There is limited knowledge of interspecies interactions in biofilm communities. In this study, Pseudomonas sp. GJ1, a 2-chloroethanol (2-CE) degrading organism, and Pseudomonas putida DMP1, a p-cresol degrader, produced distinct biofilms in response to model mixed waste streams comprised of 2-CE and various p-cresol concentrations. The two organisms maintained a commensal relationship, with DMP1 mitigating the inhibitory effects of p-cresol on GJ1. A triple labeling technique compatible with confocal microscopy was used to investigate the influence of toxicant concentrations on biofilm morphology, species distribution, and exopolysaccharide production. Single species biofilms of GJ1 shifted from loosely associated cell clusters connected by exopolysaccharide to densely-packed structures as p-cresol concentrations increased, and biofilm formation was severely inhibited at high p-cresol concentrations. In contrast, GJ1 was abundant when associated with DMP1 in a dual species biofilm at all p-cresol concentrations, although at high p-cresol concentrations it was only present in regions of the biofilm where it was surrounded by DMP1. Evidence in support of a commensal relationship between DMP1 and GJ1 was obtained by comparing GJ1-DMP1 biofilms with dual species biofilms containing GJ1 and Escherichia coli 33456, an adhesive strain that does not mineralize p-cresol. Additionally, the data indicated that only tower-like cell structures in the GJ1-DMP1 biofilm produced exopolysaccharide, in contrast to the uniform distribution of EPS in the single-species GJ1 biofilm.
Abstract The late Miocene Adu-Asa Formation comprises major sedimentary and volcanic units that crop out along the densely faulted and tilted frontal blocks of the western rift margin of the transition zone between the northern Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) and the southern Afar Rift. This chapter discusses the geological and tectonic processes that led to the origin and evolution of the rift basin of the transition zone. It highlights a decade-long geological and paleontological reconnaissance and focuses investigation along the strike of the frontal fault blocks of the western rift margin of the Middle Awash study area.
Vertical integration of healthcare services has been viewed by hospitals as an effective strategy for maintaining institutional viability in the face of increased competitive pressures. This paper examines the effects of vertical integration on hospital utilization and market share, based on the experience of a selected set of hospitals that developed primary care group practices as part of a national demonstration program conducted over the period 1976 to 1982. Inpatient days and admissions for the average hospital increased 9.0 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively, over the initial four-year period of group operation, while average market share of inpatient days and admissions rose by 4.9 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively. The establishment of the group practices also helped most hospitals achieve a more favorable outpatient payor mix.
Visual illusion is the fallacious perception of reality or some actually existing object. In this paper, we imitate the mechanism of Ehrenstein illusion, neon color spreading illusion, watercolor illusion, Kanizsa illusion, shifted edges illusion, and hybrid image illusion using the Open Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV). We also imitate these illusions using Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs). These imitations suggest that some illusions are processed by high-level brain functions. We next apply the morphological gradient operation to anomalous motion illusions. The processed images are classified into two kinds of images, which correspond to the central drift illusion and the peripheral drift illusion, respectively. It demonstrates that the contrast of the colors plays an important role in the anomalous motion illusion. We also imitate the anomalous motion illusions using both OpenCV and CNN. These imitations suggest that some visual illusions may be processed by the illusory movement of animations.
This paper demonstrates a new visual motion estimation technique that is able to recover high degree-of-freedom articulated human body configurations in complex video sequences. We introduce the use of a novel mathematical technique, the product of exponential maps and twist motions, and its integration into a differential motion estimation. This results in solving simple linear systems, and enables us to recover robustly the kinematic degrees-offreedom in noise and complex self occluded configurations. We demonstrate this on several image sequences of people doing articulated full body movements, and visualize the results in re-animating an artificial 3D human model. We are also able to recover and re-animate the famous movements of Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies from the last century. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first computer vision based system that is able to process such challenging footage and recover complex motions with such high accuracy. 1
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