A Semi-Automated Pipeline for the Creation of Virtual Fitting Room Experiences Featuring Motion Capture and Cloth Simulation

Technological advancements are prompting the digitization of many industries, including fashion. Many brands are exploring ways to enhance customers' experience, e.g., offering new shopping-oriented services like Virtual Fitting Rooms (VFRs). However, there are still challenges that prevent customers from effectively using these tools for trying on digital garments. Challenges are associated with difficulties in obtaining high-fidelity reconstructions of body shapes and providing realistic visualizations of animated clothes following real-time customers' movements. This paper tackles such lacks by proposing a semi-automated pipeline supporting the creation of VFR experiences by exploiting state-of-the-art techniques for the accurate description and reconstruction of customers' 3D avatars, motion capture-based animation, as well as realistic garment design and simulation. A user study in which the resulting VFR experience was compared with those created with two existing tools showed the benefits of the devised solution in terms of usability, embodiment, model accuracy, perceived value, adoption and purchase intention

Stream drying drives microbial ammonia oxidation and first-flush nitrate export

Acknowledgments We thank Roser Ventosa for technical assistance at the Nutrient Analytical Service of the CEAB-CSIC, Unai Perez de Arenaza Basauri for field assistance and Iñaki Odriozola and Aitor Larrañaga for statistical advice. We also acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback and constructive comments on the manuscript. S. N. Merbt was supported by a JAE predoctoral fellowship from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). This research was granted by the projects DARKNESS (CGL2012-32747, MINECO) to E. O. Casamayor and MED_FORESTREAM (CGL2011-30590-CO2-02, MINECO) and REFRESH (244121 FP7 EU Commission) to E. Martí.Peer reviewedPostprin

Ammonia-oxidising archaea living at low pH: Insights from comparative genomics

Obligate acidophilic members of the thaumarchaeotal genus Candidatus Nitrosotalea play an important role in nitrification in acidic soils, but their evolutionary and physiological adaptations to acidic environments are still poorly understood, with only a single member of this genus (Ca. N. devanaterra) having its genome sequenced. In this study, we sequenced the genomes of two additional cultured Ca. Nitrosotalea strains, extracted an almost complete Ca. Nitrosotalea metagenome-assembled genome from an acidic fen, and performed comparative genomics of the four Ca. Nitrosotalea genomes with 19 other archaeal ammonia oxidiser genomes. Average nucleotide and amino acid identities revealed that the four Ca. Nitrosotalea strains represent separate species within the genus. The four Ca. Nitrosotalea genomes contained a core set of 103 orthologous gene families absent from all other ammonia-oxidizing archaea and, for most of these gene families, expression could be demonstrated in laboratory culture or the environment via proteomic or metatranscriptomic analyses respectively. Phylogenetic analyses indicated that four of these core gene families were acquired by the Ca. Nitrosotalea common ancestor via horizontal gene transfer from acidophilic representatives of Euryarchaeota. We hypothesize that gene exchange with these acidophiles contributed to the competitive success of the Ca. Nitrosotalea lineage in acidic environments

Analysis of multiple haloarchaeal genomes suggests that the quinone-dependent respiratory nitric oxide reductase is an important source of nitrous oxide in hypersaline environments

Microorganisms, including Bacteria and Archaea, play a key role in denitrification, which is the major mechanism by which fixed nitrogen returns to the atmosphere from soil and water. Whilst the enzymology of denitrification is well understood in Bacteria, the details of the last two reactions in this pathway, which catalyse the reduction of nitric oxide (NO) via nitrous oxide (N2O) to nitrogen (N2), are little studied in Archaea, and hardly at all in haloarchaea. This work describes an extensive interspecies analysis of both complete and draft haloarchaeal genomes aimed at identifying the genes that encode respiratory nitric oxide reductases (Nors). The study revealed that the only nor gene found in haloarchaea is one that encodes a single subunit quinone dependent Nor homologous to the qNor found in bacteria. This surprising discovery is considered in terms of our emerging understanding of haloarchaeal bioenergetics and NO management

Polysaccharide degradation potential of bacterial communities in Arctic deep-sea sediments (1200-5500 m water depth)

The majority of the Earth’s surface is covered by fine-grained deep-sea sediments, with bacteria dominating total benthic biomass. These benthic bacterial communities depend on organic matter input from the upper ocean, but as they comprise mostly unknown and uncultivated taxa, we have very limited knowledge of their enzymatic machinery to break down this material. Here we studied deep-sea surface sediments along a seafloor depth gradient from 1000 to 5500 m at the Arctic long-term ecological research station HAUSGARTEN. We applied Illumina 16S rRNA gene surveys based on DNA and cDNA and metagenomic sequencing to elucidate total and active bacterial community composition, and the key functional potentials. Some sequence-dominant taxa of the total community (e.g. members of the Gamma- and Deltaproteobacteria) were underrepresented in the cDNA fraction, while other groups (e.g. Flavobacteriaceae; SAR202 clade) were overrepresented in the active fraction when compared to total community reads. We used the Carbohydrate Active Enzymes database (http://www.cazy.org) to identify protein families in the generated metagenomes, which are associated with polysaccharide degradation, e.g. glycoside hydrolases. We found the same families of glycoside hydrolases in all metagenomes, but their relative contribution to glycoside hydrolase-coding genes varied according to depth. A larger number of hydrolases involved in polysaccharide degradation of algae material (e.g. for laminarin; xylan) was found at shallower depths, while those responsible for the breakdown of bacterial cell walls (e.g. for components of peptidoglycan) were more strongly represented at deep stations. Our findings indicate an adaptation of the communities to differences in organic matter quality

Phylogenetic congruence and ecological coherence in terrestrial Thaumarchaeota

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr Robert Griffith/CEH for providing DNA from soil samples and Dr Anthony Travis for his help with BioLinux. Sequencing was performed in NERC platform in Liverpool. CG-R was funded by a NERC fellowship NE/J019151/1. CQ was funded by a MRC fellowship (MR/M50161X/1) as part of the cloud infrastructure for microbial genomics consortium (MR/L015080/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Towards an integrated microbial observatory in the Arctic Ocean

The Fram Strait separates Northeast Greenland from the Svalbard Archipelago, and is the only deep connection to the Arctic Ocean. Therefore, this strait is the only gateway for direct exchange of intermediate and deep waters between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic. Two main currents influence the exchanges: i) the West Spitsbergen Current, bringing Atlantic waters northwards, and ii) the East Greenland Current, which carries cold Arctic waters and ice southwards. These two currents consist of water masses with different origin, generate distinct physical and chemical conditions between the eastern and western parts of the strait, which effects the biological characteristics in this region. Oceanographic observations in the Fram Strait have been carried out for ~15 years with microbial research in the water column focusing mainly on eukaryotes, while very little exploratory work was conducted on pelagic Bacteria and Archaea. Here we present a preliminary report of the first extensive survey across the waters of the Fram Strait focused on Bacterial and Archaeal domains, conducted as part of the Arctic long-term observatory HAUSGARTEN annual expedition in summer 2016. Besides the investigation of “who is out there”, the observations gained in this survey will be integrated with other biological and physical data of the long-term observatory framework and will provide an essential step towards the understanding of the biochemical dynamics in the Fram Strait. In addition, on a long-term plan this project will contribute to the microbial observatory work as part of the FRAM Helmholtz research infrastructure and EU AtlantOS program

Genome size evolution in the Archaea

What determines variation in genome size, gene content and genetic diversity at the broadest scales across the tree of life? Much of the existing work contrasts eukaryotes with prokaryotes, the latter represented mainly by Bacteria. But any general theory of genome evolution must also account for the Archaea, a diverse and ecologically important group of prokaryotes that represent one of the primary domains of cellular life. Here, we survey the extant diversity of Bacteria and Archaea, and ask whether the general principles of genome evolution deduced from the study of Bacteria and eukaryotes also apply to the archaeal domain. Although Bacteria and Archaea share a common prokaryotic genome architecture, the extant diversity of Bacteria appears to be much higher than that of Archaea. Compared with Archaea, Bacteria also show much greater genome-level specialisation to specific ecological niches, including parasitism and endosymbiosis. The reasons for these differences in long-term diversification rates are unclear, but might be related to fundamental differences in informational processing machineries and cell biological features that may favour archaeal diversification in harsher or more energy-limited environments. Finally, phylogenomic analyses suggest that the first Archaea were anaerobic autotrophs that evolved on the early Earth

Metagenome sequence of Elaphomyces granulatus from sporocarp tissue reveals Ascomycota ectomycorrhizal fingerprints of genome expansion and a Proteobacteria‐rich microbiome

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113145/1/emi12840.pd