NOPE-SAC: Neural One-Plane RANSAC for Sparse-View Planar 3D Reconstruction

This paper studies the challenging two-view 3D reconstruction in a rigorous sparse-view configuration, which is suffering from insufficient correspondences in the input image pairs for camera pose estimation. We present a novel Neural One-PlanE RANSAC framework (termed NOPE-SAC in short) that exerts excellent capability to learn one-plane pose hypotheses from 3D plane correspondences. Building on the top of a siamese plane detection network, our NOPE-SAC first generates putative plane correspondences with a coarse initial pose. It then feeds the learned 3D plane parameters of correspondences into shared MLPs to estimate the one-plane camera pose hypotheses, which are subsequently reweighed in a RANSAC manner to obtain the final camera pose. Because the neural one-plane pose minimizes the number of plane correspondences for adaptive pose hypotheses generation, it enables stable pose voting and reliable pose refinement in a few plane correspondences for the sparse-view inputs. In the experiments, we demonstrate that our NOPE-SAC significantly improves the camera pose estimation for the two-view inputs with severe viewpoint changes, setting several new state-of-the-art performances on two challenging benchmarks, i.e., MatterPort3D and ScanNet, for sparse-view 3D reconstruction. The source code is released at https://github.com/IceTTTb/NopeSAC for reproducible research.Comment: Accepted to IEEE TPAMI; Code is available at https://github.com/IceTTTb/NopeSA

Volumetric Wireframe Parsing from Neural Attraction Fields

The primal sketch is a fundamental representation in Marr's vision theory, which allows for parsimonious image-level processing from 2D to 2.5D perception. This paper takes a further step by computing 3D primal sketch of wireframes from a set of images with known camera poses, in which we take the 2D wireframes in multi-view images as the basis to compute 3D wireframes in a volumetric rendering formulation. In our method, we first propose a NEural Attraction (NEAT) Fields that parameterizes the 3D line segments with coordinate Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs), enabling us to learn the 3D line segments from 2D observation without incurring any explicit feature correspondences across views. We then present a novel Global Junction Perceiving (GJP) module to perceive meaningful 3D junctions from the NEAT Fields of 3D line segments by optimizing a randomly initialized high-dimensional latent array and a lightweight decoding MLP. Benefitting from our explicit modeling of 3D junctions, we finally compute the primal sketch of 3D wireframes by attracting the queried 3D line segments to the 3D junctions, significantly simplifying the computation paradigm of 3D wireframe parsing. In experiments, we evaluate our approach on the DTU and BlendedMVS datasets with promising performance obtained. As far as we know, our method is the first approach to achieve high-fidelity 3D wireframe parsing without requiring explicit matching.Comment: Technical report; Video can be found at https://youtu.be/qtBQYbOpVp

Transcriptome Analysis of Metapenaeus affinis Reveals Genes Involved in Gonadal Development

Metapenaeus affinis is a crustacean with important commercial value in the fishery of the South China Sea. Overfishing has resulted in the decline of the wild population and germplasm degradation. However, there is little background knowledge about its gonadal development, and there is a lack of research on the development of this species. To better understand the molecular regulatory mechanisms during gonadal development, here, we performed RNA-Seq on immature and mature ovaries and compared their transcriptomic signatures. 126,930,488 and 122,677,356 clean sequencing reads were obtained from the Illumina sequencing platform, respectively. 394 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, of which 136 were up-regulated, and 258 were down-regulated. Further analysis revealed rich transcriptional sequences, which have homology with genes related to reproduction and development. Expression patterns of COX, GPX, E3s, PCNA, STPK, and other genes were changed during ovarian development. Validation by qRT-PCR demonstrated the reliability of RNA-Seq. This study has made a significant contribution to the currently available sequence data of M. affinis and provided reference data for the development of genetic and breeding work

Molecular cloning, expression pattern of Trypsin gene and association analysis with growth traits in Penaeus monodon

A novel TRY homolog was cloned in Penaeus monodon by RACE technology, named PmTry (GenBank: KP998480). The PmTry cDNA was 916 bp, which encodes 266 amino acids with a predicted molecular weight of 28.38 KDa and an isoelectric point of 4.58. Homologous analysis indicated that PmTry shared 42%~91% similarity with other species. The phylogenetic tree showed that PmTry was closely related to Fenneropenaeus chinensis. Tissue expression profiles showed that PmTry was highest expressed in the hepatopancreas and the lowest expressed in the eyestalk nerve. It was expressed in the whole growth stage of P. monodon, but the relative expression level of each stage was significantly different. In addition, PmTry-524 and PmTry-798 were particularly related to growth traits of P. monodon by genotype. The SNP markers may provide a basis for genetic selection and breed improvement studies in P. monodon

Identification and functional characterization of ApisOr23 in pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum

peer reviewedPea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, is a serious pest of many different leguminous plants, and it mainly relies on its odorant receptors (Ors) to discriminate among host species. However, less is known about the role that Ors play in the host plant location. In this study, we identified a novel conserved odorant receptor clade by phylogenetic analysis, and conducted the functional analysis of ApisOr23 in A. pisum. The results showed that the homologous Ors from A. pisum, Aphis glycines and Aphis gossypii share 94.28% identity in amino acid sequences. Moreover, conserved motifs were analyzed using the annotated homologous Or23 from eight aphid species, providing further proof of the high conservation level of the Or23 clade. According to the tissue expression pattern analysis, ApisOr23 was mainly expressed in the antennae. Further functional study using a heterologous Xenopus expression system revealed that ApisOr23 was tuned to five plant volatiles, namely trans-2-hexen-1-al, cis-2-hexen-1-ol, 1-heptanol, 4´-ethylacetophenone, and hexyl acetate. Among them, trans-2-hexen-1-al, which is one of the main volatile organic compounds released from legume plants, activated the highest response of ApisOr23. Our findings suggest that the conserved Or23 clade in most aphid species might play an important role in host plant detection

Efficacy of apatinib 250 mg combined with chemotherapy in patients with pretreated advanced breast cancer in a real-world setting

ObjectivesThis study evaluated the efficacy and safety of apatinib (an oral small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting VEGFR-2) 250 mg combined with chemotherapy in patients with pretreated metastatic breast cancer in a real-world setting.Patients and methodsA database of patients with advanced breast cancer who received apatinib between December 2016 and December 2019 in our institution was reviewed, and patients who received apatinib combined with chemotherapy were included. Progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), the objective response rate (ORR), the disease control rate (DCR), and treatment-related toxicity were analyzed.ResultsIn total, 52 evaluated patients with metastatic breast cancer previously exposed to anthracyclines or taxanes who received apatinib 250 mg combined with chemotherapy were enrolled in this study. Median PFS and OS were 4.8 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.2–6.4) and 15.4 months (95% CI = 9.2–21.6), respectively. The ORR and DCR were 25% and 86.5%, respectively. Median PFS for the previous line of treatment was 2.1 months (95% CI = 0.65–3.6), which was significantly shorter than that for the apatinib–chemotherapy combination (p < 0.001). No significant difference was identified in the ORR and PFS among the subgroups(subtypes, target lesion, combined regimens and treatment lines). The common toxicities related to apatinib were hypertension, hand-foot syndrome, proteinuria, and fatigue events.ConclusionApatinib 250 mg combined with chemotherapy provided favorable efficacy in patients with pretreated metastatic breast cancer regardless of molecular types and treatment lines. The toxicities of the regimen were well tolerated and manageable. This regimen could be a potential treatment option in patients with refractory pretreated metastatic breast cancers

A huge-amplitude white-light superflare on a L0 brown dwarf discovered by GWAC survey

White-light superflares from ultra cool stars are thought to be resulted from magnetic reconnection, but the magnetic dynamics in a fully convective star is not clear yet. In this paper, we report a stellar superflare detected with the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), along with rapid follow-ups with the F60A, Xinglong 2.16m and LCOGT telescopes. The effective temperature of the counterpart is estimated to be $2200\pm50$K by the BT-Settl model, corresponding to a spectral type of L0. The $R-$band light curve can be modeled as a sum of three exponential decay components, where the impulsive component contributes a fraction of 23\% of the total energy, while the gradual and the shallower decay phases emit 42\% and 35\% of the total energy, respectively. The strong and variable Balmer narrow emission lines indicate the large amplitude flare is resulted from magnetic activity. The bolometric energy released is about $6.4\times10^{33}$ ergs, equivalent to an energy release in a duration of 143.7 hours at its quiescent level. The amplitude of $\Delta R=-8.6$mag ( or $\Delta V=-11.2$ mag), placing it one of the highest amplitudes of any ultra cool star recorded with excellent temporal resolution. We argue that a stellar flare with such rapidly decaying and huge amplitude at distances greater than 1 kpc may be false positive in searching for counterparts of catastrophic events such as gravitational wave events or gamma-ray bursts, which are valuable in time-domain astronomy and should be given more attention.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, MNRAS accepte

Charge-changing cross section measurements of 300 MeV/nucleon 28^{28}Si on carbon and data analysis

Charge-changing cross section ($\sigma_{\text{cc}}$) measurements via the transmission method have made important progress recently aiming to determine the charge radii of exotic nuclei. In this work, we report a new $\sigma_{\text{cc}}$ measurement of 304(9) MeV/nucleon $^{28}$Si on carbon at the second Radioactive Ion Beam Line in Lanzhou (RIBLL2) and describe the data analysis procedure in detail. This procedure is essential to evaluate the systematic uncertainty in the transmission method. The determined $\sigma_{\mathrm{cc}}$ of 1125(11) mb is found to be consistent with the existing data at similar energies. The present work will serve as a reference in the $\sigma_{\text{cc}}$ determinations at RIBLL2.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, to be published in Chinese Physics