Object-based 2D-to-3D video conversion for effective stereoscopic content generation in 3D-TV applications

Three-dimensional television (3D-TV) has gained increasing popularity in the broadcasting domain, as it enables enhanced viewing experiences in comparison to conventional two-dimensional (2D) TV. However, its application has been constrained due to the lack of essential contents, i.e., stereoscopic videos. To alleviate such content shortage, an economical and practical solution is to reuse the huge media resources that are available in monoscopic 2D and convert them to stereoscopic 3D. Although stereoscopic video can be generated from monoscopic sequences using depth measurements extracted from cues like focus blur, motion and size, the quality of the resulting video may be poor as such measurements are usually arbitrarily defined and appear inconsistent with the real scenes. To help solve this problem, a novel method for object-based stereoscopic video generation is proposed which features i) optical-flow based occlusion reasoning in determining depth ordinal, ii) object segmentation using improved region-growing from masks of determined depth layers, and iii) a hybrid depth estimation scheme using content-based matching (inside a small library of true stereo image pairs) and depth-ordinal based regularization. Comprehensive experiments have validated the effectiveness of our proposed 2D-to-3D conversion method in generating stereoscopic videos of consistent depth measurements for 3D-TV applications

Potentiation of TRPM7 Inward Currents by Protons

TRPM7 is unique in being both an ion channel and a protein kinase. It conducts a large outward current at +100 mV but a small inward current at voltages ranging from −100 to −40 mV under physiological ionic conditions. Here we show that the small inward current of TRPM7 was dramatically enhanced by a decrease in extracellular pH, with an ∼10-fold increase at pH 4.0 and 1–2-fold increase at pH 6.0. Several lines of evidence suggest that protons enhance TRPM7 inward currents by competing with Ca2+ and Mg2+ for binding sites, thereby releasing blockade of divalent cations on inward monovalent currents. First, extracellular protons significantly increased monovalent cation permeability. Second, higher proton concentrations were required to induce 50% of maximal increase in TRPM7 currents when the external Ca2+ and Mg2+ concentrations were increased. Third, the apparent affinity for Ca2+ and Mg2+ was significantly diminished at elevated external H+ concentrations. Fourth, the anomalous-mole fraction behavior of H+ permeation further suggests that protons compete with divalent cations for binding sites in the TRPM7 pore. Taken together, it appears that at physiological pH (7.4), Ca2+ and Mg2+ bind to TRPM7 and inhibit the monovalent cationic currents; whereas at high H+ concentrations, the affinity of TRPM7 for Ca2+ and Mg2+ is decreased, thereby allowing monovalent cations to pass through TRPM7. Furthermore, we showed that the endogenous TRPM7-like current, which is known as Mg2+-inhibitable cation current (MIC) or Mg nucleotide–regulated metal ion current (MagNuM) in rat basophilic leukemia (RBL) cells was also significantly potentiated by acidic pH, suggesting that MIC/MagNuM is encoded by TRPM7. The pH sensitivity represents a novel feature of TRPM7 and implies that TRPM7 may play a role under acidic pathological conditions

Functional Characterization of Homo- and Heteromeric Channel Kinases TRPM6 and TRPM7

TRPM6 and TRPM7 are two known channel kinases that play important roles in various physiological processes, including Mg2+ homeostasis. Mutations in TRPM6 cause hereditary hypomagnesemia and secondary hypocalcemia (HSH). However, whether TRPM6 encodes functional channels is controversial. Here we demonstrate several signature features of TRPM6 that distinguish TRPM6 from TRPM7 and TRPM6/7 channels. We show that heterologous expression of TRPM6 but not the mutant TRPM6S141L produces functional channels with divalent cation permeability profile and pH sensitivity distinctive from those of TRPM7 channels and TRPM6/7 complexes. TRPM6 exhibits unique unitary conductance that is 2- and 1.5-fold bigger than that of TRPM7 and TRPM6/7. Moreover, micromolar levels of 2-aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2-APB) maximally increase TRPM6 but significantly inhibit TRPM7 channel activities; whereas millimolar concentrations of 2-APB potentiate TRPM6/7 and TRPM7 channel activities. Furthermore, Mg2+ and Ca2+ entry through TRPM6 is enhanced three- to fourfold by 2-APB. Collectively, these results indicate that TRPM6 forms functional homomeric channels as well as heteromeric TRPM6/7 complexes. The unique characteristics of these three channel types, TRPM6, TRPM7, and TRPM6/7, suggest that they may play different roles in vivo

DLFuzz: Differential Fuzzing Testing of Deep Learning Systems

Deep learning (DL) systems are increasingly applied to safety-critical domains such as autonomous driving cars. It is of significant importance to ensure the reliability and robustness of DL systems. Existing testing methodologies always fail to include rare inputs in the testing dataset and exhibit low neuron coverage. In this paper, we propose DLFuzz, the frst differential fuzzing testing framework to guide DL systems exposing incorrect behaviors. DLFuzz keeps minutely mutating the input to maximize the neuron coverage and the prediction difference between the original input and the mutated input, without manual labeling effort or cross-referencing oracles from other DL systems with the same functionality. We present empirical evaluations on two well-known datasets to demonstrate its efficiency. Compared with DeepXplore, the state-of-the-art DL whitebox testing framework, DLFuzz does not require extra efforts to find similar functional DL systems for cross-referencing check, but could generate 338.59% more adversarial inputs with 89.82% smaller perturbations, averagely obtain 2.86% higher neuron coverage, and save 20.11% time consumption.Comment: This paper is to appear in ESEC/FSE'2018 (NIER track

PO-093 Effects of 6-week hypoxic exercise on aerobic capacity-related proteins in overweight/obese women

Objective To explore the effects of hypoxic and normoxic exercise on hemoglobin (Hb), erythropoietin (EPO), hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1α) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in overweight women. Methods This study enrolled 40 female overweight/obese subjects, age is among 18-47 years old, with no abnormal physical examination. The overweight standard is BMI ≥ 24, and the obesity standard is BMI ≥ 28. All subjects were paired according to body weight, divided into hypoxia group and normoxia group, doing 6 weeks of exercise intervention, 3 times a week, every next day one time. The exercise intervention includes 30 minutes of strength training and 30 minutes of endurance training. There are 5 minutes of warm up before training and 5 minutes cool down after the training. Strength training uses the device as a dumbbell. The training content consists of 8 movements, there are dead lift, upright row, squat, shoulder press, calf Jump, advance junge, biceps curl and triceps extension, and the weight is 12RM. 2 sets for each action, rest between sets is 30s. Endurance training uses a treadmill with a slope of 0°, and the speed is adjusted according to the target heart rate interval. The calculation method of the target heart rate interval is (220-age)×60%～(220-age)×70%. Among them, the hypoxic group is equipped with a suction-type atmospheric hypoxic device, which moves with low-oxygen environment, and the oxygen content of the inhaled mixed gas is 16%; the normoxic group moves with normal oxygen environment. Nutritional education was given to all subjects prior before the start of exercise intervention, but diet was not restricted during the intervention. Fasting venous blood was taken before and after Fasting venous blood before and after exercise intervention intervention, and Hb, EPO, HIF1α, and VEGF were detected. All the test results were expressed by mean±standard deviation (x±SD). The data between two groups were compared by non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. The intra-group data were compared using a nonparametric Wilcoxon match for the symbol level test, with a significance level of P < 0.05 and a very significant level of P < 0.01. Results After the intervention, the Hb level in the hypoxic group was increased, but there was no significant difference compared with the pre-intervention group (P>0.05). There was no significant difference in the Hb change rate between the hypoxic group and the normoxic group (P>0.05). The EPO level in the hypoxic group was significantly increased, and there was a statistically significant difference compared with the pre-intervention group (P<0.01). There was no significant change in the EPO level in the normoxic group (P>0.05). The EPO change rate in the hypoxic group was compared with the normoxic group. There was no statistical difference (P>0.05). The level of HIF1α in the hypoxic group was significantly higher than that before the intervention (P<0.01). The level of HIF1α in the normoxic group was significantly lower than that before the intervention (P<0.01). The rate of change of HIF1α in the oxygen group was statistically different from that in the normox group (P<0.01). The level of VEGF in the hypoxic group was increased, but the level of VEGF in the normoxic group was decreased, but there was no significant difference compared with the pre-intervention group (P>0.05). There was no significant difference in the rate of VEGF in the hypoxic group compared with the normoxic group(P>0.05). Conclusions Compared with normotensive exercise, 6-week exercise increased the levels of Hb and EPO in overweight women, but the difference between hypoxia and normoxia was not significant. The level of HIF1α in the hypoxic group was increased, and the level of HIF1α in the normoxic group was decreased. This index was significantly affected by hypoxia. The level of VEGF in the hypoxic group was increased, and the level of VEGF in the normoxic group was decreased, but the effects of hypoxia and exercise were not obvious

Gesture Decoding Using ECoG Signals from Human Sensorimotor Cortex: A Pilot Study

Electrocorticography (ECoG) has been demonstrated as a promising neural signal source for developing brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). However, many concerns about the disadvantages brought by large craniotomy for implanting the ECoG grid limit the clinical translation of ECoG-based BMIs. In this study, we collected clinical ECoG signals from the sensorimotor cortex of three epileptic participants when they performed hand gestures. The ECoG power spectrum in hybrid frequency bands was extracted to build a synchronous real-time BMI system. High decoding accuracy of the three gestures was achieved in both offline analysis (85.7%, 84.5%, and 69.7%) and online tests (80% and 82%, tested on two participants only). We found that the decoding performance was maintained even with a subset of channels selected by a greedy algorithm. More importantly, these selected channels were mostly distributed along the central sulcus and clustered in the area of 3 interelectrode squares. Our findings of the reduced and clustered distribution of ECoG channels further supported the feasibility of clinically implementing the ECoG-based BMI system for the control of hand gestures