Double spike Dirichlet priors for structured weighting

Assigning weights to a large pool of objects is a fundamental task in a wide variety of applications. In this article, we introduce a concept of structured high-dimensional probability simplexes, whose most components are zero or near zero and the remaining ones are close to each other. Such structure is well motivated by 1) high-dimensional weights that are common in modern applications, and 2) ubiquitous examples in which equal weights -- despite their simplicity -- often achieve favorable or even state-of-the-art predictive performances. This particular structure, however, presents unique challenges both computationally and statistically. To address these challenges, we propose a new class of double spike Dirichlet priors to shrink a probability simplex to one with the desired structure. When applied to ensemble learning, such priors lead to a Bayesian method for structured high-dimensional ensembles that is useful for forecast combination and improving random forests, while enabling uncertainty quantification. We design efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for easy implementation. Posterior contraction rates are established to provide theoretical support. We demonstrate the wide applicability and competitive performance of the proposed methods through simulations and two real data applications using the European Central Bank Survey of Professional Forecasters dataset and a UCI dataset

Solar window blinds with passive cooling coating and smart controllers

In the recent design of solar window blinds, the flexible solar films are attached to one side of the window blinds, making use of the building facades. As solar films absorb the heat from sunlight, a significant decrease in energy conversion efficiency becomes one obstacle for widespread commercial application. In order to tackle the difficulty, this project yields an improvement, where a passive cooling coating (PCC) is applied to another side of the window blinds. The PCC makes the temperature of window blinds lower than the ambient temperature effectively, by emitting the long-wave infrared to the outer environment. With the aid of PCC, the lower in-room temperature is attained, resulting in less energy required for air conditioners during summers. The solar window blinds involve two work states: (I) solar films are orientated towards the sunlight to harvest energy; (II) PCCs are orientated towards the sunlight to cool down the surrounding temperature. The switch of work states between (I) and (II) is achieved by smart controllers based on temperature data acquired from sensors. A prototype is fabricated to demonstrated how much energy conversion efficiency is promoted with PCCs

Defense against Adversarial Cloud Attack on Remote Sensing Salient Object Detection

Detecting the salient objects in a remote sensing image has wide applications for the interdisciplinary research. Many existing deep learning methods have been proposed for Salient Object Detection (SOD) in remote sensing images and get remarkable results. However, the recent adversarial attack examples, generated by changing a few pixel values on the original remote sensing image, could result in a collapse for the well-trained deep learning based SOD model. Different with existing methods adding perturbation to original images, we propose to jointly tune adversarial exposure and additive perturbation for attack and constrain image close to cloudy image as Adversarial Cloud. Cloud is natural and common in remote sensing images, however, camouflaging cloud based adversarial attack and defense for remote sensing images are not well studied before. Furthermore, we design DefenseNet as a learn-able pre-processing to the adversarial cloudy images so as to preserve the performance of the deep learning based remote sensing SOD model, without tuning the already deployed deep SOD model. By considering both regular and generalized adversarial examples, the proposed DefenseNet can defend the proposed Adversarial Cloud in white-box setting and other attack methods in black-box setting. Experimental results on a synthesized benchmark from the public remote sensing SOD dataset (EORSSD) show the promising defense against adversarial cloud attacks

Plant Defense Responses Induced by Two Herbivores and Consequences for Whitefly Bemisia tabaci

Diverse herbivores are known to induce various plant defenses. The plant defenses may detrimentally affect the performance and preference to subsequent herbivores on the same plant, such as affecting another insect’s feeding, settling, growth or oviposition. Here, we report two herbivores (mealybug Phenacoccus solenopsis and carmine spider mite Tetranychus cinnabarinus) which were used to pre-infest the cucumber to explore the impact on the plants and the later-colonizing species, whitefly Bemisia tabaci. The results showed that the whiteflies tended to select the treatments pre-infested by the mites, rather than the uninfected treatments. However, the result of treatments pre-infested by the mealybugs was opposite. Total number of eggs laid of whiteflies was related to their feeding preference. The results also showed that T. cinnabarinus were more likely to activate plant jasmonic acid (JA) regulated genes, while mealybugs were more likely to activate key genes regulated by salicylic acid (SA). The different plant defense activities on cucumbers may be one of the essential factors that affects the preference of B. tabaci. Moreover, the digestive enzymes and protective enzymes of the whitefly might play a substantial regulatory role in its settling and oviposition ability

Determination of reference intervals of serum levels of human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) in Chinese women

The detailed numbers of subjects from different centers. (DOCX 17.3 kb

Integrated analysis of genomic and transcriptomic data for the discovery of splice-associated variants in cancer

Somatic mutations within non-coding regions and even exons may have unidentified regulatory consequences that are often overlooked in analysis workflows. Here we present RegTools ( www.regtools.org ), a computationally efficient, free, and open-source software package designed to integrate somatic variants from genomic data with splice junctions from bulk or single cell transcriptomic data to identify variants that may cause aberrant splicing. We apply RegTools to over 9000 tumor samples with both tumor DNA and RNA sequence data. RegTools discovers 235,778 events where a splice-associated variant significantly increases the splicing of a particular junction, across 158,200 unique variants and 131,212 unique junctions. To characterize these somatic variants and their associated splice isoforms, we annotate them with the Variant Effect Predictor, SpliceAI, and Genotype-Tissue Expression junction counts and compare our results to other tools that integrate genomic and transcriptomic data. While many events are corroborated by the aforementioned tools, the flexibility of RegTools also allows us to identify splice-associated variants in known cancer drivers, such as TP53, CDKN2A, and B2M, and other genes

A Phase Ib Study of the Simmitecan Single Agent and in Combination With 5-Fluorouracil/Leucovorin or Thalidomide in Patients With Advanced Solid Tumor

Background: Simmitecan is a potent inhibitor of topoisomerase I with anti-tumor activity. This phase Ib trial was conducted to investigate the safety and anti-tumor effect of simmitecan alone or in combination with other drugs.Methods: Eligible patients with advanced solid tumor had no further standard treatment options. Patients were allocated to receive simmitecan alone, simmitecan in combination with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)/leucovorin (LV), or simmitecan in combination with thalidomide, 14 days a cycle, until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity occurred.Results: A total of 41 patients were enrolled, with a median age of 55 (range 29–69) years. Among them, 13 patients received simmitecan monotherapy, 10 received simmitecan + 5-FU/LV, and 18 received simmitecan + thalidomide. No dose-limiting toxicity occurred. Overall, the most common grade 3/4 adverse event (AE) was neutropenia (46.2, 70.0, and 88.9%, respectively, in simmitecan, simmitecan + 5-FU/LV, and simmitecan + thalidomide cohorts), and treatment-related severe AEs included anemia and febrile neutropenia (7.7% each in simmitecan cohort), diarrhea (10% in simmitecan +5-FU/LV cohort), and febrile neutropenia (5.6% in simmitecan + thalidomide cohort). The majority of patients (24/41, 58.3%) had progressed on prior irinotecan; nevertheless, partial response was achieved in one colorectal cancer patients treated with simmitecan + thalidomide. The disease control rates of simmitecan, simmitecan + 5-FU/LV, and simmitecan + thalidomide cohorts were 46.2, 80.0, and 61.1%, respectively.Conclusion: This study demonstrated a manageable safety profile of simmitecan as a single agent or as part of a combination therapy. There have not been any safety concerns with simmitecan in combination when compared to simmitecan alone. Simmitecan + 5-FU/LV regimen seemed to have a better efficacy. Nonetheless, the efficacy of this regimen needs to be further explored in the subsequent study

Frequent alterations in cytoskeleton remodelling genes in primary and metastatic lung adenocarcinomas

The landscape of genetic alterations in lung adenocarcinoma derived from Asian patients is largely uncharacterized. Here we present an integrated genomic and transcriptomic analysis of 335 primary lung adenocarcinomas and 35 corresponding lymph node metastases from Chinese patients. Altogether 13 significantly mutated genes are identified, including the most commonly mutated gene TP53 and novel mutation targets such as RHPN2, GLI3 and MRC2. TP53 mutations are furthermore significantly enriched in tumours from patients harbouring metastases. Genes regulating cytoskeleton remodelling processes are also frequently altered, especially in metastatic samples, of which the high expression level of IQGAP3 is identified as a marker for poor prognosis. Our study represents the first large-scale sequencing effort on lung adenocarcinoma in Asian patients and provides a comprehensive mutational landscape for both primary and metastatic tumours. This may thus form a basis for personalized medical care and shed light on the molecular pathogenesis of metastatic lung adenocarcinoma