Compatibility Family Learning for Item Recommendation and Generation

Compatibility between items, such as clothes and shoes, is a major factor among customer's purchasing decisions. However, learning "compatibility" is challenging due to (1) broader notions of compatibility than those of similarity, (2) the asymmetric nature of compatibility, and (3) only a small set of compatible and incompatible items are observed. We propose an end-to-end trainable system to embed each item into a latent vector and project a query item into K compatible prototypes in the same space. These prototypes reflect the broad notions of compatibility. We refer to both the embedding and prototypes as "Compatibility Family". In our learned space, we introduce a novel Projected Compatibility Distance (PCD) function which is differentiable and ensures diversity by aiming for at least one prototype to be close to a compatible item, whereas none of the prototypes are close to an incompatible item. We evaluate our system on a toy dataset, two Amazon product datasets, and Polyvore outfit dataset. Our method consistently achieves state-of-the-art performance. Finally, we show that we can visualize the candidate compatible prototypes using a Metric-regularized Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (MrCGAN), where the input is a projected prototype and the output is a generated image of a compatible item. We ask human evaluators to judge the relative compatibility between our generated images and images generated by CGANs conditioned directly on query items. Our generated images are significantly preferred, with roughly twice the number of votes as others.Comment: 9 pages, accepted to AAAI 201

Silicon-based MHz Multiple Fourier-Horn Ultrasonic Nozzles for Pulmonary Drug Delivery

Medicinal particles or aerosols of the size range from 1 to 5 µm at high output rates are required for efficient and effective inhaled drug delivery to rapidly administer a large dose of medicine to the lung. Current commercial devices all suffer from broad aerosol size distributions, with a geometrical standard deviation (GSD) range of 1.5 to >4.0, making it difficult to deliver sufficient drug to targeted sites precisely and rapidly. The silicon-based megahertz multiple-Fourier horn ultrasonic nozzles (MFHUNs) presented in this dissertation have been shown capable of producing such micrometer-sized particles (aerosols) at high output rate and low electrical drive power. The precise control of aerosol size and much narrower size distribution achieved by the new device will greatly improve targeting of treatment within the respiratory tract and improve delivery efficiency, resulting in better efficacy, fewer side effects, shorter treatment times, and lower medication costs compared with the existing nebulizers. The basic ultrasonic nozzle consists of a drive section and a resonator section with a lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducer bonded on the drive section to excite large mechanical vibrations on the end face of the distal horn to initiate instability of megahertz (MHz) Faraday waves on the free liquid surface. In operation, a medicinal liquid layer with a certain thickness is formed on the end face of the nozzle tip via a silica tube. The dramatic resonance effect among the multiple Fourier horns and high growth rate of the MHz Faraday waves excited on the medicinal liquid layer together facilitate ejection of monodisperse aerosols of desirable size range (2-5 µm) at low electrical power(<1.0W). The interaction between the medicinal liquid layer and the MFHUN was studied for optimization of nozzle designs. The effect of variations of the medicinal liquid layer on the performance of MFHUN was minimized by increasing the half-power bandwidth of the MFHUN. The temporal instability of Faraday waves has been observed and studied on both a planar liquid layer and a spherical water drop. The critical excitation displacement of the nozzle end face for temporal instability of MHz Faraday waves on the liquid layer was verified via measuring the threshold drive voltage. The theoretical prediction of the aerosol diameter was verified by the size analyses of aerosols produced at the drive frequencies of 1.0, 1.5 2.0 and 2.5 MHz. A number of common pulmonary drugs have been nebulized with desirable aerosol sizes and output rates using the pocket-size units consisting of a single nozzle or twin nozzles. A versatile ultrasonic nebulizer that utilizes a twin-nozzle of multiple Fourier horns at 1-2 MHz drive frequencies has also been realized to demonstrate the capability of doubling the aerosol output rate of the same drug solution as well as simultaneous aerosolization of two different drug solutions

Dedifferentiated liposarcoma can induce a leukemoid reaction

SummaryLiposarcoma is one of the most common malignant soft tissue neoplasms in adults; however, few reports of liposarcoma had been described the expression of leukocytosis and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF). In this report, we present the rare case of a patient who had de-differentiated liposarcoma and elevated G-CSF levels that resulted in a leukemoid reaction. The patient was a 65-year-old man who had been lame for one month due to right thigh swelling. His body temperature was slightly elevated at 38°C and leukocytosis with an elevated white blood cell (WBC) count (41500/μL) was noted. The findings of computed tomography of the lower extremities indicated the presence of a malignancy. Therefore, an incision biopsy was performed. Based on the finding of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the biopsy pathology report, we diagnosed the patient with liposarcoma. Moreover, the preoperative serum G-CSF level was elevated (261.8 pg/mL). An en bloc excision including the entire biopsy pathway was performed 5 days after admission. After en bloc excision of the tumor, WBC count, C-reactive protein (CRP) level, and G-CSF expression decreased. The final pathologic report confirmed the diagnosis of de-differentiated liposarcoma. No local recurrence or distant metastasis was detected in the follow-up image study, and the patient has remained asymptomatic 2 years after surgery. The case described here is a rare type of liposarcoma that produces G-CSF, which in turn, induces leukocytosis. Liposarcoma with elevated G-CSF levels resulting in a leukemoid reaction may indicate a poorly differentiated cell type and may be associated with a poor prognosis; however, en bloc excision of the tumor remains the primary treatment for this type of tumor. Moreover, the WBC count and G-CSF serum level can be as the tools monitoring the tumor recurrence

A Wireless Sensor Network-Speech Recognition Scheme Using Deployments of Multiple Kinect Microphone Array-Sensors

Speech recognition has successfully been utilized in lots of applications recently. With the development of the Kinect sensor device from Microsoft, speech recognition could be further promoted to be used in an ubiquitous environment where a wireless sensor network using Kinect sensors is deployed. This study develops a wireless sensor network (WSN)-speech recognition scheme using deployments of multiple Kinect microphone-array sensors. Presented speech recognition by Kinect-WSN could effectively capture the acoustic data made from the talking speaker and then perform the corresponding voice command control on certain target. In this study, different strategies to deploy multiple Kinect microphone-array sensors for constructing an ubiquitous Kinect-WSN speech recognition environment are investigated. Several different acoustic sensing data fusion methods are also explored for achieving superior performance on Kinect-WSN speech recognition. The presented method in this paper is evaluated the efficiency and effectiveness in an 5m×5m laboratory environment in which any of four test speakers is to make the voice command anywhere. Developed Kinect microphone array sensor-deployed WSN speech recognition in this work is finely utilized in various different applications in control

Influence of electrode thermal conductivity on resistive switching behavior during reset process

Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is the most promising candidate for non-volatile memory (NVM) due to its extremely low operation voltage, extremely fast write/erase speed, and excellent scaling capability. However, an obstacle hindering mass production of RRAM is the non-uniform physical mechanism in its resistance switching process. This study examines the influence of different electrode thermal conductivity on switching behavior during the reset process. Electrical analysis methods and an analysis of current conduction mechanism indicate that better thermal conductivity in the electrode will require larger input power in order to induce more active oxygen ions to take part in the reset process. More active oxygen ions cause a more complete reaction during the reset process, and cause the effective switching gap (dsw) to become thicker. The effect of the electrode thermal conductivity and input power are explained by our model and clarified by electrical analysis methods. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Characterizing clinical isolates of Acanthamoeba castellanii with high resistance to polyhexamethylene biguanide in Taiwan

AbstractBackground/PurposeAcanthamoeba keratitis (AK), a painful infectious corneal disease, is caused by the free-living pathogenic species Acanthamoeba. The symptoms include corneal infiltrate, epithelial, and stromal destruction, and loss of vision. Current treatment generally involves an hourly application of polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) over a period of several days; however, even this is not entirely effective against all strains/isolates. The aims of this study were to confirm the existence of pathogenic strains in Taiwan which are highly resistant to drugs and to characterize the behavior of these strains.MethodsAn in vitro Acanthamoeba species culture platform was established to observe the effectiveness of treatment and chart the morphological changes that occur under the effects of drugs using a light microscope and time-lapse recording. Changes in gene expression were examined using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and real-time PCR.ResultsOver 90% of the standard strain cells (ATCC 30010) were lysed after being treated with PHMB for 1 hour; however, clinical isolates of Acanthamoeba castellanii that differed in their susceptibility to the treatment drug were only partly lysed. Following treatment with PHMB, National Cheng Kung University Hospital isolation B (NCKH_B) transformed into a pseudocyst under the effects of drug stress; however, National Cheng Kung University Hospital isolation D (NCKH_D), an isolate with higher tolerance for PHMB, did not transform.ConclusionOur results confirm the existence of clinical isolates of A. castellanii with high resistance to PHMB in Taiwan and present the alternative drug tolerance of A. castellanii in addition to the transformation of pseudocyst/cyst

WiRiS: Transformer for RIS-Assisted Device-Free Sensing for Joint People Counting and Localization using Wi-Fi CSI

Channel State Information (CSI) is widely adopted as a feature for indoor localization. Taking advantage of the abundant information from the CSI, people can be accurately sensed even without equipped devices. However, the positioning error increases severely in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) regions. Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been introduced to improve signal coverage in NLoS areas, which can re-direct and enhance reflective signals with massive meta-material elements. In this paper, we have proposed a Transformer-based RIS-assisted device-free sensing for joint people counting and localization (WiRiS) system to precisely predict the number of people and their corresponding locations through configuring RIS. A series of predefined RIS beams is employed to create inputs of fingerprinting CSI features as sequence-to-sequence learning database for Transformer. We have evaluated the performance of proposed WiRiS system in both ray-tracing simulators and experiments. Both simulation and real-world experiments demonstrate that people counting accuracy exceeds 90%, and the localization error can achieve the centimeter-level, which outperforms the existing benchmarks without employment of RIS