156 research outputs found
Nobel-Prize-winning papers are significantly more highly-cited but not more disruptive than non-prize-winning counterparts
Using citation data of 557 Nobel prize winning papers and the same number of their non-prize winning counterparts in the same journal issues, we examined if the prize-winning papers have higher academic disruption than their counterparts. The results show that overall, the former group is significantly more highly-cited but not more disruptive than the latter. Moreover, the results are not consistent with existing knowledge that the numbers of authors and references negatively correlate with the disruption of papers
Flipbot: Learning Continuous Paper Flipping via Coarse-to-Fine Exteroceptive-Proprioceptive Exploration
This paper tackles the task of singulating and grasping paper-like deformable
objects. We refer to such tasks as paper-flipping. In contrast to manipulating
deformable objects that lack compression strength (such as shirts and ropes),
minor variations in the physical properties of the paper-like deformable
objects significantly impact the results, making manipulation highly
challenging. Here, we present Flipbot, a novel solution for flipping paper-like
deformable objects. Flipbot allows the robot to capture object physical
properties by integrating exteroceptive and proprioceptive perceptions that are
indispensable for manipulating deformable objects. Furthermore, by
incorporating a proposed coarse-to-fine exploration process, the system is
capable of learning the optimal control parameters for effective paper-flipping
through proprioceptive and exteroceptive inputs. We deploy our method on a
real-world robot with a soft gripper and learn in a self-supervised manner. The
resulting policy demonstrates the effectiveness of Flipbot on paper-flipping
tasks with various settings beyond the reach of prior studies, including but
not limited to flipping pages throughout a book and emptying paper sheets in a
box.Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA) 202
Learn to Grasp via Intention Discovery and its Application to Challenging Clutter
Humans excel in grasping objects through diverse and robust policies, many of
which are so probabilistically rare that exploration-based learning methods
hardly observe and learn. Inspired by the human learning process, we propose a
method to extract and exploit latent intents from demonstrations, and then
learn diverse and robust grasping policies through self-exploration. The
resulting policy can grasp challenging objects in various environments with an
off-the-shelf parallel gripper. The key component is a learned intention
estimator, which maps gripper pose and visual sensory to a set of sub-intents
covering important phases of the grasping movement. Sub-intents can be used to
build an intrinsic reward to guide policy learning. The learned policy
demonstrates remarkable zero-shot generalization from simulation to the real
world while retaining its robustness against states that have never been
encountered during training, novel objects such as protractors and user
manuals, and environments such as the cluttered conveyor.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L
Designing a Programming Contract Library for Java
Programmers are now developing large and complex software systems, so it’s important to have software that is consistent, efficient, and robust. Programming contracts allow developers to specify preconditions, postconditions, and invariants in order to more easily identify programming errors. The design by contract principle [1] was first used in the Eiffel programming language [2], and has since been extended to libraries in many other languages. The purpose of my project is to design a programming contract library for Java. The library supports a set of preconditions, postconditions, and invariants that are specified in Java annotations. It incorporates contract checking for objects of classes following the bean notation [3]. The library also supports checking for user-defined functions as contract conditions. This feature allows the user to check for complex contract conditions. In addition to these, the library supports contracts using lambdas in Java 8 [4], which to our knowledge has not been done in previous works on Java contracts. While the results show us that enabling contracts lowers the performance of the system, especially when lambda contracts are used, we also demonstrate how careful design can significantly reduce the overhead
ERRA: An Embodied Representation and Reasoning Architecture for Long-horizon Language-conditioned Manipulation Tasks
This letter introduces ERRA, an embodied learning architecture that enables
robots to jointly obtain three fundamental capabilities (reasoning, planning,
and interaction) for solving long-horizon language-conditioned manipulation
tasks. ERRA is based on tightly-coupled probabilistic inferences at two
granularity levels. Coarse-resolution inference is formulated as sequence
generation through a large language model, which infers action language from
natural language instruction and environment state. The robot then zooms to the
fine-resolution inference part to perform the concrete action corresponding to
the action language. Fine-resolution inference is constructed as a Markov
decision process, which takes action language and environmental sensing as
observations and outputs the action. The results of action execution in
environments provide feedback for subsequent coarse-resolution reasoning. Such
coarse-to-fine inference allows the robot to decompose and achieve long-horizon
tasks interactively. In extensive experiments, we show that ERRA can complete
various long-horizon manipulation tasks specified by abstract language
instructions. We also demonstrate successful generalization to the novel but
similar natural language instructions.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L
Exploring the Potential Transmission Risk of Schistosomiasis Japonica in the Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River, China
Vector snails are important in the life cycle of schisosomiasis, the need to understand the ecologic factors that could enhance snails’ survival and trigger schistosomiasis transmission necessitated this study. Therefore, the potential risk of schistosomiasis transmission was explored in Zhangjiagang region, a non-endemic area in lower reaches of Yangtze River, eastern of China. The key indictors, including snail survival rate, spawn rate, hatching rate and gland development, were investigated through the designed experiments, routine snail and infectious source surveillance. The results showed that there was no significant difference in surviving rate, spawn rate, hatching rate and gland development between groups of simulated environments in laboratory, similar finding in field experiments, which suggested that snails stand a high possibility to survive in these non-endemic areas once they spread into these areas from other places. And no snails and infectious source were found either in the previous routine monitoring in the past decades and the snail surveillance we conducted from 2007 to 2013. Therefore, there is little risk in the study areas in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. However, the sporadic and imported cases are still seen in a few areas adjacent to the endemic or transmission interrupted areas as the important infectious source, thus become a risk of schistosomisis transmission or re-emergence in these areas where the snail exists. Hence, maintaining routine monitoring and surveillance can be one of the effective and efficient ways to prevent the re-emergence of Schistosomiasis
Antisense oligonucleotide targeting Livin induces apoptosis of human bladder cancer cell via a mechanism involving caspase 3
BACKGROUND AND AIM: in recent years, Livin, a new member of IAPs family, is found to be a key molecule in cancers. Researchers consider Livin may become a new target for tumor therapy; however, the role of it in bladder cancer is still unclear. The purpose of this article is to investigate Antisense Oligonucleotide (ASODN) of Livin on treating bladder cancer cell and underlying mechanisms. METHODS: Phosphorathioate modifying was used to synthesize antisense oligonucleotides targeting Livin, followed by transfection into human bladder cancer cell 5637. After transfection, Livin mRNA and protein level, cell proliferation and apoptosis changes, caspase3 level and its effect on human bladder cancer transplantable tumor in nude mice were measured. RESULT: results showed Livin ASODN effectively inhibited Livin expression and tumor cell proliferation, and these effects probably through enhanced caspase3 activity and apoptosis of tumor cells. In nude mice transplantable tumor model, Livin expressions were inhibited meanwhile caspase3 expression was increased. Tumor growth slowed down and apoptosis was enhanced. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that Livin plays an important role in inhibiting apoptosis of bladder cancer cells. Livin ASODN may promote cell apoptosis, inhibit bladder cancer growth, and become one of the methods of gene therapy for bladder cancer
Electroweak Supersymmetry around the Electroweak Scale
Inspired by the phenomenological constraints, LHC supersymmetry and Higgs
searches, dark matter search as well as string model building, we propose the
electroweak supersymmetry around the electroweak scale: the squarks and/or
gluinos are around a few TeV while the sleptons, sneutrinos, bino and winos are
within one TeV. The Higgsinos can be either heavy or light. We consider bino as
the dominant component of dark matter candidate, and the observed dark matter
relic density is achieved via the neutralino-stau coannihilations. Considering
the Generalized Minimal Supergravity (GmSUGRA), we show explicitly that the
electroweak supersymmetry can be realized, and the gauge coupling unification
can be preserved. With two Scenarios, we study the viable parameter spaces that
satisfy all the current phenomenological constraints, and we present the
concrete benchmark points. Furthermore, we comment on the fine-tuning problem
and LHC searches.Comment: RevTex4, 28 pages, 8 figures, 8 tables, version to appear in EPJ
The Physiological Occlusion of the Central Canal May Be a Prerequisite for Syringomyelia Formation
Objective Syringomyelia is a common central nervous system disease characterized by the dilation of the central canal (CC). Regarding the pathogenesis of syringomyelia, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulation obstruction in the subarachnoid space (SAS) of the spinal cord has been widely accepted. However, clinical and animal studies on obstructing the CSF in SAS failed to form syringomyelia, challenging the theory of SAS obstruction. The precise pathogenesis remains unknown. Methods We utilized an extradural compression rat model to investigate the pathogenesis underlying syringomyelia. Magnetic resonance imaging enabled detection of syringomyelia formation. To assess CSF flow within the SAS, Evans blue was infused into the cisterna magna. Histological analysis allowed morphological examination of the CC. Furthermore, CSF flow through the CC was traced using Ovalbumin Alexa-Flour 647 conjugate (OAF-647). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) enabled visualization of ependymal cilia. Results The findings showed that the dura mater below the compression segment exhibited lighter coloration relative to the region above the compression, indicative of partial obstruction within the SAS. However, the degree of SAS occlusion did not significantly differ between syringomyelia (SM-Y group) and those without (SM-N group). Intriguingly, hematoxylin and eosin staining and CSF tracing revealed occlusion of the CC accompanied by reduced CSF flow in the SM-Y group compared to SM-N and control groups. SEM images uncovered impairment of ependymal cilia inside the syringomyelia. Conclusion CC occlusion may represent a physiological prerequisite for syringomyelia formation, while SAS obstruction serves to initiate disease onset. The impairment of ependymal cilia appears to facilitate progression of syringomyelia
A Novel Systems Pharmacology Method to Investigate Molecular Mechanisms of Scutellaria barbata D. Don for Non-small Cell Lung Cancer
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most ordinary type of lung cancer which leads to 1/3 of all cancer deaths. At present, cytotoxic chemotherapy, surgical resection, radiation, and photodynamic therapy are the main strategies for NSCLC treatment. However, NSCLC is relatively resistant to the above therapeutic strategies, resulting in a rather low (20%) 5-year survival rate. Therefore, there is imperative to identify or develop efficient lead compounds for the treatment of NSCLC. Here, we report that the herb Scutellaria barbata D. Don (SBD) can effectively treat NSCLC by anti-inflammatory, promoting apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, and angiogenesis. In this work, we analyze the molecular mechanism of SBD for NSCLC treatment by applying the systems pharmacology strategy. This method combines pharmacokinetics analysis with pharmacodynamics evaluation to screen out the active compounds, predict the targets and assess the networks and pathways. Results show that 33 compounds were identified with potential anti-cancer effects. Utilizing these active compounds as probes, we predicted that 145 NSCLC related targets mainly involved four aspects: apoptosis, inflammation, cell cycle, and angiogenesis. And in vitro experiments were managed to evaluate the reliability of some vital active compounds and targets. Overall, a complete overview of the integrated systems pharmacology method provides a precise probe to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of SBD for NSCLC. Moreover, baicalein from SBD effectively inhibited tumor growth in an LLC tumor-bearing mice models, demonstrating the anti-tumor effects of SBD. Our findings further provided experimental evidence for the application in the treatment of NSCLC
- …