The Thermal Infrared Visual Object Tracking VOT-TIR2015 challenge results

The Thermal Infrared Visual Object Tracking challenge 2015, VOT-TIR2015, aims at comparing short-term single-object visual trackers that work on thermal infrared (TIR) sequences and do not apply pre-learned models of object appearance. VOT-TIR2015 is the first benchmark on short-term tracking in TIR sequences. Results of 24 trackers are presented. For each participating tracker, a short description is provided in the appendix. The VOT-TIR2015 challenge is based on the VOT2013 challenge, but introduces the following novelties: (i) the newly collected LTIR (Link - ping TIR) dataset is used, (ii) the VOT2013 attributes are adapted to TIR data, (iii) the evaluation is performed using insights gained during VOT2013 and VOT2014 and is similar to VOT2015

How do metro stations integrate with walking environments? Results from walking access within three types of built environment in Beijing

China is in a period of rapid metro system development. However, there are few empirical evaluations of the complex interactions between the local built environment and metro ridership in the Chinese context. In this study, we collected empirical data on the influence of local environmental characteristics on walking access in Beijing. Walking behaviors and built environment perceptions among commuters (N = 495) were collected at six metro stations in three distinctly different physical settings in Beijing—two inhutong, two in danwei, and two in xiaoqu. Participants recorded walking routes from the metro stations until they arrived at their destinations. Evaluations of the built environment were collected using a questionnaire after the participants arrived. Geographic information system was used to map walking routes and code built environment variables. Walking behavior outcomes were measured as walked time from metro exit to participant\u27s destination. ANOVA compared differences between perceived and measured built environment characteristics and walking behaviors among selected neighborhoods. Multiple regression was used to test for associations between the built environment and metro station routes. We found that mean walking time from the metro station to a destination was 8 min. Recreational and office destinations had similar walking times to the metro station as residential destinations. Metro riders in xiaoqu anddanwei walked longer distances to their destinations compared to metro riders in hutong. Physical obstacles to crossing streets made walking times longer. Greater connectivity, both perceived and measured, predicted shorter walking times. Local land use is not well integrated into metro station placement in Beijing. Better connectivity, pedestrian-friendly designs and higher building coverage ratio around the metro station might promote easier walking access and have the potential to capture more metro riders

BrainCLIP: Bridging Brain and Visual-Linguistic Representation via CLIP for Generic Natural Visual Stimulus Decoding from fMRI

Reconstructing perceived natural images or decoding their categories from fMRI signals are challenging tasks with great scientific significance. Due to the lack of paired samples, most existing methods fail to generate semantically recognizable reconstruction and are difficult to generalize to novel classes. In this work, we propose, for the first time, a task-agnostic brain decoding model by unifying the visual stimulus classification and reconstruction tasks in a semantic space. We denote it as BrainCLIP, which leverages CLIP's cross-modal generalization ability to bridge the modality gap between brain activities, images, and texts. Specifically, BrainCLIP is a VAE-based architecture that transforms fMRI patterns into the CLIP embedding space by combining visual and textual supervision. Note that previous works rarely use multi-modal supervision for visual stimulus decoding. Our experiments demonstrate that textual supervision can significantly boost the performance of decoding models compared to the condition where only image supervision exists. BrainCLIP can be applied to multiple scenarios like fMRI-to-image generation, fMRI-image-matching, and fMRI-text-matching. Compared with BraVL, a recently proposed multi-modal method for fMRI-based brain decoding, BrainCLIP achieves significantly better performance on the novel class classification task. BrainCLIP also establishes a new state-of-the-art for fMRI-based natural image reconstruction in terms of high-level image features.Comment: incomplete experiment

Study on the Seismic Performance of Stiffened Corrugated Steel Plate Shear Walls with Atmospheric Corrosion

Corrugated steel plate shear walls (CSPWs) with three different stiffening methods are proposed in this paper, including unstiffened CSPWs (USWs), cross stiffened CSPWs (CSWs) and asymmetric diagonal-stiffened CSPWs (ASWs). A numerical model was established by ABAQUS 6.13 based on the validation of an existing cyclic test on a CSPW. This paper presents an investigation of the lateral performance under monotonic loading, seismic performance under cyclic loading and seismic performance under atmospheric corrosion of USW, CSW and ASW. The results show that (1) Stiffeners can improve the elastic critical buckling load, the initial stiffness and the ultimate shear resistance of CSPWs, and the effect of asymmetric diagonal stiffeners is more significant than that of cross stiffeners; (2) Stiffeners can improve the energy dissipation capacity and ductility, delay stiffness degradation and reduce the out-of-plane deformation of CSPWs, and the hysteretic performance of ASWs is obviously better than that of CSWs; and (3) Under atmospheric corrosion, stiffeners are conducive to inhibiting buckling and improving the seismic performance of CSPWs, while the seismic performance of CSWs is significantly affected by corrosion, so asymmetric diagonal stiffeners are better than cross stiffeners in improving the seismic performance of CSPWs. Meanwhile, the formula of ultimate shear resistance of corroded specimens is also fitted in this paper, which can provide design suggestions for practical engineering

Protective Effects of Biscoclaurine Alkaloids on Leukopenia Induced by 60Co-γ Radiation

Objective. Leukopenia, a common complication of tumor chemoradiotherapy, contributes serious damage to the hematopoietic, gastrointestinal, and immune systems of the body and can cause delay, discontinuation, or even failure to tumor treatment, thereby greatly threatening human health. The present study aims to investigate the protective effects of biscoclaurine alkaloids (BA) on leukopenia. Methods. This study was conducted on 60 Kunming mice, which were randomly divided into six groups containing 10 animals each. A hematology analyzer was used to count white blood cells (WBC) in the peripheral blood cell. Mice serum was collected, and the granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1), and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Pathological changes were detected through hematoxylin and eosin staining in the liver and spleen of mice. The spleen and liver ultrastructures were observed via electron microscopy. Results. Results showed that BA ameliorated WBC, PLT reduction in the peripheral blood and significantly increased the levels of IFN-γ and VCAM-1 in mice serum. BA reduced ionizing radiation-induced injuries to spleen, mitigated the reduction of superoxide dismutase (SOD), and significantly decreased the malonaldehyde (MDA) and xanthine oxidase (XOD) levels in the liver. Conclusion. BA enhanced the immune and hematopoietic functions and ameliorated the oxidative stress induced by 60Co-γ radiation, revealing its therapeutic potential both as a radioprotector and as a radiation mitigator for leukopenia induced by 60Co-γ radiation

Bavachinin protects the liver in NAFLD by promoting regeneration via targeting PCNA

Introduction: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disease all over the world, and no drug is approved for the treatment of NAFLD. Bavachinin (BVC) is proven to possess liver-protecting effect against NAFLD, but its mechanism is still blurry. Objectives: With the use of Click Chemistry-Activity‐Based Protein Profiling (CC-ABPP) technology, this study aims to identify the target of BVC, and investigate the mechanism by which BVC exerts its liver-protecting effect. Methods: The high fat diet induced hamster NAFLD model is introduced to investigate BVC’s lipid-lowering and liver-protecting effects. Then, a small molecular probe of BVC is designed and synthesized based on the CC-ABPP technology, and BVC’s target is fished out. A series of experiments are performed to identify the target, including competitive inhibition assay, surface-plasmon resonance (SPR), cellular thermal shift assay (CETSA), drug affinity responsive target stability (DARTS) assay, and co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP). Afterward, the pro-regeneration effects of BVC are validated in vitro and in vivo through flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, and the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL). Result: In the hamster NAFLD model, BVC shows lipid-lowing effect and improvement on the histology. PCNA is identified as the target of BVC with the method mentioned above, and BVC facilitates the interaction between PCNA and DNA polymerase delta. BVC promotes HepG2 cells proliferation which is inhibited by T2AA, an inhibitor suppresses the interaction between PCNA and DNA polymerase delta. In NAFLD hamsters, BVC enhances PCNA expression and liver regeneration, reduces hepatocyte apoptosis. Conclusion: This study suggests that, besides the anti-lipemic effect, BVC binds to the pocket of PCNA facilitating its interaction with DNA polymerase delta and pro-regeneration effect, thereby exerts the protective effect against HFD induced liver injury

Robust steganography without embedding based on secure container synthesis and iterative message recovery

Synthesis-based steganography without embedding (SWE) methods transform secret messages to container images synthesised by generative networks, which eliminates distortions of container images and thus can fundamentally resist typical steganalysis tools. However, existing methods suffer from weak message recovery robustness, synthesis fidelity, and the risk of message leakage. To address these problems, we propose a novel robust steganography without embedding method in this paper. In particular, we design a secure weight modulation-based generator by introducing secure factors to hide secret messages in synthesised container images. In this manner, the synthesised results are modulated by secure factors and thus the secret messages are inaccessible when using fake factors, thus reducing the risk of message leakage. Furthermore, we design a difference predictor via the reconstruction of tampered container images together with an adversarial training strategy to iteratively update the estimation of hidden messages. This ensures robustness of recovering hidden messages, while degradation of synthesis fidelity is reduced since the generator is not included in the adversarial training. Extensive experimental results convincingly demonstrate that our proposed method is effective in avoiding message leakage and superior to other existing methods in terms of recovery robustness and synthesis fidelity.</p

Semisynthesis and Biological Evaluation of Oleanolic Acid 3-O-β-d-Glucuronopyranoside Derivatives for Protecting H9c2 Cardiomyoblasts against H2O2-Induced Injury

A series of novel oleanolic acid 3-O-β-d-glucuronopyranoside derivatives have been designed and synthesized. Biological evaluation has indicated that some of the synthesized compounds exhibit moderate to good activity against H2O2-induced injury in rat myocardial cells (H9c2). Particularly, derivative 28-N-isobutyl ursolic amide 3-O-β-d-galactopyranoside (8a) exhibited a greater protective effect than the positive control oleanolic acid 3-O-β-d-glucuronopyranoside, indicating that it possesses a great potential for further development as a cardiovascular disease modulator by structural modification