Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP), essential for brain formation, is a frequent autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-mutated gene. ADNP associates with microtubule end-binding proteins ...(EBs) through its SxIP motif, to regulate dendritic spine formation and brain plasticity. Here, we reveal SKIP, a novel four-amino-acid peptide representing an EB-binding site, as a replacement therapy in an outbred Adnp-deficient mouse model. We discovered, for the first time, axonal transport deficits in Adnp(+/-) mice (measured by manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging), with significant male-female differences. RNA sequencing evaluations showed major age, sex and genotype differences. Function enrichment and focus on major gene expression changes further implicated channel/transporter function and the cytoskeleton. In particular, a significant maturation change (1 month-five months) was observed in beta1 tubulin (Tubb1) mRNA, only in Adnp(+/+) males, and sex-dependent increase in calcium channel mRNA (Cacna1e) in Adnp(+/+) males compared with females. At the protein level, the Adnp(+/-) mice exhibited impaired hippocampal expression of the calcium channel (voltage-dependent calcium channel, Cacnb1) as well as other key ASD-linked genes including the serotonin transporter (Slc6a4), and the autophagy regulator, BECN1 (Beclin1), in a sex-dependent manner. Intranasal SKIP treatment normalized social memory in 8- to 9-month-old Adnp(+/-)-treated mice to placebo-control levels, while protecting axonal transport and ameliorating changes in ASD-like gene expression. The control, all d-amino analog D-SKIP, did not mimic SKIP activity. SKIP presents a novel prototype for potential ASD drug development, a prevalent unmet medical need.
Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP) is a most frequent autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-associated gene and the only protein significantly decreasing in the serum of Alzheimer's disease ...(AD) patients. Is ADNP associated with ASD being more prevalent in boys and AD more prevalent in women? Our results revealed sex-related learning/memory differences in mice, reflecting hippocampal expression changes in ADNP and ADNP-controlled AD/ASD risk genes. Hippocampal ADNP transcript content was doubled in male vs female mice, with females showing equal expression to ADNP haploinsufficient (ADNP(+/)(-)) males and no significant genotype-associated reduction. Increased male ADNP expression was replicated in human postmortem hippocampal samples. The hippocampal transcript for apolipoprotein E (the major risk gene for AD) was doubled in female mice compared with males, and further doubled in the ADNP(+/-) females, contrasting a decrease in ADNP(+/-) males. Previously, overexpression of the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) led to ASD-like phenotype in mice. Here, we identified binding sites on ADNP for eIF4E and co-immunoprecipitation. Furthermore, hippocampal eIF4E expression was specifically increased in young ADNP(+/-) male mice. Behaviorally, ADNP(+/-) male mice exhibited deficiencies in object recognition and social memory compared with ADNP(+/+) mice, while ADNP(+/-) females were partially spared. Contrasting males, which preferred novel over familiar mice, ADNP(+/+) females showed no preference to novel mice and ADNP(+/-) females did not prefer mice over object. ADNP expression, positioned as a master regulator of key ASD and AD risk genes, introduces a novel concept of hippocampal gene-regulated sexual dimorphism and an ADNP(+/-) animal model for translational psychiatry.
The ATLAS Muon Spectrometer is designed to measure the momentum of muons with a resolution of dp/p=3% at 100GeV and 10% at 1TeV. For this task, the spectrometer employs 355,000 Monitored Drift Tubes ...(MDTs) arrayed in 1200 chambers. Calibration (RT) functions convert drift time measurements into tube-centered impact parameters for track segment reconstruction. RT functions depend on MDT environmental parameters and so must be appropriately calibrated for local chamber conditions. We report on the creation and application of a gas monitor system based calibration program for muon track reconstruction in the LHC startup phase.
In this work, a novel live scalable video streaming scheme, with adaptive pre-processing (pre-filtering), is presented. The scheme employs Scalable Video Coding (SVC), which is an extension of the ...H.264/AVC. An adaptive pre-filter is provided for each SVC layer, while each pre-filter's parameters, such as the standard deviation and kernel matrix size, are dynamically adjusted according to the varying network conditions, thereby enabling to continuously obtain an optimal visual presentation quality at the decoder end. The performance of the presented live scalable video streaming scheme is evaluated and tested in detail, thereby demonstrating significant improvements of more than 2dB.
Ultra-fast live video-in-video insertion for H.264/AVC Grois, D.; Loants, M.; Hadar, O. ...
2013 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE),
2013-Jan., 20130101
Conference Proceeding, Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this work, an ultra-fast live video-in-video (ViV) insertion scheme is presented, according to which a predefined video content, such as a video advertisement, can be inserted in real-time into a ...predefined location within a pre-encoded video stream. According to the proposed scheme, the video insertion process is performed in two steps. The first step includes the modification of a conventional H.264/AVC video encoder to support the visual content insertion by using either the Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) technique or by using the Variable Length Coding (VLC)/Variable Length Decoding (VLD). In the second step, the ViV insertion is performed separately for each overlay, while operating in a compressed domain. The presented scheme provides significant improvements in terms of both the bit-rate and insertion run-time: the time period of the proposed ViV insertion process is extremely fast, i.e. up to 8000 times faster compared to JM 17.2 reference software and more than 100 times faster compare to the commercial VSS ® (Vanguard Software Solutions ® ) Streaming Codec Pack 4.5. Also, the bitrate overhead is very low.
We update our CHEP06 2 presentation on the ATLAS experiment software infrastructure used to build, validate, distribute, and document the ATLAS offline software. The ATLAS collaboration's ...computational resources and software developers are distributed around the globe in about 35 counties. The ATLAS offline code base is currently over 7 million source lines of code in 10,000+ C++ classes organized into about 2,000 packages. More than 400 developers contribute code each month. Since our last report, we have developed a powerful, flexible system to request code versions to be included in software builds, made changes to our software building tools, increased the number of daily builds used to validate significant code changes, improved the tools for distributing the code to our computational sites around the world, and made many advancements in the tools to document the code.
Thin gap chambers (TGCs) are built for the muon trigger chambers in the endcap region of the LHC experiment ATLAS. More than 2500 ATLAS TGCs are being produced at the Weizmann institute in Israel, ...and in Shandong University in China. Detailed testing of these chambers is performed at the Technion and at the Tel-Aviv University. Two cosmic ray hodoscopes for testing the operation of these detectors were built in Israel. In these hodoscopes the response of the chambers to energetic cosmic ray muons is recorded and analyzed. The hodoscopes measure the exact time and space location of the cosmic ray hit and read out the chambers which are being tested to verify that they produce a corresponding signal within the required time interval. The cosmic ray hodoscopes built at the Technion and at the Tel Aviv University for the test of ATLAS TGCs are described. The mechanical structure, readout electronics, data acquisition and operating scheme are presented. Typical TGC test results are presented and discussed.
The new particle accelerators and its experiments create a challenging data processing environment, characterized by large amount of data where only small portion of it carry the expected new ...scientific information. Modern detectors, such as the Cathode Strip Chamber (CSC), achieve high accuracy of coordinate measurements (between 50 to 70 microns). However, heavy physical backgrounds can decrease the accuracy significantly. In the presence of such background, the charge induced over adjacent CSC strips (cluster) is different from the ideal Matheison distribution. The traditional least squares method which takes the same ideal position error for all clusters loses its optimal properties on contaminated data. A new technique that calculates the cluster quality and uses it to improve the track fitting results is suggested. The algorithm is applied on test beam data, and its performance is compared to other fitting methods. It is shown that the suggested algorithm improves the fitting performance significantly.
We investigate the responsibilities of the session manager in a multi-channel streaming video session over wireless networks. The session manager decides how many channels should be active in the ...next time interval on the basis of session measurement reports and other considerations. We suggest a simple algorithm for session management and evaluate its performance against unmanaged multi-channel sessions. Experimental results reveal that system performance significantly improved in the managed as compared to the unmanaged session.
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