Deletion 5q12: Delineation of a Phenotype Including Mental Retardation and Ocular Defects

Array-CGH enables the detection of submicroscopic chromosomal deletions and duplications and leads to an accurate delineation of the imbalances, raising the possibility of correlating genotype to phenotype and mapping minimal critical regions associated with particular patterns of clinical features. We report here on four patients sharing common clinical features (psychomotor retardation, coarse facies and ocular anomalies), with proximal 5q deletions identified by oligo array-CGH. The deletions range from 5.75 to 17.26-Mb in size and occurred de novo. A common 2.63-Mb region between the deletions described here can be defined in 5q12.1 (59,390,122-62,021,754 bp bp from 5pter, hg18) and includes 12 genes. Among them, KIF2A, which encodes a kinesin superfamily protein, is a particularly interesting candidate for the phenotype, as it suppresses the growth of axonal collateral branches and is involved in normal brain development. Ocular defects, albeit unspecific, seem to be common in the 5q12.1 deletion. Identification of additional cases of deletions involving the 5q12.1 region will allow more accurate genotype-phenotype correlations. (C) 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES AND THE STRUCTURAL REMODELING OF THE VISUAL SYSTEM AFTER OCULAR ENUCLEATION

Redox processes associated with controlled generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by NADPH oxidase (Nox) add an essential level of regulation to signaling pathways underlying physiological processes. We evaluated the ROS generation in the main visual relays of the mammalian brain, namely the superior colliculus (SC) and the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (DLG), after ocular enucleation in adult rats. Dihydroethidium (DHE) oxidation revealed increased ROS generation in SC and DLG between 1 and 30 days postlesion. ROS generation was decreased by the Nox inhibitors diphenyleneiodonium chloride (DPI) and apocynin. Real-time PCR results revealed that Nox 2 was upregulated in both retinorecipient structures after deafferentation, whereas Nox 1 and Nox 4 were upregulated only in the SC. To evaluate the role of ROS in structural remodeling after the lesions, apocynin was given to enucleated rats and immunohistochemistry was conducted for markers of neuronal remodeling into SC and DLG. Immunohistochemical data showed that ocular enucleation produces an increase of neurofilament and microtubule-associated protein-2 immunostaining in both SC and DLG, which was markedly attenuated by apocynin treatment. Taken together, the findings of the present study suggest a novel role for Nox-induced ROS signaling in mediating neuronal remodeling in visual areas after ocular enucleation. (C) 2010 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of Experimental Autoimmune Uveitis in Mice Treated with FTY720

PURPOSE. FTY720 (fingolimod) is an immunomodulatory drug capable of preventing T-cell migration to inflammatory sites by binding to and subsequently downregulating the expression of sphingosine-1 phosphate receptor 1 (S1P(1)) leading in turn to T-cell retention in lymphoid organs. Additional effects of FTY720 by increasing functional activity of regulatory T cells have recently been demonstrated, raising the conversion of conventional T cells into regulatory T cells and affecting the sequestration of regulatory T cells in normal mice. In this study, the action of FTY720 in the ocular autoimmune model in mice was investigated. METHODS. Mice were immunized with 161-180 peptide and pertussis toxin and were treated with 1 mg/kg/d FTY720 by gavage (7-21 days postimmunization [dpi]) or left untreated. Spleen cells, harvested 21 dpi, were cultured and assayed for cytokine production. Draining lymph node, spleen, and eye cells 21 dpi were assayed for quantification of T-cell populations. Disease severity was evaluated by histologic examination of the enucleated eyes at 21 and 49 dpi. In addition, anti-IRBP antibodies were analyzed by ELISA. RESULTS. FTY720 was effective in suppressing the experimental autoimmune uveitis score. Although there was a reduction in the number of eye-infiltrating cells, FTY did not prevent Treg accumulation at this site. FTY720 leads to a significant increase of CD4(+)IFN-gamma(+) and CD4(+)Foxp3(+) cell percentages in lymph nodes, suggesting that this site could be the source of Treg cells found in the eye. CONCLUSIONS. The data showed that treatment in vivo with FTY720 was able to suppress EAU in mice. These results are indicative of the possible therapeutic use of FTY720 in ocular autoimmune processes. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2010;51:2568-2574) DOI:10.1167/iovs.09-4769

Vision in click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae): pigments and spectral correspondence between visual sensitivity and species bioluminescence emission

Among lampyrids, intraspecific sexual communication is facilitated by spectral correspondence between visual sensitivity and bioluminescence emission from the single lantern in the tail. Could a similar strategy be utilized by the elaterids (click beetles), which have one ventral abdominal and two dorsal prothoracic lanterns? Spectral sensitivity [S(lambda)] and bioluminescence were investigated in four Brazilian click beetle species Fulgeochlizus bruchii, Pyrearinus termitilluminans, Pyrophorus punctatissimus and P. divergens, representing three genera. In addition, in situ microspectrophotometric absorption spectra were obtained for visual and screening pigments in P. punctatissimus and P. divergens species. In all species, the electroretinographic S(lambda) functions showed broad peaks in the green with a shoulder in the near-ultraviolet, suggesting the presence of short- and long-wavelength receptors in the compound eyes. The long-wavelength receptor in Pyrophorus species is mediated by a P540 rhodopsin in conjunction with a species-specific screening pigment. A correspondence was found between green to yellow bioluminescence emissions and its broad S(lambda) maximum in each of the four species. It is hypothesized that in elaterids, bioluminescence of the abdominal lantern is an optical signal for intraspecifc sexual communication, while the signals from the prothoracic lanterns serve to warn predators and may also provide illumination in flight.

Machine vision for the automatic classification of images acquired from Non-destructive tests

This project is based on Artificial Intelligence (A.I) and Digital Image processing (I.P) for automatic condition monitoring of sleepers in the railway track. Rail inspection is a very important task in railway maintenance for traffic safety issues and in preventing dangerous situations. Monitoring railway track infrastructure is an important aspect in which the periodical inspection of rail rolling plane is required.Up to the present days the inspection of the railroad is operated manually by trained personnel. A human operator walks along the railway track searching for sleeper anomalies. This monitoring way is not more acceptable for its slowness and subjectivity. Hence, it is desired to automate such intuitive human skills for the development of more robust and reliable testing methods. Images of wooden sleepers have been used as data for my project. The aim of this project is to present a vision based technique for inspecting railway sleepers (wooden planks under the railway track) by automatic interpretation of Non Destructive Test (NDT) data using A.I. techniques in determining the results of inspection.

MACHINE VISION FOR AUTOMATICVISUAL INSPECTION OF WOODENRAILWAY SLEEPERS USING UNSUPERVISED NEURAL NETWORKS

The motivation for this thesis work is the need for improving reliability of equipment and quality of service to railway passengers as well as a requirement for cost-effective and efficient condition maintenance management for rail transportation. This thesis work develops a fusion of various machine vision analysis methods to achieve high performance in automation of wooden rail track inspection.The condition monitoring in rail transport is done manually by a human operator where people rely on inference systems and assumptions to develop conclusions. The use of conditional monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions to be taken to avoid the consequences of failure, before the failure occurs. Manual or automated condition monitoring of materials in fields of public transportation like railway, aerial navigation, traffic safety, etc, where safety is of prior importance needs non-destructive testing (NDT).In general, wooden railway sleeper inspection is done manually by a human operator, by moving along the rail sleeper and gathering information by visual and sound analysis for examining the presence of cracks. Human inspectors working on lines visually inspect wooden rails to judge the quality of rail sleeper. In this project work the machine vision system is developed based on the manual visual analysis system, which uses digital cameras and image processing software to perform similar manual inspections. As the manual inspection requires much effort and is expected to be error prone sometimes and also appears difficult to discriminate even for a human operator by the frequent changes in inspected material. The machine vision system developed classifies the condition of material by examining individual pixels of images, processing them and attempting to develop conclusions with the assistance of knowledge bases and features.A pattern recognition approach is developed based on the methodological knowledge from manual procedure. The pattern recognition approach for this thesis work was developed and achieved by a non destructive testing method to identify the flaws in manually done condition monitoring of sleepers.In this method, a test vehicle is designed to capture sleeper images similar to visual inspection by human operator and the raw data for pattern recognition approach is provided from the captured images of the wooden sleepers. The data from the NDT method were further processed and appropriate features were extracted.The collection of data by the NDT method is to achieve high accuracy in reliable classification results. A key idea is to use the non supervised classifier based on the features extracted from the method to discriminate the condition of wooden sleepers in to either good or bad. Self organising map is used as classifier for the wooden sleeper classification.In order to achieve greater integration, the data collected by the machine vision system was made to interface with one another by a strategy called fusion. Data fusion was looked in at two different levels namely sensor-level fusion, feature- level fusion. As the goal was to reduce the accuracy of the human error on the rail sleeper classification as good or bad the results obtained by the feature-level fusion compared to that of the results of actual classification were satisfactory.

Gymnasieskola 2007 - Endast en vision?

Syftet med detta examensarbete var att ta reda på vilka tankar som finns angående helhetsperspektivet i den stundande gymnasiereformen Gymnasieskola 2007 (GY-07). För att få reda på detta intervjuades två rektorer och åtta lärare som fick ge sin syn på den kommande reformen. De tillhörde två olika program, ett studieförberedande respektive ett yrkesförberedande och dessa program kontrasteras mot varandra. Resultatet visar att alla informanter har en positiv inställning till reformen men att det yrkesförberedande programmet är mer positivt inställda än det studieförberedande programmet som hyser mindre tillförsikt till implementeringen av reformen.

Independent Domain of Symmetric Encryption using Least SignificantBit : Computer Vision, Steganography and Cryptography Techniques

The rapid development of data transfer through internet made it easier to send the data accurate and faster to the destination. There are many transmission media to transfer the data to destination like e-mails; at the same time it is may be easier to modify and misuse the valuable information through hacking. So, in order to transfer the data securely to the destination without any modifications, there are many approaches like cryptography and steganography. This paper deals with the image steganography as well as with the different security issues, general overview of cryptography, steganography and digital watermarking approaches.  The problem of copyright violation of multimedia data has increased due to the enormous growth of computer networks that provides fast and error free transmission of any unauthorized duplicate and possibly manipulated copy of multimedia information. In order to be effective for copyright protection, digital watermark must be robust which are difficult to remove from the object in which they are embedded despite a variety of possible attacks. The message to be send safe and secure, we use watermarking. We use invisible watermarking to embed the message using LSB (Least Significant Bit) steganographic technique. The standard LSB technique embed the message in every pixel, but my contribution for this proposed watermarking, works with the hint for embedding the message only on the image edges alone. If the hacker knows that the system uses LSB technique also, it cannot decrypt correct message. To make my system robust and secure, we added cryptography algorithm as Vigenere square. Whereas the message is transmitted in cipher text and its added advantage to the proposed system. The standard Vigenere square algorithm works with either lower case or upper case. The proposed cryptography algorithm is Vigenere square with extension of numbers also. We can keep the crypto key with combination of characters and numbers. So by using these modifications and updating in this existing algorithm and combination of cryptography and steganography method we develop a secure and strong watermarking method. Performance of this watermarking scheme has been analyzed by evaluating the robustness of the algorithm with PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and MSE (Mean Square Error) against the quality of the image for large amount of data. While coming to see results of the proposed encryption, higher value of 89dB of PSNR with small value of MSE is 0.0017. Then it seems the proposed watermarking system is secure and robust for hiding secure information in any digital system, because this system collect the properties of both steganography and cryptography sciences.

A Computer Vision Framework For Finger-Tapping Evaluation In Parkinson's Disease

Objective: To define and evaluate a Computer-Vision (CV) method for scoring Paced Finger-Tapping (PFT) in Parkinson's disease (PD) using quantitative motion analysis of index-fingers and to compare the obtained scores to the UPDRS (Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale) finger-taps (FT). Background: The naked-eye evaluation of PFT in clinical practice results in coarse resolution to determine PD status. Besides, sensor mechanisms for PFT evaluation may cause patients discomfort. In order to avoid cost and effort of applying wearable sensors, a CV system for non-invasive PFT evaluation is introduced. Methods: A database of 221 PFT videos from 6 PD patients was processed. The subjects were instructed to position their hands above their shoulders besides the face and tap the index-finger against the thumb consistently with speed. They were facing towards a pivoted camera during recording. The videos were rated by two clinicians between symptom levels 0-to-3 using UPDRS-FT. The CV method incorporates a motion analyzer and a face detector. The method detects the face of testee in each video-frame. The frame is split into two images from face-rectangle center. Two regions of interest are located in each image to detect index-finger motion of left and right hands respectively. The tracking of opening and closing phases of dominant hand index-finger produces a tapping time-series. This time-series is normalized by the face height. The normalization calibrates the amplitude in tapping signal which is affected by the varying distance between camera and subject (farther the camera, lesser the amplitude). A total of 15 features were classified using K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier to characterize the symptoms levels in UPDRS-FT. The target ratings provided by the raters were averaged. Results: A 10-fold cross validation in KNN classified 221 videos between 3 symptom levels with 75% accuracy. An area under the receiver operating characteristic curves of 82.6% supports feasibility of the obtained features to replicate clinical assessments. Conclusions: The system is able to track index-finger motion to estimate tapping symptoms in PD. It has certain advantages compared to other technologies (e.g. magnetic sensors, accelerometers etc.) for PFT evaluation to improve and automate the ratings

Möjligheternas Hus : Om ett projekt med en vision att skapa ett socialt företag för människor med psykiska funktionsnedsättningar

Bakgrunden till projektet Möjligheternas Hus var att det fanns ett behov av att utveckla rehabiliteringsinsatser för individer med psykiska funktionsnedsättningar som står långt från arbetsmarknaden, men även att de skulle erbjudas tillgång till en meningsfull daglig verksamhet. Rapporten syftar till att beskriva, problematisera och analysera hur projektet Möjligheternas Hus genomförts och vad det resulterade i. Den handlar om hur projektet har förmått fungera som ett verktyg för att skapa ett socialt företag för personer med psykiska funktionsnedsättningar. Rapporten behandlar även hur deltagarna har påverkats av sin medverkan i projektet, både vad avser deras livssituation i stort och deras möjligheter att bryta ett utanförskap samt hur projektet lyckades med att uppnå de mål som sattes upp. Deltagarna har startat ett socialt företag och de upplever att de kommit att må bättre. Flertalet uppger att de trivs bättre med livet, att de har ett rikare socialt liv, självförtroendet och självkänslan har stärkts och att det sociala företaget ger hopp för framtiden. En fråga som dock fortfarande är obesvarad är om sociala företag är ett framgångsrikt sätt att hjälpa och stödja individer som befinner i ett utanförskap att kunna lämna detta? Den här rapporten har inga svar på detta, med visar samtidigt att det är en fråga som behöver studeras ytterligare.