Animal3D: A Comprehensive Dataset of 3D Animal Pose and Shape

Accurately estimating the 3D pose and shape is an essential step towards understanding animal behavior, and can potentially benefit many downstream applications, such as wildlife conservation. However, research in this area is held back by the lack of a comprehensive and diverse dataset with high-quality 3D pose and shape annotations. In this paper, we propose Animal3D, the first comprehensive dataset for mammal animal 3D pose and shape estimation. Animal3D consists of 3379 images collected from 40 mammal species, high-quality annotations of 26 keypoints, and importantly the pose and shape parameters of the SMAL model. All annotations were labeled and checked manually in a multi-stage process to ensure highest quality results. Based on the Animal3D dataset, we benchmark representative shape and pose estimation models at: (1) supervised learning from only the Animal3D data, (2) synthetic to real transfer from synthetically generated images, and (3) fine-tuning human pose and shape estimation models. Our experimental results demonstrate that predicting the 3D shape and pose of animals across species remains a very challenging task, despite significant advances in human pose estimation. Our results further demonstrate that synthetic pre-training is a viable strategy to boost the model performance. Overall, Animal3D opens new directions for facilitating future research in animal 3D pose and shape estimation, and is publicly available.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, link to the dataset: https://xujiacong.github.io/Animal3D

Study on Surface Discharge Characteristics of GO-Doped Epoxy Resin–LN₂ Composite Insulation

Superconducting power lead equipment for epoxy insulation, such as high-temperature superconducting DC power or liquefied natural gas energy pipelines, as well as high-temperature superconducting cables, has long been used in extreme environments, from liquid nitrogen temperatures to normal temperatures. It is easy to induce surface discharge and flashover under the action of strong electric field, which accelerates the insulation failure of current leads. In this paper, two-dimensional nano-material GO was used to control the electrical properties of epoxy resins. The DC surface discharge and flashover characteristics of the prepared epoxy resin–GO composite insulation materials were tested at room temperature with liquid nitrogen. The surface discharge mechanism of the epoxy resin–GO composite insulation materials was analyzed. The experimental results show that the insulation properties of epoxy composites doped with GO changed. Among them, the surface flashover voltage of 0.05 wt% material is the best, which can inhibit the discharge phenomenon and improve its insulation properties in extreme environments, from room temperature to liquid nitrogen temperature. It is found that the development process of surface discharge of composite insulating materials under liquid nitrogen is quite different from that under room temperature. Before critical flashover, the repetition rate and amplitude of surface discharge remain at a low level until critical flashover. Furthermore, the voltage of the first flashover is significantly higher than that of the subsequent flashover under the action of the desorption gas on the surface of the composite insulating material and the gasification layer produced by the discharge. Given that the surface flashover voltage of 0.05 wt% epoxy composite is the best, the research and analysis of 0.05 wt% composite is emphasized. In the future design of superconducting power lead insulation, the modification method of adding GO to epoxy resin can be considered in order to improve its insulation performance

Bioinspired Injectable Polyurethane Underwater Adhesive with Fast Bonding and Hemostatic Properties

Abstract Underwater adhesives with injectable, organic solvent‐free, strong, fast adhesion, and hemostatic properties have become an urgent need in biomedical field. Herein, a novel polyurethane underwater adhesive (PUWA) inspired by mussels is developed utilizing the rapid post‐cure reaction of isocyanate esterification without organic solvents. The PUWA is created through the injectable two component curing process of component A (biocompatible polyurethane prepolymer) and component B (dopamine modified lysine derivatives: chain extender‐LDA and crosslinker‐L3DA). The two‐component adhesive cures quickly and firmly underwater, with an impressive bonding strength of 40 kPa on pork skin and excellent burst pressure of 394 mmHg. Moreover, the PUWA exhibits robust adhesion strength in hostile environments with acid, alkali and saline solutions. Combined with excellent biocompatibility and hemostatic performance, the PUWA demonstrates effectively sealing wounds and promoting healing. With the ability to bond diverse substrates rapidly and strongly, the PUWA holds significant potential for application in both biomedical and industrial fields

Deciphering the Role of Sulfonated Unit in Heparin-Mimicking Polymer to Promote Neural Differentiation of Embryonic Stem Cells

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), especially heparin and heparan sulfate (HS), hold great potential for inducing the neural differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and have brought new hope for the treatment of neurological diseases. However, the disadvantages of natural heparin/HS, such as difficulty in isolating them with a sufficient amount, highly heterogeneous structure, and the risk of immune responses, have limited their further therapeutic applications. Thus, there is a great demand for stable, controllable, and well-defined synthetic alternatives of heparin/HS with more effective biological functions. In this study, based upon a previously proposed unit-recombination strategy, several heparin-mimicking polymers were synthesized by integrating glucosamine-like 2-methacrylamido glucopyranose monomers (MAG) with three sulfonated units in different structural forms, and their effects on cell proliferation, the pluripotency, and the differentiation of ESCs were carefully studied. The results showed that all the copolymers had good cytocompatibility and displayed much better bioactivity in promoting the neural differentiation of ESCs as compared to natural heparin; copolymers with different sulfonated units exhibited different levels of promoting ability; among them, copolymer with 3-sulfopropyl acrylate (SPA) as a sulfonated unit was the most potent in promoting the neural differentiation of ESCs; the promoting effect is dependent on the molecular weight and concentration of P­(MAG-<i>co</i>-SPA), with the highest levels occurring at the intermediate molecular weight and concentration. These results clearly demonstrated that the sulfonated unit in the copolymers played an important role in determining the promoting effect on ESCs’ neural differentiation; SPA was identified as the most potent sulfonated unit for copolymer with the strongest promoting ability. The possible reason for sulfonated unit structure as a vital factor influencing the ability of the copolymers may be attributed to the difference in electrostatic and steric hindrance effect. The synthetic heparin-mimicking polymers obtained here can offer an effective alternative to heparin/HS and have great therapeutic potential for nervous system diseases

miR-137 Affects Vaginal Lubrication in Female Sexual Dysfunction by Targeting Aquaporin-2

Introduction: Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is a common disease with serious potential hazards, but it has not received much attention. The pathogenesis of FSD is urgently needed for the diagnosis and treatment of FSD. Aim: To investigate the role of microribonucleic acid (mRNA, miR)-137 in FSD. Methods: Vaginal epithelium tissues from 15 women with lubrication disorder and 15 women with normal function were collected for this study. The expression level of miR-137 in lubrication disorder and normal function women were measured by microarray analysis and Real-time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR, qPCR). miR-137 was overexpressed in vaginal epithelial cells VK2/E6E7 by lentivirus infection. The cell water permeability was measured using the calcein-quenching method. Cell apoptosis was analyzed by flow cytometry. The potential target of miR-137 was predicted by bioinformatic analysis, then verified by luciferase reporter assays. Main Outcome Measure: The expression level of miR-137 and aquaporin-2 (AQP2), cell water permeability, cell apoptosis, and luciferase reporter assays were examined. Results: miR-137 was found to be highly expressed in vaginal epithelial tissues of women with lubrication disorder. Additionally, functional in vitro studies suggested that overexpression of miR-137 leads to a decrease in cell permeability. By combining target prediction and examination, we identified AQP2 as the direct mechanistic target of miR-137 that affected the water permeability of vaginal epithelial cells. Conclusion: Our results point to a novel role for miR-137 and its downstream effector AQP2 in vaginal lubrication, which can be manipulated as therapeutic targets against lubrication disorder and its related disorders.Zhang H, Liu T, Zhou Z. miR-137 affects vaginal lubrication in female sexual dysfunction by targeting Aquaporin-2. Sex Med 2018;6:339–347. Key Words: Female Sexual Dysfunction, miR-137, Vaginal Lubrication, Aquaporin-