AI for Archives: Using Facial Recognition to Enhance Metadata

The goal of this research project was to determine the most effective facial recognition applications that could be implemented into digital archive image collections from libraries, museums, and cultural heritage institutions. Computer scientists and librarians at Florida International University collaborated to conduct qualitative assessments of both face detection and face search using photographs from FIU’s digital collections. Specifically, the facial recognition platforms OpenCV, Face++, and Amazon AWS were analyzed. This project seeks to assist LYRASIS community members who wish to incorporate facial recognition and other artificial intelligence technology into their digital collections and repositories as a method to reduce research time and enhance their collections with more complete metadata

Robustness-Guided Image Synthesis for Data-Free Quantization

Quantization has emerged as a promising direction for model compression. Recently, data-free quantization has been widely studied as a promising method to avoid privacy concerns, which synthesizes images as an alternative to real training data. Existing methods use classification loss to ensure the reliability of the synthesized images. Unfortunately, even if these images are well-classified by the pre-trained model, they still suffer from low semantics and homogenization issues. Intuitively, these low-semantic images are sensitive to perturbations, and the pre-trained model tends to have inconsistent output when the generator synthesizes an image with poor semantics. To this end, we propose Robustness-Guided Image Synthesis (RIS), a simple but effective method to enrich the semantics of synthetic images and improve image diversity, further boosting the performance of downstream data-free compression tasks. Concretely, we first introduce perturbations on input and model weight, then define the inconsistency metrics at feature and prediction levels before and after perturbations. On the basis of inconsistency on two levels, we design a robustness optimization objective to enhance the semantics of synthetic images. Moreover, we also make our approach diversity-aware by forcing the generator to synthesize images with small correlations in the label space. With RIS, we achieve state-of-the-art performance for various settings on data-free quantization and can be extended to other data-free compression tasks.Comment: Accepted at AAAI 202

Nanoscale variation of the Rashba energy in BiTeI

BiTeI is a polar semiconductor with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) that produces large Rashba spin splitting. Due to its potential utility in spintronics and magnetoelectrics, it is essential to understand how defects impact the spin transport in this material. Using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, we image ring-like charging states of single-atom defects on the iodine surface of BiTeI. We observe nanoscale variations in the Rashba energy around each defect, which we correlate with the local electric field extracted from the bias dependence of each ring radius. Our data demonstrate the local impact of atomic defects on the Rashba effect, which is both a challenge and an opportunity for the development of future nanoscale spintronic devices

DGST : a dual-generator network for text style transfer

We propose DGST, a novel and simple Dual-Generator network architecture for text Style Transfer. Our model employs two generators only, and does not rely on any discriminators or parallel corpus for training. Both quantitative and qualitative experiments on the Yelp and IMDb datasets show that our model gives competitive performance compared to several strong baselines with more complicated architecture designs

When It's Heavier: Interfacial and Solvation Chemistry of Isotopes in Aqueous Electrolytes for Zn-ion Batteries

The electrochemical effect of isotope (EEI) of water is introduced in the Zn-ion batteries (ZIBs) electrolyte to deal with the challenge of severe side reactions and massive gas production. Due to the low diffusion and strong coordination of ions in D2O, the possibility of side reactions is decreased, resulting in a broader electrochemically stable potential window, less pH change, and less zinc hydroxide sulfate (ZHS) generation during cycling. Moreover, we demonstrate that D2O eliminates the different ZHS phases generated by the change of bound water during cycling because of the consistently low local ion and molecule concentration, resulting in a stable interface between the electrode and electrolyte. The full cells with D2O-based electrolyte demonstrated more stable cycling performance which displayed ∼100 % reversible efficiencies after 1,000 cycles with a wide voltage window of 0.8–2.0 V and 3,000 cycles with a normal voltage window of 0.8–1.9 V at a current density of 2 A g−1

Molecular Characterization, Expression Profiles of SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 Genes and Lack of Association with Litter Size in Tibetan Sheep

SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 belonging to the transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) superfamily are indispensable for oocyte formation and development, ovarian organogenesis and folliculogenesis. However, only a few studies have investigated the characteristics of SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 in Tibetan sheep and the effect of their polymorphism on litter size. In this study, we examined the expression of SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 in 13 tissues of Tibetan sheep by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Further, cDNA of these genes was cloned, sequenced and subjected to bioinformatics analysis. DNA sequencing was also used to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, iM-LDRTM technology was used for SNP genotyping. Associations between polymorphisms and litter size were analyzed using data from genotyping of 433 Tibetan sheep. The results showed that the expression of SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 genes was ubiquitous in the tissues of Tibetan sheep, such as the ovary, uterus and oviduct, hypothalamus, hypophysis, heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, rumen, duodenum and longissimus dorsi. However, the expression was unbalanced and upregulated in the spleen, lung, ovary and uterus and downregulated in the longissimus dorsi. The bioinformatics analysis showed that SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 in Tibetan sheep encoded proteins of 533, 465 and 427 amino acids, respectively. Sequence homology analysis of the three proteins among other animals showed that the sequences of SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 of Tibetan sheep were similar to those in sheep, yak, cattle, dog, human, pig, chimpanzee, rhesus monkey and house mouse. Two synonymous mutations, g.51537A>G and g.319C>T, were detected in SMAD5 and SMAD7, respectively. The associations of these SNPs and litter size were determined, and it was found that both g.51537A>G and g.319C>T have no significant effect on the litter size of Tibetan sheep. The results provided novel insights into the molecular characterization, expression profiles and polymorphisms of SMAD4, SMAD5 and SMAD7 in Tibetan sheep, but our results do not support associations between these genes and the litter size of Tibetan sheep

Expression and Polymorphisms of SMAD1, SMAD2 and SMAD3 Genes and Their Association with Litter Size in Tibetan Sheep (Ovis aries)

SMAD1, SMAD2, and SMAD3 are important transcription factors downstream of the TGF-β/SMAD signaling pathway that mediates several physiological processes. In the current study, we used cloning sequencing, RT-qPCR, bioinformatics methods and iMLDR technology to clone the coding region of Tibetan sheep genes, analyze the protein structure and detect the tissue expression characteristics of Tibetan sheep genes, and detect the polymorphisms of 433 Tibetan sheep and analyze their correlation with litter size. The results showed that the ORFs of the SMAD1, SMAD2 and SMAD3 genes were 1398 bp, 1404 bp and 1278 bp, respectively, and encoded 465, 467 and 425 amino acids, respectively. The SMAD1, SMAD2, and SMAD3 proteins were all unstable hydrophilic mixed proteins. SMAD1, SMAD2 and SMAD3 were widely expressed in Tibetan sheep tissues, and all were highly expressed in the uterus, spleen, ovary and lung tissues. Litter sizes of the genotype CC in the SMAD1 gene g.10729C>T locus were significantly higher than that of CT (p < 0.05). In the SMAD3 gene g.21447C>T locus, the genotype TT individuals showed a higher litter size than the CC and CT genotype individuals (p < 0.05). These results preliminarily demonstrated that SMAD1, SMAD2 and SMAD3 were the major candidate genes that affected litter size traits in Tibetan sheep and could be used as a molecular genetic marker for early auxiliary selection for improving reproductive traits during sheep breeding

Expression of MSTN/Smad signaling pathway genes and its association with meat quality in Tibetan sheep (Ovis aries)

Abstract Tibetan sheep is a unique breed living in Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau. Since MSTN/Smad signaling pathway plays a critical role in the regulation of muscle development, we aimed to study the mutton quality, mRNA expression of main transduction genes in the MSTN/Smad signaling pathway, and the effects of those genes on the mutton quality of Tibetan sheep in this study. Six‐month‐old Qinghai‐Tibetan sheep were selected, slaughtered, and their Longissimus lumborum, semitendinosus muscle, arm triceps, and quadriceps femoris muscle were collected. The mutton quality was evaluated, and gene expression and their association with the mutton quality were analyzed using RT‐qPCR. The results showed that the indexes of mutton quality were not significantly different between ewes and rams (p > .05) except for Warner–Bratzler shear force (WBSF) (p  .05). The correlation analysis of the main genes and mutton quality showed that MSTN was significantly correlated with redness and cooking time; Smad2, Smad3, Smad4, and TGFβRI had significant positive correlations with marbling in arm triceps; Smad3 and TGFβRII had strong negative correlations with pH24 h in Longissimus lumborum; Smad2 was negatively correlated with drip loss in Longissimus lumborum. In short, the expression level of MSTN in muscles was positively correlated with Smad2, Smad3, and Smad4 genes and negatively correlated with TGFβRII genes. Thus, the results of this study provide a theoretical basis for the regulation mechanism of the MSTN/Smad pathway on mutton quality

Transfer Learning Strategy in Neural Network Application for Underwater Visible Light Communication System

Post-equalization using neural network (NN) is a promising technique that models and offsets the nonlinear distortion in visible light communication (VLC) channels, which is recognized as an essential component in the incoming 6G era. NN post-equalizer is good at modeling complex channel effects without previously knowing the law of physics during the transmission. However, the trained NN might be weak in generalization, and thus consumes considerable computation in retraining new models for different channel conditions. In this paper, we studied transfer learning strategy, growing DNN models from a well-trained ‘stem model’ instead of exhaustively training multiple models from randomly initialized states. It extracts the main feature of the channel first whose signal power balances the signal-to-noise ratio and the nonlinearity, and later focuses on the detailed difference in other channel conditions. Compared with the exhaustive training strategy, stem-originated DNN models achieve 64% of the working range with five times the training efficiency at most or more than 95% of the working range with 150% higher efficiency. This finding is beneficial to improving the feasibility of DNN application in real-world UVLC systems

Understanding Sex-Based Kinematic and Kinetic Differences of Chasse-Step in Elite Table Tennis Athletes

With the progress and innovation of table tennis technology, individualized training programs may deserve special attention. This study aimed to analyze elite table tennis athletes in chasse-step, with a particular focus on sex-based biomechanical differences. A total of 36 (18 males and 18 females) elite table tennis athletes performed topspin forehand of chasse-step. Angles and moments of hip, knee, and ankle joints were calculated using OpenSim (v4.2) with marker trajectories and ground reaction forces were measured via Vicon motion capture system and AMTI in-ground force platform. Males had greater hip and knee flexion angles during the entire motion phase and greater internal rotation angles of the hip during the forward swing phase. The joint stiffness of knee in males was greater than females in the frontal plane. Females in the forward swing phase showed greater hip flexion, adduction, and internal rotation moments than males. It was suggested that the difference may be due to the limitation of anatomical structures in sexes. Male table tennis athletes should strengthen lower extremity muscle groups to improve performance, while female table tennis athletes should focus on hip joint groups to avoid injury. The sex differences presented in this study could help coaches and athletes to develop individualized training programs for table tennis