470 research outputs found
The Cinderella Complex: Word Embeddings Reveal Gender Stereotypes in Movies and Books
Our analysis of thousands of movies and books reveals how these cultural
products weave stereotypical gender roles into morality tales and perpetuate
gender inequality through storytelling. Using the word embedding techniques, we
reveal the constructed emotional dependency of female characters on male
characters in stories
Exploring Feature Representation Learning for Semi-supervised Medical Image Segmentation
This paper presents a simple yet effective two-stage framework for
semi-supervised medical image segmentation. Our key insight is to explore the
feature representation learning with labeled and unlabeled (i.e., pseudo
labeled) images to enhance the segmentation performance. In the first stage, we
present an aleatoric uncertainty-aware method, namely AUA, to improve the
segmentation performance for generating high-quality pseudo labels. Considering
the inherent ambiguity of medical images, AUA adaptively regularizes the
consistency on images with low ambiguity. To enhance the representation
learning, we propose a stage-adaptive contrastive learning method, including a
boundary-aware contrastive loss to regularize the labeled images in the first
stage and a prototype-aware contrastive loss to optimize both labeled and
pseudo labeled images in the second stage. The boundary-aware contrastive loss
only optimizes pixels around the segmentation boundaries to reduce the
computational cost. The prototype-aware contrastive loss fully leverages both
labeled images and pseudo labeled images by building a centroid for each class
to reduce computational cost for pair-wise comparison. Our method achieves the
best results on two public medical image segmentation benchmarks. Notably, our
method outperforms the prior state-of-the-art by 5.7% on Dice for colon tumor
segmentation relying on just 5% labeled images.Comment: On submission to TM
(Z)-Ethyl 2,4-diphenyl-3-(propylamino)but-2-enoate
The title compound, C21H25NO2, adopts a Z conformation about the C=C double bond. The molecular structure is stabilized by an intramolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond and the dihedral angle between the aromatic ring planes is 76.04 (12)°. The atoms of the ethyl substituent are disordered over two sets of sites in a 0.60 (2):0.40 (2) ratio
Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Associated With Diabetic Foot Prevention Among Rural Adults With Diabetes in North China
The diabetic foot is a global threat to public health because it can result in infection and amputation, as well as cause the patient to experience considerable pain and incur financial costs. The condition of patients with diabetic foot in North China is distinguished by more severe local ulcers, a worse prognosis, and a longer duration of disease than that of patients with diabetic foot in the south. Through appropriate preventive measures, the diabetic foot can be effectively avoided. This study assesses the existing knowledge, attitudes and practices associated with diabetic foot prevention among adults with diabetes living in rural areas of North China
Poly(phenylene ethynylene)-coated aligned ZnO nanorod arrays for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene detection
Evaluating the Bioactivity of a Novel Broad-Spectrum Antimicrobial Peptide Brevinin-1GHa from the Frog Skin Secretion of Hylarana guentheri and Its Analogues
Many antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been identified from the skin secretion of the frog Hylarana guentheri (H.guentheri), including Temporin, Brevinin-1, and Brevinin-2. In this study, an antimicrobial peptide named Brevinin-1GHa was identified for the first time by using ‘shotgun’ cloning. The primary structure was also confirmed through mass spectral analysis of the skin secretion purified by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). There was a Rana-box (CKISKKC) in the C-terminal of Brevinin-1GHa, which formed an intra-disulfide bridge. To detect the significance of Rana-box and reduce the hemolytic activity, we chemically synthesized Brevinin-1GHb (without Rana-box) and Brevinin-1GHc (Rana-box in central position). Brevinin-1GHa exhibited a strong and broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against seven microorganisms, while Brevinin-1GHb only inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), which indicates Rana-box was necessary for the antimicrobial activity of Brevinin-1GHa. The results of Brevinin-1GHc suggested transferring Rana-box to the central position could reduce the hemolytic activity, but the antimicrobial activity also declined. Additionally, Brevinin-1GHa demonstrated the capability of permeating cell membrane and eliminating biofilm of S. aureus, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and Candida albicans (C. albicans). The discovery of this research may provide some novel insights into natural antimicrobial drug desig
Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction Coupled With Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate and Propidium Monoazide for Detection of Viable Streptococcus agalactiae in Milk
Streptococcus agalactiae is an important pathogen causing bovine mastitis. The aim of this study was to develop a simple and specific method for direct detection of S. agalactiae from milk products. Propidium monoazide (PMA) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) were utilized to eliminate the interference of dead and injured cells in qPCR. Lysozyme (LYZ) was adopted to increase the extraction efficiency of target bacteria DNA in milk matrix. The specific primers were designed based on cfb gene of S. agalactiae for qPCR. The inclusivity and exclusivity of the assay were evaluated using 30 strains. The method was further determined by the detection of S. agalactiae in spiked milk. Results showed significant differences between the SDS–PMA–qPCR, PMA–qPCR and qPCR when a final concentration of 10 mg/ml (R2 = 0.9996, E = 95%) of LYZ was added in DNA extraction. Viable S. agalactiae was effectively detected when SDS and PMA concentrations were 20 μg/ml and 10 μM, respectively, and it was specific and more sensitive than qPCR and PMA–qPCR. Moreover, the SDS–PMA–qPCR assay coupled with LYZ was used to detect viable S. agalactiae in spiked milk, with a limit of detection of 3 × 103 cfu/ml. Therefore, the SDS–PMA–qPCR assay had excellent sensitivity and specificity for detection of viable S. agalactiae in milk
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