TELEVISION SETTINGS MANAGEMENT

A television settings management system can automatically manage television settings using one or more electronic devices associated with a user. The system r eceives a request to configure settings for a television. The system also receives a request to associate the configured settings with a particular user device. Based on the received request, the system associates the television settings with the user device. Further, whenever the system detects presence of the user device in a vicinity of the television, the system applies, to the television, the television settings associated with the user device

SYNCHRONIZED MULTIPLE AMBIENT DISPLAYS

Ambient displays are particularly good at monitoring and displaying information in a peripheral and aesthetically pleasing way. A system of multiple ambient displays is disclosed where the user can view image or video or any content in two or more displays at a time, in synchronized fashion. Alternatively, multiple displays may be used to display content scaled or extended across the displays. A major advantage of the system is that users may be able to display important ambient information at all rooms in a location, for example

Controlling a television from proximate devices

This disclosure describes techniques to control and interact with displays, e.g., televisions, without a traditional infrared (IR) remote control or a directional pad. An application on a user computing device is used to initiate and control content playback on the television. The app is also usable to update television settings and user settings, e.g., multiple user accounts, multiple mobile devices, user permissions, etc. When permitted by a user, a television automatically detects a proximate user computing device and sends a notification to the detected device. The television also automatically enters a responsive state, without user input to switch on the television. A notification of the availability of the television is sent to the detected device. A user can wireless transmit content to the television, change television settings, etc. via the computing device

Three-Dimensional (3D) Audio Laser for Virtual Reality Systems

A three-dimensional (3D) audio laser for VR systems is provided. The 3D audio laser is a system that includes a laser pointer and a dedicated audio location control. The system uses sound to orient a user to a virtual object and to provide an audible description of the virtual object. A location and a name (or other description) of virtual objects in the VR environment are known to the VR system. When the user aims the laser pointer at a particular virtual object and selects the dedicated audio location control, the VR system plays a series of tones with simulated locations at specified distances between the user and the virtual object. The distances are known to the user (e.g., given in the user manual for the VR system). After the series of tones is played, the name or description of the virtual object is played. The user can thereby discover the name and location of the virtual object, even if it the user cannot visually determine them

CONTENT CONTROL MANAGEMENT

A content control system can be used to control media content that is being played at one or more client devices. The system receives an instruction from a first user’s client device to play media content. The system provides complete control of the playing media content at the first user’s client device. The system provides limited control of the playing media content at the second user’s client device

Determining Optimal Player Position, Distance, and Scale from a Point of Interest on a Terrain

In a three-dimensional virtual world that is presented as part of a virtual reality environment, a player is teleported from one location displaying a point of interest to a new location displaying a new point of interest. When positioning the player at the location within the three-dimensional virtual world displaying the new point of interest, a virtual reality application determines a player viewing position at the location in order for the player to view the point of interest in a consistent and optimized fashion. The determination made by the virtual reality application, comprehending factors of scale, altitude, and direction, provides the player with a view that is comfortable and makes the point of interest easily recognizable

Spatial and Functional Distribution of MYBPC3 Pathogenic Variants and Clinical Outcomes in Patients with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Background - Pathogenic variants in MYBPC3, encoding cardiac MyBP-C, are the most common cause of familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. A large number of unique MYBPC3 variants and relatively small genotyped HCM cohorts have precluded detailed genotype-phenotype correlations. Methods - Patients with HCM and MYBPC3 variants were identified from the Sarcomeric Human Cardiomyopathy Registry (SHaRe). Variant types and locations were analyzed, morphologic severity was assessed, and time-event analysis was performed (composite clinical outcome of sudden death, class III/IV heart failure, LVAD/transplant, atrial fibrillation). For selected missense variants falling in enriched domains, myofilament localization and degradation rates were measured in vitro. Results - Among 4,756 genotyped HCM patients in SHaRe, 1,316 patients were identified with adjudicated pathogenic truncating (N=234 unique variants, 1047 patients) or non-truncating (N=22 unique variants, 191 patients) variants in MYBPC3. Truncating variants were evenly dispersed throughout the gene, and hypertrophy severity and outcomes were not associated with variant location (grouped by 5' - 3' quartiles or by founder variant subgroup). Non-truncating pathogenic variants clustered in the C3, C6, and C10 domains (18 of 22, 82%, p<0.001 vs. gnomAD common variants) and were associated with similar hypertrophy severity and adverse event rates as observed with truncating variants. MyBP-C with variants in the C3, C6, and C10 domains was expressed in rat ventricular myocytes. C10 mutant MyBP-C failed to incorporate into myofilaments and degradation rates were accelerated by ~90%, while C3 and C6 mutant MyBP-C incorporated normally with degradation rate similar to wild-type. Conclusions - Truncating variants account for 91% of MYBPC3 pathogenic variants and cause similar clinical severity and outcomes regardless of location, consistent with locus-independent loss-of-function. Non-truncating MYBPC3 pathogenic variants are regionally clustered, and a subset also cause loss-of-function through failure of myofilament incorporation and rapid degradation. Cardiac morphology and clinical outcomes are similar in patients with truncating vs. non-truncating variants

The Allometry of Host-Pathogen Interactions

Understanding the mechanisms that control rates of disease progression in humans and other species is an important area of research relevant to epidemiology and to translating studies in small laboratory animals to humans. Body size and metabolic rate influence a great number of biological rates and times. We hypothesize that body size and metabolic rate affect rates of pathogenesis, specifically the times between infection and first symptoms or death.We conducted a literature search to find estimates of the time from infection to first symptoms (t(S)) and to death (t(D)) for five pathogens infecting a variety of bird and mammal hosts. A broad sampling of diseases (1 bacterial, 1 prion, 3 viruses) indicates that pathogenesis is controlled by the scaling of host metabolism. We find that the time for symptoms to appear is a constant fraction of time to death in all but one disease. Our findings also predict that many population-level attributes of disease dynamics are likely to be expressed as dimensionless quantities that are independent of host body size.Our results show that much variability in host pathogenesis can be described by simple power functions consistent with the scaling of host metabolic rate. Assessing how disease progression is controlled by geometric relationships will be important for future research. To our knowledge this is the first study to report the allometric scaling of host/pathogen interactions

A Cellular Potts Model simulating cell migration on and in matrix environments

Cell migration on and through extracellular matrix plays a critical role in a wide variety of physiological and pathological phenomena, and in scaffold-based tissue engineering. Migration is regulated by a number of extracellular matrix- or cell-derived biophysical parameters, such as matrix fiber orientation, gap size, and elasticity, or cell deformation, proteolysis, and adhesion. We here present an extended Cellular Potts Model (CPM) able to qualitatively and quantitatively describe cell migratory phenotype on both two-dimensional substrates and within three-dimensional environments, in a close comparison with experimental evidence. As distinct features of our approach, the cells are represented by compartmentalized discrete objects, differentiated in the nucleus and in the cytosolic region, while the extracellular matrix is composed of a fibrous mesh and of a homogeneous fluid. Our model provides a strong correlation of the directionality of migration with the topological ECM distribution and, further, a biphasic dependence of migration on the matrix density, and in part adhesion, in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional settings. Moreover, we demonstrate that the directional component of cell movement is strongly correlated with the topological distribution of the ECM fibrous network. In the three-dimensional networks, we also investigate the effects of the matrix mechanical microstructure, observing that, at a given distribution of fibers, cell motility has a subtle bimodal relation with the elasticity of the scaffold. Finally, cell locomotion requires deformation of the cell's nucleus and/or cell-derived proteolysis of steric fibrillar obstacles within rather rigid matrices characterized by small pores, not, however, for sufficiently large pores. In conclusion, we here propose a mathematical modeling approach that serves to characterize cell migration as a biological phenomen in health, disease and tissue engineering applications. The research that led to the present paper was partially supported by a grant of the group GNFM of INdA

ATHENA detector proposal - a totally hermetic electron nucleus apparatus proposed for IP6 at the Electron-Ion Collider

ATHENA has been designed as a general purpose detector capable of delivering the full scientific scope of the Electron-Ion Collider. Careful technology choices provide fine tracking and momentum resolution, high performance electromagnetic and hadronic calorimetry, hadron identification over a wide kinematic range, and near-complete hermeticity.This article describes the detector design and its expected performance in the most relevant physics channels. It includes an evaluation of detector technology choices, the technical challenges to realizing the detector and the R&D required to meet those challenges