piecewise-constant model for the time-variable dispersion measure, determine the sensitivity curve over the low-frequency GW band we are searching. We tabulate information for all of the pulsars in this data release and present some representative sensitivity curves. We then combine the individual pulsar sensitivities using a signal-to-noise-ratio statistic to calculate the global sensitivity of the PTA to a stochastic background of GWs, obtaining a minimum noise characteristic strain of $7\times 10^{-15}$ at 5 nHz. A power law-integrated analysis shows rough agreement with the amplitudes recovered in NANOGrav's 15-year GW background analysis. While our phenomenological noise model does not model all known physical effects explicitly, it provides an accurate characterization of the noise in the data while preserving sensitivity to multiple classes of GW signals.Comment: 67 pages, 73 figures, 3 tables; published in Astrophysical Journal Letters as part of Focus on NANOGrav's 15-year Data Set and the Gravitational Wave Background. For questions or comments, please email [email protected]

The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

Evidence for a low-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background has recently been reported based on analyses of pulsar timing array data. The most likely source of such a background is a population of supermassive black hole binaries, the loudest of which may be individually detected in these datasets. Here we present the search for individual supermassive black hole binaries in the NANOGrav 15-year dataset. We introduce several new techniques, which enhance the efficiency and modeling accuracy of the analysis. The search uncovered weak evidence for two candidate signals, one with a gravitational-wave frequency of $\sim$4 nHz, and another at $\sim$170 nHz. The significance of the low-frequency candidate was greatly diminished when Hellings-Downs correlations were included in the background model. The high-frequency candidate was discounted due to the lack of a plausible host galaxy, the unlikely astrophysical prior odds of finding such a source, and since most of its support comes from a single pulsar with a commensurate binary period. Finding no compelling evidence for signals from individual binary systems, we place upper limits on the strain amplitude of gravitational waves emitted by such systems.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters as part of Focus on NANOGrav's 15-year Data Set and the Gravitational Wave Background. For questions or comments, please email [email protected]

The NANOGrav 15-year data set: Search for Transverse Polarization Modes in the Gravitational-Wave Background

Recently we found compelling evidence for a gravitational wave background with Hellings and Downs (HD) correlations in our 15-year data set. These correlations describe gravitational waves as predicted by general relativity, which has two transverse polarization modes. However, more general metric theories of gravity can have additional polarization modes which produce different interpulsar correlations. In this work we search the NANOGrav 15-year data set for evidence of a gravitational wave background with quadrupolar Hellings and Downs (HD) and Scalar Transverse (ST) correlations. We find that HD correlations are the best fit to the data, and no significant evidence in favor of ST correlations. While Bayes factors show strong evidence for a correlated signal, the data does not strongly prefer either correlation signature, with Bayes factors $\sim 2$ when comparing HD to ST correlations, and $\sim 1$ for HD plus ST correlations to HD correlations alone. However, when modeled alongside HD correlations, the amplitude and spectral index posteriors for ST correlations are uninformative, with the HD process accounting for the vast majority of the total signal. Using the optimal statistic, a frequentist technique that focuses on the pulsar-pair cross-correlations, we find median signal-to-noise-ratios of 5.0 for HD and 4.6 for ST correlations when fit for separately, and median signal-to-noise-ratios of 3.5 for HD and 3.0 for ST correlations when fit for simultaneously. While the signal-to-noise-ratios for each of the correlations are comparable, the estimated amplitude and spectral index for HD are a significantly better fit to the total signal, in agreement with our Bayesian analysis.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

How to Detect an Astrophysical Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Background

Analysis of pulsar timing data have provided evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background in the nHz frequency band. The most plausible source of such a background is the superposition of signals from millions of supermassive black hole binaries. The standard statistical techniques used to search for such a background and assess its significance make several simplifying assumptions, namely: i) Gaussianity; ii) isotropy; and most often iii) a power-law spectrum. However, a stochastic background from a finite collection of binaries does not exactly satisfy any of these assumptions. To understand the effect of these assumptions, we test standard analysis techniques on a large collection of realistic simulated datasets. The dataset length, observing schedule, and noise levels were chosen to emulate the NANOGrav 15-year dataset. Simulated signals from millions of binaries drawn from models based on the Illustris cosmological hydrodynamical simulation were added to the data. We find that the standard statistical methods perform remarkably well on these simulated datasets, despite their fundamental assumptions not being strictly met. They are able to achieve a confident detection of the background. However, even for a fixed set of astrophysical parameters, different realizations of the universe result in a large variance in the significance and recovered parameters of the background. We also find that the presence of loud individual binaries can bias the spectral recovery of the background if we do not account for them.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars

We present observations and timing analyses of 68 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) comprising the 15-year data set of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). NANOGrav is a pulsar timing array (PTA) experiment that is sensitive to low-frequency gravitational waves. This is NANOGrav's fifth public data release, including both "narrowband" and "wideband" time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements and corresponding pulsar timing models. We have added 21 MSPs and extended our timing baselines by three years, now spanning nearly 16 years for some of our sources. The data were collected using the Arecibo Observatory, the Green Bank Telescope, and the Very Large Array between frequencies of 327 MHz and 3 GHz, with most sources observed approximately monthly. A number of notable methodological and procedural changes were made compared to our previous data sets. These improve the overall quality of the TOA data set and are part of the transition to new pulsar timing and PTA analysis software packages. For the first time, our data products are accompanied by a full suite of software to reproduce data reduction, analysis, and results. Our timing models include a variety of newly detected astrometric and binary pulsar parameters, including several significant improvements to pulsar mass constraints. We find that the time series of 23 pulsars contain detectable levels of red noise, 10 of which are new measurements. In this data set, we find evidence for a stochastic gravitational-wave background.Comment: 90 pages, 74 figures, 6 tables; published in Astrophysical Journal Letters as part of Focus on NANOGrav's 15-year Data Set and the Gravitational Wave Background. For questions or comments, please email [email protected]