A Distinct Cytokine Profile and Stromal Vascular Fraction Metabolic Status without Significant Changes in the Lipid Composition Characterizes Lipedema

Lipedema is an adipose tissue disorder characterized by the disproportionate increase of subcutaneous fat tissue in the lower and/or upper extremities. The underlying pathomechanism remains unclear and no molecular biomarkers to distinguish the disease exist, leading to a large number of undiagnosed and misdiagnosed patients. To unravel the distinct molecular characteristic of lipedema we performed lipidomic analysis of the adipose tissue and serum of lipedema versus anatomically- and body mass index (BMI)-matched control patients. Both tissue groups showed no significant changes regarding lipid composition. As hyperplastic adipose tissue represents low-grade inflammation, the potential systemic effects on circulating cytokines were evaluated in lipedema and control patients using the Multiplex immunoassay system. Interestingly, increased systemic levels of interleukin 11 (p = 0.03), interleukin 28A (p = 0.04) and interleukin 29 (p = 0.04) were observed. As cytokines can influence metabolic activity, the metabolic phenotype of the stromal vascular fraction was examined, revealing significantly increased mitochondrial respiration in lipedema. In conclusion, despite sharing a comparable lipid profile with healthy adipose tissue, lipedema is characterized by a distinct systemic cytokine profile and metabolic activity of the stromal vascular fraction.     

Impedance evaluation of rectangular coils for eddy current testing of planar media

As for any other eddy current probe coil, the analysis of rectangular ones plays a vital role towards understanding their characteristics and performance. In this paper, closed-form expressions are provided both for the impedance of rectangular coils of rectangular cross-section located above a conducting half-space and for the eddy current density induced therein. The formulation is general and can be easily used for any coil shape.     

A Comprehensive Performance Evaluation of Deformable Face Tracking “In-the-Wild”

Recently, technologies such as face detection, facial landmark localisation and face recognition and verification have matured enough to provide effective and efficient solutions for imagery captured under arbitrary conditions (referred to as “in-the-wild”). This is partially attributed to the fact that comprehensive “in-the-wild” benchmarks have been developed for face detection, landmark localisation and recognition/verification. A very important technology that has not been thoroughly evaluated yet is deformable face tracking “in-the-wild”. Until now, the performance has mainly been assessed qualitatively by visually assessing the result of a deformable face tracking technology on short videos. In this paper, we perform the first, to the best of our knowledge, thorough evaluation of state-of-the-art deformable face tracking pipelines using the recently introduced 300 VW benchmark. We evaluate many different architectures focusing mainly on the task of on-line deformable face tracking. In particular, we compare the following general strategies: (a) generic face detection plus generic facial landmark localisation, (b) generic model free tracking plus generic facial landmark localisation, as well as (c) hybrid approaches using state-of-the-art face detection, model free tracking and facial landmark localisation technologies. Our evaluation reveals future avenues for further research on the topic.     

Synthesis and characterization of reversible and self‐healable networks based on acylhydrazone groups

A series of seven dynamic covalent networks based on pentaerythritol tetra(benzohydrazide) and 1,10‐decanediol dibenzaldehyde were prepared in N,N‐dimethylformamide (DMF). The equilibrium degree of swelling in DMF and the sol fraction displayed a minimum at or near the hydrazide–benzaldehyde stoichiometric ratio. The composition of the sol fraction changed according to the feed composition, with the dibenzaldehyde‐rich preparations exhibiting extractables composed of star oligomers based on tetra(benzohydrazide) cores. Finally, network reversibility and self‐healing were demonstrated in the presence of acid. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry     

Structural Identifiability in Low-Rank Matrix Factorization

In many signal processing and data mining applications, we need to approximate a given matrix Y with a low-rank product Y≈AX. Both matrices A and X are to be determined, but we assume that from the specifics of the application we have an important piece of a-priori knowledge: A must have zeros at certain positions. In general, different AX factorizations approximate a given Y equally well, so a fundamental question is whether the known zero pattern of A contributes to the uniqueness of the factorization. Using the notion of structural rank, we present a combinatorial characterization of uniqueness up to diagonal scaling (subject to a mild non-degeneracy condition on the factors), called structural identifiability of the model.