A planning method for safe interaction between human arms and robot manipulators

This paper presents a planning method based on mapping moving obstacles into C-space for safe interaction between human arms and robot manipulators. In pre-processing phase, a hybrid distance metric is defined to select neighboring sampled nodes in C-space to construct a roadmap. Then, two kinds of mapping are constructed to determine invalid and dangerous edges in the roadmap for each basic cell decomposed in workspace. For updating the roadmap when an obstacle is moving, basic cells covering the obstacle's surfaces are mapped into the roadmap by using new positions of the surfaces points sampled on the obstacle. In query phase, in order to predict and avoid coming collisions and reach the goal efficiently, an interaction strategy with six kinds of planning actions of searching, updating, walking, waiting, dodging and pausing are designed. Simulated experiments show that the proposed method is efficient for safe interaction between two working robot manipulators and two randomly moving human arms.Computer Science, Artificial IntelligenceRoboticsCPCI-S(ISTP)

Document image retrieval based on density distribution feature and key block feature

Document image retrieval is an important part of many document image processing systems such as paperless office systems, digital libraries and so on. Its task is to help users find out the most similar document images from a document image database. For developing a System of document image retrieval among different resolutions, different formats document images with hybrid characters of multiple languages,. a new retrieval method based on document image density distribution features and key block features is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the density distribution and key block features of a document image are defined and extracted based on documents' print-core. Secondly, the candidate document images are attained based on the density distribution features. Thirdly, to improve reliability of the retrieval results, a confirmation procedure using key block features is applied to those candidates. Experimental results on a large scale document image database, which contains 10385 document images, show that the proposed method is efficient and robust to retrieve different kinds of document images in real time.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000232022600204&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Computer Science, Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science, Information SystemsCPCI-S(ISTP)

Macrocyclic colibactin induces DNA double-strand breaks via copper-mediated oxidative cleavage.

Colibactin is an assumed human gut bacterial genotoxin, whose biosynthesis is linked to the clb genomic island that has a widespread distribution in pathogenic and commensal human enterobacteria. Colibactin-producing gut microbes promote colon tumour formation and enhance the progression of colorectal cancer via cellular senescence and death induced by DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs); however, the chemical basis that contributes to the pathogenesis at the molecular level has not been fully characterized. Here, we report the discovery of colibactin-645, a macrocyclic colibactin metabolite that recapitulates the previously assumed genotoxicity and cytotoxicity. Colibactin-645 shows strong DNA DSB activity in vitro and in human cell cultures via a unique copper-mediated oxidative mechanism. We also delineate a complete biosynthetic model for colibactin-645, which highlights a unique fate of the aminomalonate-building monomer in forming the C-terminal 5-hydroxy-4-oxazolecarboxylic acid moiety through the activities of both the polyketide synthase ClbO and the amidase ClbL. This work thus provides a molecular basis for colibactin's DNA DSB activity and facilitates further mechanistic study of colibactin-related colorectal cancer incidence and prevention

Anti-Cripto Mab inhibit tumour growth and overcome MDR in a human leukaemia MDR cell line by inhibition of Akt and activation of JNK/SAPK and bad death pathways

Doxorubicin (DOX) selection of CCRF-CEM leukaemia cell line resulted in multidrug resistance (MDR) CEM/A7R cell line, which overexpresses MDR, 1 coded P-glycoprotein (Pgp). Here, we report for the first time that oncoprotein Cripto, a founding member of epidermal growth factor-Cripto-FRL, 1-Criptic family is overexpressed in the CEM/A7R cells, and anti-Cripto monoclonal antibodies (Mab) inhibited CEM/A7R cell growth both in vitro and in an established xenograft tumour in severe combined immunodeficiency mice. Cripto Mab synergistically enhanced sensitivity of the MDR cells to Pgp substrates epirubicin (EPI), daunorubicin (DAU) and non-Pgp substrates nucleoside analogue cytosine arabinoside (AraC). In particular, the combination of anti-Cripto Mab at less than 50% of inhibition concentrations with noncytotoxic concentrations of EPI or DAU inhibited more than 90% of CEM/A7R cell growth. Cripto Mab slightly inhibited Pgp expression, and had little effect on Pgp function, indicating that a mechanism independent of Pgp was involved in overcoming MDR. We demonstrated that anti-Cripto Mab-induced CEM/A7R cell apoptosis, which was associated with an enhanced activity of the c-Jun N-terminal kinase/stress-activated protein kinase and inhibition of Akt phosphorylation, resulting in an activation of mitochondrial apoptosis pathway as evidenced by dephosphorylation of Bad at Ser136, Bcl-2 at Ser70 and a cleaved caspase-9

Prevalence and trend of hepatitis C virus infection among blood donors in Chinese mainland: a systematic review and meta-analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Blood transfusion is one of the most common transmission pathways of hepatitis C virus (HCV). This paper aims to provide a comprehensive and reliable tabulation of available data on the epidemiological characteristics and risk factors for HCV infection among blood donors in Chinese mainland, so as to help make prevention strategies and guide further research.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A systematic review was constructed based on the computerized literature database. Infection rates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated using the approximate normal distribution model. Odds ratios and 95% CI were calculated by fixed or random effects models. Data manipulation and statistical analyses were performed using STATA 10.0 and ArcGIS 9.3 was used for map construction.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two hundred and sixty-five studies met our inclusion criteria. The pooled prevalence of HCV infection among blood donors in Chinese mainland was 8.68% (95% CI: 8.01%-9.39%), and the epidemic was severer in North and Central China, especially in Henan and Hebei. While a significant lower rate was found in Yunnan. Notably, before 1998 the pooled prevalence of HCV infection was 12.87% (95%CI: 11.25%-14.56%) among blood donors, but decreased to 1.71% (95%CI: 1.43%-1.99%) after 1998. No significant difference was found in HCV infection rates between male and female blood donors, or among different blood type donors. The prevalence of HCV infection was found to increase with age. During 1994-1995, the prevalence rate reached the highest with a percentage of 15.78% (95%CI: 12.21%-19.75%), and showed a decreasing trend in the following years. A significant difference was found among groups with different blood donation types, Plasma donors had a relatively higher prevalence than whole blood donors of HCV infection (33.95% <it>vs </it>7.9%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The prevalence of HCV infection has rapidly decreased since 1998 and kept a low level in recent years, but some provinces showed relatively higher prevalence than the general population. It is urgent to make efficient measures to prevent HCV secondary transmission and control chronic progress, and the key to reduce the HCV incidence among blood donors is to encourage true voluntary blood donors, strictly implement blood donation law, and avoid cross-infection.</p

Camera pose determination from a single view of parallel lines

In this paper, we present a method for finding the closed form solutions to the problem of determining the pose of a camera with respect to a given set of parallel lines in 3D space from a single view, while It can not be solved by previous methods for the Perspective-n-Line (PnL) problem. The main idea of our method is that, firstly the distances from the optical center of the camera to these parallel lines are determined, and then the pose parameters are recovered using the obtained distances. The problem of finding these optical-center-to-line distances in fact is the degenerated Perspective-n-Point (PnP) problem, and we proved that there are at most two solutions for the degenerated P3P problem. An application of our method is to distinguish crosswalks and staircases aiding for the partially sighted. The method also provides a different way to investigate the problem of shape from texture.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000235773303097&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Computer Science, Artificial IntelligenceImaging Science &amp; Photographic TechnologyCPCI-S(ISTP)

Combining interest points and edges for content-based image retrieval

This paper presents a novel approach using combined features to retrieve images containing specific objects, scenes or buildings. The content of an image is characterized by two kinds of features: Harris-Laplace interest points described by the SIFT descriptor and edges described by the edge color histogram. Edges and corners contain the maximal amount of information necessary for image retrieval. The feature detection in this work is an integrated process: edges are detected directly based on the Harris function; Harris interest points are detected at several scales and Harris-Laplace interest points are found using the Laplace function. The combination of edges and interest points brings efficient feature detection and high recognition ratio to the image retrieval system. Experimental results show this system has good performance.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000235773304175&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Computer Science, Artificial IntelligenceImaging Science &amp; Photographic TechnologyCPCI-S(ISTP)