Acquisition Of Features Research Articles

Представления о рыбах в традиционной культуре лесных юкагиров (по материалам языка, этнографии и фольклора)

The study aims to describe the traditional ideas of the Forest Yukaghir about fish based on the materials of language, ethnography and folklore. Scientific novelty lies in the systematisation of these data, introduction of new information on the ethnography and folklore of the Yukaghir into scientific use. As a result of the study, it has been shown that linguistic and ethnographic materials on the Forest Yukaghir indicate the great importance of fishing in their life. In the non-fairytale and fairytale prose of the Yukagir related to the ichthyofauna, mythological representations associated with the theme of birth are found, the reasons for the acquisition of certain features by fish are explained, folklore and mythological characteristics of individual fish are given; in small genres of folklore, there is an indication of the images of fish in fairy tales, a comparison based on an external feature; in song folklore reflecting the worldview and way of life of fishermen, fish are a marker of ancestral territories, a symbol of natural abundance.

Pyruvate prevents the onset of the cachectic features and metabolic alterations in myotubes downregulating STAT3 signaling.

Cachexia is a systemic disease associated with several pathologies, including cancer, that leads to excessive weight loss due to enhanced protein degradation. Previously, we showed that cachectic features in myotubes are provoked by a metabolic shift toward lactic fermentation. Our previous results led us to hyphotesise that increasing pyruvate concentration could impede the metabolic modifications responsible for induction of cachexia in myotubes. Here, we demonstrated that the addition of sodium pyruvate in conditioned media from CT26 colon cancer cells (CM CT26) prevents the onset of either phenotypic and metabolic cachectic features. Myotubes treated with CM CT26 containing sodium pyruvate show a phenotype similar to the healthy counterpart and display lactate production, oxygen consumption, and pyruvate dehydrogenase activity as control myotubes. The use of the Mitochondrial Pyruvate Carrier inhibitor UK5099, highlights the importance of mitochondrial pyruvate amount in the prevention of cachexia. Indeed, UK5099-treated myotubes show cachectic features as those observed in myotubes treated with CM CT26. Finally, we found that sodium pyruvate is able to decrease STAT3 phosphorylation level, a signaling pathway involved in the induction of cachexia in myotubes. Collectively, our results show that cachexia in myotubes could be prevented by the utilization of sodium pyruvate which impedes the metabolic modifications responsible for the acquisition of the cachectic features.

Population genomics of an icefish reveals mechanisms of glacier-driven adaptive radiation in Antarctic notothenioids

BackgroundAntarctica harbors the bulk of the species diversity of the dominant teleost fish suborder—Notothenioidei. However, the forces that shape their evolution are still under debate.ResultsWe sequenced the genome of an icefish, Chionodraco hamatus, and used population genomics and demographic modelling of sequenced genomes of 52 C. hamatus individuals collected mainly from two East Antarctic regions to investigate the factors driving speciation. Results revealed four icefish populations with clear reproduction separation were established 15 to 50 kya (kilo years ago) during the last glacial maxima (LGM). Selection sweeps in genes involving immune responses, cardiovascular development, and photoperception occurred differentially among the populations and were correlated with population-specific microbial communities and acquisition of distinct morphological features in the icefish taxa. Population and species-specific antifreeze glycoprotein gene expansion and glacial cycle-paced duplication/degeneration of the zona pellucida protein gene families indicated fluctuating thermal environments and periodic influence of glacial cycles on notothenioid divergence.ConclusionsWe revealed a series of genomic evidence indicating differential adaptation of C. hamatus populations and notothenioid species divergence in the extreme and unique marine environment. We conclude that geographic separation and adaptation to heterogeneous pathogen, oxygen, and light conditions of local habitats, periodically shaped by the glacial cycles, were the key drivers propelling species diversity in Antarctica.

Combining robust level extraction and unsupervised adaptive classification for high-accuracy fNIRS-BCI: An evidence on single-trial differentiation between mentally arithmetic- and singing-tasks.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a safe and non-invasive optical imaging technique that is being increasingly used in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to recognize mental tasks. Unlike electroencephalography (EEG) which directly measures neural activation, fNIRS signals reflect neurovascular-coupling inducing hemodynamic response that can be slow in time and varying in the pattern. The established classifiers extend the EEG-ones by mostly employing the feature based supervised models such as the support vector machine (SVM) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and fail to timely characterize the level-sensitive hemodynamic pattern. A dedicated classifier is desired for intentional activity recognition of fNIRS-BCI, including the adaptive acquisition of response relevant features and accurate discrimination of implied ideas. To this end, we herein propose a specifically-designed joint adaptive classification method that combines a Kalman filtering (KF) for robust level extraction and an adaptive Gaussian mixture model (a-GMM) for enhanced pattern recognition. The simulative investigations and paradigm experiments have shown that the proposed KF/a-GMM classification method can effectively track the random variations of task-evoked brain activation patterns, and improve the accuracy of single-trial classification task of mental arithmetic vs. mental singing, as compared to the conventional methods, e.g., those that employ combinations of the band-pass filtering (BPF) based feature extractors (mean, slope, and variance, etc.) and the classical recognizers (GMM, SVM, and LDA). The proposed approach paves a promising way for developing the real-time fNIRS-BCI technique.

Hybrid Detection of Breast Abnormalities Based on Contrast Agents: Introducing a Proof of Concept from a Physics Perspective.

This manuscript attempts to present a proof of concept from a physics perspective of a hybrid detective system based on the utilization of contrast agents with the purpose of indicating breast tissue abnormalities. In the present concept, the photon-counting module of the detector is set up to the K-characteristic radiation emitted by the contrast agent. Τwo X-ray spectra were used: 40 kV- W/Al (1.6 mm) and 50 kV- W/Al (1.6 mm) with additional filtration of 0.3 mm Gd. Iodine (I) contrast agent was studied as a ‘‘fingerprint’’ for tissue abnormality indication. A computational Monte Carlo model, based on previously published validated tabulated data and tissue experimental measurements, was developed with the purpose of showing that the present concept has practical potential; however, with a weakness of not being accompanied by experimental validation. The study considered two types of internal tissue layers (fibrous/tumor with thickness values of 0.2–2.5 mm) within an external layer of fat tissue (4 and 8 cm). Quantitative (number of encountered K-photons) and qualitative (tumor–fibrous ratio) advantages of using X-ray spectra of a higher tube voltage (50 kV) and of counting the Κα photons were found. In addition, the quantitative and qualitative benefits were correspondingly more dominant at high (2.5 mm) and low (0.2 mm) tissue thickness values. In conclusion, by utilizing suitable contrast agents as ‘‘fingerprint’’ tissue abnormalities, the acquisition of combined morphological and functional imaging features (through the counting of K-X-rays) could enhance breast imaging in its present form and lead to advanced prognostic capabilities of breast abnormalities.

Good view frames from ultrasonography (USG) video containing ONS diameter using state-of-the-art deep learning architectures.

This paper presents an automated method for detection of the diagnostically prominent frames containing optic nerve sheath (ONS) from ocular ultrasonography video using deep learning; such frames are referred to as "Good View" frames in this paper. Vivid acquisition and measurement of diagnostic features during ultrasound imaging is a challenging task; it needs a highly skilled and experienced medical expert. Automated detection of the Good View frame and the subsequent automatic measurement of optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD), predicting elevated intracranial pressure (ICP) status, will eliminate the need for frequent intervention of a medical expert for continuous monitoring and ICP status in traumatic patients. In the presented work, the proposed model automatically detects the appropriate frames containing ONS, from an ultrasound video, by using faster region-based CNN (Faster R-CNN) object detection model. The region proposal detection network finds the ONS by using bounding boxes. In addition, three CNN-based architectures are used for its feature extraction. Finally, SoftMax classifier classifies the ONS containing Good View frame. The Inceptionv2, ResNet50, and ResNet101 architectures are then compared by utilizing the optimized learning rate and epoch parameters for the CNN model so as to provide better detection of the Good View frame. The performance of the developed module has been analyzed by proposing a grading criterion of the Good View frame. Based on the detection score and mean opinion score, an USG frame is considered a Good View for a 95-99% detection score, and this Good View frame is used for measuring the ONSD value. It is found that Faster R-CNN ResNet101 (model 3) is an optimal model in terms of sensitivity and specificity for Good View frame detection at a learning rate of 0.0003. The sensitivity and specificity of this model are obtained as 90.41 and 91.45, respectively. Furthermore, the ONSD value is measured from Good View-detected frames using an automated algorithm involving image processing and computational methods. Considering the Good View frame (detection score 95-99), the algorithm-generated ONSD values are compared with the radiologist's measured value of ONSD to validate the findings; a small percent root mean square difference (PRD) of 0.501 is found between these values, which is strong indicative of the accuracy of algorithm generated ONSD measurement using automatically detected Good View ocular USG frames.

The rapid construction method of human body model for virtual try-on on mobile terminal based on MDD-Net

Traditional anthropometric evaluation needs professional measuring tools and operations, and it is time-consuming, expensive, and not suitable for virtual try-on. As the mobile internet develops, the issue of human body reconstruction toward virtual try-on needs to be tackled. This paper proposes a rapid human body reconstruction method for virtual try-on based on multidimensional dense net (MDD-Net) on mobile terminal. MDD-Net takes fusion features as input and predicts 3D human body model. The acquisition of fusion features and the display of 3D human body are implemented on mobile toward virtual try-on. In the learning fuzzy anthropometric feature module, the example-guided fuzzy anthropometric feature matrix is acquired and default coding elements are interpolated. In the learning multi-perspective silhouette feature module, the fine human body shape features are learned based on DenseNet201. A related fusion feature data set is generated for the training and testing of MDD-Net. Compared to shape pose estimation models, the shape representation spaces of HMR and SMPLify are only 20.34% and 7.59% of our method, and their prediction accuracies are approximately 50% of our method. Compared to accurate shape estimation models, our method is more robust against the pose and perspective noise. The prediction accuracies of our method are improved by 13.34%, 55.77%, 34.6%, and 43.4%, 37.2% 9.0% on four test sets. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the superiority of our method for human body shape estimation toward virtual try-on.

Mitochondrial Genomes in Perkinsus Decode Conserved Frameshifts in All Genes.

Mitochondrial genomes of apicomplexans, dinoflagellates, and chrompodellids that collectively make up the Myzozoa, encode only three proteins (Cytochrome b [COB], Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 [COX1], Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 3 [COX3]), contain fragmented ribosomal RNAs, and display extensive recombination, RNA trans-splicing, and RNA-editing. The early-diverging Perkinsozoa is the final major myzozoan lineage whose mitochondrial genomes remained poorly characterized. Previous reports of Perkinsus genes indicated independent acquisition of non-canonical features, namely the occurrence of multiple frameshifts. To determine both ancestral myzozoan and novel perkinsozoan mitochondrial genome features, we sequenced and assembled mitochondrial genomes of four Perkinsus species. These data show a simple ancestral genome with the common reduced coding capacity but disposition for rearrangement. We identified 75 frameshifts across the four species that occur as distinct types and that are highly conserved in gene location. A decoding mechanism apparently employs unused codons at the frameshift sites that advance translation either +1 or +2 frames to the next used codon. The locations of frameshifts are seemingly positioned to regulate protein folding of the nascent protein as it emerges from the ribosome. The cox3 gene is distinct in containing only one frameshift and showing strong selection against residues that are otherwise frequently encoded at the frameshift positions in cox1 and cob. All genes lack cysteine codons implying a reduction to 19 amino acids in these genomes. Furthermore, mitochondrion-encoded rRNA fragment complements are incomplete in Perkinsus spp. but some are found in the nuclear DNA suggesting import into the organelle. Perkinsus demonstrates further remarkable trajectories of organelle genome evolution including pervasive integration of frameshift translation into genome expression.

Real-Time and Efficient Multi-Scale Traffic Sign Detection Method for Driverless Cars.

Traffic signs detection and recognition is an essential and challenging task for driverless cars. However, the detection of traffic signs in most scenarios belongs to small target detection, and most existing object detection methods show poor performance in these cases, which increases the difficulty of detection. To further improve the accuracy of small object detection for traffic signs, this paper proposed an optimization strategy based on the YOLOv4 network. Firstly, an improved triplet attention mechanism was added to the backbone network. It was combined with optimized weights to make the network focus more on the acquisition of channel and spatial features. Secondly, a bidirectional feature pyramid network (BiFPN) was used in the neck network to enhance feature fusion, which can effectively improve the feature perception field of small objects. The improved model and some state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods were compared on the joint dataset TT100K-COCO. Experimental results show that the enhanced network can achieve 60.4% mAP(Mean Average Precision), surpassing the YOLOv4 by 8% with the same input size. With a larger input size, it can achieve a best performance capability of 66.4% mAP. This work provides a reference for research on obtaining higher accuracy for traffic sign detection in autonomous driving.

P12.12.A Resolving the cellular architecture of infiltration zones in glioblastoma

Abstract Background Therapy resistance and infiltration still pose major challenges in the treatment of glioma. In the tumour border niche, an interaction between different healthy cell types and malignant cells leads to therapy resistance, acquisition of stem-cell like features, and recurrence. However, studying the tumour border is quite challenging due to the lack of specific glioma markers. Although single cell datasets contain information about the abundance of different cell types, they still lack the spatial arrangement at the border niche. Spatial transcriptomic approaches might overcome these problems, but are still limited by a low resolution or a limited number of detectable transcripts. Material and Methods We applied the Visium spatial transcriptomics platform on 18 FFPE and 11 fresh frozen gliomas to image the cellular architecture of the tumour border niche. In addition, the transcriptome of single nuclei isolated from the fresh frozen sections was also analysed. Using Seurat and a single cell reference set from Darmanis et al. (2017) the cell types were mapped onto the section and the copy number variation profile (CNV) was determined. Results Using a single cell reference set we were able to map different cell types onto different areas of the tumour border niche of gliomas. To control the mapping the expression of cellular markers was used to detect healthy brain cells and the CNV profile was used to identify the tumour. The mapping matched the expression of markers and the CNV profile and only showed minor differences. First analysis confirmed distinct distribution of oligodendrocytes and neurons at the tumour border. We could not detect an enrichment of any tumour subtypes at the tumour border so far. However, one sample showed an enrichment of the mesenchymal subtype at the perinecrotic region. CNVs also showed low intratumoural heterogeneity for most sections. Conclusion Although the first results of the mapping of different cell types look promising, a larger reference set including a larger variety of cell types and tumour subtypes could improve the mapping even further. Nevertheless, we were able to show the cell type distribution at the tumour border and generate robust CNVs for most sections using spatial transcriptomics.

Spatio-temporal aggregation of skeletal motion features for human motion prediction

This study proposes a human body motion prediction model that can adapt to the disorders in various human motion patterns and represent the kinematic constraints. In human motion prediction, the acquisition of features that capture inter-motion and inter-joint linkages is considered effective. To generate links that are adaptive to the reference time of dominant features and their crossing-over joints, we construct an attention-based network that aggregates motion sequences temporally and spatially. We evaluated the motion prediction results using the Human3.6M dataset with the indices of mean angle error and mean per joint position error and showed that our method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.

The Effect of Written Corrective Feedback on the Acquisition of Different Types of Linguistic Features

The current study investigated whether there exists a differential effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of rule-based features (simple present) and item-based features (prepositions). Fifty students enrolled in an EFL writing class were divided into four groups. Each group received one of the following treatments: direct CF on simple present, indirect CF on simple present, direct CF on prepositions, or indirect CF on prepositions over three sessions. In this pretest/immediate posttest/delayed posttest design, students received written CF, revised writing tasks, and completed new tasks and tests. Results showed that simple present, a type of rule-based feature, responded better to indirect CF while prepositions, a type of item-based feature, responded better to direct CF. The findings suggest that teachers should consider addressing different types of linguistic features through different types of CF.
  

Extracellular Vesicles in Myeloid Neoplasms.

Myeloid neoplasms arise from malignant primitive cells, which exhibit growth advantage within the bone marrow microenvironment (BMM). The interaction between these malignant cells and BMM cells is critical for the progression of these diseases. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid bound vesicles secreted into the extracellular space and involved in intercellular communication. Recent studies have described RNA and protein alterations in EVs isolated from myeloid neoplasm patients compared to healthy controls. The altered expression of various micro-RNAs is the best-described feature of EVs of these patients. Some of these micro-RNAs induce growth-related pathways such as AKT/mTOR and promote the acquisition of stem cell-like features by malignant cells. Another well-described characteristic of EVs in myeloid neoplasms is their ability to suppress healthy hematopoiesis either via direct effect on healthy CD34+ cells or via alteration of the differentiation of BMM cells. These results support a role of EVs in the pathogenesis of myeloid neoplasms. mainly through mediating the interaction between malignant and BMM cells, and warrant further study to better understand their biology. In this review, we describe the reported alterations of EV composition in myeloid neoplasms and the recent discoveries supporting their involvement in the development and progression of these diseases.

The AGEs/RAGE Transduction Signaling Prompts IL-8/CXCR1/2-Mediated Interaction between Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts (CAFs) and Breast Cancer Cells.

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and the cognate receptor, named RAGE, are involved in metabolic disorders characterized by hyperglycemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity. Moreover, the AGEs/RAGE transduction pathway prompts a dysfunctional interaction between breast cancer cells and tumor stroma toward the acquisition of malignant features. However, the action of the AGEs/RAGE axis in the main players of the tumor microenvironment, named breast cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), remains to be fully explored. In the present study, by chemokine array, we first assessed that interleukin-8 (IL-8) is the most up-regulated pro-inflammatory chemokine upon AGEs/RAGE activation in primary CAFs, obtained from breast tumors. Thereafter, we ascertained that the AGEs/RAGE signaling promotes a network cascade in CAFs, leading to the c-Fos-dependent regulation of IL-8. Next, using a conditioned medium from AGEs-exposed CAFs, we determined that IL-8/CXCR1/2 paracrine activation induces the acquisition of migratory and invasive features in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. Altogether, our data provide new insights on the involvement of IL-8 in the AGEs/RAGE transduction pathway among the intricate connections linking breast cancer cells to the surrounding stroma. Hence, our findings may pave the way for further investigations to define the role of IL-8 as useful target for the better management of breast cancer patients exhibiting metabolic disorders.

A Sampling of Highlights from the Literature

CRISPR-based screening can enhance understanding of T-cell biology (from marius walter via Wikimedia Commons)Using CRISPR-based screening, two groups have identified canonical BRG1/BRM-associated factor (cBAF) complex components as regulators of T-cell differentiation and function that are important for antitumor immunity. Guo et al. find cBAF levels influence the fate of activated CD8+ T cells: high levels promote effector T-cell differentiation and low levels promote memory T-cell differentiation. Belk et al. show cBAF complex components, including Arid1a, promote T-cell acquisition of epigenetic features of exhaustion and limit T-cell persistence. Reducing cBAF activity, either pharmacologically (Guo et al.) or genetically (Belk et al.), improves tumor control in mouse models. The two studies suggest modulating the cBAF complex may improve T cell–based cancer immunotherapy.Guo A, …, Green DR. Nature 2022 June 22;607:135–141.Belk JA, …, Satpathy AT. Cancer Cell 2022 July 11;40:768–86.E7.S. epidermis specific T-cell responses can drive skin irAEs (from NIAID via NIH Flickr)Increasing our understanding of the mechanisms underlying immune-related adverse events (irAEs) is important for optimizing the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). Using a mouse model of skin irAEs, Hu et al. find that exposure to Staphylococcus epidermis at the time of anti-CTLA4 treatment induces an inflammatory response resembling skin irAEs in patients treated with ICIs. The response is driven by S. epidermis–specific T cells that produce IL17 and leads to the emergence of S. epidermis–specific memory T cells. Further analysis will determine whether modulating cross-talk between the host immune system and microbiota can alleviate skin irAEs.Hu ZI, …, Belkaid Y. PNAS 2022 June 21;119:e2200348119.Phase II clinical trial results testing chemoimmuno-therapy in PDAC (via Rawpixel)Immunotherapy has so far been ineffective in the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Padrón et al. report results from a phase II clinical trial evaluating chemotherapy combined with the anti–PD-1 nivolumab or the CD40-agonist sotigalimab, or with both together. The only group of patients among whom the 1-year overall survival rate was significantly greater than a historical control rate of 35% was the group assigned nivolumab/chemotherapy. Analysis of circulating and tumor biomarkers identified distinct immune signatures of improved outcome for patients receiving nivolumab/chemotherapy or sotigalimab/chemotherapy that could be used for patient selection in future clinical trials.Padrón LJ, …, Vonderheide RH. Nat Med 2022 June 3;28:1167–77.B cells can promote or suppress tumors depending on the TME (Carsten Tolkmit via Flickr)The role of B cells in the suppression or promotion of tumors remains unclear. In colorectal cancer (CRC), Wang et al. discover a specific regulatory B-cell subset expressing leucine-tRNA-synthase-2 (LARS2) and TGFβ1 that contributes to CRC progression by altering metabolic processes in the tumor microenvironment (TME). In a second study, Sagiv-Barfi et al. demonstrate that B-cell activation and antigen presentation are key to inducing antitumor T-cell responses, and both B and T cells are needed for efficacy of combination therapy with IL12, anti-OX40, and CpG in breast cancer. The two studies highlight how B-cell responses in the TME not only depend on cancer type, but also on B-cell phenotype and regulatory function.Wang Z, …, Chu Y. Immunity 2022 June 14;55:1067–81.E8.Sagiv-Barfi I, …, Levy R. Sci Immunol 2022 May 27;7:eabn5859.Profiling the diversity of tumor antigens (Andy Mitchell via Wikimedia Commons)A greater understanding of in vivo cancer-specific patterns of peptide presentation by MHC class I complexes is needed to improve the development of antigen-specific immunotherapies. Jaeger et al. develop and use a new genetically engineered mouse model to profile the cancer immunopeptidome from autochthonous pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and lung adenocarcinomas. The authors find little correlation between mRNA abundance and peptide detection, suggesting significant posttranslational regulation of tumor-specific peptide presentation. Dendritic cell vaccines loaded with lung adenocarcinoma peptides uniquely identified by the assay induce antigen-specific T-cell responses ex vivo, highlighting the model’s ability to capture the cancer immunopeptidome.Jaeger AM, …, Jacks T. Nature 2022 June 15;607:149–55.A new map of human immune cell development (tzunghaor via openclipart)Understanding how and where the immune system develops can provide a better understanding of cancer origin and facilitate the development of novel immunotherapies. Through single-cell profiling and spatial transcriptomics of nine prenatal tissues, Suo et al. have generated a comprehensive atlas of the developing human immune system. Highlights of the findings include the discovery that human immune development occurs across multiple tissue sites, including sites not considered primary hematopoietic organs; the identification of a population of prenatal B1 cells; and the demonstration that unconventional T cells are selected on thymocytes. This road map provides a resource for advancing immune-based science and medicine.Suo C, …, Teichmann SA. Science 2022 May 12;376:eabo0510.

Review on the Application of Airborne LiDAR in Active Tectonics of China: Dushanzi Reverse Fault in the Northern Tian Shan

High-resolution topographic data are fundamental for active tectonics studies. Within the last 2 decades, the airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system provided a solution for the accurate and efficient acquisition of detailed geomorphic features. The use of LiDAR data for the identification of microstructural and geomorphic features, fault zone activity analysis, and earthquake disaster assessment remains challenging and has been the focus of active tectonics studies. Based on the LiDAR data of Dushanzi anticline–a reverse fault zone in Xinjiang, China, our group carried out a significant number of active tectonic research studies. By reviewing the specific content of these works, we summarized the main application of LiDAR for a specific structure, the Dushanzi Reverse Fault in the northern Tianshan. In addition, other applications of LiDAR in active tectonics are summarized in this paper. These studies show that high-resolution LiDAR data facilitate detailed studies of the fault activity and paleoseismicity. We hope more researchers can realize the advantages of LiDAR technology in active tectonics research and apply LiDAR technology into their own practical work, so as to promote the development of active tectonics research.

Stromal Notch ligands foster lymphopenia-driven functional plasticity and homeostatic proliferation of naive B cells.

In lymphopenic environments, secondary lymphoid organs regulate the size of B and T cell compartments by supporting the homeostatic proliferation of mature lymphocytes. The molecular mechanisms underlying these responses and their functional consequences remain incompletely understood. To evaluate homeostasis of the mature B cell pool during lymphopenia, we turned to an adoptive transfer model of purified follicular B cells into Rag2–/– mouse recipients. Highly purified follicular B cells transdifferentiated into marginal zone–like B cells when transferred into Rag2–/– lymphopenic hosts but not into wild-type hosts. In lymphopenic spleens, transferred B cells gradually lost their follicular phenotype and acquired characteristics of marginal zone B cells, as judged by cell surface phenotype, expression of integrins and chemokine receptors, positioning close to the marginal sinus, and an ability to rapidly generate functional plasma cells. Initiation of follicular to marginal zone B cell transdifferentiation preceded proliferation. Furthermore, the transdifferentiation process was dependent on Notch2 receptors in B cells and expression of Delta-like 1 Notch ligands by splenic Ccl19-Cre+ fibroblastic stromal cells. Gene expression analysis showed rapid induction of Notch-regulated transcripts followed by upregulated Myc expression and acquisition of broad transcriptional features of marginal zone B cells. Thus, naive mature B cells are endowed with plastic transdifferentiation potential in response to increased stromal Notch ligand availability during lymphopenia.

Acquisition and integration of spatial and acoustic features: a worflow tailored to small-scale heritage architecture

This paper reports on an interdisciplinary data acquisition and processing chain, the novelty of which is primarily to be found in a close integration of acoustic and spatial data. It provides a detailed description of the technological and methodological choices that were made in order to adapt to the particularities of the corpus studied (interiors of small scale rural architectural artefacts) keeping in mind the backbone objective of the research: facilitate comparisons (among buildings, among spatial and acoustic features). The research outputs pave the way for proportion-as-ratios analyses, as well as for the study of perceptual aspects from an acoustic point of view. Ultimately, “perceptual” acoustic data characterised by acoustic descriptors will be related to “objective” spatial data such as architectural metrics. The experiment is carried out on a set of fifteen “small-scale” rural chapels, which is a corpus intended at fostering cross-examinations in the context of an architectural programme acting as a constant. The specificity of this corpus, in terms of architectural layout, usage, and economic or access constraints, will be shown to have had a significant impact on choices made during the acquisition and processing chains.

CL-ECPE: contrastive learning with adversarial samples for emotion-cause pair extraction

The existing Emotion-Cause Pair Extraction (ECPE) has made some achievements, and it is applied in many tasks, such as criminal investigations. Previous approaches realised extraction by constructing different networks, but they did not fully exploit the original information of the data, which led to low extraction precision. Moreover, the extraction precision will also be decreased when the model is attacked by adversarial samples. To address the above problems, a new model CL-ECPE is proposed in this article to improve the extraction precision through contrastive learning. First, contrastive sets are constructed by adversarial samples. The contrastive sets are used as the raw data of adversarial training and the test data of the pilot experiment. Then, adversarial training is used to get contrastive features according to the training target. The acquisition of contrastive features can improve extraction precision. Experimental results on the benchmark emotion cause corpus show our method outperforms the state-of-the-art method by over 12.49%, as well as demonstrates the strong robustness of CL-ECPE.

Abstract 5540: Tumor phenotypic plasticity and resistance to immune-mediated cytotoxicity in models of castration resistant prostate cancer

Abstract Androgen receptor (AR)-targeted therapies are routinely used to treat prostate cancer, including the use of next-generation hormonal therapies such as abiraterone or enzalutamide. Although these therapies are initially effective, a significant proportion of patients exhibit resistance to treatment, therefore developing castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). While immune checkpoint blockade therapies have led to remarkable clinical responses in patients with several tumor types, CRPC remains resistant to immunotherapy. The characterization of tumor resistance mechanisms has led to the identification of various tumor variants that could emerge along the progression of prostate cancer, including tumors undergoing phenotypic plasticity. Our laboratory has previously shown that phenotypic plasticity is a driver of resistance to immunotherapy. Here we investigated whether changes in tumor phenotype could affect the response of CRPC to immune-based therapies, and ways these mechanisms can be mitigated. Models of resistance to enzalutamide (LNCAP-EnzaR) or abiraterone (LNCAP-AbiR) were derived from the androgen sensitive LNCAP prostate cancer cell line. Resistant and parental LNCAP cells were comparatively evaluated for phenotypic features via RT-PCR, ELISA, western blot, immunofluorescence, and RNAseq analysis. Changes in the susceptibility to NK-cell mediated cytotoxicity were evaluated with NK cells isolated from peripheral blood from healthy donors. LNCAP-EnzaR and LNCAP parental cells were also grown in vivo in NSG MHCI/II-deficient mice, and tumors were characterized for phenotypic markers and potential therapeutic targets. Our results demonstrated that acquisition of resistance to both enzalutamide and abiraterone was associated with a significant increase in mesenchymal tumor features, including increased levels of vimentin and fibronectin, and the loss of epithelial E-cadherin. The susceptibility of LNCAP-Enza-R and LNCAP-AbiR cells to NK-cell mediated cytotoxicity and antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity (ADCC) were significantly reduced (up to 90%), compared with parental cells. RNAseq analysis identified several upregulated gene and gene pathways, including estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1), which was particularly overexpressed in LNCAP-EnzaR cells. In a xenograft model of LNCAP-EnzaR cells, we corroborated the maintenance of tumor phenotypic plasticity and the expression of actionable targets. Our data indicates that acquisition of resistance to AR inhibition is associated with significant reduction of susceptibility to immune attack, and the acquisition of tumor phenotypic plasticity features. Future studies plan to investigate approaches that revert tumor plasticity, including blockade of increased markers such as ESR1, TGF-beta or IL-8, for potential improvement of tumor susceptibility to immune attack in CRPC. Citation Format: Madeline Dahut, Kristen Fousek, Lucas Horn, Haiyan Qin, Jeffrey Schlom, Claudia Palena. Tumor phenotypic plasticity and resistance to immune-mediated cytotoxicity in models of castration resistant prostate cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 5540.