Visible and Near Infrared Image Fusion Based on Texture Information

Multi-sensor fusion is widely used in the environment perception system of the autonomous vehicle. It solves the interference caused by environmental changes and makes the whole driving system safer and more reliable. In this paper, a novel visible and near-infrared fusion method based on texture information is proposed to enhance unstructured environmental images. It aims at the problems of artifact, information loss and noise in traditional visible and near infrared image fusion methods. Firstly, the structure information of the visible image (RGB) and the near infrared image (NIR) after texture removal is obtained by relative total variation (RTV) calculation as the base layer of the fused image; secondly, a Bayesian classification model is established to calculate the noise weight and the noise information and the noise information in the visible image is adaptively filtered by joint bilateral filter; finally, the fused image is acquired by color space conversion. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can preserve the spectral characteristics and the unique information of visible and near-infrared images without artifacts and color distortion, and has good robustness as well as preserving the unique texture.Comment: 10 pages,11 figure

Chinese Antarctic Magnetometer Chain at the Cusp Latitude

A Chinese Antarctic Magnetometer (CAM) chain from Zhongshan Station (ZHS) to Dome-A (DMA) has been established since February 2009. A regular magnetometer is operated at ZHS, and four low power magnetometers are operated along the interior route from ZHS to DMA in the cusp latitude, extending over a distance of 1260 km. These stations fill an important void in the Antarctic magnetometer network. Furthermore, the CAM chain is magnetically conjugated with the Arctic region reaching from the Svalbard archipelago to Daneborg, on the east coast of Greenland. Conjugate measurements using the Arctic and Antarctic magnetometers provide excellent opportunities to investigate phenomena related to the coupling of the solar wind to the magnetosphere and ionosphere, such as magnetic impulse events, flux transfer events, traveling convection vortices and ultra-low frequency waves

Efficacy and Safety/Toxicity Study of Recombinant Vaccinia Virus JX-594 in Two Immunocompetent Animal Models of Glioma

The purpose of this study was to investigate the oncolytic potential of the recombinant, granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-expressing vaccinia virus (VV) JX-594 in experimental malignant glioma (MGs) in vitro and in immunocompetent rodent models. We have found that JX-594 killed all MG cell lines tested in vitro. Intratumoral (i.t.) administration of JX-594 significantly inhibited tumor growth and prolonged survival in rats-bearing RG2 intracranial (i.c.) tumors and mice-bearing GL261 brain tumors. Combination therapy with JX-594 and rapamycin significantly increased viral replication and further prolonged survival in both immunocompetent i.c. MG models with several animals considered “cured” (three out of seven rats >120 days, terminated experiment). JX-594 infected and killed brain tumor-initiating cells (BTICs) from patient samples grown ex vivo, and did so more efficiently than other oncolytic viruses MYXV, Reovirus type-3, and VSVΔM51. Additional safety/toxicity studies in nontumor-bearing rodents treated with a supratherapeutic dose of JX-594 demonstrated GM-CSF-dependent inflammation and necrosis. These results suggest that i.c. administered JX-594 triggers a predictable GM-CSF-mediated inflammation in murine models. Before proceeding to clinical trials, JX-594 should be evaluated in the brains of nonhuman primates and optimized for the viral doses, delivery routes as well as the combination agents (e.g., mTOR inhibitors)

Gamma-Secretase Represents a Therapeutic Target for the Treatment of Invasive Glioma Mediated by the p75 Neurotrophin Receptor

The multifunctional signaling protein p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) is a central regulator and major contributor to the highly invasive nature of malignant gliomas. Here, we show that neurotrophin-dependent regulated intramembrane proteolysis (RIP) of p75NTR is required for p75NTR-mediated glioma invasion, and identify a previously unnamed process for targeted glioma therapy. Expression of cleavage-resistant chimeras of p75NTR or treatment of animals bearing p75NTR-positive intracranial tumors with clinically applicable γ-secretase inhibitors resulted in dramatically decreased glioma invasion and prolonged survival. Importantly, proteolytic processing of p75NTR was observed in p75NTR-positive patient tumor specimens and brain tumor initiating cells. This work highlights the importance of p75NTR as a therapeutic target, suggesting that γ-secretase inhibitors may have direct clinical application for the treatment of malignant glioma

User-Oriented Robust Reinforcement Learning

Recently, improving the robustness of policies across different environments attracts increasing attention in the reinforcement learning (RL) community. Existing robust RL methods mostly aim to achieve the max-min robustness by optimizing the policy’s performance in the worst-case environment. However, in practice, a user that uses an RL policy may have different preferences over its performance across environments. Clearly, the aforementioned max-min robustness is oftentimes too conservative to satisfy user preference. Therefore, in this paper, we integrate user preference into policy learning in robust RL, and propose a novel User-Oriented Robust RL (UOR-RL) framework. Specifically, we define a new User-Oriented Robustness (UOR) metric for RL, which allocates different weights to the environments according to user preference and generalizes the max-min robustness metric. To optimize the UOR metric, we develop two different UOR-RL training algorithms for the scenarios with or without a priori known environment distribution, respectively. Theoretically, we prove that our UOR-RL training algorithms converge to near-optimal policies even with inaccurate or completely no knowledge about the environment distribution. Furthermore, we carry out extensive experimental evaluations in 6 MuJoCo tasks. The experimental results demonstrate that UOR-RL is comparable to the state-of-the-art baselines under the average-case and worst-case performance metrics, and more importantly establishes new state-of-the-art performance under the UOR metric

The complete mitochondrial genome of Holothuria fuscocinerea (Jaeger,1833)

In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of Holothuria fuscocinerea was sequenced on an Illumina platform and assembled using NovoPlasty v. 2.7.1. It was submitted to NCBI GenBank and is available with accession number MN542416. The genome was 15,827 bp in size and contains 22 tRNA genes, 12 protein-coding genes, and 2 rRNA genes. The composition of A + T in Holothura spinifera mtDNA was 60.30%. Except ND6 and 5 tRNAs, the others are not on the H-strand. The phylogenetic relationship of 13 species of sea cucumber were analyzed using the neighbor-joining method by software MEGA5.0. Holothuria fuscocinerea was most closely related to Holothuria polii

The complete mitochondrial genome of Holothuria spinifera (Théel, 1866)

In this research, on an Illumina platform, the full mitochondrial genome of Holothuria spinifera was listed in a sequence and also gathered by using the NovoPlasty v. 2.7.1. It was submitted to NCBI GenBank, and is available with accession number MN816440. The size of genome was 15,812 bp and contained 12 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, and 22 tRNA genes. The configuration of A + T in Holothuria spinifera mtDNA was 60.44%. Except five tRNAs and ND6, others are placed on the H-strand. By using the Neighbor-Joining method by software MEGA5.0, the phylogenetic relationship of 13 species of sea cucumber was analyzed. Holothuria spinifera was most closely associated to Parastichopus parvimensis

High-performance three-dimensional SnO₂-Sb electrode supported on titanium foam substrate prepared by solvothermal process

Three-dimensional (3D) Ti/SnO2–Sb electrode is promising for electrochemical oxidation process (EAOP) application, while hindered by uneven and low catalysts loading, especially on the inner surface of porous substrates. In this study, Ti foam and a solvothermal preparation method were developed for preparing a novel 3D Ti/SnO2–Sb electrode. The catalysts in hollow ellipsoidal shape were well dispersed and stacked on the outer surface, and fully grown along the rugged surface inside Ti foam. Owing to this distinctive structure, the Ti foam/ATO electrode expressed 1.89 times increasing electrochemically active surface area and 48% improved OH· production than the 2D Ti plate/ATO electrode. Moreover, the Ti foam/ATO electrode performed 1.57 years of predicted service life which is 65.8 times than that of Ti plate/ATO electrode. In conclusion, this study provided a facile method and a novel porous substrate to prepare 3D Ti/SnO2–Sb electrode with high performance for EAOP application.</p