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Virus triggers allergic reaction to gluten
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Robot vision test raises its sights
Virus triggers allergic reaction to gluten A COMMON, symptomless virus could be responsible for triggering coeliac disease. This painful autoimmune condition involves the immune system mistakenly attacking gluten – a protein found in wheat, rye and barley – and damaging the gut. Coeliac disease is generally thought to be a genetic disease, but there is some evidence that its onset may be linked to infection with cold-causing adenoviruses or hepatitis C. 16 | NewScientist | 15 April 2017
built a system that was over 95 per cent accurate, surpassing average human performance for the first time in the competition’s history. And photo apps from Google and Apple allow people to search their image collections using terms like “food” or “baby”. Google Photos even classifies images by abstract concepts like “happiness”. “When we were starting the project, these were not things that
OOSTENDE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
COMPUTER vision is ready for its next big test: seeing in 3D. The ImageNet Challenge, which has boosted the development of image-recognition algorithms, will be replaced by a new contest next year that aims to help robots see the world in all its depth. Since 2010, image recognition algorithms have been trained on the ImageNet database, a go-to set of more than 14 million images hand-labelled with information about the objects they depict. The algorithms learn to classify the objects into different categories, such as house, steak or Alsatian. Almost all computer vision systems are trained like this before being fine-tuned on more specific images for different tasks. Every year, participants in the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge try to code algorithms that can categorise these images with as few errors as possible. Seven years ago, this proved difficult, but now computer vision is great at identifying objects in images. In 2015, a team from Microsoft
Now Bana Jabri at the University of Chicago and her colleagues have obtained the first experimental evidence that a virus can cause the immune system to stop tolerating certain molecules in our food. The group found that exposing mice to a common reovirus called T1L destroys their tolerance of gluten. When the team fed gliadin – a component of gluten – to mice, the animals produced two to three times as many antibodies against the compound over the next two days if they were also infected with reovirus (Science, doi.org/b5cq). And mice infected with the T1L virus had between two to four times as much of an inflammatory molecule
industry had done yet,” says Alex Berg at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is one of the competition’s organisers. “Now they are products that millions of people are using.” So the ImageNet team says it is time for a fresh challenge in 2018. Although the details of this contest have yet to be decided, it will tackle a problem computer vision has yet to master: how to make systems that can classify objects in the real world, not just in 2D images, and describe them using natural language. “There is very little work on putting a 3D scene through a machine-learning algorithm,”
says Victor Prisacariu at the University of Oxford. Building a large database of images complete with 3D information would allow robots to be trained to recognise the objects around them and map out routes. This database would largely comprise images of scenes inside homes and other buildings. It could consist of digital models that simulate the real world or 360-degree photos that include depth information, says Berg. But first someone must make these images. As this is difficult and costly, the data set is likely to be a lot smaller than the one that was put together for the original challenge. Robot vision is ready for its ImageNet moment, says Andrew Davison at Imperial College London. Domestic robots will need to know how to deal with objects and manipulate the world around them, he says. Berg isn’t expecting major progress in the first couple of years of the new challenge. Eventually, he would like to see robots that can consistently understand their environment and explain what they see just as well as a human can. But achieving either of these things is more than five years away, –Looking for context– he says. Matt Reynolds n
called interferon regulatory factor 1 in their bodies. This molecule is seen at high levels in the gut linings of children with coeliac disease, and has also been implicated in instigating the condition’s onset. “The reovirus changes the way the immune system sees gluten,” says Jabri. “Instead of mounting a tolerant, non-aggressive response, the immune system in the presence of the reovirus views gluten as being dangerous, promoting a destructive inflammatory response.”
“In the presence of the virus, the immune system views gluten as dangerous, instead of tolerating it”
Gluten is more likely than most other foodstuffs to trigger immunological problems, because it resists being broken down in the gut, says Jabri. Gliadin is the most difficult component of gluten to digest. “This is a fascinating study,” says David Sanders at the University of Sheffield, UK. “Investigators have studied this ‘second-hit’ hypothesis for some time to explain why not everyone with genetic predisposition actually develops the disease. Now the new study suggests that reoviruses might play a role.” Jabri’s team is now working on a vaccine that might stop infections from causing coeliac disease. Andy Coghlan n
Robot vision test raises its sights
Virus triggers allergic reaction to gluten A COMMON, symptomless virus could be responsible for triggering coeliac disease. This painful autoimmune condition involves the immune system mistakenly attacking gluten – a protein found in wheat, rye and barley – and damaging the gut. Coeliac disease is generally thought to be a genetic disease, but there is some evidence that its onset may be linked to infection with cold-causing adenoviruses or hepatitis C. 16 | NewScientist | 15 April 2017
built a system that was over 95 per cent accurate, surpassing average human performance for the first time in the competition’s history. And photo apps from Google and Apple allow people to search their image collections using terms like “food” or “baby”. Google Photos even classifies images by abstract concepts like “happiness”. “When we were starting the project, these were not things that
OOSTENDE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
COMPUTER vision is ready for its next big test: seeing in 3D. The ImageNet Challenge, which has boosted the development of image-recognition algorithms, will be replaced by a new contest next year that aims to help robots see the world in all its depth. Since 2010, image recognition algorithms have been trained on the ImageNet database, a go-to set of more than 14 million images hand-labelled with information about the objects they depict. The algorithms learn to classify the objects into different categories, such as house, steak or Alsatian. Almost all computer vision systems are trained like this before being fine-tuned on more specific images for different tasks. Every year, participants in the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge try to code algorithms that can categorise these images with as few errors as possible. Seven years ago, this proved difficult, but now computer vision is great at identifying objects in images. In 2015, a team from Microsoft
Now Bana Jabri at the University of Chicago and her colleagues have obtained the first experimental evidence that a virus can cause the immune system to stop tolerating certain molecules in our food. The group found that exposing mice to a common reovirus called T1L destroys their tolerance of gluten. When the team fed gliadin – a component of gluten – to mice, the animals produced two to three times as many antibodies against the compound over the next two days if they were also infected with reovirus (Science, doi.org/b5cq). And mice infected with the T1L virus had between two to four times as much of an inflammatory molecule
industry had done yet,” says Alex Berg at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is one of the competition’s organisers. “Now they are products that millions of people are using.” So the ImageNet team says it is time for a fresh challenge in 2018. Although the details of this contest have yet to be decided, it will tackle a problem computer vision has yet to master: how to make systems that can classify objects in the real world, not just in 2D images, and describe them using natural language. “There is very little work on putting a 3D scene through a machine-learning algorithm,”
says Victor Prisacariu at the University of Oxford. Building a large database of images complete with 3D information would allow robots to be trained to recognise the objects around them and map out routes. This database would largely comprise images of scenes inside homes and other buildings. It could consist of digital models that simulate the real world or 360-degree photos that include depth information, says Berg. But first someone must make these images. As this is difficult and costly, the data set is likely to be a lot smaller than the one that was put together for the original challenge. Robot vision is ready for its ImageNet moment, says Andrew Davison at Imperial College London. Domestic robots will need to know how to deal with objects and manipulate the world around them, he says. Berg isn’t expecting major progress in the first couple of years of the new challenge. Eventually, he would like to see robots that can consistently understand their environment and explain what they see just as well as a human can. But achieving either of these things is more than five years away, –Looking for context– he says. Matt Reynolds n
called interferon regulatory factor 1 in their bodies. This molecule is seen at high levels in the gut linings of children with coeliac disease, and has also been implicated in instigating the condition’s onset. “The reovirus changes the way the immune system sees gluten,” says Jabri. “Instead of mounting a tolerant, non-aggressive response, the immune system in the presence of the reovirus views gluten as being dangerous, promoting a destructive inflammatory response.”
“In the presence of the virus, the immune system views gluten as dangerous, instead of tolerating it”
Gluten is more likely than most other foodstuffs to trigger immunological problems, because it resists being broken down in the gut, says Jabri. Gliadin is the most difficult component of gluten to digest. “This is a fascinating study,” says David Sanders at the University of Sheffield, UK. “Investigators have studied this ‘second-hit’ hypothesis for some time to explain why not everyone with genetic predisposition actually develops the disease. Now the new study suggests that reoviruses might play a role.” Jabri’s team is now working on a vaccine that might stop infections from causing coeliac disease. Andy Coghlan n