Sound information in videos plays an important role in shaping the user experience. When sound is not accessible in videos, text captions can provide sound information. However, conventional text ...captions are not very expressive for nonverbal sounds because they are designed to visualize speech sounds. Here, we present a framework to automatically transform nonverbal video sounds into animated sound words and position them near the sound source objects in the video for visualization. This provides natural visual representation of nonverbal sounds with rich information about the sound category and dynamics. To evaluate how the animated sound words generated by our framework affect the user experience, we implemented an experimental system and conducted a user study involving over 300 participants from an online crowdsourcing service. The results of the user study show that the animated sound words can effectively and naturally visualize the dynamics of sound while clarifying the position of the sound source as well as contribute to making video-watching more enjoyable and increasing the visual impact of videos.
Mitochondrial dysfunction, especially tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle arrest, is strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), however, its systemic alterations in the central and peripheral of ...AD patients are not well defined. Here, we performed an integrated analysis of AD brain and peripheral blood cells transcriptomics to reveal the expression levels of nine TCA cycle enzymes involving 35 genes. The results showed that TCA cycle related genes were consistently down-regulated in the AD brain, whereas 11 genes were increased and 16 genes were decreased in the peripheral system. Pearson analysis of the TCA cycle genes with Aβ, Tau and mini-mental state examination (MMSE) revealed several significant correlated genes, including pyruvate dehydrogenase complex subunit (PDHB), isocitrate dehydrogenase subunits (IDH3B, IDH3G), 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase complex subunit (DLD), succinyl-CoA synthetase subunit (SUCLA2), malate dehydrogenase subunit (MDH1). In addition, SUCLA2, MDH1, and PDHB were also uniformly down-regulated in peripheral blood cells, suggesting that they may be candidate biomarkers for the early diagnosis of AD. Taken together, TCA cycle enzymes were systemically altered in AD progression, PDHB, SUCLA2, and MDH1 may be potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets.
Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase-producing K. pneumoniae (KPC-Kp) poses a major threat to human health worldwide. Combination therapies of antibiotics with different mechanisms have been ...recommended in literatures. This study assessed in vitro antibacterial activities and synergistic activities of ceftazidime/avibactam alone and in combinations against KPC-Kp. In total, 70 isolates from 2 hospitals in Beijing were examined in our study. By using the agar dilution method and broth dilution method, we determined the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of candidate antibiotics. Ceftazidime/avibactam demonstrated promising susceptibility against KPC-Kp (97.14%). Synergistic activities testing was achieved by checkerboard method and found ceftazidime/avibactam-amikacin displayed synergism in 90% isolates. Ceftazidime/avibactam-colistin displayed partial synergistic in 43% isolates, and ceftazidime/avibactam-tigecycline displayed indifference in 67% isolates. In time-kill assays, antibiotics at 1-fold MIC were mixed with bacteria at 1 x 10.sup.5 CFU/ml and Mueller-Hinton broth (MHB). Combinations of ceftazidime/avibactam with amikacin and tigecycline displayed better antibacterial effects than single drug. Ceftazidime/avibactam-colistin combination did not exhibit better effect than single drug. In KPC-Kp infections, susceptibility testing suggested that ceftazidime/avibactam may be considered as first-line choice. However, monotherapy is often inadequate in infection management. Thus, our study revealed that combination therapy including ceftazidime/avibactam colistin and ceftazidime/avibactam tigecycline may benefit than monotherapy in KPC-Kp treatment. Further pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic and mutant prevention concentration studies should be performed to optimize multidrug-regimens.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) play an important role in oxidizing ammonia to nitrite in different marine environments; however, their relative contribution to ammonia oxidation ...in the deep-sea sediments is still largely unknown. Sediment samples from seamounts and the Challenger Deep along the arc of the Yap Trench and the Mariana Trench were used for the investigation of the geographical distribution of AOA and AOB at the cDNA level, with associated potential nitrification rates (PNRs) being measured. AOA was predominated by
Candidatus Nitrosopumilus
and Nitrosopumilaceae, while
Methylophaga
was the major group of AOB. Significantly higher transcript abundance of the AOA
amoA
gene than that of AOB appeared in all samples, corresponding to the much higher RNRs contributed to AOA. Both the total and AOA PNRs were significantly higher in the deeper layers due to the high sensitivity of AOA to ammonia and oxygen than in AOB. In the surface layers, TN and TOC had significant positive and negative effects on the distribution of the AOA
amoA
gene transcripts, respectively, while
NH
4
+
concentration was positively correlated with the AOB
amoA
gene transcripts. Our study demonstrated that AOA played a more important role than AOB in the ammonia-oxidizing process that occurred in the sediments of the Yap and Mariana Trenches and would expand the understanding of their ecological contribution to the nitrification process and nitrogen flux of trenches.
This paper addresses the problem of target delay and Doppler frequency estimation for passive bistatic radar employing noncooperative illuminators of opportunity (IOs), where the receivers are ...contaminated by nonnegligible noise, clutter, and direct-path interference. A parametric approach is proposed by modeling the unknown signal transmitted from the IO as an autoregressive process whose temporal correlation is jointly estimated and exploited for passive estimation. An iterative estimator based on the expectation-maximization (EM) principle is utilized to solve this highly nonlinear problem. We also discuss the initialization of the EM-based estimator and a fast implementation based on the fast Fourier transform and interpolation techniques. In addition, we derive the Cramér-Rao lower bound for the estimation problem to benchmark the performance of the proposed estimator. Simulation results show that the proposed estimator behaves similarly to a clairvoyant EM estimator, which assumes knowledge of the IO waveform covariance matrix, and significantly outperforms other methods that ignore the waveform correlation.
Mariana Trench represents the deepest and one of least explored biosphere on Earth, and its carbon sources include euphotic sinking, lateral transportation and diffusion from underlying crust, etc. ...By far the spatial variation of microbial community with associated organic carbon degradation potential in the surface sediments of the Mariana Trench were still largely unknown. Based on the high-throughput 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, significantly different microbial community structure was overserved between the shallow (<10,000 m) and deep stations (>10,000 m), which could be explained by spatial variation of Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria and Crenarchaeota, with sampling depth and total organic carbon (TOC) content as the environmental driving forces. During the 109-day incubation with Biolog EcoPlate™ microplate, polymers and carbohydrates were preferentially used, followed by amino acids and carboxylic acids, and microbial metabolic diversity was significantly different between the shallow and deep stations. The metabolic diversity of microorganisms at most shallow stations was significantly lower than that at deep stations. This could potentially be attributed the metabolic capabilities of different microbial groups with varied ecological niches, and reflected the initial preference of carbon source by the nature microbes as well. Our study obtained a rough assessment of physiological and taxonomic characteristics of the trench sediment microbial community with polyphasic approaches. Distinct microbial structure and potential carbon metabolic functions in different sampling depths might led to the differentiation of ecological niches, which enable various microorganisms to make full use of the limited resources in the deep sea, and provided a research basis for further exploration of the carbon cycle in different deep-sea regions.
The twilight zone is an important depth of the ocean where particulate organic matter (POM) remineralization takes place, and prokaryotes contribute to more than 70% of the estimated ...remineralization. However, little is known about the microbial community and metabolic activity associated with different particles in the twilight zone. The composition and distribution of particle-attached prokaryotes in the twilight zone of the South China Sea (SCS) were investigated using high-throughput sequencing and quantitative PCR, together with the Biolog Ecoplate™ microplates culture to analyze the microbial metabolic activity. We found that α- and γ-Proteobacteria dominating at the lower and upper boundary of the twilight zone, respectively;
and
of the Euyarchaeota occupied in the larger particles at the upper boundary. Similar microbial community existed between euphotic layer and the upper boundary. Higher amount of shared Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in the larger particles along the water depths, might be due to the fast sinking and major contribution of carbon flux of the larger particles from the euphotic layer. In addition to polymers as the major carbon source, carbohydrates and amino acids were preferentially used by microbial community at the upper and lower boundary, respectively. This could potentially be attributed to the metabolic capabilities of attached microbial groups in different particles, and reflected the initial preference of the carbon source by the natural microbes in the twilight zone as well. The microbial structure and carbon metabolic profiles could be complemented with metatranscriptomic analysis in future studies to augment the understanding of the complex carbon cycling pathways in the twilight zone.
Neoantigens have emerged as a promising area of focus in tumor immunotherapy, with several established strategies aiming to enhance their identification. Human leukocyte antigen class I molecules ...(HLA-I), which present intracellular immunopeptides to T cells, provide an ideal source for identifying neoantigens. However, solely relying on a mutation database generated through commonly used whole exome sequencing (WES) for the identification of HLA-I immunopeptides, may result in potential neoantigens being missed due to limitations in sequencing depth and sample quality.
In this study, we constructed and evaluated an extended database for neoantigen identification, based on COSMIC mutation database. This study utilized mass spectrometry-based proteogenomic profiling to identify the HLA-I immunopeptidome enriched from HepG2 cell. HepG2 WES-based and the COSMIC-based mutation database were generated and utilized to identify HepG2-specific mutant immunopeptides.
The results demonstrated that COSMIC-based database identified 5 immunopeptides compared to only 1 mutant peptide identified by HepG2 WES-based database, indicating its effectiveness in identifying mutant immunopeptides. Furthermore, HLA-I affinity of the mutant immunopeptides was evaluated through NetMHCpan and peptide-docking modeling to validate their binding to HLA-I molecules, demonstrating the potential of mutant peptides identified by the COSMIC-based database as neoantigens.
Utilizing the COSMIC-based mutation database is a more efficient strategy for identifying mutant peptides from HLA-I immunopeptidome without significantly increasing the false positive rate. HepG2 specific WES-based database may exclude certain mutant peptides due to WES sequencing depth or sample heterogeneity. The COSMIC-based database can effectively uncover potential neoantigens within the HLA-I immunopeptidomes.
Hackers often engage in website defacement early in their criminal careers to establish a reputation. Some hackers become increasingly prolific and launch a large number of attacks against their ...targets, whereas others only launch a few attacks before eventually desisting from a life of crime. A better understanding of why some hackers launch a large number of attacks, while others do not, will assist in the implementation of targeted intervention strategies. Therefore, the current study, using a sample of 119 active hackers, seeks to answer two research questions: (1) Are there different groups of website defacers based on attack volume? (2) Which observed hacker-level characteristics can be used to predict latent class membership? We find that two unique groups of website defacers exist: low-volume defacers (69%) and high-volume defacers (31%). Social media presence, the content of the defacement, and the type of defacement are all predictive of latent class membership. Policy implications are discussed.
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