IID-GAN: an IID Sampling Perspective for Regularizing Mode Collapse

Despite its success, generative adversarial networks (GANs) still suffer from mode collapse, i.e., the generator can only map latent variables to a partial set of modes in the target distribution. In this paper, we analyze and seek to regularize this issue with an independent and identically distributed (IID) sampling perspective and emphasize that holding the IID property referring to the target distribution for generation can naturally avoid mode collapse. This is based on the basic IID assumption for real data in machine learning. However, though the source samples {z} obey IID, the generations {G(z)} may not necessarily be IID sampling from the target distribution. Based on this observation, considering a necessary condition of IID generation that the inverse samples from target data should also be IID in the source distribution, we propose a new loss to encourage the closeness between inverse samples of real data and the Gaussian source in latent space to regularize the generation to be IID from the target distribution. Experiments on both synthetic and real-world data show the effectiveness of our model.Comment: Accepted in IJCAI 202

N-Myc Downstream-Regulated Gene 2 (NDRG2) as a Novel Tumor Suppressor in Multiple Human Cancers

N-myc downstream-regulated gene 2 (NDRG2) was identified as a novel tumor suppressor gene in regulating the proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and metastasis of multiple cancer types. Consistent with this finding, we and other groups observed the decreased NDRG2 expression in multiple human cancer cell lines and tumors, including breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and cervical cancer. We identified NDRG2 as a stress sensor for hypoxia, DNA damage stimuli and endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS). Our recent data showed that NDRG2 could promote the differentiation of colorectal cancer cells. Interestingly, we found that reduced NDRG2 expression was a powerful and independent predictor of poor prognosis of colorectal cancer patients. Furthermore, NDRG2 can inhibit epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by positively regulating E-cadherin expression. Moreover, NDRG2-deficient mice show spontaneous development of various tumor types, including T-cell lymphomas, providing in vivo evidence that NDRG2 functions as a tumor suppressor gene. We believe that NDRG2 is a novel tumor suppressor and might be a therapeutic target for cancer treatment

Spatial Finite Element Analysis for Dynamic Response of Curved Thin-Walled Box Girder Bridges

According to the flexural and torsional characteristics of curved thin-walled box girder with the effect of initial curvature, 7 basic displacements of curved box girder are determined. And then the strain-displacement calculation correlations were established. Under the curvilinear coordinate system, a three-noded curved girder finite element which has 7 degrees of freedom per node for the vibration characteristic and dynamic response analysis of curved box girder is constructed. The shape functions are used as the interpolation functions of variable curvature and variable height to accommodate to the variation of curvature and section height. A MATLAB numerical analysis program has been implemented

Transcriptome Sequencing of Two Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) Genotypes in Response to Heat Stress

Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) (KBG) is a major cool-season turfgrass. However, as its complex genetic background and production modes, limited genomic and transcriptomic information of KBG was known so far. In this study, a transcriptome study between wild type material Ninglan (summer stress sensitive) and cultivar material KBG03 (summer stress tolerant) was conducted, under optimal (25 °C) and high (40 °C) temperatures. A total of 81.42 Gb clean reads were generated and de novo assembled into 110,784 unigenes with an average length of 1,105 bp. About 50% KBG unigenes were similar to the non-redundant (NR) database. Among the NR BLASTx top hits, 27.47% unigenes were matched to Brachypodium distachyon. After heat stress, a massive amount of unigenes showed significantly differential expression in both genotypes. After 2h heat stress, more specially up-regulated differentially expressed unigenes (DEGs) and less down-regulated DEGs were detected in Ninglan than in KBG03. At 24h, the expression of 1710 and 730 unigenes were increased and decreased uniquely in Ninglan, and 1361 up-regulated DEGs and 757 down-regulated DEGs were just found in KBG03. More heat shock proteins (HSPs) and heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) DEGs were also identified at 2h than 24h in both genotypes. In addition, by Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis, three core terms (“protein folding”, “response to heat”, and “response to hydrogen peroxide”) of biological process (BP) ontology were found in both genotypes under different heat stress time. The DEGs shared in both genotypes might be related to the basic mechanism of thermal response in KBG

PointeNet: A Lightweight Framework for Effective and Efficient Point Cloud Analysis

Current methodologies in point cloud analysis predominantly explore 3D geometries, often achieved through the introduction of intricate learnable geometric extractors in the encoder or by deepening networks with repeated blocks. However, these approaches inevitably lead to a significant number of learnable parameters, resulting in substantial computational costs and imposing memory burdens on CPU/GPU. Additionally, the existing strategies are primarily tailored for object-level point cloud classification and segmentation tasks, with limited extensions to crucial scene-level applications, such as autonomous driving. In response to these limitations, we introduce PointeNet, an efficient network designed specifically for point cloud analysis. PointeNet distinguishes itself with its lightweight architecture, low training cost, and plug-and-play capability, effectively capturing representative features. The network consists of a Multivariate Geometric Encoding (MGE) module and an optional Distance-aware Semantic Enhancement (DSE) module. The MGE module employs operations of sampling, grouping, and multivariate geometric aggregation to lightweightly capture and adaptively aggregate multivariate geometric features, providing a comprehensive depiction of 3D geometries. The DSE module, designed for real-world autonomous driving scenarios, enhances the semantic perception of point clouds, particularly for distant points. Our method demonstrates flexibility by seamlessly integrating with a classification/segmentation head or embedding into off-the-shelf 3D object detection networks, achieving notable performance improvements at a minimal cost. Extensive experiments on object-level datasets, including ModelNet40, ScanObjectNN, ShapeNetPart, and the scene-level dataset KITTI, demonstrate the superior performance of PointeNet over state-of-the-art methods in point cloud analysis

Modified Dachengqi Tang improves decreased gastrointestinal motility in postoperative esophageal cancer patients

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate the clinical effects of modified Dachengqi Tang (DCQT) on promoting gastrointestinal motility in post-operative esophageal cancer patients.MethodsSixty postoperative esophageal cancer patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to the modified treatment group or the control group (30 patients in each group). Patients in the treatment group were given DCQT made from decocted herbs and administered via nasojejunal tube at a dosage of 150 mL. Gastrointestinal motility was assessed by recording time for recovery of bowel sounds, flatus, defecation, and the total amount of gastric drainage during the first three postoperative days. Plasma motilin (MTL) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) were measured one hour before and three days after surgery.ResultsCompared with the control group, the times to first bowel sound, flatus, and defecation were significantly shorter and there was less gastric drainage in the treatment group (P < 0.01, P < 0.01, P < 0.01, and P < 0.05, respectively). In the treatment group, postoperative plasma MTL was significantly higher (P < 0.01) and VIP was significantly lower than those in the control group (P < 0.05). There was no difference found in either MTL or VIP from before to after operation in the treatment group (P > 0.05). MTL was significantly lower and VIP was higher postoperatively in the control group, compared to before surgery (P < 0.01).ConclusionsModified DCQT effectively improved decreased gastrointestinal motility in postoperative esophageal cancer patients by increasing MTL and reducing VIP

Fabrication and Investigation of Two-Component Film of 2,5-Diphenyloxazole and Octafluoronaphthalene Exhibiting Tunable Blue/Bluish Violet Fluorescence Based on Low Vacuum Physical Vapor Deposition Method

Organic luminescent materials play an important role in the fields of light-emitting diodes and fluorescent imaging. Moreover, new synthetic approaches towards π-conjugated molecular systems with high fluorescence quantum efficiency are highly desired. Herein, different 2,5-diphenyloxazole-octafluoronaphthalene (DPO-OFN) films with tunable fluorescence have been prepared by Low Vacuum Physical Vapor Deposition (LVPVD) method. DPO-OFN films showed some changed properties, such as molecular vibration and fluorescence. All films exhibited blue/bluish violet fluorescence and showed blue shift, in comparison with pristine DPO. This work introduced a new method to fabricate two-component molecular materials with tunable blue/bluish violet luminescence properties and provided a new perspective to prepare organic luminescent film materials, layer film materials, cocrystal materials, and cocrystal film materials. Importantly, these materials have potential applications in the fields of next generation of photofunctional materials