Phosphorylation by the stress-activated MAPK Slt2 down-regulates the yeast TOR complex 2

Saccharomyces cerevisiae target of rapamycin (TOR) complex 2 (TORC2) is an essential regulator of plasma membrane lipid and protein homeostasis. How TORC2 activity is modulated in response to changes in the status of the cell envelope is unclear. Here we document that TORC2 subunit Avo2 is a direct target of Slt2, the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) of the cell wall integrity pathway. Activation of Slt2 by overexpression of a constitutively active allele of an upstream Slt2 activator (Pkc1) or by auxin-induced degradation of a negative Slt2 regulator (Sln1) caused hyperphosphorylation of Avo2 at its MAPK phosphoacceptor sites in a Slt2-dependent manner and diminished TORC2-mediated phosphorylation of its major downstream effector, protein kinase Ypk1. Deletion of Avo2 or expression of a phosphomimetic Avo2 allele rendered cells sensitive to two stresses (myriocin treatment and elevated exogenous acetic acid) that the cell requires Ypk1 activation by TORC2 to survive. Thus, Avo2 is necessary for optimal TORC2 activity, and Slt2-mediated phosphorylation of Avo2 down-regulates TORC2 signaling. Compared with wild-type Avo2, phosphomimetic Avo2 shows significant displacement from the plasma membrane, suggesting that Slt2 inhibits TORC2 by promoting Avo2 dissociation. Our findings are the first demonstration that TORC2 function is regulated by MAPK-mediated phosphorylation.Comment: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Predoctoral Traineeship GM07232 and a University of California at Berkeley MacArthur and Lakhan-Pal Graduate Fellowship to K.L.L., Erwin Schroedinger Fellowship J3787-B21 from the Austrian Science Fund to AE-A, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 InsiliCardio, GA 75083 to CMA, and NIH R01 research grant GM21841 to J

Economic growth in low income countries: How the G20 can help to raise and sustain it

This paper aims to operationalise the G20 commitment to ensure that the benefits of global growth are shared with Low Income Countries. Growth is central to poverty reduction and the achievement of MDGs, and in developing countries it is episodic and volatile. However, while the current LICs have poor growth histories, the countries that started off the 1960s as LICs have had virtually the same average growth rates as other country groups. We review the evidence connecting long-run growth and growth accelerations and collapses to six areas of policy: trade, skills development, macro-stability, financial development, infrastructure investment and human development. Growth strategies have to be developed and owned by LIC governments and societies and they need to be tailored to individual country needs. However, there are some things which the G20 can do to help. We group these actions under three headings: mitigating downturns, boosting underlying growth rates and developing institutions and knowledge. A final annex describes how Korea’s spectacular growth strategy can be viewed through these lenses.growth, low income countries, G20

Facial Expression Analysis and The PAD Space

International audienceIn this paper we present a technique for facial expression analysis and representing the underlying emotions in the PAD (Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance) space. We develop a purely appearance based approach using Multi-scale Gaussian derivatives and Support Vector Machines. The system can generalize well and is shown to outperform the baseline method

Restriction on the energy and luminosity of e+e- storage rings due to beamstrahlung

The role of beamstrahlung in high-energy e+e- storage-ring colliders (SRCs) is examined. Particle loss due to the emission of single energetic beamstrahlung photons is shown to impose a fundamental limit on SRC luminosities at energies 2E_0 >~ 140 GeV for head-on collisions and 2E_0 >~ 40 GeV for crab-waist collisions. With beamstrahlung taken into account, we explore the viability of SRCs in the E_0=240-500 GeV range, which is of interest in the precision study of the Higgs boson. At 2E_0=240 GeV, SRCs are found to be competitive with linear colliders; however, at 2E_0=400-500 GeV, the attainable SRC luminosity would be a factor 15-25 smaller than desired.Comment: Latex, 5 pages. v2 differs only by minor changes is abstract and introduction, one reference is added. v3 corresponds to the paper published in PR

Depression Estimation Using Audiovisual Features and Fisher Vector Encoding

International audienceWe investigate the use of two visual descriptors: Local Bi-nary Patterns-Three Orthogonal Planes(LBP-TOP) and Dense Trajectories for depression assessment on the AVEC 2014 challenge dataset. We encode the visual information gen-erated by the two descriptors using Fisher Vector encod-ing which has been shown to be one of the best performing methods to encode visual data for image classification. We also incorporate audio features in the final system to intro-duce multiple input modalities. The results produced using Linear Support Vector regression outperform the baseline method[16]

Determination of Sugars in Soft Drinks by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

The fructose, glucose and sucrose contents of selected soft' drinks available in Malaysian markets were determined by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The soft drinks tested had a soluble sugar content of between 8.5 to 15.3 g 100 ml- 1 • The average fructose, glucose and sucrose contents werefound to be in the ranges of 0 - 6. 7, 0 - 6.9 and 0 - 10.5 g 100 ml I respectively. The content of individual sugars were found to be more variable than the content of total sugar in different samples of a specific soft drink

Facial expression analysis and the affect space

International audienceIn this paper we present a technique for facial expression analysis and representing the underlyingemotions in the affect space. We develop a purely appearance based approach using Multi!scale Gaussianderivatives and Support Vector Machines. The technique is validated on two different databases. The systemis shown to generalize well and performs better than the baseline method

Scale Normalized Radial Fourier Transform as a Robust Image Descriptor

International audienceWe present a new visual descriptor that combines a multi-scale Laplacian Profile with a Radial Discrete Fourier Transform. This descriptor exists at every position and scale in an image and provides a local feature vector that is both discriminant and robust to changes in orientation and scale. It has a variable description length, and thus can be easily adapted for a variety of applications, ranging from simple detection tasks on low power computing platforms to complex tasks requiring highly discriminant detectors. To demonstrate the discriminant power of this descriptor we employ it in its most compact form to construct a cascade of linear classifiers for detecting people in images. We compare this detector to cascades classifiers constructed using Haar wavelets, Gaussian derivatives and variable size block HOG descriptors. Our experiments show that a cascade with this descriptor performs well against the other three detectors when tested using a common publicly available data set. We examine the stability of the descriptor to changes in image rotation and scaling for different description lengths

Restoration of peatlands and greenhouse gas balances

In this chapter the impact of peatland restoration on greenhouse gas fluxes is discussed based on a literature review. Casestudies are presented covering different peatland types, different regions and different starting conditions