NTIRE 2020 Challenge on Spectral Reconstruction from an RGB Image

This paper reviews the second challenge on spectral reconstruction from RGB images, i.e., the recovery of whole- scene hyperspectral (HS) information from a 3-channel RGB image. As in the previous challenge, two tracks were provided: (i) a "Clean" track where HS images are estimated from noise-free RGBs, the RGB images are themselves calculated numerically using the ground-truth HS images and supplied spectral sensitivity functions (ii) a "Real World" track, simulating capture by an uncalibrated and unknown camera, where the HS images are recovered from noisy JPEG-compressed RGB images. A new, larger-than-ever, natural hyperspectral image data set is presented, containing a total of 510 HS images. The Clean and Real World tracks had 103 and 78 registered participants respectively, with 14 teams competing in the final testing phase. A description of the proposed methods, alongside their challenge scores and an extensive evaluation of top performing methods is also provided. They gauge the state-of-the-art in spectral reconstruction from an RGB image

Inventing a Moralist Self: The Moral Experiences of Drug Users in China\u27s State-run Methadone Maintenance Treatment Program

This dissertation investigates the moral experiences of drug users receiving addiction treatment in southwest China. The launch of a nationwide, state-run methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) program in 2003 heralded a transition from the criminalization of drug use to the medicalization of addiction as a kind of chronic brain disease in contemporary China. This new paradigm emerged from global public health interventions to reduce HIV/AIDS transmission. The large-scale MMT program aimed to facilitate drug users\u27 Ҳeturn to societyӠby fulfilling both their biological and social needs: by providing methadone to fix their biological addiction to heroin while simultaneously building MMT clinics as caring environments to rehabilitate their relationship with society. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2016 in Yunnan province, China\u27s ground zero in its People\u27s War on Drugs, I argue that even addressing both biological and social aspects are not enough to understand what is at stake for drug users. Instead, we must understand methadone usersՠefforts to invent a moralist self (Yan 2017) in the face of extreme moral opprobrium. The transformation in drug control policy has suspended Chinese methadone users between competing arenas: within the public health realm where a medical explanation of addiction was promoted and a legitimizing identity of patienthood was conferred by the Chinese government; and in the broader society where drug-related issues have been deeply moralized since the late Qing dynasty and drug users continue to suffer from stigma and marginalization. This dissertation thus investigates how and why drug users have moralized their relationships with drugs, care providers, government officials, the Chinese state, as well as themselves. By studying methadone usersՠcomplex and often conflicting moral experiences, this dissertation contributes to a more nuanced understanding Chinese personhood and ultimately sheds light on a fundamental question in the anthropology of morality: җhat drives us to understand our lives in ethical terms?Ӽ/p\u3

Negative Emotion Reduces Visual Working Memory Recall Variability: A Meta-analytical Review

Negative emotion is often hypothesized to trigger a more deliberate processing mode. This effect can manifest as increased precision of information maintained in working memory (WM) captured by reduced WM recall variability. However, some recent evidence shows that WM representations are immune to any emotional influences. Here, we meta-analyze existing evidence based on data from 13 experiments across 491 participants who performed a delay estimation WM task under negative and neutral emotions. We find that negative emotion modestly reduces WM recall variability and increases recall failures relative to the neutral condition. These effects are moderated by participants’ self-report negative experiences during emotion induction. Collectively, these data suggest that negative emotion influences how much and how well one can remember in WM

Electrophysiological evidence supports the role of sustained visuospatial attention in maintaining visual WM contents

Recent empirical and theoretical work suggests that there is a close relationship between visual working memory (WM) and visuospatial attention. Here, we investigated whether visuospatial attention was involved in maintaining object representations in visual WM. To this end, the alpha lateralization and contralateral delay activity (CDA) were analyzed as neural markers for visuospatial attention and visual WM storage, respectively. In the single-task condition, participants performed a grating change-detection task. To probe the role of visuospatial attention in maintaining WM contents, two color squares were presented above and below the fixation point during the retention interval, which remained visible until the detection display was present. In the dual-task condition, participants were required to maintain lateralized gratings while staring at the center-presented color squares, to detect possible subsequent color change. With this task, sustained visuospatial attention that guided to individual memory representations was disrupted. The behavioral data showed that, the insertion of secondary task significantly deteriorated WM performance. For electrophysiological data, we divided the retention interval into two stages, the early stage and late stage, bounded by the onset of the secondary task. We found that CDA amplitude was lower under the dual-task condition than the single-task condition during the late stage, but not the early stage, and the extent to which CDA reduced tracked the impaired memory performance at the individual level. Also, alpha lateralization only could be observed in the single-task condition of the late stage, and completely disappeared in the dual-task condition, indicating the disruption of visuospatial attention directed to memory representations. Individuals who experienced greater visuospatial attention disruption, as indicated by the alpha lateralization, had lower maintenance-associated neural activity (CDA), and suffered greater impairment of memory performance. These findings confirm that sustained visuospatial attention continues improving visual WM processing after the initial encoding phase, and most likely participates in this process by supporting the maintenance of representations in an active state.peerReviewe

Improving electrochemical corrosion properties of ZE41A magnesium alloy via hydrothermal treatment

ZE41A magnesium alloy was selected as matrix material, using hydrothermal method for the synthesis of the surface coating. The formation of anti-corrosion coatings on the surface of magnesium alloy was investigated in pure water. By adjusting the experimental parameters such as the hydrothermal time (1-3 h) and the hydrothermal temperature (120-160 °C), the generation of the coating on the magnesium alloy surface is regulated. The surface morphologies, composition phase, and corrosion resistance of the hydrothermal conversion coatings were investigated by the method of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electrochemical corrosion tests. Results show that prolonged hydrothermal time and increased hydrothermal temperature change the morphologies as well as the chemical compositions of formed coatings from a relative loose structure with few magnesium hydroxides into a fine dense one with higher amount of magnesium hydroxide

The inhibitory effect of long-term associative representation on working memory

Studies on how long-term memory affects working memory (WM) have found that long-term memory can enhance WM processing. However, these studies only use item memory as the representation of long-term memory. In addition to item memory, associative memory is also an essential part of long-term memory. The associative memory and item memory involve different cognitive mechanisms and brain areas. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how associative memory affects WM processing. Before the WM task, participants were asked to store 16 pairs of dissimilar pictures into long-term memory. The participants would obtain the associative memory of these pairs of pictures in the long-term memory. The WM task was a change detection paradigm. Memory pictures in the memory array appeared in pairs (associative condition) or out of pairs (independent condition). In Experiment 1, the memory array with 6 items (3 pairs) was presented for 500 ms or 1000 ms. After a 1000 ms interval, participants needed to determine whether the probe item was the same as the memory array. The design and procedure of Experiment 2 were similar to those of Experiment 1, except that memory array was presented for only 500 ms, and 2 items (1 pairs) and 4 terms (2 pairs) were added in set size condition. Alpha power of electroencephalogram (EEG) was also collected and analyzed in Experiment 2. The results in Experiment 1 showed that WM capacity and accuracy were significantly lower in the associative condition than in the independent condition (for both presentation-time conditions: 500ms and 1000ms). The results in Experiment 2 showed that the alpha power in the independent condition increased as the memory set size increased (2 items < 4 items < 6 items), while the alpha power in the associative condition reached the asymptote when the set size was 4 (2 items < 4 items = 6 items). Both of these two experiments' results showed that WM capacity in the associative condition was lower than that in the independent condition. In conclusion, long-term associative representations inhibit the current WM processing and decrease WM capacity. This inhibitory effect is not affected by the length of encoding time. It implies that the reason for the increase of WM load by associative memory may come from the disorder of attention distribution.peerReviewe

Function of Deubiquitinating Enzyme USP14 as Oncogene in Different Types of Cancer

Background/Aims: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tissues overexpress USP14, which promotes tumor cell proliferation and is associated with shorter overall survival time. Methods: The expression of USP14 was assayed in many types of cancers. USP14 was up-and down-regulated using appropriate plasmid or lentiviral vector constructs and its effects on proliferation, cell colony number, and apoptosis rate were measured. A human NSCLC cell line was inoculated into nude mice and the survival rates were recorded. Results: We found USP14 amplification and overexpression in many different cancers. The overexpression of USP14 in USP14 low-expression cell lines promoted cell proliferation and migration, whereas USP14 downregulation suppressed tumor cell proliferation, decreased tumor cell colony number, increased apoptosis rate, and decreased cell migration and invasion. Conclusion: USP14 plays an oncogenic role in various types of cancer, and may thus represent a new cancer therapy target