171 research outputs found
Human Pose Transfer with Augmented Disentangled Feature Consistency
Deep generative models have made great progress in synthesizing images with
arbitrary human poses and transferring poses of one person to others. Though
many different methods have been proposed to generate images with high visual
fidelity, the main challenge remains and comes from two fundamental issues:
pose ambiguity and appearance inconsistency. To alleviate the current
limitations and improve the quality of the synthesized images, we propose a
pose transfer network with augmented Disentangled Feature Consistency (DFC-Net)
to facilitate human pose transfer. Given a pair of images containing the source
and target person, DFC-Net extracts pose and static information from the source
and target respectively, then synthesizes an image of the target person with
the desired pose from the source. Moreover, DFC-Net leverages disentangled
feature consistency losses in the adversarial training to strengthen the
transfer coherence and integrates a keypoint amplifier to enhance the pose
feature extraction. With the help of the disentangled feature consistency
losses, we further propose a novel data augmentation scheme that introduces
unpaired support data with the augmented consistency constraints to improve the
generality and robustness of DFC-Net. Extensive experimental results on
Mixamo-Pose and EDN-10k have demonstrated DFC-Net achieves state-of-the-art
performance on pose transfer.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure
Recombinant human insulin-like growth factor-1 promotes osteoclast formation and accelerates orthodontic tooth movement in rats
Background: IGF-1 may be an important factor in bone remodeling, but its mechanism of action on osteoclasts during orthodontic tooth movement is complex and unclear. Methodology: The closed-coil spring was placed between the left maxillary first molar and upper incisors with a force of 50 g to establish an orthodontic movement model. Eighty SD rats were randomized to receive phosphate buffer saline or 400 ng rhIGF-1 in the lateral buccal mucosa of the left maxillary first molar every two days. Tissue sections were stained for tartrate-resistant acidic phosphatase (TRAP), the number of TRAP-positive cells was estimated and tooth movement measured. Results: The rhIGF-1 group exhibited evidential bone resorption and lacuna appeared on the alveolar bone compared to the control group. Moreover, the number of osteoclasts in compression side of the periodontal ligament in the rhIGF-1 group peaked at day 4 (11.37±0.95 compared to 5.28±0.47 in the control group) after the orthodontic force was applied and was significantly higher than that of the control group (p<0.01). Furthermore, the distance of tooth movement in the rhIGF-1 group was significantly larger than that of the control group from day 4 to day 14 (p<0.01), suggesting that rhIGF-1 accelerated orthodontic tooth movement. Conclusion: Our study has showed that rhIGF-1 could stimulate the formation of osteoclasts in the periodontal ligament, and accelerate bone remodeling and orthodontic tooth movement
Nitrogen acquisition strategy and its effects on invasiveness of a subtropical invasive plant
IntroductionPreference and plasticity in nitrogen (N) form uptake are the main strategies with which plants absorb soil N. However, little effort has been made to explore effects of N form acquisition strategies, especially the plasticity, on invasiveness of exotic plants, although many studies have determined the effects of N levels (e.g. N deposition).MethodsTo address this problem, we studied the differences in N form acquisition strategies between the invasive plant Solidago canadensis and its co-occurring native plant Artemisia lavandulaefolia, effects of soil N environments, and the relationship between N form acquisition strategy of S. canadensis and its invasiveness using a 15N-labeling technique in three habitats at four field sites.ResultsTotal biomass, root biomass, and the uptakes of soil dissolved inorganic N (DIN) per quadrat were higher for the invasive relative to the native species in all three habitats. The invader always preferred dominant soil N forms: NH4+ in habitats with NH4+ as the dominant DIN and NO3- in habitats with NO3- as the dominant DIN, while A. lavandulaefolia consistently preferred NO3- in all habitats. Plasticity in N form uptake was higher in the invasive relative to the native species, especially in the farmland. Plant N form acquisition strategy was influenced by both DIN levels and the proportions of different N forms (NO3-/NH4+) as judged by their negative effects on the proportional contributions of NH4+ to plant N (fNH4+) and the preference for NH4+ (βNH4+). In addition, total biomass was positively associated with fNH4+ or βNH4+ for S. canadensis, while negatively for A. lavandulaefolia. Interestingly, the species may prefer to absorb NH4+ when soil DIN and/or NO3-/NH4+ ratio were low, and root to shoot ratio may be affected by plant nutrient status per se, rather than by soil nutrient availability.DiscussionOur results indicate that the superior N form acquisition strategy of the invader contributes to its higher N uptake, and therefore to its invasiveness in different habitats, improving our understanding of invasiveness of exotic plants in diverse habitats in terms of utilization of different N forms
Detection of a superconducting phase in a two-atom layer of hexagonal Ga film grown on semiconducting GaN(0001)
The recent observation of superconducting state at atomic scale has motivated
the pursuit of exotic condensed phases in two-dimensional (2D) systems. Here we
report on a superconducting phase in two-monolayer crystalline Ga films
epitaxially grown on wide band-gap semiconductor GaN(0001). This phase exhibits
a hexagonal structure and only 0.552 nm in thickness, nevertheless, brings
about a superconducting transition temperature Tc as high as 5.4 K, confirmed
by in situ scanning tunneling spectroscopy, and ex situ electrical
magneto-transport and magnetization measurements. The anisotropy of critical
magnetic field and Berezinski-Kosterlitz-Thouless-like transition are observed,
typical for the 2D superconductivity. Our results demonstrate a novel platform
for exploring atomic-scale 2D superconductor, with great potential for
understanding of the interface superconductivity
The Plasma LncRNA Acting as Fingerprint in Hilar Cholangiocarcinoma
Background & Aims: Current studies have indicated that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) could act as tumor biomarkers for disease diagnosis and prognosis prediction. In this study, we mainly focused on determining the expression of circulating lncRNAs in patients suffering for hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HC), aiming to reveal the potential lncRNA as a fingerprint. Methods: A total 12 lncRNAs were previously proven to be aberrantly expressed in HC tumor tissues. All of the 12 lncRNAs were selected as candidate targets for subsequent circulating lncRNA assay. The candidate lncRNAs were validated by qRT-PCR arranged in training and validation sets. The risk score analysis was employed. Data was presented with receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). Results: Circulating PCAT1, MALAT1, and CPS1-IT1 were significantly increased in plasma samples of HC patients in both the training set and validation set. Through ROC analysis, we found that the three plasmatic lncRNAs presented the area under ROC curve value (AUC) as 0.784, 0.860, and 0.677. Further combination with the three factors indicated a higher power (AUC, 0.893; sensitivity, 85.5%; specificity, 93.2%). Conclusion: This was the first time to reveal the potential circulating fingerprints for predicting HC. PCAT1, MALAT1, and CPS1-IT1 may act as novel early diagnosis biomarkers for predicting HC
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