Induced candidosis in mice with artificially established oral flora

The aim of this study was to gauge the effect of an artificially established flora, unnatural for mice, on the induction of oral candidosis in mice. Four groups of BALB/c mice were compared; conventional Candida albicans-free mice, "germ-free" mice which had been inoculated with Candida-free human saliva, germ-free mice which had been exposed to a cocktail of Streptococcus mitis, S. sobrinus and S. sanguis, and uncontaminated germ-free mice. After exposure to C. albicans via drinking water, the four groups of mice were killed and their oral cavities examined for candidal growth and oral lesions. Conventional mice yielded significantly less candidal growth and exhibited significantly fewer oral lesions than the other three groups. Candidal lesions in the two groups of contaminated germ-free mice were significantly fewer than in the uncontaminated germ-free mice. The latter exhibited extensive candidal lesions with little inflammatory infiltrate. It is concluded that mice with human oral micro-organisms have some resistance against candidal infection albeit at a reduced level, that mice with natural oral flora are highly resistant, and that germ-free mice are extremely susceptible to C. albicans infection.     

Organizational Commitment: Clarifying the Concept and Simplifying the Existing Construct Typology

This paper examines popular concepts and "types" of organizational commitment in light of the definition of commitment and common factors that pertain to all commitments. It argues that a commitment is best conceptualized as a single, fundamental construct that may vary according to differences in focus, terms, and time-specific evaluation. Analysis of affective commitment measures indicates that certain measures contain more than one set of terms and make assumptions about evaluation that add constraints to the basic meaning of commitment. Recommendations include the argument that commitment measures address one set of terms and avoid evaluative phraseology.     

Yearly stepwise increments of the growth hormone dose results in a better growth response after four years in girls with Turner syndrome. Dutch Working Group on Growth Hormone

To optimize the growth promoting effect of growth hormone (GH), 65 previously untreated girls with Turner syndrome (TS), chronological age (CA) 2-11 yr, were randomized into 3 dosage regimen groups: A, B, and C, with a daily recombinant-human GH dose during 4 study years of 4-4-4-4, 4-6-6-6, and 4-6-8-8 IU/m2 b.s. The first GH dosage increase in groups B and C resulted in a significantly higher mean height velocity (HV) compared with constant dose group A. During the third year, when the dose was raised again only in group C, mean HV was significantly higher in groups B and C than in group A, and in group C compared with group B. In year 4 only group C mean HV remained significantly higher than group A. The pattern of change in HSDSCA (Dutch-Swedish-Danish Turner references) was identical; however, in year 4 mean delta HSDSCA in group B also remained significantly higher than group A. After 4 yr GH treatment, the following was determined. 1) The mean delta HSDSCA was significantly higher for groups B and C compared with group A, but not significantly different between groups B and C. 2) Although significantly higher compared with estimated values for untreated Dutch girls with TS, bone maturation of the GH treated girls was not significantly different between groups. 3) It was positively related with the degree of bone age (BA) retardation at start of study and negatively with baseline CA. 4) Both the modified Index of Potential Height (mIPHRUS) and a recently developed Turner-specific final height (FH) prediction method (PTSRUS), based on regression coefficients for H, CA, and bone age, showed significant increases in mean FH prediction, without significant differences between groups. PTSRUS values were markedly higher than the mIPHRUS values. Dose dependency could be shown for the area under the curve (AUC) for GH, but delta HSDSCA was not linearly related with AUC. Baseline GH binding protein (BP) levels were in 84% of the cases within the normal age range; the decrease in mean levels after 6 months GH was not significant. Mean insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) and IGFBP-3 plasma levels increased significantly, without significant differences between groups. delta HSDSCA during GH was dependent on IGF-I plasma levels at baseline and during the study period, beta-0.002 and beta-0.0004. Thus, a stepwise GH-dosing approach reduced the "waning" effect of the growth response after 4 yr treatment without undue bone maturation. FH prediction was not significantly different between treatment groups. Irrespective of the GH dose used, initiation of GH treatment at a younger age was beneficial after 4 yr GH when expressed as actual cm gained or as gain in FH prediction, but was not statistically significant when expressed as delta HSDSCA over the study period.     

Interactive visualization of hyperspectral images of historical documents

This paper presents an interactive visualization tool to study and analyze hyperspectral images (HSI) of historical documents. This work is part of a collaborative effort with the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands (NAN) and Art Innovation, a manufacturer of hyperspectral imaging hardware designed for old and fragile documents. The NAN is actively capturing HSI of historical documents for use in a variety of tasks related to the analysis and management of archival collections, from ink and paper analysis to monitoring the effects of environmental aging. To assist their work, we have developed a comprehensive visualization tool that offers an assortment of visualization and analysis methods, including interactive spectral selection, spectral similarity analysis, time-varying data analysis and visualization, and selective spectral band fusion. This paper describes our visualization software and how it is used to facilitate the tasks needed by our collaborators. Evaluation feedback from our collaborators on how this tool benefits their work is included.     

Estimating the Laplace-Beltrami Operator by Restricting 3D Functions

We present a novel approach for computing and solving the Poisson equation over the surface of a mesh. As in previous approaches, we define the Laplace-Beltrami operator by considering the derivatives of functions defined on the mesh. However, in this work, we explore a choice of functions that is decoupled from the tessellation. Specifically, we use basis functions (second-order tensor-product B-splines) defined over 3D space, and then restrict them to the surface. We show that in addition to being invariant to mesh topology, this definition of the Laplace-Beltrami operator allows a natural multiresolution structure on the function space that is independent of the mesh structure, enabling the use of a simple multigrid implementation for solving the Poisson equation.     

Thermal and cardiovascular strain imposed by motorcycle protective clothing under Australian summer conditions

Motorcycle protective clothing can be uncomfortably hot during summer, and this experiment was designed to evaluate the physiological significance of that burden. Twelve males participated in four, 90-min trials (cycling 30 W) across three environments (25, 30, 35 °C [all 40% relative humidity]). Clothing was modified between full and minimal injury protection. Both ensembles were tested at 25 °C, with only the more protective ensemble investigated at 30 and 35 °C. At 35 °C, auditory canal temperature rose at 0.02 °C min^?1 (SD 0.005), deviating from all other trials (p < 0.05). The thresholds for moderate (>38.5 °C) and profound hyperthermia (>40.0 °C) were predicted to occur within 105 min (SD 20.6) and 180 min (SD 33.0), respectively. Profound hyperthermia might eventuate in ~10 h at 30 °C, but should not occur at 25 °C. These outcomes demonstrate a need to enhance the heat dissipation capabilities of motorcycle clothing designed for summer use in hot climates, but without compromising impact protection.

Practitioner’s Summary:

Motorcycle protective clothing can be uncomfortably hot during summer. This experiment was designed to evaluate the physiological significance of this burden across climatic states. In the heat, moderate (>38.5 °C) and profound hyperthermia (>40.0 °C) were predicted to occur within 105 and 180 min, respectively.     

Motion regularization for matting motion blurred objects

This paper addresses the problem of matting motion blurred objects from a single image. Existing single image matting methods are designed to extract static objects that have fractional pixel occupancy. This arises because the physical scene object has a finer resolution than the discrete image pixel and therefore only occupies a fraction of the pixel. For a motion blurred object, however, fractional pixel occupancy is attributed to the object’s motion over the exposure period. While conventional matting techniques can be used to matte motion blurred objects, they are not formulated in a manner that considers the object’s motion and tend to work only when the object is on a homogeneous background. We show how to obtain better alpha mattes by introducing a regularization term in the matting formulation to account for the object’s motion. In addition, we outline a method for estimating local object motion based on local gradient statistics from the original image. For the sake of completeness, we also discuss how user markup can be used to denote the local direction in lieu of motion estimation. Improvements to alpha mattes computed with our regularization are demonstrated on a variety of examples.     

Context-aware Retrieval: Exploring a New Environment for Information Retrieval and Information Filtering

The opportunities for context-aware computing are fast expanding. Computing systems can be made aware of their environment by monitoring attributes such as their current location, the current time, the weather, or nearby equipment and users. Context-aware computing often involves retrieval of information: it introduces a new aspect to technologies for information delivery; currently these technologies are based mainly on contemporary approaches to information retrieval and information filtering. In this paper, we consider how the closely related, but distinct, topics of information retrieval and information filtering relate to context-aware retrieval. Our thesis is that context-aware retrieval is as yet a sparsely researched and sparsely understood area, and we aim in this paper to make a start towards remedying this.     

A spreadsheet approach to facilitate visualization of uncertainty in information

Information uncertainty is inherent in many problems and is often subtle and complicated to understand. Although visualization is a powerful means for exploring and understanding information, information uncertainty visualization is ad hoc and not widespread. This paper identifies two main barriers to the uptake of information uncertainty visualization: firstly, the difficulty of modeling and propagating the uncertainty information; and secondly, the difficulty of mapping uncertainty to visual elements. To overcome these barriers, we extend the spreadsheet paradigm to encapsulate uncertainty details within cells. This creates an inherent awareness of the uncertainty associated with each variable. The spreadsheet can hide the uncertainty details, enabling the user to think simply in terms of variables. Furthermore, the system can aid with automated propagation of uncertainty information, since it is intrinsically aware of the uncertainty. The system also enables mapping the encapsulated uncertainty to visual elements via the formula language and a visualization sheet. Support for such low-level visual mapping provides flexibility to explore new techniques for information uncertainty visualization.