In-situ Model Downloading to Realize Versatile Edge AI in 6G Mobile Networks

The sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks are expected to feature the ubiquitous deployment of machine learning and AI algorithms at the network edge. With rapid advancements in edge AI, the time has come to realize intelligence downloading onto edge devices (e.g., smartphones and sensors). To materialize this version, we propose a novel technology in this article, called in-situ model downloading, that aims to achieve transparent and real-time replacement of on-device AI models by downloading from an AI library in the network. Its distinctive feature is the adaptation of downloading to time-varying situations (e.g., application, location, and time), devices' heterogeneous storage-and-computing capacities, and channel states. A key component of the presented framework is a set of techniques that dynamically compress a downloaded model at the depth-level, parameter-level, or bit-level to support adaptive model downloading. We further propose a virtualized 6G network architecture customized for deploying in-situ model downloading with the key feature of a three-tier (edge, local, and central) AI library. Furthermore, experiments are conducted to quantify 6G connectivity requirements and research opportunities pertaining to the proposed technology are discussed.Comment: The paper has been submitted to IEEE for possible publicatio

Fine mapping of a QTL for ear size on porcine chromosome 5 and identification of high mobility group AT-hook 2 (HMGA2) as a positional candidate gene

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ear size and shape are distinct conformation characteristics of pig breeds. Previously, we identified a significant quantitative trait locus (QTL) influencing ear surface on pig chromosome 5 in a White Duroc × Erhualian F₂resource population. This QTL explained more than 17% of the phenotypic variance.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Four new markers on pig chromosome 5 were genotyped across this F₂population. RT-PCR was performed to obtain expression profiles of different candidate genes in ear tissue. Standard association test, marker-assisted association test and F-drop test were applied to determine the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) on ear size. Three synthetic commercial lines were also used for the association test.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We refined the QTL to an 8.7-cM interval and identified three positional candidate genes i.e. <it>HMGA2</it>, <it>SOX5 </it>and <it>PTHLH </it>that are expressed in ear tissue. Seven SNP within these three candidate genes were selected and genotyped in the F₂population. Of the seven SNP, <it>HMGA2 </it>SNP (JF748727: g.2836 A > G) showed the strongest association with ear size in the standard association test and marker-assisted association test. With the F-drop test, F value decreased by more than 97% only when the genotypes of <it>HMGA2 </it>g.2836 A > G were included as a fixed effect. Furthermore, the significant association between g.2836 A > G and ear size was also demonstrated in the synthetic commercial Sutai pig line. The haplotype-based association test showed that the phenotypic variance explained by <it>HMGA2 </it>was similar to that explained by the QTL and at a much higher level than by <it>SOX5</it>. More interestingly, <it>HMGA2 </it>is also located within the dog orthologous chromosome region, which has been shown to be associated with ear type and size.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p><it>HMGA2 </it>was the closest gene with a potential functional effect to the QTL or marker for ear size on chromosome 5. This study will contribute to identify the causative gene and mutation underlying this QTL.</p

Bis(2-amino­pyridinium) 5,5′-disulfanediylbis(1,3,4-thia­diazole-2-thiol­ate) monohydrate

In the crystal of the title compound, 2C5H7N2 +·C4N4S6 2−·H2O, inter­molecular N—H⋯S and N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds link four cations and two dianions into a centrosymmetric cluster. The crystal packing is further consolidated by π–π inter­actions between the five- and six-membered rings of neighbouring clusters [centroid–centroid distances = 3.692 (3), 3.718 (3), 3.660 (3) and 3.696 (3) Å] and via O—H⋯N, O—H⋯S and N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds involving the uncoordinated water mol­ecules

Context De-confounded Emotion Recognition

Context-Aware Emotion Recognition (CAER) is a crucial and challenging task that aims to perceive the emotional states of the target person with contextual information. Recent approaches invariably focus on designing sophisticated architectures or mechanisms to extract seemingly meaningful representations from subjects and contexts. However, a long-overlooked issue is that a context bias in existing datasets leads to a significantly unbalanced distribution of emotional states among different context scenarios. Concretely, the harmful bias is a confounder that misleads existing models to learn spurious correlations based on conventional likelihood estimation, significantly limiting the models' performance. To tackle the issue, this paper provides a causality-based perspective to disentangle the models from the impact of such bias, and formulate the causalities among variables in the CAER task via a tailored causal graph. Then, we propose a Contextual Causal Intervention Module (CCIM) based on the backdoor adjustment to de-confound the confounder and exploit the true causal effect for model training. CCIM is plug-in and model-agnostic, which improves diverse state-of-the-art approaches by considerable margins. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our CCIM and the significance of causal insight.Comment: Accepted by CVPR 2023. CCIM is available at https://github.com/ydk122024/CCI

Effect of Acupuncture on Endometrial Angiogenesis and Uterus Dendritic Cells in COH Rats during Peri-Implantation Period

This study was to explore the mechanism of acupuncture on regulating the endometrial angiogenesis and uterus dendritic cells (uDCs) during the peri-implantation period. Rats, in early pregnancy, were randomized into five groups: normal (N), model (M), acupuncture (A), progesterone (P), and A + P groups. The COH model was established using pregnant mare serum, combined with human chorionic gonadotrophin. Endometrium was collected on days 4, 6, and 8 (D4, D6, and D8) of gestation. Compared with group M, both VEGF and FGF-2 protein and mRNA levels were significantly lower on D4 and higher on D6 and D8 (P<0.05), except for VEGF of group P on D8; the proportion of uterus dendritic cells (uDCs) in the endometrium was significantly lower on D4 and D6 and higher on D8 (P<0.05). In vitro, except for the proliferation of group P on D8, proliferation, tube formation, and migration of uDCs were significantly decreased on D4 and increased on D8 (P<0.05). In addition, acupuncture or progesterone regulated the secretion levels of VEGF, IL-15, and IL-18 secreted by uDCs instead of soluble sFLT-1. In conclusion, acupuncture may regulate angiogenesis of the endometrium and the number and roles of uDCs after COH, and the specific mechanism may be different with progesterone

Effects of treatment with Astragalus Membranaceus on function of rat leydig cells

Background Astragalus membranaceus (AM) is a Chinese traditional herb which has been reported to have broad positive effects on many diseases, including hepatitis, heart disease, diabetes and skin disease. AM can promote cell proliferation, increase the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx), and inhibit apoptosis by regulating the transcription of proto-oncogenes controlling cell death. While AM is included in some commercially available “testosterone boosting supplements”, studies directly testing ability of AM to modulate testosterone production are lacking. In the present study, we examined the effects of AM on Leydig cell function in vitro. Methods Rat Leydig cells were purified and treated with AM at different concentrations (0 μg/mL, 10 μg/mL, 20 μg/mL, 50 μg/mL, 100 μg/mL and 150 μg/mL) and cell counting-8 (CCK-8) assay, Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, quantitative real time PCR and analysis of activities of SOD and GPx were done respectively. Results Treatment with 100 μg/mL (P \u3c 0.05) and 150 μg/mL AM (P \u3c 0.01) significantly increased Leydig cell numbers. Treatment with AM (20 μg/mL, 50 μg/mL and 100 μg/mL) significantly increased testosterone production (P \u3c 0.01). In addition, increased Leydig cell SOD and GPx activities were observed in response to 20 μg/mL and 50 μg/mL AM treatment (P \u3c 0.01). Furthermore, expression of Bax mRNA was significantly decreased (P \u3c 0.01), and the ratio of Bcl-2/Bax mRNA was significantly increased in response to 20 μg/mL AM in the culture medium (P \u3c 0.05). Conclusions Results supported a beneficial effect of AM on multiple aspects of rat Leydig cell function in vitro including testosterone production

Imputation-Based Whole-Genome Sequence Association Study Reveals Constant and Novel Loci for Hematological Traits in a Large-Scale Swine F2 Resource Population

The whole-genome sequences of progenies with low-density single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes can be imputed with high accuracy based on the deep-coverage sequences of key ancestors. With this imputation technology, a more powerful genome-wide association study (GWAS) can be carried out using imputed whole-genome variants and the phenotypes of interest to overcome the shortcomings of low-power detection and the large confidence interval derived from low-density SNP markers in classic association studies. In this study, 19 ancestors of a large-scale swine F2 White Duroc × Erhualian population were deeply sequenced for their genome with an average coverage of 25×. Considering 98 pigs from 10 different breeds with high-quality deep sequenced genomes, we imputed the whole genomic variants of 1020 F2 pigs genotyped by the PorcineSNP60 BeadChip with high accuracy and obtained 14,851,440 sequence variants after quality control. Based on this, 87 novel quantitative traits loci (QTLs) for 18 hematological traits at three different physiological stages of the F2 pigs were identified, among which most of the novel QTLs have been repeated in two of the three stages. Literature mining pinpointed that the FGF14 and LCLAT1 genes at SSC11 and SSC3 may affect the MCH at day 240 and MCV at day 18, respectively. The present study shows that combining high-quality imputed genomic variants and correlated phenomic traits into GWAS can improve the capability to detect QTL considerably. The large number of different QTLs for hematological traits identified at multiple growth stages implies the complexity and time specificity of these traits

From cropland to cropped field: A robust algorithm for national-scale mapping by fusing time series of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2

Detailed and updated maps of actively cropped fields on a national scale are vital for global food security. Unfortunately, this information is not provided in existing land cover datasets, especially lacking in smallholder farmer systems. Mapping national-scale cropped fields remains challenging due to the spectral confusion with abandoned vegetated land, and their high heterogeneity over large areas. This study proposed a large-area mapping framework for automatically identifying actively cropped fields by fusing Vegetation-Soil-Pigment indices and Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) time-series images (VSPS). Three temporal indicators were proposed and highlighted cropped fields by consistently higher values due to cropping activities. The proposed VSPS algorithm was exploited for national-scale mapping in China without regional adjustments using Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 images. Agriculture in China illustrated great heterogeneity and has experienced tremendous changes such as non-grain orientation and cropland abandonment. Yet, little is known about the locations and extents of cropped fields cultivated with field crops on a national scale. Here, we produced the first national-scale 20 m updated map of cropped and fallow/abandoned land in China and found that 77 % of national cropland (151.23 million hectares) was actively cropped in 2020. We found that fallow/abandoned cropland in mountainous and hilly regions were far more than we expected, which was significantly underestimated by the commonly applied VImax-based approach based on the MODIS images. The VSPS method illustrates robust generalization capabilities, which obtained an overall accuracy of 94 % based on 4,934 widely spread reference sites. The proposed mapping framework is capable of detecting cropped fields with a full consideration of a high diversity of cropping systems and complexity of fallow/abandoned cropland. The processing codes on Google Earth Engine were provided and hoped to stimulate operational agricultural mapping on cropped fields with finer resolution from the national to the global scale

Discovery of novel 5-fluoro-N 2 ,N 4 -diphenylpyrimidine-2,4-diamines as potent inhibitors against CDK2 and CDK9

Novel 5-fluoro-pyrimidine derivatives have been designed, synthesized and evaluated as potential CDK inhibitors as well as antitumor and anti-HIV agents