Look, Listen and Learn - A Multimodal LSTM for Speaker Identification

Speaker identification refers to the task of localizing the face of a person who has the same identity as the ongoing voice in a video. This task not only requires collective perception over both visual and auditory signals, the robustness to handle severe quality degradations and unconstrained content variations are also indispensable. In this paper, we describe a novel multimodal Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture which seamlessly unifies both visual and auditory modalities from the beginning of each sequence input. The key idea is to extend the conventional LSTM by not only sharing weights across time steps, but also sharing weights across modalities. We show that modeling the temporal dependency across face and voice can significantly improve the robustness to content quality degradations and variations. We also found that our multimodal LSTM is robustness to distractors, namely the non-speaking identities. We applied our multimodal LSTM to The Big Bang Theory dataset and showed that our system outperforms the state-of-the-art systems in speaker identification with lower false alarm rate and higher recognition accuracy.Comment: The 30th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16

Pseudozyma spp. and Barnettozyma spp. effectively kill cancer cells in vitro

AbstractCancer is the overall leading cause of death in developed countries and also worldwide, and being able to exploit an effective anticancer drug is the aim of all cancer scientists. However, many of the synthetic drugs produced so far usually cause serious side effects, which reduces their therapeutic efficacy. Discovering new drugs or auxiliary therapies derived from natural products might thus provide a novel opportunity for cancer therapy. A recent study reported that some lethal toxins can maintain their activity after being injected into mice. We therefore used two Pseudozyma spp. and three Barnettozyma spp. to examine whether these killer yeasts can preserve their lethal effect on cancer cells under the physical environment (optimum pH, temperature and osmolality, supporting a living cell accomplishes to proliferate, metabolize, differentiate and survive). Our preliminary results showed that both Barnettozyma spp. and Pseudozyma spp. have stronger cytotoxicity against HepG2 than Chang’s liver cells. According to the results of two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE), a total of 115 and 27 proteins differentially expressed by 1.5-fold or more were observed for HepG2 and Chang’s liver cells, respectively. Furthermore, we explored the mechanism involved in the effect of the lethal yeast filtrates on liver cancer cells using 2D-DIGE and mass spectrometry

Life expectancies and incidence rates of patients under prolonged mechanical ventilation: a population-based study during 1998 to 2007 in Taiwan

[[abstract]]Introduction: The present study examined the median survival, life expectancies, and cumulative incidence rate (CIR) of patients undergoing prolonged mechanical ventilation (PMV) stratified by different underlying diseases.Methods: According to the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan, there were 8,906,406 individuals who obtained respiratory care during the period from 1997 to 2007. A random sample of this population was performed, and subjects who had continuously undergone mechanical ventilation for longer than 21 days were enrolled in the current study. Annual incidence rates and the CIR were calculated. After stratifying the patients according to their specific diagnoses, latent class analysis was performed to categorise PMV patients with multiple co-morbidities into several groups. The life expectancies of different groups were estimated using a semiparametric method with a hazard function based on the vital statistics of Taiwan.Results: The analysis of 50,481 PMV patients revealed that incidence rates increased as patients grew older and that the CIR (17 to 85 years old) increased from 0.103 in 1998 to 0.183 in 2004 before stabilising thereafter. The life expectancies of PMV patients suffering from degenerative neurological diseases, stroke, or injuries tended to be longer than those with chronic renal failure or cancer. Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease survived longer than did those co-morbid with other underlying diseases, especially septicaemia/shock.Conclusions: PMV provides a direct means to treat respiratory tract diseases and to sustain respiration in individuals suffering from degenerative neurological diseases, and individuals with either of these types of conditions respond better to PMV than do those with other co-morbidities. Future research is required to determine the cost-effectiveness of this treatment paradigm

Enhancement of Canonical Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Activity by HCV Core Protein Promotes Cell Growth of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells

BACKGROUND: The Hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein has been implicated as a potential oncogene or a cofactor in HCV-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. Overactivation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling is a major factor in oncogenesis of HCC. However, the pathogenesis of HCV core-associated Wnt/β-catenin activation remains to be further characterized. Therefore, we attempted to determine whether HCV core protein plays an important role in regulating Wnt/β-catenin signaling in HCC cells. METHODOLOGY: Wnt/β-catenin signaling activity was investigated in core-expressing hepatoma cells. Protein and gene expression were examined by Western blot, immunofluorescence staining, RT-qPCR, and reporter assay. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: HCV core protein significantly enhances Tcf-dependent transcriptional activity induced by Wnt3A in HCC cell lines. Additionally, core protein increases and stabilizes β-catenin levels in hepatoma cell line Huh7 through inactivation of GSK-3β, which contributes to the up-regulation of downstream target genes, such as c-Myc, cyclin D1, WISP2 and CTGF. Also, core protein increases cell proliferation rate and promotes Wnt3A-induced tumor growth in the xenograft tumor model of human HCC. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: HCV core protein enhances Wnt/β-catenin signaling activity, hence playing an important role in HCV-associated carcinogenesis

The sudden change phenomenon of quantum discord

Even if the parameters determining a system's state are varied smoothly, the behavior of quantum correlations alike to quantum discord, and of its classical counterparts, can be very peculiar, with the appearance of non-analyticities in its rate of change. Here we review this sudden change phenomenon (SCP) discussing some important points related to it: Its uncovering, interpretations, and experimental verifications, its use in the context of the emergence of the pointer basis in a quantum measurement process, its appearance and universality under Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics, its theoretical and experimental investigation in some other physical scenarios, and the related phenomenon of double sudden change of trace distance discord. Several open questions are identified, and we envisage that in answering them we will gain significant further insight about the relation between the SCP and the symmetry-geometric aspects of the quantum state space.Comment: Lectures on General Quantum Correlations and their Applications, F. F. Fanchini, D. O. Soares Pinto, and G. Adesso (Eds.), Springer (2017), pp 309-33

Detection of SARS-associated Coronavirus in Throat Wash and Saliva in Early Diagnosis

Early detection of SARS-CoV in throat wash and saliva suggests that these specimens are ideal for SARS diagnosis

Identification of MSRA gene on chromosome 8p as a candidate metastasis suppressor for human hepatitis B virus-positive hepatocellular carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) still remains very dismal, which is mainly due to metastasis. In our previous studies, we found that chromosome 8p deletions might contribute to metastasis of HCC. In this study, we aimed to identify the candidate metastatic suppressor gene on chromosome 8p.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Oligo-nucleotide microarrays which included 322 genes on human chromosome 8p were constructed to analyze the difference in gene expression profiles between HCC tissues with and without metastasis. The leading differentially expressed genes were identified and selected for further analysis by real-time PCR and Western blotting. Recombinant expression plasmid vectors for each target gene were constructed and transfected into HCC cells and its <it>in vitro </it>effects on proliferation and invasion of HCC cells were also investigated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sixteen leading differentially expressed genes were identified from the HCC tissues with metastasis compared with those without metastasis (<it>p </it>< 0.01, <it>q </it>< 16 %). Among of the 10 significantly down-regulated genes in HCC with metastasis, methionine sulfoxide reductase A (<it>MSRA</it>) had the lowest <it>p </it>value and false discovery rate (FDR), and was considered as a potential candidate for metastasis suppressor gene. Real-time PCR and Western blotting confirmed that the mRNA and protein expression levels of <it>MSRA </it>were significantly decreased in HCC with metastasis compared with those without metastasis (<it>p </it>< 0.001), and <it>MSRA </it>mRNA level in HCCLM6 cells (with high metastatic potential) was also much lower than that of other HCC cell lines. Transfection of a recombinant expression plasmid vector and overexpression of <it>MSRA </it>gene could obviously inhibit cell colony formation (4.33 ± 2.92 vs. 9.17 ± 3.38, <it>p </it>= 0.008) and invasion (7.40 ± 1.67 vs. 17.20 ± 2.59, <it>p</it>= 0.0001) of HCCLM6 cell line.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p><it>MSRA </it>gene on chromosome 8p might possess metastasis suppressor activity in HCC.</p

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO