Search results for "Complex."
showing 10 items of 5824 documents
The brainstem efferent acoustic chiasm in pigmented and albino rats
2015
Abstract The present study examined whether structural peculiarities in the brain-efferent pathway to the organ of Corti may underlie functional differences in hearing between pigmented and albino individuals of the same mammalian species. Pigmented Brown-Norway rats and albino Wistar rats received unilateral injections of an aqueous solution of the retrograde neuronal tracer Fluorogold (FG) into the scala tympani of the cochlea to identify olivocochlear neurons (OCN) in the brainstem superior olivary complex. After five days, brains were perfusion-fixed and brainstem sections were cut and analyzed with respect to retrogradely labeled neurons. Intrinsic neurons of the lateral system were lo…
Event-related brain potentials to change in the frequency and temporal structure of sounds in typically developing 5-6-year-old children.
2015
The brain's ability to recognize different acoustic cues (e.g., frequency changes in rapid temporal succession) is important for speech perception and thus for successful language development. Here we report on distinct event-related potentials (ERPs) in 5-6-year-old children recorded in a passive oddball paradigm to repeated tone pair stimuli with a frequency change in the second tone in the pair, replicating earlier findings. An occasional insertion of a third tone within the tone pair generated a more merged pattern, which has not been reported previously in 5-6-year-old children. Both types of deviations elicited pre-attentive discriminative mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discrimina…
Video preprocessing for audiovisual indexing
2003
We address the problem of detecting shots of subjects that are interviewed in news sequences. This is useful since usually these kinds of scenes contain important and reusable information that can be used for other news programs. In a previous paper, we presented a technique based on a priori knowledge of the editing techniques used in news sequences which allowed a fast search of news stories (see Albiol, A. et al., 3rd Int. Conf. on Audio and Video-based Biometric Person Authentication, p.366-71, 2001). We now present a new shot descriptor technique which improves the previous search results by using a simple, yet efficient, algorithm, based on the information contained in consecutive fra…
Differenziazione e quantificazione dei carbonati litogenici e pedogenici di Gypsisuoli forestali attraverso l'analisi isotopica
2004
Gli autori riferiscono sui tipi e sui modelli di genesi dei carbonati dei suoli, attraverso l’uso degli isotopi del 13C. Lo studio è stato condotto in un’area dell’interno collinare argilloso siciliano, su suoli che evolvono sui depositi evaporitici della Serie Gessoso-Solfifera. Sono stati scelti cinque pedon su litotipi calcarei e non. I pedon sono stati descritti in campo e campionati secondo la sequenza degli orizzonti genetici; sui campioni di suolo sono state eseguite le seguenti analisi: tessitura, reazione, conducibilità elettrica, gesso, carbonio organico ed inorganico. Inoltre, parallelamente sono state eseguite le analisi isotopiche del carbonio organico ed inorganico. I risultat…
Pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases associated with 8.1 ancestral haplotype: effect of multiple gene interactions.
2003
Genetic studies have shown that individuals with certain HLA alleles have a higher risk of specific autoimmune disease than those without these alleles. Particularly, the association in all Caucasian populations of an impressive number of autoimmune diseases with genes from the HLA-B8,DR3 haplotype that is part of the ancestral haplotype (AH) 8.1 HLA-A1, Cw7, B8, TNFAB*a2b3, TNFN*S, C2*C, Bf*s, C4A*Q0, C4B*1, DRB1*0301, DRB3*0101, DQA1*0501, DQB1*0201 has been reported by different research groups. This haplotype, the more common one in northern Europe, is also associated in healthy subjects with a number of immune system dysfunctions. It has been proposed that a small number of genes withi…
Detection of antigen-specific T-cells with MHC/peptide-tetramer-complexes
2002
Abstract Tetramer analysis is a novel technique in immunological research that has dramatically changed our knowledge of the immune response to viral and bacterial pathogens, to tumors and in autoimmune disease. Through the formation of major histocompatibility complex (MHC)/peptide-tetrameric complexes it can provide accurate counts of antigen-specific T-cells and it allows their phenotypical and functional analysis. We review the strengths of this method and use the analysis of peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from a patient with melanoma as a paradigm for the detection of tetramer-binding T-cells. The implementation of tetramer-guided analysis in immunomonitoring allows the ex vivo tes…
Experimental confirmation of the 'protein traffic hypothesis' by routine diagnostic tests
2010
The 'protein traffic hypothesis' suggests that the inflammation associated with autoimmune disease, trauma and disturbances of blood circulation is the result of misguided protein trafficking. The hypothesis divides the antigen spectrum into an intracellular component and an extracellular component. While the intracellular component is recognised by MHC class-I molecules and is presented to CD8 T-lymphocytes, the extracellular component is recognised by MHC class-II molecules and is presented to CD4 T-lymphocytes. To test this hypothesis, CD4 and CD8 T-cell counts of 271 HIV-negative patients of the University Hospital, Mainz, Germany were examined retrospectively. The results corroborate t…
Involvement of PAR-4 in Cannabinoid-Dependent Sensitization of Osteosarcoma Cells to TRAIL-Induced Apoptosis
2014
The synthetic cannabinoid WIN 55,212-2 is a potent cannabinoid receptor agonist with anticancer potential. Experiments were performed to determine the effects of WIN on proliferation, cell cycle distribution, and programmed cell death in human osteosarcoma MG63 and Saos-2 cells. Results show that WIN induced G2/M cell cycle arrest, which was associated with the induction of the main markers of ER stress (GRP78, CHOP and TRB3). In treated cells we also observed the conversion of the cytosolic form of the autophagosome marker LC3-I into LC3-II (the lipidated form located on the autophagosome membrane) and the enhanced incorporation of monodansylcadaverine and acridine orange, two markers of t…
A NEW COMPLEXITY FUNCTION FOR WORDS BASED ON PERIODICITY
2013
Motivated by the extension of the critical factorization theorem to infinite words, we study the (local) periodicity function, i.e. the function that, for any position in a word, gives the size of the shortest square centered in that position. We prove that this function characterizes any binary word up to exchange of letters. We then introduce a new complexity function for words (the periodicity complexity) that, for any position in the word, gives the average value of the periodicity function up to that position. The new complexity function is independent from the other commonly used complexity measures as, for instance, the factor complexity. Indeed, whereas any infinite word with bound…
Learning-Graph-Based Quantum Algorithm for k-distinctness
2012
We present a quantum algorithm solving the $k$-distinctness problem in $O(n^{1-2^{k-2}/(2^k-1)})$ queries with a bounded error. This improves the previous $O(n^{k/(k+1)})$-query algorithm by Ambainis. The construction uses a modified learning graph approach. Compared to the recent paper by Belovs and Lee arXiv:1108.3022, the algorithm doesn't require any prior information on the input, and the complexity analysis is much simpler. Additionally, we introduce an $O(\sqrt{n}\alpha^{1/6})$ algorithm for the graph collision problem where $\alpha$ is the independence number of the graph.