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RNAseq gene expression changes in BRCA1-I26A mutant MEFs (Oct1 CRISPR vs control).

Supp. Figure S1 Differential metabolite levels in BRCA1 I26A compared to normal MEFs. Supp. Figure S2 Control immunofluorescence microscopy images using Oct1-deficient MEFs. Supp. Figure S3 Small increase in Oct1 proteins levels in MEFs with a C-terminal BRCA1 mutation. Supp. Figure S4 Equivalent infection rates in Oct1 and control CRISPR infection rates in BRCA1-I26A MEFs. Supp. Figure S5 Quality-control and validation of RNAseq. Supp. Figure S6 CRISPR-mediated Oct1 loss in either BRCA1-I26A MEFs or MCF-7 cells minimally affects HIF-1α and c-Myc levels. Supp. Figure S7 Equivalent infection rates in Oct1 and control CRISPR infection rates in MCF-7 cells. Supp. Figure S8 MG-132 treatment reveals ubiquitylated Oct1 bands in the presence of urea. Supp. Figure S9 O2 consumption rate (OCR) was assessed in MCF-7 cells transduced with either empty vector control (EV), or viruses expressing WT or K9/403R Oct1. Supp. Figure S10 Oct1 protein stability in WT and I26A MEFs. Supp. Figure S11 Immunoprecipitating in vitro ubiquitylation assay products with control rabbit IgG antibodies results in recovery of background ubiquitylation. Supp. Figure S12 The same as in Figure 6A except with individual datapoints (Supplemental Table S4) superimposed. Supp. Figure S13 Elevated Oct1 (Pou2f1) mRNA levels correlate with poor patient outcome in gastric but not breast cancer.

The tumor suppressor BRCA1 regulates the DNA damage response (DDR) and other processes that remain incompletely defined. Among these, BRCA1 heterodimerizes with BARD1 to ubiquitylate targets via its N-terminal E3 ligase activity. Here, it is demonstrated that BRCA1 promotes oxidative metabolism by degrading Oct1 (POU2F1), a transcription factor with proglycolytic and tumorigenic effects. BRCA1 E3 ubiquitin ligase mutation skews cells toward a glycolytic metabolic profile while elevating Oct1 protein. CRISPR-mediated Oct1 deletion reverts the glycolytic phenotype. RNA sequencing (RNAseq) confirms deregulation of metabolic genes downstream of Oct1. BRCA1 mediates Oct1 ubiquitylation and degradation, and mutation of two ubiquitylated Oct1 lysines insulates the protein against BRCA1-mediated destabilization. Oct1 deletion in MCF-7 breast cancer cells does not perturb growth in standard culture, but inhibits growth in soft agar and xenograft assays. In primary breast cancer clinical specimens, Oct1 protein levels correlate positively with tumor aggressiveness and inversely with BRCA1. These results identify BRCA1 as an Oct1 ubiquitin ligase that catalyzes Oct1 degradation to promote oxidative metabolism and restrict tumorigenicity. Mol Cancer Res; 16(3); 439–52. ©2018 AACR.

Legends for Supplementary Figures S1-S13, and Tables S1-S4

Agrivoltaics facilitates the collocation of agriculture and solar power generation while helping to increase the income in the farming sector by producing extra electricity. In order to secure benefits for both sectors, this study considers the configuration variables for the agrivoltaic system design which usually deviate from the commercial ground-mounted photovoltaic systems. The homogeneity of light conditions on the ground level in 7 locations across the world with different climate conditions is analyzed in detail using different system designs. In addition, this study compares electricity productions of different agrivoltaic designs. The designs for optimal crop yield and for optimal electricity production are different. The homogeneity of the light conditions on ground level varies greatly depending on the system design, and the results of the homogeneity of the lighting conditions on the ground, which varies depending on 7 locations, were analyzed. And also, global tilted irradiation, which directly affects electric energy production, was analyzed at each location. as a result, the homogeneity of the irradiation under the arrays differs according to the azimuth. And also, the east-west system mentioned in this paper has the highest homogeneity of irradiation and the lowest global tilted irradiation.

Real driving emission (RDE) test conducted in sub-zero temperature conditions has been acting as a severe emission regulation over the existing test methods for diesel engines. In order to cope with this tightened regulation, many studies have been conducted to interpret the factors causing the deteriorated diesel engine combustion in cold operation conditions. The deteriorated fuel injection performance has been regarded as one of the key contributing factors but the governing mechanisms are not thoroughly understood so far. This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the effects of fuel temperature including sub-zero conditions on fuel injection performance by measuring the transient needle motion and injection velocity of a diesel injector using synchrotron X-ray imaging techniques. The factors causing the deteriorated injector performance and their contributions are discussed thoroughly based on the results. The results showed that the injection duration was shortened as the fuel temperature decreased as a result of decreased needle opening speed and increased needle closing speed. The increase of fuel viscosity and bulk modulus was discussed as the main factors associated with these results. The total injection mass was reduced by lowering the fuel temperature not only by the shortened injection duration but also by the decreased injection velocity. These factors exerted near equivalent contribution to the reduced injection mass at low fuel temperatures.

STAT3 functions are largely bifurcated: (1) STAT3 activated by Y705 phosphorylation (pY705) regulates target-gene expression in nucleus. (2) STAT3 activated by S727 phosphorylation (pS727) supports a electron transport complex (ETC) in mitochondria. Constitutive activation of STAT3 has long been considered to correlate with activation of diverse oncogenic pathways, which is a promising target for anti-cancer agents, but clinical therapeutic options are still unsatisfactory. Here we discovered a highly novel small-molecule inhibitor, JW-STAT3i directly binding to STAT3 N-terminal domain: 1) Through the cancer cell line panel screening, JW-STAT3i shows strong anti-cancer potency on various cancer cell lines including the breast cancer cell lines. 2) Anti-cancer mechanism of JW-STAT3i was elucidated: Firstly, the JW-STAT3i impairs pY705-STAT3 to abrogate pro-tumorigenic transcriptional programs mediated by STAT3. Secondly, JW-STAT3i also blocks pS727-STAT3 leading to mitochondrial dysfunction and AMPK activation. Consequently, JW-STAT3i treated cancer cells undergo growth arrest and apoptosis. 3) We further validated JW-STAT3i efficacy using cancer cell line- and patient-derived xenograft models whose response is well-correlated with the predictive biomarkers identified. Accuracy of in vivo efficacy in selected breast cancer PDX models based on predictive biomarker (estimated responders and non-responders) was very high. 4) We also demonstrated that JW-STAT3i shows a strong synergy with anti-PD-L1 antibody by induction of anti-tumorigenic immune environment. In conclusion, JW-STAT3i possesses both negative and positive effects on cancer cell proliferation and anti-immunity respectively. Currently, JW-STAT3i is under preclinical development and highly expected to be a promising anticancer therapeutic option in the near future. Citation Format: Jinsuk Kang. A novel STAT3 inhibitor directly targeting STAT3 N-terminus simultaneously abrogates the nuclear and mitochondrial STAT3 activities leading to highly potent anti-cancer efficacy on the breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 929.

Two kinds of Neighbor Discovery Processes has been specified in BLE 5.0, namely basic and advanced neighbor discovery process. The neighbor discovery process enables a BLE device called a scanner to discover another neighboring BLE device called an advertiser. Advanced neighbor discovery process is an extended version of the basic one designed to accommodate environments where there are a large number of BLE advertisers. However, the advanced neighbor discovery process has a fatal drawback. That is the hidden node problem which makes it very difficult to discover an advertiser when more than two scanners try to discover the advertiser at the same time. Therefore, how to overcome this problem is a challenge. In this paper, we propose a solution that enables multiple scanners to discover an advertiser successfully. The proposed scheme can dynamically adapt to different numbers of scanners and achieve better discovery performance. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Combining agriculture and photovoltaics on the same land area gains in attention and political support in a growing number of countries accompanied by notable research activities in France, USA and Korea, amongst others. This study assesses the technical feasibility of agrivoltaic (APV), while it gives insights on how to design an APV system. Furthermore, it analyses the electrical yield and the behavior and productivity of four crops grown in Germany's largest agrivoltaic research facility installed in 2016 near Lake Constance within the research project APV-RESOLA by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. The German design differs from most other agrivoltaic approaches by allowing for a wide range of machine employment, facilitated by a vertical clearance of 5 m and a width clearance of up to 19 m. Crops cultivated under the APV system and on the reference field under a crop rotation scheme include potato, celeriac, clover grass and winter wheat. The land use efficiency measured by the Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) indicated a rise between 56% and 70% in 2017 while the dry and hot summer in 2018 demonstrated that the agrivoltaic system could increase land productivity by nearly 90%. Radiation simulations showed that deviating from full south by around 30° resulted in equal distribution of radiation on ground level, representing the basis for the agrivoltaic design. Considering climate change and increasing land scarcity, our overall results suggest a high potential of agrivoltaics as a viable and efficient technology to address major challenges of the 21rst century.

The tumor suppressor BRCA1 regulates the DNA damage response (DDR) and other processes that remain incompletely defined. Among these, BRCA1 heterodimerizes with BARD1 to ubiquitylate targets via its N-terminal E3 ligase activity. Here, it is demonstrated that BRCA1 promotes oxidative metabolism by degrading Oct1 (POU2F1), a transcription factor with proglycolytic and tumorigenic effects. BRCA1 E3 ubiquitin ligase mutation skews cells toward a glycolytic metabolic profile while elevating Oct1 protein. CRISPR-mediated Oct1 deletion reverts the glycolytic phenotype. RNA sequencing (RNAseq) confirms deregulation of metabolic genes downstream of Oct1. BRCA1 mediates Oct1 ubiquitylation and degradation, and mutation of two ubiquitylated Oct1 lysines insulates the protein against BRCA1-mediated destabilization. Oct1 deletion in MCF-7 breast cancer cells does not perturb growth in standard culture, but inhibits growth in soft agar and xenograft assays. In primary breast cancer clinical specimens, Oct1 protein levels correlate positively with tumor aggressiveness and inversely with BRCA1. These results identify BRCA1 as an Oct1 ubiquitin ligase that catalyzes Oct1 degradation to promote oxidative metabolism and restrict tumorigenicity. Mol Cancer Res; 16(3); 439–52. ©2018 AACR.

Embryonic stem cells co-express Oct4 and Oct1, a related protein with similar DNA-binding specificity. To study the role of Oct1 in ESC pluripotency and transcriptional control, we constructed germline and inducible-conditional Oct1-deficient ESC lines. ESCs lacking Oct1 show normal appearance, self-renewal and growth but manifest defects upon differentiation. They fail to form beating cardiomyocytes, generate neurons poorly, form small, poorly differentiated teratomas, and cannot generate chimeric mice. Upon RA-mediated differentiation, Oct1-deficient cells induce lineage-appropriate developmentally poised genes poorly while lineage-inappropriate genes, including extra-embryonic genes, are aberrantly expressed. In ESCs, Oct1 co-occupies a specific set of targets with Oct4, but does not occupy differentially expressed developmental targets. Instead, Oct1 occupies these targets as cells differentiate and Oct4 declines. These results identify a dynamic interplay between Oct1 and Oct4, in particular during the critical window immediately after loss of pluripotency when cells make the earliest developmental fate decisions. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20937.001, eLife digest Humans and most other animals are composed of hundreds of different types of cell, including nerve cells, muscle cells and blood cells. Despite performing many different roles, these cells all develop from a single fertilized egg, which divides to make a particular group of cells that when studied in the laboratory are called embryonic stem cells (or ESCs for short). The ability of a cell to become a different cell type is defined as “potency”. ESCs are unique because they can specialize into any type of cell present in the adult organism, and they are therefore called “pluripotent”. However, as the embryo develops, its ESCs gradually lose their potency, and become more and more specialized. The activity of a great number of genes must be regulated during the transition from pluripotent to specialized cells, and some of the mechanisms involved in this transition are still unclear. ESCs are known to need a gene-regulating protein called Oct4 to remain pluripotent and Shen, Kang, Shakya et al. now show that a similar protein named Oct1 is essential for their transition to becoming more specialized. When the gene for Oct1 was deleted from mouse ECSs, they behaved largely like “normal” ESCs, but could not properly mature into certain cell types such as heart and nerve cells. Molecular analyses revealed that Oct4 and Oct1 compete to regulate the activity of many common genes with opposing outcomes: Oct4 keeps ESCs pluripotent while Oct1 leads them to specialize. The Oct4 protein is abundant in ESCs and prevails over Oct1, but as the cells mature, the levels of Oct4 drop, and Oct1 takes over in the regulation of their common target genes. Going forward, a better understanding of how ESCs become specialized will help basic research in the laboratory and allow scientists to tackle new questions about how the human body develops and how our organs work. In the longer-term, these findings might also have applications in the field of regenerative medicine, which aims to repair or replace a person’s cells, tissues or organs to improve their health. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20937.002

integrated camera, users can interact with objects or Things in a very simple manner. A further advantage is that the objects themselves don’t have to be tagged with any kind of markers. Also, Quantitative validation of experimental results, while presenting an accurate rate, an early detection rate and a correct duration rate with detecting the intent of several smart-phone performing various activities, shows that proposed research contributes to implement effective intent recognition system.

The Oct1 transcription factor is a potent regulator of stress responses, metabolism, and tumorigenicity. Although Oct1 is regulated by phosphorylation and ubiquitination, the presence and importance of other modifications is unknown. Here we show that Oct1 is modified by O-linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) moieties. We map two sites of O-GlcNAcylation at positions T255 and S728 within human Oct1. Under anchorage-independent overgrowth conditions, Oct1 associates 3-fold more strongly with the Gadd45a promoter and mediates transcriptional repression. Increased binding correlates with quantitative reductions in Oct1 nuclear periphery-associated puncta, and a reduced association with lamin B1. The O-GlcNAc modification sites are important for both Gadd45a repression and anchorage-independent survival. In contrast to chronic overgrowth conditions, following acute nutrient starvation Oct1 mediates Gadd45a activation. The O-GlcNAc sites are also important for Gadd45a activation under these conditions. We also, for the first time, identify specific Oct1 ubiquitination sites. The findings suggest that Oct1 integrates metabolic and stress signals via O-GlcNAc modification to regulate target gene activity.—Kang, J., Shen, Z., Lim, J.-M., Handa, H., Wells, L., Tantin, D. Regulation of Oct1/Pou2f1 transcription activity by O-GlcNAcylation.

Jamming and interference are significant problems in wireless networks including sensor networks and tactical military networks. Recently, intelligent jamming schemes have been introduced to enhance the jamming capability based on the understanding of protocols, while ensuring energy efficiency. In this paper, we examine how to mitigate the effect of the intelligent jamming method and present an adaptive network-layer jamming resilient scheme. We show the proposed scheme achieves reliable data delivery as well as reduces control overhead in the face of the intelligent jamming.

In this paper, we describe an augmented reality system for defense technologies and present a novel approach to a Collaboration Interaction Model (CIM) combining context-aware and mobile augmented reality devices. This model is aware of a user's context through user-centric integration and inference of contextual information in geo- cloud space. Based on the user's context, the model filters the content relevant to the user and overlays the filtered content over the associated physical entities. In addition, CIM generates the community according to the relationship between the entities and enables a user to selectively share personalized content with other mobile users.

The pluripotency control regions (PluCRs) are defined as genomic regions that are bound by POU5F1, SOX2, and NANOG in vivo. We utilized a high-throughput binding assay to record more than 270,000 different DNA/protein binding measurements along incrementally tiled windows of DNA within these PluCRs. This high-resolution binding map is then used to systematically define the context of POU factor binding, and reveals patterns of cooperativity and competition in the pluripotency network. The most prominent pattern is a pervasive binding competition between POU5F1 and the forkhead transcription factors. Like many transcription factors, POU5F1 is co-expressed with a paralog, POU2F1, that shares an apparently identical binding specificity. By analyzing thousands of binding measurements, we discover context effects that discriminate POU2F1 from POU5F1 binding. Proximal NANOG binding promotes POU5F1 binding, whereas nearby SOX2 binding favors POU2F1. We demonstrate by cross-species comparison and by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) that the contextual sequence determinants learned in vitro are sufficient to predict POU2F1 binding in vivo. [Supplemental material is available for this article. The microarray data from this study have been submitted to the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo) under accession no. GSE27535.] POU5F1 (formerly Oct4), SOX2, and NANOG are generally regarded

Wireless communications has matured from a curiosity to a serious business tool. Personal digital assistants have totally replaced daytimers and notepads. But security has been lacking or weak, making such automation untrustworthy for critical applications. By adding strong security and authentication, these tools will facilitate trustworthy electronic methods for commerce, financial transactions, medical data, even prescriptions. In this paper, considering the limited computing power of mobile and portable devices, a simple but efficient pre-processing method is introduced for iris localization for such iris images. An iris database ( http://chungbuk.ac.kr/Iris/index.html ) with such consideration is created for this paper. The proposed iris pre-processing method implements the following steps: (a) Automatic segmentation for pupil region, (b) Helper data extraction and pupil detection, etc (c) Eyelids detection and feature matching. Experiment results show that the proposed iris pre-processing method is performing well and stable across different iris databases.

Oct1 and Oct4 are homologous transcription factors with similar DNA-binding specificities. Here we show that Oct1 is dynamically phosphorylated in vivo following exposure of cells to oxidative and genotoxic stress. We further show that stress regulates the selectivity of both proteins for specific DNA sequences. Mutation of conserved phosphorylation target DNA-binding domain residues in Oct1, and Oct4 confirms their role in regulating binding selectivity. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation, we show that association of Oct4 and Oct1 with a distinct group of in vivo targets is inducible by stress, and that Oct1 is essential for a normal post-stress transcriptional response. Finally, using an unbiased Oct1 target screen we identify a large number of genes targeted by Oct1 specifically under conditions of stress, and show that several of these inducible Oct1 targets are also inducibly bound by Oct4 in embryonic stem cells following stress exposure.

Dioxygenases of the TET (Ten-Eleven Translocation) family produce oxidized methylcytosines, intermediates in DNA demethylation, as well as new epigenetic marks. Here we show data suggesting that TET proteins maintain the consistency of gene transcription. Embryos lacking Tet1 and Tet3 (Tet1/3 DKO) displayed a strong loss of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) and a concurrent increase in 5-methylcytosine (5mC) at the eight-cell stage. Single cells from eight-cell embryos and individual embryonic day 3.5 blastocysts showed unexpectedly variable gene expression compared with controls, and this variability correlated in blastocysts with variably increased 5mC/5hmC in gene bodies and repetitive elements. Despite the variability, genes encoding regulators of cholesterol biosynthesis were reproducibly down-regulated in Tet1/3 DKO blastocysts, resulting in a characteristic phenotype of holoprosencephaly in the few embryos that survived to later stages. Thus, TET enzymes and DNA cytosine modifications could directly or indirectly modulate transcriptional noise, resulting in the selective susceptibility of certain intracellular pathways to regulation by TET proteins.

A break-up zone in the diesel spray of a valve-covered orifice nozzle was investigated to observe the effect of the injection rate on the spray structure and to obtain physical insight into the development of a transient diesel spray. The surface shape and internal structure of the diesel spray from a common-rail injection system were visualized with high spatial and temporal resolution under atmospheric ambient conditions. During the injection period, common-rail pressures of 39.5 MPa and 112 MPa were used to obtain highly magnified spray images from the nozzle exit to about 260 nozzle diameters downstream. Before the atomization break-up regime appeared, a short transition period was observed, while ligaments were formed on the disturbed liquid column surface. During atomization, the spray was surrounded by these short fine ligaments, which were arranged and bent towards the direction of the spray penetration. The internal structure of the break-up zone consisted of complex entangled ligaments and dispersed liquid drops. The break-up process occurred simultaneously at the spray surface and the core. The entrained ambient air that penetrated through the crevices of the densely packed ligaments seemed to stretch the coherent structure and to carry the small droplets from the surface of the spray. The collapse of a cavitation bubble might have caused the ligaments to form near the nozzle exit at the core of the spray, although details of the process remain to be identified. Using image-processing techniques, the sizes of the liquid drops downstream from the spray were measured. The average size of the drops decreased as the injection rate decreased and, as expected, a higher common-rail pressure produced smaller droplets.

Transient nature of common-rail diesel sprays was characterized at the initial stage of fuel injection, the effects of injection rate being taken into account. Direct photography and the shadowgraph technique were used to obtain macroscopic spray images at several different experimental conditions. Highly versatile image processing software was developed to analyse the spray images. In the analysis, spray penetration, dispersion and spray angles were defined and accurately measured by the software with consistency. The effects of rail pressure and ambient gas density upon spray behaviours were discussed in detail. Based on the measured injection rates, the asymptotic relations of spray penetration were found at early and late stages of injection. The changes in spray volume were correlated with the measured injection rates. It was found that the initial spray penetration correlates well with the amount of fuel injected. The increase in injection rate during the injection period was observed to induce a smaller spray angle.

Dioxygenases of the Ten-Eleven Translocation (TET) family are 5-methylcytosine oxidases that convert 5-methylcytosine (5mC) to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) and further oxidation products in DNA. We show that Tet1 and Tet2 have distinct roles in regulating 5hmC in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC). Tet1 depletion diminishes 5hmC levels at transcription start sites (TSS), whereas Tet2 depletion is predominantly associated with decreased 5hmC in gene bodies. Enrichment of 5hmC is observed at the boundaries of exons that are highly expressed, and Tet2 depletion results in substantial loss of 5hmC at these boundaries. In contrast, at promoter/TSS regions, Tet2 depletion results in increased 5hmC, potentially because of the redundant activity of Tet1. Together, the data point to a complex interplay between Tet1 and Tet2 in mESC, and to distinct roles for these two proteins in regulating promoter, exon, and polyadenylation site usage in cells.

A rapid increase in personal mobile communication devices and wireless communication capability of electronic devices in home automations and security systems will in turn increase interference among communication devices. Especially, interference source with mobility can significantly affect data delivery among wireless communication devices, which deteriorates service in the system. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive Networking for Continuous and Reliable data Delivery (ANCORD) scheme that guarantees lossless and reliable data delivery by employing the adaptive networking method.

In zygotes, a global loss of DNA methylation occurs selectively in the paternal pronucleus before the first cell division, concomitantly with the appearance of modified forms of 5-methylcytosine. The adjacent maternal pronucleus and certain paternally-imprinted loci are protected from this process. Nakamura et al. recently clarified the molecular mechanism involved: PGC7/Stella/Dppa3 binds to dimethylated histone 3 lysine 9 (H3K9me2), thereby blocking the activity of the Tet3 methylcytosine oxidase in the maternal genome as well as at certain imprinted loci in the paternal genome.

Defining master transcription factors governing somatic and cancer stem cell identity is an important goal. Here we show that the Oct4 paralog Oct1, a transcription factor implicated in stress responses, metabolic control, and poised transcription states, regulates normal and pathologic stem cell function. Oct1HI cells in the colon and small intestine co-express known stem cell markers. In primary malignant tissue, high Oct1 protein but not mRNA levels strongly correlate with the frequency of CD24LOCD44HI cancer-initiating cells. Reducing Oct1 expression via RNAi reduces the proportion of ALDHHI and dye effluxHI cells, and increasing Oct1 increases the proportion of ALDHHI cells. Normal ALDHHI cells harbor elevated Oct1 protein but not mRNA levels. Functionally, we show that Oct1 promotes tumor engraftment frequency and promotes hematopoietic stem cell engraftment potential in competitive and serial transplants. In addition to previously described Oct1 transcriptional targets, we identify four Oct1 targets associated with the stem cell phenotype. Cumulatively, the data indicate that Oct1 regulates normal and cancer stem cell function., Author Summary Understanding the mechanisms that control stem cell function is a fundamental prerequisite both for the full application of stem cells to regenerative medicine and for a full understanding of the relationship between stem cells and cancer. In this study we show that a transcription factor known as Oct1 is a central regulator of normal and cancer stem cell function. We show that high Oct1 levels are associated with stem cells in multiple normal and malignant settings. Altering Oct1 expression, up or down, correspondingly alters multiple stem cell parameters, as well as stem cell function. We highlight known and identify new target genes Oct1 binds to that are consistent with a role in stem cell function.

Their combined smartphone image processing, recognition and communication capabilities in a smartphone device make them an ideal platform for embedding computer vision in the pursuit of new mobile applications. This paper, we present a novel approach of collaborative interaction model combining tangible user interface and mobile augmented reality. This model is aware of a user's context through the user-centric integration and inference of contextual information in smart space. Based on the user's context, it filters the content relevant toe the user and overlays the filtered content over the associated physical entities. In addition, the collaboration interaction model generates the community according to the relationship between the entities and enables a user to share the personalized content with other mobile users selectively in a customized way. This paper describes the objectives and method for developing a mobile interaction model for smart-phones.

This paper presents an application of vision-based object recognition to create in mobile robots. A system is developed which makes use of the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm to recognize a leader robot or human. The follower robot then uses PID control to track the leader's movements while maintaining a fixed following distance. These experiments proved the SIFT algorithm as a viable method of creating leader/follower behavior, and can serve as a proof of concept for more complex convoying operations using machine-vision based leader detection.

It is a classic story of two related transcription factors. Oct4 is a potent regulator of pluripotency during early mammalian embryonic development, and is notable for its ability to convert adult somatic cells to pluripotency. The widely expressed Oct1 protein shares significant homology with Oct4, binds to the same sequences, regulates common target genes, and shares common modes of upstream regulation, including the ability to respond to cellular stress. Both proteins are also associated with malignancy, yet Oct1 cannot substitute for Oct4 in the generation of pluripotency. The molecular underpinnings of these phenomena are emerging, as are the consequences for adult stem cells and cancer, and thereby hangs a tale.

CBIR makes a wide use of histogram based methods for image indexing. Histograms describe the global intensity distribution of images. They are very easy to compute and are insensitive to small changes in object translations and rotations. However, they are not robust to large appearance changes, and they might give similar results for different kinds of images if the distributions of colors are same in the images. Our research focuses mainly on the image bins (histogram value divisions by frequency) separation technique followed by calculating the sum of values, and using them as image local features. At first, the histogram is first calculated for an image. After that, it is subdivided into sixteen equal bins and the sum of local values is calculated and stored. We have tested the proposed algorithm on a large database of images.

Color histogram is widely used for image indexing in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). A color histogram describes the global color distribution of an image. It is very easy to compute and is insensitive to small changes in viewing positions. However, the histogram is not robust to large appearance changes. Moreover, the histogram might give similar results for different kinds of images if the distributions of colors are same in the images. On the other hand, color correlogram is efficiently used for image indexing in content-based image retrieval. Color correlogram extracts not only the color distribution of pixels in images like color histogram, but also extracts the spatial information of pixels in the images. The characteristic of the color Correlogram to take into account the spatial information as well as the distribution of color pixels greatly attracts the researcher for content based image retrieval. In this paper, we propose the image bin (histogram value divisions) separation technique followed by extracting maxima of frequencies and plotting a correlogram. At first, the histogram is first calculated for an image. After that, it is subdivided into four equal bins. Each bin is subdivided into four more bins and for every such subdivision the maxima of frequencies s calculated. This information is stored in the form of a correlogram. The distance between correlogram of the query image with the corresponding correlogram of database images is calculated. The proposed algorithm is tested on a database comprising a large number of images.

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of National Research Laboratory scheme, Korean government.

Spray characteristics of diesel fuel injection system is one of the most important factors in diesel combustion and pollutant emissions especially in HSDI (High Speed Direct Injection) diesel engines where the interval between the onset of combustion and the evaporation of atomized fuel is relatively short. An investigation into various spray characteristics from different holes of VCO (Valve Covered Orifice) nozzles was performed. The global characteristics of spray, including spray angle, spray tip penetration, and spray pattern were measured from the spray images, which were frozen by an instantaneous photography with a spark light source and ICCD. These spray images were acquired sequentially from the first injection to fifth injection to investigate injection-to-injection variation. For better understanding of spray development and their internal structures, a long-distance microscope was used to get magnified spray images at the vicinity of the nozzle hole with a laser sheet illumination. Also backward illuminated images with a spark light source were taken at various points of the spray field including vicinity of the nozzle hole to understand surface structures and breakup process of dense spray from VCO nozzle incorporated with common-rail injection system. As injection pressure increases interaction between spray and ambient air becomes important to liquid penetration and spray angle. Macroscopic spray angle increases due to air entrainment as injection pressure increases though spray angle near the hole seems independent from injection pressure. Liquid penetration is initially affected by injection rate increase as needle is moving upward and liquid penetration increase rate is in accordance with injection pressure. After this stage, air entrainment and high potential of evaporation makes the increase rate slower and this tendency is more obvious for higher injection pressure. Microscopic images taken at the vicinity of the nozzle hole exit reveal that central dense region consists of thick ligaments or membranes and most of the liquid droplets are formed at the tip of ligaments from spray surface due to the waves developed on it. Some smaller liquid droplets seem to be generated from the bubble or membrane breakup process. Droplet sizing was performed from the microscopic images, which were frozen by spark light source that has light duration of 10ns and high-resolution CCD camera equipped with long distance microscope whose magnification factor is more than six. Fuel particle sizes, described as SMD (Sauter Mean Diameter) in many points, decreased during injection durations and higher injection pressure induced smaller value.