Effect of irradiation/bone marrow transplantation on alveolar epithelial type II cells is aggravated in surfactant protein D deficient mice.

Irradiation followed by bone marrow transplantation (BM-Tx) is a frequent therapeutic intervention causing pathology to the lung. Although alveolar epithelial type II (AE2) cells are essential for lung function and are damaged by irradiation, the long-term consequences of irradiation and BM-Tx are not well characterized. In addition, it is unknown whether surfactant protein D (SP-D) influences the response of AE2 cells to the injurious events. Therefore, wildtype (WT) and SP-D(-/-) mice were subjected to a myeloablative whole body irradiation dose of 8 Gy and subsequent BM-Tx and compared with age- and sex-matched untreated controls. AE2 cell changes were investigated quantitatively by design-based stereology. Compared with WT, untreated SP-D(-/-) mice showed a higher number of larger sized AE2 cells and a greater amount of surfactant-storing lamellar bodies. Irradiation and BM-Tx induced hyperplasia and hypertrophy in WT and SP-D(-/-) mice as well as the formation of giant lamellar bodies. The experimentally induced alterations were more severe in the SP-D(-/-) than in the WT mice, particularly with respect to the surfactant-storing lamellar bodies which were sometimes extremely enlarged in SP-D(-/-) mice. In conclusion, irradiation and BM-Tx have profound long-term effects on AE2 cells and their lamellar bodies. These data may explain some of the clinical pulmonary consequences of this procedure. The data should also be taken into account when BM-Tx is used as an experimental procedure to investigate the impact of bone marrow-derived cells for the phenotype of a specific genotype in the mouse

HoloGS: Instant Depth-based 3D Gaussian Splatting with Microsoft HoloLens 2

In the fields of photogrammetry, computer vision and computer graphics, the task of neural 3D scene reconstruction has led to the exploration of various techniques. Among these, 3D Gaussian Splatting stands out for its explicit representation of scenes using 3D Gaussians, making it appealing for tasks like 3D point cloud extraction and surface reconstruction. Motivated by its potential, we address the domain of 3D scene reconstruction, aiming to leverage the capabilities of the Microsoft HoloLens 2 for instant 3D Gaussian Splatting. We present HoloGS, a novel workflow utilizing HoloLens sensor data, which bypasses the need for pre-processing steps like Structure from Motion by instantly accessing the required input data i.e. the images, camera poses and the point cloud from depth sensing. We provide comprehensive investigations, including the training process and the rendering quality, assessed through the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio, and the geometric 3D accuracy of the densified point cloud from Gaussian centers, measured by Chamfer Distance. We evaluate our approach on two self-captured scenes: An outdoor scene of a cultural heritage statue and an indoor scene of a fine-structured plant. Our results show that the HoloLens data, including RGB images, corresponding camera poses, and depth sensing based point clouds to initialize the Gaussians, are suitable as input for 3D Gaussian Splatting

Rapport fait au nom de la Commission Politique sur les aspects politiques et institutionnels de l'adhésion ou de l'association á la Communauté

Informe del diputado socialista en contra de la adhesión de España por no garantizar el régimen español los derechos y libertades del hombre

Question orale nº 2 de M. Birkelbach au nom du Groupe socialiste au Conseil et á la Commission e la Communauté Economique Européenne. Objet: Demande du Gouvernement espagnol en vue de l'ouverture de négociations l'Espagne et la CEE

El Eurodiputado M. Birkelach plantea mediante pregunta parlamentaria la pertinencia de continuar las negociaciones con España, dada su situación polític