Bombardier Enables Delivery of Short-Form Bomanins in the Drosophila Toll Response.

Toll mediates a robust and effective innate immune response across vertebrates and invertebrates. In Drosophila melanogaster, activation of Toll by systemic infection drives the accumulation of a rich repertoire of immune effectors in hemolymph, including the recently characterized Bomanins, as well as the classical antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Here we report the functional characterization of a Toll-induced hemolymph protein encoded by the bombardier (CG18067) gene. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate a precise deletion of the bombardier transcriptional unit, we found that Bombardier is required for Toll-mediated defense against fungi and Gram-positive bacteria. Assaying cell-free hemolymph, we found that the Bomanin-dependent candidacidal activity is also dependent on Bombardier, but is independent of the antifungal AMPs Drosomycin and Metchnikowin. Using mass spectrometry, we demonstrated that deletion of bombardier results in the specific absence of short-form Bomanins from hemolymph. In addition, flies lacking Bombardier exhibited a defect in pathogen tolerance that we trace to an aberrant condition triggered by Toll activation. These results lead us to a model in which the presence of Bombardier in wild-type flies enables the proper folding, secretion, or intermolecular associations of short-form Bomanins, and the absence of Bombardier disrupts one or more of these steps, resulting in defects in both immune resistance and tolerance

Vertex-Ball Spring Smoothing: An efficient method for unstructured dynamic hybrid meshes

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A universal mass-based index defining energy efficiency of different modes of passenger transport

Reduction in vehicle weight can significantly reduce energy use in human transportation. However, to gauge efficiency, energy use and weight for a particular vehicle should be related to the number of people being transported while currently there is no convenient means to assess this. Here we statistically analyse the weight, energy consumption, carrying capacity and occupancy level for automobiles, buses, high-speed trains and aircraft. Based on the analysis and inspired by the medical body mass index (BMI), we have proposed a vehicle mass index (VMI), defined as [Formula presented], for the first time enables energy efficiency assessment of different transportations on a global scale, where n a weight sensitivity parameter and A the energy efficiency constant of a theoretically weightless vehicle. We show the VMI ranges and conclude the significant vehicle weight reduction windows to achieve their index lower limits. The possible limits for the VMI and the associated A and n values are also assessed. The concept of VMI could form the basis of a worldwide standard, useful in the current drive for a greener economy

ADVISE: Symbolism and External Knowledge for Decoding Advertisements

In order to convey the most content in their limited space, advertisements embed references to outside knowledge via symbolism. For example, a motorcycle stands for adventure (a positive property the ad wants associated with the product being sold), and a gun stands for danger (a negative property to dissuade viewers from undesirable behaviors). We show how to use symbolic references to better understand the meaning of an ad. We further show how anchoring ad understanding in general-purpose object recognition and image captioning improves results. We formulate the ad understanding task as matching the ad image to human-generated statements that describe the action that the ad prompts, and the rationale it provides for taking this action. Our proposed method outperforms the state of the art on this task, and on an alternative formulation of question-answering on ads. We show additional applications of our learned representations for matching ads to slogans, and clustering ads according to their topic, without extra training.Comment: To appear, Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV

Automatic age estimation system for face images

Humans are the most important tracking objects in surveillance systems. However, human tracking is not enough to provide the required information for personalized recognition. In this paper, we present a novel and reliable framework for automatic age estimation based on computer vision. It exploits global face features based on the combination of Gabor wavelets and orthogonal locality preserving projections. In addition, the proposed system can extract face aging features automatically in real-time. This means that the proposed system has more potential in applications compared to other semi-automatic systems. The results obtained from this novel approach could provide clearer insight for operators in the field of age estimation to develop real-world applications. © 2012 Lin et al

Experimental investigation of multi-step stress-relaxation-ageing of 7050 aluminium alloy for different pre-strained conditions

A novel insight into the whole two-step stress relaxation ageing process during T74 multi–step ageing treatment (120 °C for 6 h and subsequently 177 °C for 7 h), which is typically experienced by extra-large aircraft components that contain high residual stresses, has been established. Stress relaxation ageing (SRA) tests, tensile tests and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were performed on AA7050 samples to determine the relationship between internal microstructure and macroscopic behaviour during the stress relaxation and precipitate evolution process. Samples were subjected to SRA at different initial stresses (220–360 MPa) after being pre-strained to different extents (i.e. 0%, 1%, 3%). Room temperature tensile tests were then performed on interrupted SRA test specimens to examine the corresponding strengthening phenomenon. TEM was performed on a selection of peak–aged and T74 over–aged samples to study the precipitate distribution. At 120 °C typical stress relaxation behaviour was observed and the data follow ed a logarithmic curve. Subsequently at 177 °C, dislocation–creep dominated stress relaxation behaviour, with no apparent threshold stress, was observed. The absence of a threshold stress at 177 °C may be attributed to the continuous over-ageing phenomenon. The effect of pre-deformation levels and initial stresses on SRA has also been investigated. Pre-stretching, which creates uniformly distributed dislocations, promotes stress relaxation and ageing. No significant influence of initial stress level on SRA was observed at 120 °C, but noticeable effects were seen at 177 °C. The calculated stress exponent n at 177 °C is found independent of the initial stresses. These findings provide clear scientific guidance for residual stress reduction during the multi-step ageing process of AA7050 and provide the basis for residual stress prediction models

Enhanced structural and magnetic ordering of FePt/Mn-oxide bilayers by ion-beam bombardment and annealing

This journal issue contain selected papers of APDSC'10Poster Session - A. Magnetic Recording Technologies: PA-7Structural and magnetic properties of FePt thin films were affected strongly by capped MnO x layers prepared by ion-beam bombardment and post-annealing. As-deposited FePt/MnO x bilayer exhibited a magnetically soft fcc phase, and it turned to an ordered fct FePt phase with large coercivity (∼8 kOe) after annealing at 550°C. Increasing the %O 2/Ar in capped MnO x layer during deposition resulted in smaller ordered FePt grains separated by grain boundaries of MnO x. We found that the superlattice (001) peak is broadened considerably with larger amount of MnO x incorporated into FePt, likely due to the hindered formation of hard phase. Our results indicate that FePt/MnO x films deposited with lower %O 2/Ar, the oxygen atoms may occupy the interstitial positions in the FePt lattice to induce a local strain thus enhancing the FePt ordering. Further increased %O 2/Ar in capped MnO x layer, the excess oxygen atoms act a diffusion barrier effectively to inhibit the FePt grain growth and ordering. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference (APDSC'10), Hualien, Taiwan, 27-29 October 2010. In IEEE Transactions On Magnetics, 2011, v. 47 n. 3, p. 501-50

Balson: Bayesian least squares optimization with nonnegative L1-Norm constraint

© 2018 IEEE. A Bayesian approach termed the BAyesian Least Squares Optimization with Nonnegative L1-norm constraint (BALSON) is proposed. The error distribution of data fitting is described by Gaussian likelihood. The parameter distribution is assumed to be a Dirichlet distribution. With the Bayes rule, searching for the optimal parameters is equivalent to finding the mode of the posterior distribution. In order to explicitly characterize the nonnegative L1-norm constraint of the parameters, we further approximate the true posterior distribution by a Dirichlet distribution. We estimate the moments of the approximated Dirichlet posterior distribution by sampling methods. Four sampling methods have been introduced and implemented. With the estimated posterior distributions, the original parameters can be effectively reconstructed in polynomial fitting problems, and the BALSON framework is found to perform better than conventional methods