| 1. |
- Santangelo, James S., et al.
(author)
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Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover
- 2022
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 375
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural dines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale.
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| 2. |
- Alberti, Marina, et al.
(author)
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Relational approaches for joint object classification andscene similarity measurement in indoor environments
- 2014
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In: Proc. of 2014 AAAI Spring Symposium QualitativeRepresentations for Robots 2014. - Palo Alto, California : The AAAI Press.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The qualitative structure of objects and their spatial distribution,to a large extent, define an indoor human environmentscene. This paper presents an approach forindoor scene similarity measurement based on the spatialcharacteristics and arrangement of the objects inthe scene. For this purpose, two main sets of spatialfeatures are computed, from single objects and objectpairs. A Gaussian Mixture Model is applied both onthe single object features and the object pair features, tolearn object class models and relationships of the objectpairs, respectively. Given an unknown scene, the objectclasses are predicted using the probabilistic frameworkon the learned object class models. From the predictedobject classes, object pair features are extracted. A fi-nal scene similarity score is obtained using the learnedprobabilistic models of object pair relationships. Ourmethod is tested on a real world 3D database of deskscenes, using a leave-one-out cross-validation framework.To evaluate the effect of varying conditions on thescene similarity score, we apply our method on mockscenes, generated by removing objects of different categoriesin the test scenes.
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| 3. |
- Corno, Cristina, et al.
(author)
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The deubiquitinase USP8 regulates ovarian cancer cell response to cisplatin by suppressing apoptosis
- 2022
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In: Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. - : FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. - 2296-634X. ; 10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The identification of therapeutic approaches to improve response to platinum-based therapies is an urgent need for ovarian carcinoma. Deubiquitinases are a large family of ubiquitin proteases implicated in a variety of cellular functions and may contribute to tumor aggressive features through regulation of processes such as proliferation and cell death. Among the subfamily of ubiquitin-specific peptidases, USP8 appears to be involved in modulation of cancer cell survival by still poorly understood mechanisms. Thus, we used ovarian carcinoma cells of different histotypes, including cisplatin-resistant variants with increased survival features to evaluate the efficacy of molecular targeting of USP8 as a strategy to overcome drug resistance/modulate cisplatin response. We performed biochemical analysis of USP8 activity in pairs of cisplatin-sensitive and -resistant cells and found increased USP8 activity in resistant cells. Silencing of USP8 resulted in decreased activation of receptor tyrosine kinases and increased sensitivity to cisplatin in IGROV-1/Pt1 resistant cells as shown by colony forming assay. Increased cisplatin sensitivity was associated with enhanced cisplatin-induced caspase 3/7 activation and apoptosis, a phenotype also observed in cisplatin sensitive cells. Increased apoptosis was linked to FLIPL decrease and cisplatin induction of caspase 3 in IGROV-1/Pt1 cells, cisplatin-induced claspin and survivin down-regulation in IGROV-1 cells, thereby showing a decrease of anti-apoptotic proteins. Immunohistochemical staining on 65 clinical specimens from advanced stage ovarian carcinoma indicated that 40% of tumors were USP8 positive suggesting that USP8 is an independent prognostic factor for adverse outcome when considering progression free survival as a clinical end-point. Taken together, our results support that USP8 may be of diagnostic value and may provide a therapeutic target to improve the efficacy of platinum-based therapy in ovarian carcinoma.
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| 4. |
- Kunze, Lars, et al.
(author)
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Combining Top-down Spatial Reasoning and Bottom-up Object Class Recognition for Scene Understanding
- 2014
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In: Proc. of 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on IntelligentRobots and Systems 2014. - : IEEE conference proceedings. ; , s. 2910-2915
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Many robot perception systems are built to only consider intrinsic object features to recognise the class of an object. By integrating both top-down spatial relational reasoning and bottom-up object class recognition the overall performance of a perception system can be improved. In this paper we present a unified framework that combines a 3D object class recognition system with learned, spatial models of object relations. In robot experiments we show that our combined approach improves the classification results on real world office desks compared to pure bottom-up perception. Hence, by using spatial knowledge during object class recognition perception becomes more efficient and robust and robots can understand scenes more effectively.
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| 5. |
- Lobo, José, et al.
(author)
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A convergence research perspective on graduate education for sustainable urban systems science
- 2021
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In: npj Urban Sustainability. - : Springer. - 2661-8001. ; 1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Sustainable urban systems (SUS) science is a new science integrating work across established and emerging disciplines, using diverse methods, and addressing issues at local, regional, national, and global scales. Advancing SUS requires the next generation of scholars and practitioners to excel at synthesis across disciplines and possess the skills to innovate in the realms of research, policy, and stakeholder engagement. We outline key tenets of graduate education in SUS, informed by historical and global perspectives. The sketch is an invitation to discuss how graduates in SUS should be trained to engage with the challenges and opportunities presented by continuing urbanization.
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| 6. |
- McPhearson, Timon, et al.
(author)
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Advancing Urban Ecology toward a Science of Cities
- 2016
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In: BioScience. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0006-3568 .- 1525-3244. ; 66:3, s. 198-212
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Urban ecology is a field encompassing multiple disciplines and practical applications and has grown rapidly. However, the field is heterogeneous as a global inquiry with multiple theoretical and conceptual frameworks, variable research approaches, and a lack of coordination among multiple schools of thought and research foci. Here, we present an international consensus on how urban ecology can advance along multiple research directions. There is potential for the field to mature as a holistic, integrated science of urban systems. Such an integrated science could better inform decisionmakers who need increased understanding of complex relationships among social, ecological, economic, and built infrastructure systems. To advance the field requires conceptual synthesis, knowledge and data sharing; cross-city comparative research, new intellectual networks, and engagement with additional disciplines. We consider challenges and opportunities for understanding dynamics of urban systems. We suggest pathways for advancing urban ecology research to support the goals of improving urban sustainability and resilience, conserving urban biodiversity, and promoting human well-being on an urbanizing planet.
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| 7. |
- Thippur, Akshaya, et al.
(author)
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A comparison of qualitative and metric spatial relation models for scene understanding
- 2015
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In: Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. - : AI Access Foundation. - 9781577357001 ; , s. 1632-1640
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Object recognition systems can be unreliable when run in isolation depending on only image based features, but their performance can be improved when taking scene context into account. In this paper, we present techniques to model and infer object labels in real scenes based on a variety of spatial relations - geometric features which capture how objects co-occur - and compare their efficacy in the context of augmenting perception based object classification in real-world table-top scenes. We utilise a long-term dataset of office table-tops for qualitatively comparing the performances of these techniques. On this dataset, we show that more intricate techniques, have a superior performance but do not generalise well on small training data. We also show that techniques using coarser information perform crudely but sufficiently well in standalone scenarios and generalise well on small training data. We conclude the paper, expanding on the insights we have gained through these comparisons and comment on a few fundamental topics with respect to long-term autonomous robots.
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