ForceFormer: Exploring Social Force and Transformer for Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction

Predicting trajectories of pedestrians based on goal information in highly interactive scenes is a crucial step toward Intelligent Transportation Systems and Autonomous Driving. The challenges of this task come from two key sources: (1) complex social interactions in high pedestrian density scenarios and (2) limited utilization of goal information to effectively associate with past motion information. To address these difficulties, we integrate social forces into a Transformer-based stochastic generative model backbone and propose a new goal-based trajectory predictor called ForceFormer. Differentiating from most prior works that simply use the destination position as an input feature, we leverage the driving force from the destination to efficiently simulate the guidance of a target on a pedestrian. Additionally, repulsive forces are used as another input feature to describe the avoidance action among neighboring pedestrians. Extensive experiments show that our proposed method achieves on-par performance measured by distance errors with the state-of-the-art models but evidently decreases collisions, especially in dense pedestrian scenarios on widely used pedestrian datasets

A review of the spider genus Chthonopes (Araneae, Theridiosomatidae), with descriptions of two new species from China

The genus Chthonopes Wunderlich, 2011 is reviewed in this paper. The type species Chthonopes jaegeri Wunderlich, 2011 was illustrated based on new material from the type locality and the new distribution records (Bolikhamsay and Ban Kouanphavang Khammouane, Laos). Two new species are described from Yunnan, China: C. bifidum Yu & Lin, sp. nov. (♂♀) and C. jimudeng Yu & Lin, sp. nov. (♀). A key is provided for the genus, as well as species diagnoses, and a distribution map for all five species of Chthonopes

High-intensity interval training and moderate-intensity continuous training attenuate oxidative damage and promote myokine response in the skeletal muscle of ApoE KO mice on high-fat diet

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) on the skeletal muscle in Apolipoprotein E knockout (ApoE KO) and wild-type (WT) C57BL/6J mice. ApoE KO mice fed with a high-fat diet were randomly allocated into: Control group without exercise (ApoE−/− CON), HIIT group (ApoE−/− HIIT), and MICT group (ApoE−/− MICT). Exercise endurance, blood lipid profile, muscle antioxidative capacity, and myokine production were measured after six weeks of interventions. ApoE−/− CON mice exhibited hyperlipidemia and increased oxidative stress, compared to the WT mice. HIIT and MICT reduced blood lipid levels, ROS production, and protein carbonyl content in the skeletal muscle, while it enhanced the GSH generation and potently promoted mRNA expression of genes involved in the production of irisin and BAIBA. Moreover, ApoE−/− HIIT mice had significantly lower plasma HDL-C content, mRNA expression of MyHC-IIx and Vegfa165 in EDL, and ROS level; but remarkably higher mRNA expression of Hadha in the skeletal muscle than those of ApoE−/− MICT mice. These results demonstrated that both exercise programs were effective for the ApoE KO mice by attenuating the oxidative damage and promoting the myokines response and production. In particular, HIIT was more beneficial to reduce the ROS level in the skeletal muscle

Functional characterization of BjCET3 and BjCET4, two new cation-efflux transporters from Brassica juncea L.

Brassica juncea is promising for metal phytoremediation, but little is known about the functional role of most metal transporters in this plant. The functional characterization of two B. juncea cation-efflux family proteins BjCET3 and BjCET4 is reported here. The two proteins are closely related to each other in amino acid sequence, and are members of Group III of the cation-efflux transporters. Heterologous expression of BjCET3 and BjCET4 in yeast confirmed their functions in exporting Zn, and possibly Cd, Co, and Ni. Yeast transformed with BjCET4 showed higher metal resistance than did BjCET3 transformed. The two BjCET–GFP fusion proteins were localized to the plasma membrane in the roots when expressed in tobacco, and significantly enhanced the plants’ Cd tolerance ability. Under Cd stress, tobacco plants transformed with BjCET3 accumulated significant amounts of Cd in shoots, while maintaining similar shoot biomass production with vector-control subjects. Transformed BjCET4 tobacco plants showed significantly enhanced shoot biomass production with markedly decreased shoot Cd content. The two transporter genes have a lower basal transcript expression in B. juncea seedling tissues when grown in normal conditions than under metal-stress, however, their transcripts levels could be substantially increased by Zn, Cd, NaCl or PEG, suggesting that BjCET3 and BjCET4 may play roles in several stress conditions, roles which appear to be different from those of previous characterized cation-efflux transporters, for example, AtMTP1, BjCET2, and BjMTP1