Autoregressive Diffusion Model for Graph Generation

Diffusion-based graph generative models have recently obtained promising results for graph generation. However, existing diffusion-based graph generative models are mostly one-shot generative models that apply Gaussian diffusion in the dequantized adjacency matrix space. Such a strategy can suffer from difficulty in model training, slow sampling speed, and incapability of incorporating constraints. We propose an \emph{autoregressive diffusion} model for graph generation. Unlike existing methods, we define a node-absorbing diffusion process that operates directly in the discrete graph space. For forward diffusion, we design a \emph{diffusion ordering network}, which learns a data-dependent node absorbing ordering from graph topology. For reverse generation, we design a \emph{denoising network} that uses the reverse node ordering to efficiently reconstruct the graph by predicting the node type of the new node and its edges with previously denoised nodes at a time. Based on the permutation invariance of graph, we show that the two networks can be jointly trained by optimizing a simple lower bound of data likelihood. Our experiments on six diverse generic graph datasets and two molecule datasets show that our model achieves better or comparable generation performance with previous state-of-the-art, and meanwhile enjoys fast generation speed.Comment: 18 page

Swashplateless-elevon Actuation for a Dual-rotor Tail-sitter VTOL UAV

In this paper, we propose a novel swashplateless-elevon actuation (SEA) for dual-rotor tail-sitter vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In contrast to the conventional elevon actuation (CEA) which controls both pitch and yaw using elevons, the SEA adopts swashplateless mechanisms to generate an extra moment through motor speed modulation to control pitch and uses elevons solely for controlling yaw, without requiring additional actuators. This decoupled control strategy mitigates the saturation of elevons' deflection needed for large pitch and yaw control actions, thus improving the UAV's control performance on trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection performance in the presence of large external disturbances. Furthermore, the SEA overcomes the actuation degradation issues experienced by the CEA when the UAV is in close proximity to the ground, leading to a smoother and more stable take-off process. We validate and compare the performances of the SEA and the CEA in various real-world flight conditions, including take-off, trajectory tracking, and hover flight and position steps under external disturbance. Experimental results demonstrate that the SEA has better performances than the CEA. Moreover, we verify the SEA's feasibility in the attitude transition process and fixed-wing-mode flight of the VTOL UAV. The results indicate that the SEA can accurately control pitch in the presence of high-speed incoming airflow and maintain a stable attitude during fixed-wing mode flight. Video of all experiments can be found in youtube.com/watch?v=Sx9Rk4Zf7sQComment: 8 pages, 13 figure

Joint Intrinsic and Extrinsic LiDAR-Camera Calibration in Targetless Environments Using Plane-Constrained Bundle Adjustment

This paper introduces a novel targetless method for joint intrinsic and extrinsic calibration of LiDAR-camera systems using plane-constrained bundle adjustment (BA). Our method leverages LiDAR point cloud measurements from planes in the scene, alongside visual points derived from those planes. The core novelty of our method lies in the integration of visual BA with the registration between visual points and LiDAR point cloud planes, which is formulated as a unified optimization problem. This formulation achieves concurrent intrinsic and extrinsic calibration, while also imparting depth constraints to the visual points to enhance the accuracy of intrinsic calibration. Experiments are conducted on both public data sequences and self-collected dataset. The results showcase that our approach not only surpasses other state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods but also maintains remarkable calibration accuracy even within challenging environments. For the benefits of the robotics community, we have open sourced our codes

Psoralen Induces Developmental Toxicity in Zebrafish Embryos/Larvae Through Oxidative Stress, Apoptosis, and Energy Metabolism Disorder

Psoralen toxicity is an issue of wide concern. However, an assay for psoralen-induced developmental toxicity has not been reported to date. Moreover, the underlying mechanism of psoralen-induced developmental toxicity is unclear. Therefore, this study attempted to develop a psoralen-induced developmental toxicity assay in zebrafish embryos/larvae. Psoralen treatment caused a decrease in the hatching rate and body length and a significant increase in the malformation rate of zebrafish. Yolk retention, pericardial edema, swim-bladder deficiency, and curved body shape were also observed after psoralen treatment. Yolk retention might have been caused by an abnormality in lipid metabolism. Further experiments indicated that psoralen exerted toxic effects on the developing heart, liver, phagocytes, and nervous system. Increased generation of reactive oxygen species, inhibition of total superoxide dismutase activity, and increased malondialdehyde concentrations indicated inhibition of antioxidant capacity and the presence of oxidative stress. A greater number of apoptotic cells were observed after psoralen exposure, relative to the control. Furthermore, the results of gene-expression analysis showed that psoralen induced developmental toxicity by means of oxidative stress, apoptosis, and energy metabolism abnormalities. These findings will be helpful in understanding psoralen-induced toxicity

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Rapid calculation method to evaluate thermal management of LED systems based on an improved multi-layer model

An improved laminated structure model of LED systems is proposed. Besides the light-emitting diode (LED) chip, printed circuit board (PCB) substrate, heat sink, etc, additional interface layers are applied to model the non-ideal surface of thermal interface materials (TIMs). And a rapid calculation method is developed for temperature-related calculations. Through comparisons, the method is proved to be valid, and the execution time can be greatly reduced. It is found that the air gap at the TIM surface does hinder heat conduction but the effect is not obvious. The influence of LED chips on system thermal management is comprehensively analyzed. For a single LED chip, the junction temperature shows a linear relationship with its thermal resistance and heat power. The chip size, as well as the aspect ratio between the chip and the PCB substrate, has great effects on the junction temperature. For a multi-chip array, the impact of the chip quantity is suggested to be considered combined with the chip layout. The mutual thermal interaction among LED chips is of most concern, which will become more serious with an increasing number of chips. The work provides a rapid and flexible evaluation method for thermal management of LED systems

Limited arbitrage in mergers and acquisions

We examine merger and acquisition cases from 1992 to 2007 for limited arbitrage and compared our finding with Baker and Savasoglu (2001) and the result are generally consistent