Less is More: Proxy Datasets in NAS approaches

Neural Architecture Search (NAS) defines the design of Neural Networks as a search problem. Unfortunately, NAS is computationally intensive because of various possibilities depending on the number of elements in the design and the possible connections between them. In this work, we extensively analyze the role of the dataset size based on several sampling approaches for reducing the dataset size (unsupervised and supervised cases) as an agnostic approach to reduce search time. We compared these techniques with four common NAS approaches in NAS-Bench-201 in roughly 1,400 experiments on CIFAR-100. One of our surprising findings is that in most cases we can reduce the amount of training data to 25\%, consequently reducing search time to 25\%, while at the same time maintaining the same accuracy as if training on the full dataset. Additionally, some designs derived from subsets out-perform designs derived from the full dataset by up to 22 p.p. accuracy

Waving Goodbye to Low-Res: A Diffusion-Wavelet Approach for Image Super-Resolution

This paper presents a novel Diffusion-Wavelet (DiWa) approach for Single-Image Super-Resolution (SISR). It leverages the strengths of Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPMs) and Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT). By enabling DDPMs to operate in the DWT domain, our DDPM models effectively hallucinate high-frequency information for super-resolved images on the wavelet spectrum, resulting in high-quality and detailed reconstructions in image space. Quantitatively, we outperform state-of-the-art diffusion-based SISR methods, namely SR3 and SRDiff, regarding PSNR, SSIM, and LPIPS on both face (8x scaling) and general (4x scaling) SR benchmarks. Meanwhile, using DWT enabled us to use fewer parameters than the compared models: 92M parameters instead of 550M compared to SR3 and 9.3M instead of 12M compared to SRDiff. Additionally, our method outperforms other state-of-the-art generative methods on classical general SR datasets while saving inference time. Finally, our work highlights its potential for various applications

YODA: You Only Diffuse Areas. An Area-Masked Diffusion Approach For Image Super-Resolution

This work introduces "You Only Diffuse Areas" (YODA), a novel method for partial diffusion in Single-Image Super-Resolution (SISR). The core idea is to utilize diffusion selectively on spatial regions based on attention maps derived from the low-resolution image and the current time step in the diffusion process. This time-dependent targeting enables a more effective conversion to high-resolution outputs by focusing on areas that benefit the most from the iterative refinement process, i.e., detail-rich objects. We empirically validate YODA by extending leading diffusion-based SISR methods SR3 and SRDiff. Our experiments demonstrate new state-of-the-art performance gains in face and general SR across PSNR, SSIM, and LPIPS metrics. A notable finding is YODA's stabilization effect on training by reducing color shifts, especially when induced by small batch sizes, potentially contributing to resource-constrained scenarios. The proposed spatial and temporal adaptive diffusion mechanism opens promising research directions, including developing enhanced attention map extraction techniques and optimizing inference latency based on sparser diffusion.Comment: Brian B. Moser and Stanislav Frolov contributed equall

Impact of innovative technologies on highway operators: Tolling organizations' perspective

Highways play a vivacious role in a country's economic growth, by facilitating movement of both goods and people from one place to another. Over a short period of time, innovation in automobile and information technology has seen an unprecedented growth and this exploratory research highlights the impact of advent of innovative technologies like Autonomous and Connected Vehicles, Internet of Things applications and Big Data analytics on highway operators, as reflected in the opinions of organizations around the world (highway operators, toll agencies, suppliers, consultants and associations). The opinions were collected on a Likert scale type online survey, which was later tested for its empirical significance with non-parametric Binomial and Wilcoxon signed rank tests, supported by descriptive analysis. The research results clearly indicate that these technologies and products are not far from realization and while on one hand they would facilitate highway operations on the other hand they may pose some serious challenges for operators

Hitchhiker's Guide to Super-Resolution: Introduction and Recent Advances

With the advent of Deep Learning (DL), Super-Resolution (SR) has also become a thriving research area. However, despite promising results, the field still faces challenges that require further research e.g., allowing flexible upsampling, more effective loss functions, and better evaluation metrics. We review the domain of SR in light of recent advances, and examine state-of-the-art models such as diffusion (DDPM) and transformer-based SR models. We present a critical discussion on contemporary strategies used in SR, and identify promising yet unexplored research directions. We complement previous surveys by incorporating the latest developments in the field such as uncertainty-driven losses, wavelet networks, neural architecture search, novel normalization methods, and the latests evaluation techniques. We also include several visualizations for the models and methods throughout each chapter in order to facilitate a global understanding of the trends in the field. This review is ultimately aimed at helping researchers to push the boundaries of DL applied to SR.Comment: accepted by IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 202

Future Outlook of Highway Operations with Implementation of Innovative Technologies Like AV, CV, IoT and Big Data

In the last couple of decades, there has been an unparalleled growth in number of people who can afford motorized vehicles. This is increasing the number of vehicles on roads at an alarming rate and existing infrastructure and conventional methods of traffic management are becoming inefficient both on highways and in urban areas. It is very important that our highways are up and running 24/7 as they not only provide a passage for human beings to move from one place to another, but also are the most important mode for intercity or international transfer of goods. There is an utter need of adapting the new world order, where daily processes are driven with the help of innovative technologies. It is highly likely that technological advancements like autonomous or connected vehicles, big data and the Internet of things can provide highway operators with a solution that might resolve unforeseeable challenges. This investigative exploratory research identifies and highlights the impact of new technological advancements in the automotive industry on highways and highway operators. The data for this research was collected on a Likert scale type online survey, from different organizations around the world (actively or passively involved in highway operations). The data was further tested for its empirical significance with non-parametric binomial and Wilcoxon signed rank tests, supported by a descriptive analysis. The results of this study are in line with theoretical and conceptual work done by several independent corporations and academic researchers. It is evident form the opinions of seasoned professionals that these technological advancements withhold the potential to resolve all potential challenges and revolutionize highway operations

Long-term relationship between tobacco use and weight loss after sleeve gastrectomy

8 p.Fil: Signorini, Franco José. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Polero, Virginia. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Viscido, Germán. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Navarro, Luciano. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Obeide, Lucio. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Moser, Federico. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.BACKGROUND: Smoking cessation had been typically associated with weight gain. We have reported that there is no relationship between tobacco use and weight loss after bariatric surgery in the short term. The objective of this study was to establish the relationship between weight loss and the smoking habit in patients undergoing bariatric surgery and to analyze weight loss on severe smokers and on those patients who stopped smoking during the long-term postoperative period. METHODS: One hundred eighty-four patients included in our previous study were contacted by phone at 7 years after sleeve gastrectomy. They were again divided into three groups: (A) smokers, (B) ex-smokers, and (C) non-smokers. Demographics and weight loss at 6, 12, 24, and 7 years were analyzed. Smokers were subdivided for further analysis into the following: group A1: heavy smokers, group A2: non-heavy smokers, group A3: active smokers after surgery, and group A4: quitters after surgery. Student test was used for statistics. RESULTS: One hundred two patients were included. The follow-up was 80.74 ± 7.25 month. Group A: 29 patients, group B: 34 patients, and group C: 39 patients. Mean BMI was 34.35 ± 8.44 kg/m2 and the %EWL was 56.95 ± 27. The subgroup analysis showed the following composition: group A1: 6 patients, group A2: 23 patients, group A3: 23 patients, and group A4: 6 patients. Weight loss difference among groups and subgroups was statistically non-significant. CONCLUSIONS: This study reaffirms the hypothesis that weight loss among bariatric patients is independent from smoking habit even at long-term follow-up and regardless from cessation.http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11695-018-3217-9info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionFil: Signorini, Franco José. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Polero, Virginia. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Viscido, Germán. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Navarro, Luciano. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Obeide, Lucio. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Fil: Moser, Federico. Hospital Privado Universitario de Córdoba. Departamento de Cirugía General. Programa de Cirugía Bariátrica; Argentina.Cirugí

Glycemic responses to strenuous training in male professional cyclists with type 1 diabetes: a prospective observational study

Introduction This prospective observational study sought to establish the glycemic, physiological and dietary demands of strenuous exercise training as part of a 9-day performance camp in a professional cycling team with type 1 diabetes (T1D).Research design and methods Sixteen male professional cyclists with T1D on multiple daily injections (age: 27±4 years; duration of T1D: 11±5 years; body mass index: 22±2 kg/m2; glycated hemoglobin: 7%±1% (50±6 mmol/mol); maximum rate of oxygen consumption: 73±4 mL/kg/min) performed road cycle sessions (50%–90% of the anaerobic threshold, duration 1–6 hours) over 9 consecutive days. Glycemic (Dexcom G6), nutrition and physiological data were collected throughout. Glycemic data were stratified into predefined glycemic ranges and mapped alongside exercise physiology and nutritional parameters, as well as split into daytime and night-time phases for comparative analysis. Data were assessed by means of analysis of variance and paired t-tests. A p value of ≤0.05 (two-tailed) was statistically significant.Results Higher levels of antecedent hypoglycemia in the nocturnal hours were associated with greater time spent in next-day hypoglycemia overall (p=0.003) and during exercise (p=0.019). Occurrence of nocturnal hypoglycemia was associated with over three times the risk of next-day hypoglycemia (p<0.001) and a twofold risk of low glucose during cycling (p<0.001). Moreover, there was trend for a greater amount of time spent in mild hypoglycemia during the night compared with daytime hours (p=0.080).Conclusion The higher prevalence of nocturnal hypoglycemia was associated with an increased risk of next-day hypoglycemia, which extended to cycle training sessions. These data highlight the potential need for additional prebed carbohydrates and/or insulin dose reduction strategies around exercise training in professional cyclists with T1D.Trial registration number DRKS00019923

Differential requirement of kindlin-3 for T cell progenitor homing to the non-vascularized and vascularized thymus

The role of integrin-mediated adhesion during T cell progenitor homing to and differentiation within the thymus is ill-defined, mainly due to functional overlap. To circumvent compensation, we disrupted the hematopoietic integrin regulator kindlin-3 in mice and found a progressive thymus atrophy that is primarily caused by an impaired homing capacity of T cell progenitors to the vascularized thymus. Notably, the low shear flow conditions in the vascular system at midgestation allow kindlin-3-deficient fetal liver-derived T cell progenitors to extravasate via pharyngeal vessels and colonize the avascular thymus primordium. Once in the thymus, kindlin-3 promotes intrathymic T cell proliferation by facilitating the integrin-dependent crosstalk with thymic antigen presenting cells, while intrathymic T cell migration, maturation into single positive CD4 and CD8 T cells and release into the circulation proceed without kindlin-3. Thus, kindlin-3 is dispensable for integrin-mediated T cell progenitor adhesion and signalling at low and indispensable at high shear forces