24 research outputs found
EMDB: The Electromagnetic Database of Global 3D Human Pose and Shape in the Wild
We present EMDB, the Electromagnetic Database of Global 3D Human Pose and
Shape in the Wild. EMDB is a novel dataset that contains high-quality 3D SMPL
pose and shape parameters with global body and camera trajectories for
in-the-wild videos. We use body-worn, wireless electromagnetic (EM) sensors and
a hand-held iPhone to record a total of 58 minutes of motion data, distributed
over 81 indoor and outdoor sequences and 10 participants. Together with
accurate body poses and shapes, we also provide global camera poses and body
root trajectories. To construct EMDB, we propose a multi-stage optimization
procedure, which first fits SMPL to the 6-DoF EM measurements and then refines
the poses via image observations. To achieve high-quality results, we leverage
a neural implicit avatar model to reconstruct detailed human surface geometry
and appearance, which allows for improved alignment and smoothness via a dense
pixel-level objective. Our evaluations, conducted with a multi-view volumetric
capture system, indicate that EMDB has an expected accuracy of 2.3 cm
positional and 10.6 degrees angular error, surpassing the accuracy of previous
in-the-wild datasets. We evaluate existing state-of-the-art monocular RGB
methods for camera-relative and global pose estimation on EMDB. EMDB is
publicly available under https://ait.ethz.ch/emdbComment: Accepted to ICCV 202
Polymorphisms in the ADRB2 gene and Graves disease: a case-control study and a meta-analysis of available evidence
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The beta-2-Adrenergic receptor (<it>ADRB2</it>) gene on chromosome 5q33.1 is an important immunoregulatory factor. We and others have previously implicated chromosomal region 5q31-33 for contribution to the genetic susceptibility to Graves disease (GD) in East-Asian populations. Two recent studies showed associations between the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1042714 in the <it>ADRB2 </it>gene and GD. In this study, we aimed to fully investigate whether the <it>ADRB2 </it>gene conferred susceptibility to GD in Chinese population, and to perform a meta-analysis of association between <it>ADRB2 </it>and GD.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Approximately 1 kb upstream the transcription start site and the entire coding regions of the <it>ADRB2 </it>gene were resequenced in 48 Han Chinese individuals to determine the linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns. Tag SNPs were selected and genotyped in a case-control collection of 1,118 South Han Chinese subjects, which included 428 GD patients and 690 control subjects. A meta-analysis was performed with the data obtained in the present samples and those available from prior studies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Fifteen SNPs in the <it>ADRB2 </it>gene were identified by resequencing and one SNP was novel. Ten tag SNPs were investigated further to assess association of <it>ADRB2 </it>in the case-control collection. Neither individual tag SNP nor haplotypes showed association with GD in Han Chinese population (P > 0.05). Our meta-analysis of the <it>ADRB2 </it>SNP rs1042714 measured heterogeneity between the ethnic groups (I<sup>2 </sup>= 53.1%) and no association to GD was observed in the overall three studies with a random effects model (OR = 1.13, 95% CI, 0.95 to 1.36; P = 0.18). However, significant association was found from the combined data of Caucasian population with a fixed effects model (OR = 1.18, 95% CI, 1.06 to 1.32; P = 0.002; I<sup>2 </sup>= 5.9%).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study indicated that the <it>ADRB2 </it>gene did not exert a substantial influence on GD susceptibility in Han Chinese population, but contributed to a detectable GD risk in Caucasian population. This inconsistency resulted largely from between-ethnicity heterogeneity.</p
Comparison of changes in lipid profiles of premenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer treated with different endocrine therapies
Abstract Adjuvant endocrine therapy improves the prognosis of early breast cancer with hormone receptor positivity. However, there is no systematic report on the effect of endocrine therapy (particularly ovarian function suppression, OFS) on serum lipids in premenopausal women. This retrospective cohort study aimed to determine whether various endocrine treatments had different effects on blood lipids. This study enrolled 160 premenopausal patients with stage I–III breast cancer in eastern China. The initial diagnostic information was retrieved from patient's medical records, including age at the time of diagnosis, tumor characteristics, anticancer treatment and past medical history. The changes in blood lipids in patients receiving different types of endocrine therapy were compared at the 3rd, 6th, 12th, and 24th months after initiating endocrine therapy. Generalized linear mixed model was used in our analyses. Our data revealed that low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels in patients with tamoxifen (TAM) were significantly lower in the 6th, 12th, and 24th months than that in the 3rd month, while high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels in the 6th, 12th, and 24th months were significantly higher than that in the 3rd month, indicating that blood lipid levels generally improved with time. While in TAM plus OFS group, HDL-C levels were significantly higher in the 24th month than in the 3rd month, total cholesterol (TC) levels were significantly higher in the 24th month than in the 6th month. The lipid profiles of OFS plus aromatase inhibitor (AI) group did not show significant differences at any time point but were significantly higher than those of the other two groups especially in LDL and TC. TAM group tended to have lower serum lipid levels. With longer follow-up, no statistically significant difference in values was observed between TAM and TAM plus OFS groups at various time points. Compared with the other two groups, OFS plus AI group presented an increasing trend toward LDL-C and TC. The risk of dyslipidemia requires further investigation using a large sample size
Assessing and mapping of road surface roughness based on GPS and accelerometer sensors on bicycle-mounted smartphones
The surface roughness of roads is an essential road characteristic. Due to the employed carrying platforms (which are often cars), existing measuring methods can only be used for motorable roads. Until now, there has been no effective method for measuring the surface roughness of un-motorable roads, such as pedestrian and bicycle lanes. This hinders many applications related to pedestrians, cyclists and wheelchair users. In recognizing these research gaps, this paper proposes a method for measuring the surface roughness of pedestrian and bicycle lanes based on Global Positioning System (GPS) and accelerometer sensors on bicycle-mounted smartphones. We focus on the International Roughness Index (IRI), as it is the most widely used index for measuring road surface roughness. Specifically, we analyzed a computing model of road surface roughness, derived its parameters with GPS and accelerometers on bicycle-mounted smartphones, and proposed an algorithm to recognize potholes/humps on roads. As a proof of concept, we implemented the proposed method in a mobile application. Three experiments were designed to evaluate the proposed method. The results of the experiments show that the IRI values measured by the proposed method were strongly and positively correlated with those measured by professional instruments. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm was able to recognize the potholes/humps that the bicycle passed. The proposed method is useful for measuring the surface roughness of roads that are not accessible for professional instruments, such as pedestrian and cycle lanes. This work enables us to further study the feasibility of crowdsourcing road surface roughness with bicycle-mounted smartphones
The regulatory mechanism of the yeast osmoresponse under different glucose concentrations
Summary: Cells constantly respond to environmental changes by modulating gene expression programs. These responses may demand substantial costs and, thus, affect cell growth. Understanding the regulation of these processes represents a key question in biology and biotechnology. Here, we studied the responses to osmotic stress in glucose-limited environments. By analyzing seventeen osmotic stress-induced genes and stress-activated protein kinase Hog1, we found that cells exhibited stronger osmotic gene expression response and larger integral of Hog1 nuclear localization during adaptation to osmotic stress under glucose-limited conditions than under glucose-rich conditions. We proposed and verified that in glucose-limited environment, glycolysis intermediates (representing “reserve flux”) were limited, which required cells to express more glycerol-production enzymes for stress adaptation. Consequently, the regulatory mechanism of osmoresponse was derived in the presence and absence of such reserve flux. Further experiments suggested that this reserve flux-dependent stress-defense strategy may be a general principle under nutrient-limited environments
Efficient Production of 5‑Hydroxymethylfurfural Enhanced by Liquid–Liquid Extraction in a Membrane Dispersion Microreactor
Aimed at efficient production of
5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF)
in a green and sustainable way, dehydrogenation of fructose was enhanced
by liquid–liquid extraction in a membrane dispersion microreactor.
On account of the high mass-transfer rate resulted from dripping flow,
the obtained HMF was readily extracted from the aqueous phase to the
organic phase, effectively preventing the sequence side reaction and
leading to high HMF selectivity. Enhanced by efficient extraction,
the reaction duration decreased from 60 min in a traditional stirred
reactor to 4 min in the microreactor, leading to an increase in the
space-time yield by 3 orders of magnitude. The effects of total volume
flow rate, droplet size, and phase ratio relating to extraction efficiency
and HMF yield were systematically investigated. The highest extraction
efficiency of nearly 100% coupled with the HMF yield of 93.0% was
achieved at the phase ratio of 2 with volume flow rate of 600 mL/h.
Overall, this work not only delineates an efficient strategy for synthesizing
HMF but also opens a new avenue for reaction systems with subsequent
side reaction, which suffer from low selectivity of the intermediates
due to the in-line separation bottleneck under conditions of limited
mass transfer
Efficient Production of 5‑Hydroxymethylfurfural Enhanced by Liquid–Liquid Extraction in a Membrane Dispersion Microreactor
Aimed at efficient production of
5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF)
in a green and sustainable way, dehydrogenation of fructose was enhanced
by liquid–liquid extraction in a membrane dispersion microreactor.
On account of the high mass-transfer rate resulted from dripping flow,
the obtained HMF was readily extracted from the aqueous phase to the
organic phase, effectively preventing the sequence side reaction and
leading to high HMF selectivity. Enhanced by efficient extraction,
the reaction duration decreased from 60 min in a traditional stirred
reactor to 4 min in the microreactor, leading to an increase in the
space-time yield by 3 orders of magnitude. The effects of total volume
flow rate, droplet size, and phase ratio relating to extraction efficiency
and HMF yield were systematically investigated. The highest extraction
efficiency of nearly 100% coupled with the HMF yield of 93.0% was
achieved at the phase ratio of 2 with volume flow rate of 600 mL/h.
Overall, this work not only delineates an efficient strategy for synthesizing
HMF but also opens a new avenue for reaction systems with subsequent
side reaction, which suffer from low selectivity of the intermediates
due to the in-line separation bottleneck under conditions of limited
mass transfer
Microfluidic-Enabled Multi-Cell-Densities-Patterning and Culture Device for Characterization of Yeast Strains’ Growth Rates under Mating Pheromone
Yeast studies usually focus on exploring diversity in terms of a specific trait (such as growth rate, antibiotic resistance, or fertility) among extensive strains. Microfluidic chips improve these biological studies in a manner of high throughput and high efficiency. For a population study of yeast, it is of great significance to set a proper initial cell density for every strain under specific circumstances. Herein, we introduced a novel design of chip, which enables users to load cells in a gradient order (six alternatives) of initial cell density within one channel. We discussed several guidelines to choose the appropriate chamber to ensure successful data recording. With this chip, we successfully studied the growth rate of yeast strains under a mating response, which is crucial for yeasts to control growth behaviors for prosperous mating. We investigated the growth rate of eight different yeast strains under three different mating pheromone levels (0.3 μM, 1 μM, and 10 μM). Strains with, even, a six-fold in growth rate can be recorded, with the available data produced simultaneously. This work has provided an efficient and time-saving microfluidic platform, which enables loading cells in a pattern of multi-cell densities for a yeast population experiment, especially for a high-throughput study. Besides, a quantitatively analyzed growth rate of different yeast strains shall reveal inspiring perspectives for studies concerning yeast population behavior with a stimulated mating pheromone
Microfluidic-Enabled Multi-Cell-Densities-Patterning and Culture Device for Characterization of Yeast Strains’ Growth Rates under Mating Pheromone
Yeast studies usually focus on exploring diversity in terms of a specific trait (such as growth rate, antibiotic resistance, or fertility) among extensive strains. Microfluidic chips improve these biological studies in a manner of high throughput and high efficiency. For a population study of yeast, it is of great significance to set a proper initial cell density for every strain under specific circumstances. Herein, we introduced a novel design of chip, which enables users to load cells in a gradient order (six alternatives) of initial cell density within one channel. We discussed several guidelines to choose the appropriate chamber to ensure successful data recording. With this chip, we successfully studied the growth rate of yeast strains under a mating response, which is crucial for yeasts to control growth behaviors for prosperous mating. We investigated the growth rate of eight different yeast strains under three different mating pheromone levels (0.3 ÎĽM, 1 ÎĽM, and 10 ÎĽM). Strains with, even, a six-fold in growth rate can be recorded, with the available data produced simultaneously. This work has provided an efficient and time-saving microfluidic platform, which enables loading cells in a pattern of multi-cell densities for a yeast population experiment, especially for a high-throughput study. Besides, a quantitatively analyzed growth rate of different yeast strains shall reveal inspiring perspectives for studies concerning yeast population behavior with a stimulated mating pheromone
Highly Selective Production of <i>p</i>‑Xylene from 2,5-Dimethylfuran over Hierarchical NbO<sub><i>x</i></sub>‑Based Catalyst
A hierarchical NbO<sub><i>x</i></sub>-based catalyst
with both Brønsted acid and Lewis acid sites was synthesized
in the absence of corrosive hydrofluoric acid, exhibiting high catalytic
activity for biobased <i>p</i>-xylene (PX) production from
2,5-dimethylfuran (DMF). The as-prepared composite was composed of
Nb<sub>2</sub>O<sub>5</sub> and NbOPO<sub>4</sub> crystals, and the
densities of Brønsted acid and Lewis acid were determined to
be 232.9 and 80.4 μmol/g, respectively. The well-balanced Brønsted/Lewis
acidity and the hierarchical structure with small mesopores (3 nm)
and large mesopores (48 nm) contributed to the high activity and stability:
a conversion of 87.2% with the PX selectivity of 92.7%, and a carbon
balance of 94.6% was achieved after 6 h of reaction at 523 K. In comparison
with Sn-Beta, NbO<sub><i>x</i></sub>-based catalyst prepared
in this work showed obvious advantages in suppressing carbon deposition:
90.9 and 54.7 mmol of PX were obtained over the NbO<sub><i>x</i></sub>-based catalyst and the Sn-Beta, respectively, after 24 h.
Spent catalysts were regenerated through calcination at high temperature
and they proved to be recyclable: a decrease of 3.7% in DMF conversion
and no loss in PX selectivity could be evidenced over five consecutive
runs. Overall, NbO<sub><i>x</i></sub>-based catalyst which
is synthesized through the green and sustainable approach is sufficiently
stable, active, and regenerable, and provides an alternative candidate
for efficient PX production