When Causal Intervention Meets Adversarial Examples and Image Masking for Deep Neural Networks

Discovering and exploiting the causality in deep neural networks (DNNs) are crucial challenges for understanding and reasoning causal effects (CE) on an explainable visual model. "Intervention" has been widely used for recognizing a causal relation ontologically. In this paper, we propose a causal inference framework for visual reasoning via do-calculus. To study the intervention effects on pixel-level features for causal reasoning, we introduce pixel-wise masking and adversarial perturbation. In our framework, CE is calculated using features in a latent space and perturbed prediction from a DNN-based model. We further provide the first look into the characteristics of discovered CE of adversarially perturbed images generated by gradient-based methods \footnote{~~https://github.com/jjaacckkyy63/Causal-Intervention-AE-wAdvImg}. Experimental results show that CE is a competitive and robust index for understanding DNNs when compared with conventional methods such as class-activation mappings (CAMs) on the Chest X-Ray-14 dataset for human-interpretable feature(s) (e.g., symptom) reasoning. Moreover, CE holds promises for detecting adversarial examples as it possesses distinct characteristics in the presence of adversarial perturbations.Comment: Noted our camera-ready version has changed the title. "When Causal Intervention Meets Adversarial Examples and Image Masking for Deep Neural Networks" as the v3 official paper title in IEEE Proceeding. Please use it in your formal reference. Accepted at IEEE ICIP 2019. Pytorch code has released on https://github.com/jjaacckkyy63/Causal-Intervention-AE-wAdvIm

The Phytoalexin Resveratrol Regulates the Initiation of Hypersensitive Cell Death in Vitis Cell

Resveratrol is a major phytoalexin produced by plants in response to various stresses and promotes disease resistance. The resistance of North American grapevine Vitis rupestris is correlated with a hypersensitive reaction (HR), while susceptible European Vitis vinifera cv. ‘Pinot Noir’ does not exhibit HR, but expresses basal defence. We have shown previously that in cell lines derived from the two Vitis species, the bacterial effector Harpin induced a rapid and sensitive accumulation of stilbene synthase (StSy) transcripts, followed by massive cell death in V. rupestris. In the present work, we analysed the function of the phytoalexin resveratrol, the product of StSy. We found that cv. ‘Pinot Noir’ accumulated low resveratrol and its glycoside trans-piceid, whereas V. rupestris produced massive trans-resveratrol and the toxic oxidative δ-viniferin, indicating that the preferred metabolitism of resveratrol plays role in Vitis resistance. Cellular responses to resveratrol included rapid alkalinisation, accumulation of pathogenesis-related protein 5 (PR5) transcripts, oxidative burst, actin bundling, and cell death. Microtubule disruption and induction of StSy were triggered by Harpin, but not by resveratrol. Whereas most responses proceeded with different amplitude for the two cell lines, the accumulation of resveratrol, and the competence for resveratrol-induced oxidative burst differed in quality. The data lead to a model, where resveratrol, in addition to its classical role as antimicrobial phytoalexin, represents an important regulator for initiation of HR-related cell death

Power enhancement via an ion-channel in a Raman free-electron laser

As a high-power and high-efficiency coherent radiation source, the free-electron laser extends to two unique spectra: the region in the ultra-violet, x- and -rays, and the range in the millimeter- and terahertz-waves. Based on credible simulations, it is shown that the nonlinear power of a Raman free-electron laser in a millimeter wave range goes up and gets an increase of at least 9% when an ion-channel is applied to the beam-wave interaction chamber. A physical explanation is that the ion-channel weakens the velocities spread over the electron beam and, therefore, improves the electron-beam transportation quality and the beam-wave interactio

Performance of the GLAS Space Lidar Receiver Through Its Seven-Year Space Mission

NASA s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) mission [1,2] carrying the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) Instrument, was launched on January 12, 2003. The three lasers on ICESat have made a total of 1.98 billion laser shot measurements of the Earth s surface and atmosphere during its 17 science data collection campaigns over its seven year operating lifetime. ICESat completed its science mission after the last laser stopped operating in October 2009. The spacecraft was de-orbited on August 30, 2010. The GLAS instrument carried 3 diode-pumped Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers, which emitted 6-nsec wide pulses at 1064 and 532 nm at a 40-Hz rate. There are three lidar receiver channels, a 1064 nm surface altimetry channel, a 1064 nm cloud backscattering lidar channel, and a 532 nm cloud and aerosol backscattering lidar channel. The altimetry and cloud backscatter channels used Si avalanche photodiode (APD) operated in analog mode as in the Mars Global Surveyor s Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter [3,4]. GLAS also utilized a number of new technologies and techniques for space lidar, including passively Q-switched diode-pumped Nd:YAG lasers, a 1-m diameter telescope, a temperature tuned etalon optical bandpass filter, Si APD single photon counting detectors, 1 Gsample/sec waveform digitizers, ultra stable clock oscillators, and digital signal processing and detection algorithms [5]. A global position system (GPS) receiver was used to provide the spacecraft position and epoch times. The ICESat mission provided a unique opportunity to monitor the lidar component performance in the space environment over a multi-year time period. We performed a number of engineering tests periodically to monitor the lidar receiver performance, including receiver sensitivity, timing precision, detector dark noise, etc. A series of engineering tests were also performed after the end of the science mission to evaluate the performance of the spare detector, oscillator, waveform digitizer, and GPS receiver. An experiment was conducted which pointed GLAS to Venus to test the receiver sensitivity to star light and to verify GLAS bore sight with respect to the spacecraft coordinate system. These tests provided unique data to assess the degradation and the rate of change of these key lidar components due to space radiation and aging. They also helped to validate new techniques to operate and calibrate future space lidars

Gene expression profile indicates involvement of NO in Camellia sinensis pollen tube growth at low temperature

DEGs identified from the comparison between control (CsPT-CK) and 4 °C-treated (CsPT-LT) pollen tbues. All of the samples were replicated three times. CK and LT FPKM: fragments per kb per million reads for each unigene in the CK and LT libraries, respectively. The log2Ratio (LT/CK): ratio between the FPKM of LT and CK. The absolute values of log2Ratio > 1 and probability > 0.7 were used as threshold for assigning significance. Annotation of DEGs against NR, NT, Swiss-Prot protein, KEGG, COG and GO were all reported in the tables. “-”: no hit. (XLS 381 kb

Simulation and economic analysis of an innovative indoor solar cooking system with energy storage

Solar energy technology and energy storage technology are promising to make a contribution to current energy and global climate issue. The energy demand of daily cooking is enormous, and conventional cooking methods use gas or electricity with large carbon emissions. This paper proposes an innovative solar cooking system (SCS) integrated with rock-bed thermocline storage. Thermal oils transfer heat from the collectors to the rocks in the charging process and release heat in cooktop unit for cooking. The energy consumption of a household is first assessed by a reasonable hypothesis. Mathematical models and simulation models are then established to analyze the heat transfer performance of the cooktop unit and the annual running performance of the SCS. The rock-bed thermocline storage, single-tank thermocline storage and two-tank storage are compared. The simulation results indicate that the rock-bed thermocline storage unit employed to SCS will enhance the annual running performance and acquire the minimum initial investment cost. The economic analysis shows that the lowest levelized cost of cooking energy (LCOC) of the SCS is 0.3884 $/kWh, while the corresponding levelized cost of cooking a meal (LCCM) is 0.953$/Meal and the solar fraction (SF) is 71%. Compared to the electrical and natural gas cooker, the SCS saves 1.75 tons and 0.52 tons of carbon emissions annually, respectively