Binocular fusion in Panum''''s limiting case of stereopsis obeys the uniqueness constraint

In the information processing procedure of stereo vision, the uniqueness constraint has been used as one of the constraints to solve the "correspondence problem". While the uniqueness constraint is valid in most cases, whether it is still valid in some particular stimulus configuration (such as Panum's limiting case) has been a problem of widespread debate for a long time. To investigate the problem, we adopted the Panum's limiting case as its basic stimulus configuration, and delved into the phenomenon of binocular fusion from two distinct aspects: visual direction and orientation disparity. The results show that in Panum's limiting case binocular fusion does not comply with the rules governing regular binocular fusion as far as visual direction and orientation disparity are concerned. This indicates that double fusion does not happen in Panum's limiting case and that the uniqueness constraint is still valid.     

Experiment Research on Binocular Perceptual Characteristics around Peripheral Vision for Development of Head Mounted Display with Wide View

The head mounted display （HMD） is widely used in virtual reality technology. In common HMD, however, the binocular disparity is set to an equal fixed value in the entire range of view. Such HMD systems have several shortcomings when used for wide views. In this study, in order to realize a natural stereo sensation of HMD with wide view, we measure the characteristics of binocular stereo perception and binocular light perception. Results show that both the stereoacuity and light sensitivity decrease as the retina＇s eccentricity increases from fovea to periphery. However, the decrease of the stereoacuity is more rapid than that of the light sensitivity. These results suggest that the binocular disparity at the peripheral field should be small, otherwise double images would be observed instead of a stereo view. Based on the results we develop a relative binocular stereoacuity model which can be applied for the design of HMD systems with wide view.     

Directional tunings independent of orientation in the primary visual cortex of the cat

A family of moving 'random-line' patterns was developed and used to study the directional tuning of 91 single units in cat primary visual cortex (V1). The results suggest that, in addition to the well-known orientation-dependent mechanism, there is also some kind of orientation-independent mechanism underlying the direction selectivity. The directional tuning of the neurons varies in accordance with the increase of orientation or non-orientation element in the stimulus.     

Orientation of larval and juvenile horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus to visual cues: Effects of chemical odors

<正> Adult horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus have long served as models for the study of vision in marine arthropods.Yet,little is known about the ability of early life history stages to detect and respond to visual cues.We examined the visuallydirected movements of larvae and first stage juveniles to horizons containing dark visual targets of different sizes.The studytested the hypotheses that (1) larval and juvenile crabs can detect and respond to visual targets and (2) the direction of orientationvaries with the presence of chemical cues associated with settlement habitats.Orientation of larval and juvenile crabs torectangles subtending angles from 30-330° was tested in a circular arena containing water that either lacked estuarine chemicalcues (offshore water) or contained odors from aquatic vegetation or known predators.In the absence of chemical odors,larvaeoriented toward and juveniles moved away from dark horizons subtending angles 60°.When placed in water containingchemical odors from potential nursery habitats,including the seagrasses Halodule wrightii and Syringodium filiforme,crabsreversed their direction of orientation relative to their responses in offshore water.Odors from two known predators,themummichug Fundulus grandis and blue crab Callinectes sapidus,had no affect on the orientation of larvae.Yet,juvenilesresponded to both odors by moving toward the visual target.Results support the hypothesis that the visual orientation of larvaland juvenile horseshoe crabs changes upon exposure to habitat and predator cues and that the direction of the response undergoesan ontogenetic shift following metamorphosis     

Adaptation to visual stimulation modifies the burst firing property of V1 neurons

The mean firing rate of visual cortical neurons is reduced after prolonged visual stimulation, but the underlying process by which this occurs as well as the biological significance of this phenomenon remains unknown. Computational neuroscience studies indicate that high-frequency bursts in stimulus-driven responses can be transmitted across synapses more reliably than isolated spikes, and thus may carry accurate stimulus-related information. Our research examined whether or not adaptation affects the burst firing property of visual cortical neurons by examining changes in the burst firing changes of V1 neurons during adaptation to the preferred visual stimulus. The results show that adaptation to prolonged visual stimulation significantly decreased burst frequency (bursts/s) and burst length (spikes/burst), but increased burst duration and the interspike interval within bursts. These results suggest that the adaptation of V1 neurons to visual stimulation may result in a decrease of feedforward response gain but an increase of functional activities from lateral and/or feedback connections, which could lead to a reduction in the effectiveness of adapted neurons in transmitting information to its driven neurons.     

Clinical feature and waveform in infantile nystagmus syndrome in children with FRMD7 gene mutations

Infant nystagmus sydrome presents as involuntary eye movement disorder and can affect seriously ocular function. We performed a retrospective study of clinical data and FRMD7 genetic test results in 12 cases of infantile nystagmus syndrome to correlate waveform, stereopsis, and visual acuity. The patients(age 6.40±2.67 years) had FRMD7 mutations as follows: missense in eight cases, shear in two cases, frameshift in one case, and non-frameshift in one case. Horizontal jerk waveform was observed in six cases, versus horizontal pendulum in five cases and dual jerk in one case. The uncorrected visual acuity(24 eyes) was 0.21±0.12,compared with a corrected visual acuity(24 eyes) of 0.32±0.14. All patients had simultaneous perception, versus fusion function in 10 cases(83.33%) and stereoscopic vision in seven cases(58.33%) using the synoptophore. Eleven cases(91.67%) detected the stereo fly, compared with five cases(41.67%) for stereoscopic circles and seven cases(58.33%) for stereoscopic animals by Titmus test. Stereoscopic vision using the synoptophore did not correlate with the frequency, amplitude, or intensity of nystagmus or with corrected binocular visual acuity. The infantile nystagmus syndrome with FRMD7 mutations in our cases was caused primarily de novo and missense mutations. Visual acuity and binocular visual function were significant impaired, and the waveform was generally horizontal jerk. Also, an infrared videonystagmogram can record the frequency, amplitude, and intensity of nystagmus accurately.     

The quantal theory of immunity

Exactly how the immune system discriminates between all environmental antigens to which it reacts vs. all selfantigens to which it does not, is a principal unanswered question in immunology. As set forth in this review, because of the advances in our understanding of the immune system that have occurred in the last 50 years, for the first time it is possible to formulate a new theory, termed the ＂Quantal Theory of Immunity＂, which reduces the problem from the immune system as a whole, to the individual cells comprising the system, and finally to a molecular explanation as to how the system behaves as it does.     

Perception of illusory contours enhanced in motion

Object perception is one of the most important components of visual perception of human beings and mammalian animals. It is a most confusing problem on object perception that how we separate object from background and obtain the picture of the whole object. In many cases one object partly occludes the other one in natural world. When the brightness of the occluding object is the same as or similar to that of the background, though there is no difference between visual stimuli, we can still ret…     

Computational model for perception of objects and motions

Perception of objects and motions in the visual scene is one of the basic problems in the visual system. There exist 'What' and 'Where' pathways in the superior visual cortex, starting from the simple cells in the primary visual cortex. The former is able to perceive objects such as forms, color, and texture, and the latter perceives 'where', for example, velocity and direction of spatial movement of objects. This paper explores brain-like computational architectures of visual information processing. We propose a visual perceptual model and computational mechanism for training the perceptual model. The compu- tational model is a three-layer network. The first layer is the input layer which is used to receive the stimuli from natural environments. The second layer is designed for representing the internal neural information. The connections between the first layer and the second layer, called the receptive fields of neurons, are self-adaptively learned based on principle of sparse neural representation. To this end, we introduce Kullback-Leibler divergence as the measure of independence between neural responses and derive the learning algorithm based on minimizing the cost function. The proposed algorithm is applied to train the basis functions, namely receptive fields, which are localized, oriented, and bandpassed. The resultant receptive fields of neurons in the second layer have the characteristics resembling that of simple cells in the primary visual cortex. Based on these basis functions, we further construct the third layer for perception of what and where in the superior visual cortex. The proposed model is able to perceive objects and their motions with a high accuracy and strong robustness against additive noise. Computer simulation results in the final section show the feasibility of the proposed perceptual model and high efficiency of the learning algorithm.     

Asymptotic analysis of a mat hematical model of the atherosclerosis development

A mathematical model,which takes into account new experimental results about diverse roles of macrophages in the atherosclerosis development,is proposed.Using technic of upper and lower solutions,the existence and uniqueness of its positive solution are justified.After the nondimensionalization,small parameters are found and the multiscale analysis of the corresponding perturbed problem is performed when those parameters tend to zero.In particular,the limit two-dimensional problem,which is a coupled system of reaction-diffusion equations and ordinary differential equations,is derived;the asymptotic approximation is constructed;the uniform pointwise estimate for the difference between the solution of the original problem and the solution of the limit problem as well as the respective L^2-estimates for the fluxes are proved.     

Comparative study on direction selectivity and functional organization of the primary visual cortical cells in monkeys and cats

Although the directionally selective cells in many visual cortical areas are organized in columnar manner, the functional organization of direction selectivity of area VI in the monkey still remains unclear. We quantitatively studied the proportion of directionally selective cells, direction selectivity and the functional organization of the striate cortical cells in the monkey and compared those with the cat. The results show that the direction selectivity and directional organization of striate cortical cells in the monkey are significantly weaker than those in the cat, suggesting that the species difference between the two kinds of animal is related to their different anatomic pathways.     

Value of a novel diagnostics of rSP13-ELISA toward schistosomiasis elimination in China

<正>Schistosomiasis,caused by infections with Schistosoma japonicum,is one of the human parasitic diseases that remains a public health problem throughout the world’s tropical and subtropical regions.With the sustained efforts for six decades,schistosomiasis has been effectively controlled in China.But in the lake region of the schistosomiasis endemic areas,the disease is still a big burden to some specific population,such as fishmen and boatmen,which hinders the local social-economic development.Currently,due to     

Distribution of serotonin and FMRF-amide in the brain of Lymnaea stagnalis with respect to the visual system

Despite serotonin’s and FMRF-amide’s wide distribution in the nervous system of invertebrates and their importance as neurotransmitters,the exact roles they play in neuronal networks leaves many questions.We mapped the presence of serotonin and FMRF-amide-immunoreactivity in the central nervous system and eyes of the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis and interpreted the results in connection with our earlier findings on the central projections of different peripheral nerves.Since the chemical nature of the intercellular connections in the retina of L.stagnalis is still largely unknown,we paid special attention to clarifying the role of serotonin and FMRF-amide in the visual system of this snail and compared our findings with those reported from other species.At least one serotonin-and one FMRF-amidergic fibre were labeled in each optic nerve,and since no cell bodies in the eye showed immunoreactivity to these neurotransmitters,we believe that efferent fibres with somata located in the central ganglia branch at the base of the eye and probably release 5HT and FMRF-amide as neuro-hormones.Double labelling revealed retrograde transport of neurobiotin through the optic nerve,allowing us to conclude that the central pathways and serotonin-and FMRF-amideimmunoreactive cells and fibres have different locations in the CNS in L.stagnalis.The chemical nature of the fibres,which connect the two eyes in L.stagnalis,is neither serotoninergic nor FMRF-amidergic.     

Relationship between uniform connectedness and proximity in perceptual grouping

1 Introduction The visual world is composed of complex visual scenes that are projected, as two-dimen- sional images, onto the retina. Chunking of visual information is critical for object recognition, because it produces primitive perceptual units for subsequent analyses[1]. Integration of discrete local elements into a global configuration is one of the functions of perceptual grouping (e.g., combining local rectangles into a global letter as shown in fig. 1(b)). When multiple global object…     

Improvement, Comparison, and Application of Field Measurement Methods for Grassland Vegetation Fractional Coverage

As one of the important vegetation parameters, vegetation fractional coverage （VFC） is more difficult to measure accurately among a good many parameters of plant communities. The temperate typical steppe in the north of China was chosen for investigation in the present study and a digital camera was used to measure herb community coverage in the field, adopting methods of ocular estimation, gridding measurement, visual interpretation, supervised classification, and information extraction of color spatial transformation to calculate the VFC of images captured by the digital camera. In addition VFC calculated by various methods was analyzed and compared VFC, enabling us to propose an effective method for measuring VFC using a digital camera. The results of the present study indicate that： （i） as two common useful and effective methods of measuring VFC with a digital camera, not only does the error of estimated values of visual estimation and supervised classification vary considerably, but the degree of automatization is very low and depends, to a great extent, on the manipulator; （ii） although the method of visual interpretation may assure the precision of the calculated VFC and enable the precision of results obtained using other methods to be determined, as far as large quantities of data are concerned, this method has the disadvantages of wasting time and energy, and the applications of this method are limited; （iii） the precision and stability of VFC calculated using the grid and node method are superior to those of visual estimation and supervised classification and inferior to those of visual interpretation, but, as for visual interpretation and supervised classification, gridding measurements are difficult to apply in practice because they are not time efficient; and （iv） in terms of the precision of calculation of the VFC, an information-extracting model based on an intensity, hue, saturation （IHS） color space-multi-component series segmentation strategy is superior to methods of ocular estimation, gridding measurement, and supervised classification. In terms of practical efficiency, the information-extracting model is superior to visual interpretation, supervised classification, and gridding measurement. It has been proven that estimating the VFC of the north temperate typical steppe using this model is feasible. This is very fundamental research work in grassland ecology.     

Pressure profiles of a plasma confined by the magnetic field of a ring current

Pressure profiles p(ψ) marginal with respect to convective instability in a toroidal tubular plasma confined by the magnetic field of an internal levitated ring current and external ring currents are studied as functions of the shape of the magnetic separatrix. Configurations are found in which the maximum plasma pressure in a finite-width layer near the plasma boundary decreases by two orders of magnitude at the expense of artificially raising the effective length (characterized by the integral ∮dl/B) of the magnetic field lines near the separatrix surface. It is shown that, in the case of a straight cylindrical tubular plasma, which is the limiting case of a toroidal configuration with an arbitrarily large aspect ratio, the sufficient condition for the plasma to be MHD stable against both convective and kink perturbations is satisfied for local values β≤0.4. __________ Translated from Fizika Plazmy, Vol. 26, No. 6, 2000, pp. 519–528. Original Russian Text Copyright ￠ 2000 by Popovich, Shafranov.     

Novel Antiviral Agents Targeting HIV Entry and Transmission

Studies of the mechanism of HIV entry and transmission have identified multiple new targets for drug development. A range of inhibitors have demonstrated potent antiretroviral activity by interfering with CD4-gp120 interaction,coreceptor binding or viral-cell fusion in preclinical and clinical studies. One of these agents,fusion inhibitor enfuvirtide,is already in clinical use. Here we review the progress in the development of specific entry inhibitors as novel therapeutics. The potential of entry inhibitors as topical microbicides to block HIV transmission is also discussed.     

A new strategy for full-length Ebola virus glycoprotein expression in E.coli

Ebola virus(EBOV) causes severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and non-human primates with high rates of fatality. Glycoprotein(GP) is the only envelope protein of EBOV, which may play a critical role in virus attachment and entry as well as stimulating host protective immune responses.However, the lack of expression of full-length GP in Escherichia coli hinders the further study of its function in viral pathogenesis. In this study, the vp40 gene was fused to the full-length gp gene and cloned into a prokaryotic expression vector. We showed that the VP40-GP and GP-VP40 fusion proteins could be expressed in E.coli at 16 ℃. In addition, it was shown that the position of vp40 in the fusion proteins affected the yields of the fusion proteins, with a higher level of production of the fusion protein when vp40 was upstream of gp compared to when it was downstream. The results provide a strategy for the expression of a large quantity of EBOV full-length GP, which is of importance for further analyzing the relationship between the structure and function of GP and developing an antibody for the treatment of EBOV infection.     

Stepping Stones：A New Future for Zoological Research

正This past year has been an auspicious one for Chinese science.With the recent lunar landing and the advances and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’growing reputation as the leader of scientific publishing in Asia,the media is now constantly reporting the"great leaps"that Chinese researchers have made.But we would do well to remember an old Chinese proverb:"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward."None of the recent advances of this year are great leaps in the sense that they occurred from     

Homotypic Vacuole Fusion Requires VTI11 and Is Regulated by Phosphoinositides

Most plant cells contain a large central vacuole that is essential to maintain cellular turgor. We report a new mutant allele of VTI11 that implicates the SNARE protein VTI11 in homotypic fusion of protein storage and lytic vacuoles. Fusion of the multiple vacuoles present in vtill mutants could be induced by treatment with Wortmannin and LY294002, which are inhibitors of Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase （PI3K）. We provide evidence that Phosphatidylinositol 3-Phosphate （Ptdlns（3）P） regulates vacuole fusion in vtill mutants, and that fusion of these vacuoles requires intact microtubules and actin filaments. Finally, we show that Wortmannin also induced the fusion of guard cell vacuoles in fava beans, where vacuoles are naturally fragmented after ABA-induced stomata closure. These results suggest a ubiquitous role of phosphoinositides in vacuole fusion, both during the development of the large central vacuole and during the dynamic vacuole remodeling that occurs as part of stomata movements.