Coordinate Translator for Learning Deformable Medical Image Registration

The majority of deep learning (DL) based deformable image registration methods use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to estimate displacement fields from pairs of moving and fixed images. This, however, requires the convolutional kernels in the CNN to not only extract intensity features from the inputs but also understand image coordinate systems. We argue that the latter task is challenging for traditional CNNs, limiting their performance in registration tasks. To tackle this problem, we first introduce Coordinate Translator, a differentiable module that identifies matched features between the fixed and moving image and outputs their coordinate correspondences without the need for training. It unloads the burden of understanding image coordinate systems for CNNs, allowing them to focus on feature extraction. We then propose a novel deformable registration network, im2grid, that uses multiple Coordinate Translator's with the hierarchical features extracted from a CNN encoder and outputs a deformation field in a coarse-to-fine fashion. We compared im2grid with the state-of-the-art DL and non-DL methods for unsupervised 3D magnetic resonance image registration. Our experiments show that im2grid outperforms these methods both qualitatively and quantitatively

HACA3: A Unified Approach for Multi-site MR Image Harmonization

The lack of standardization is a prominent issue in magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. This often causes undesired contrast variations due to differences in hardware and acquisition parameters. In recent years, MR harmonization using image synthesis with disentanglement has been proposed to compensate for the undesired contrast variations. Despite the success of existing methods, we argue that three major improvements can be made. First, most existing methods are built upon the assumption that multi-contrast MR images of the same subject share the same anatomy. This assumption is questionable since different MR contrasts are specialized to highlight different anatomical features. Second, these methods often require a fixed set of MR contrasts for training (e.g., both Tw-weighted and T2-weighted images must be available), which limits their applicability. Third, existing methods generally are sensitive to imaging artifacts. In this paper, we present a novel approach, Harmonization with Attention-based Contrast, Anatomy, and Artifact Awareness (HACA3), to address these three issues. We first propose an anatomy fusion module that enables HACA3 to respect the anatomical differences between MR contrasts. HACA3 is also robust to imaging artifacts and can be trained and applied to any set of MR contrasts. Experiments show that HACA3 achieves state-of-the-art performance under multiple image quality metrics. We also demonstrate the applicability of HACA3 on downstream tasks with diverse MR datasets acquired from 21 sites with different field strengths, scanner platforms, and acquisition protocols

Does Government-Led Publicity Enhance Corporate Green Behavior? Empirical Evidence from Green <i>Xuanguan</i> in China

Promoting green behavior among corporations is essential to the green transition of industrial sectors in China. There is a unique government-led green publicity institution, ‘Xuanguan‘, that expects to accelerate the green idea and policy spread top-down in the economic system in China. However, few studies discussed its role in formulating corporate green behavior. By constructing an integrated model of Government-led publicity-Internal and external perception-Corporate green behavior, this paper explored the effect of government-led green publicity on corporate green behavior, based on the survey data of 199 industrial manufacturing corporations in Henan Province, China. A structural equation model (SEM) was adopted to detect the influence and influential path. The results found that government-led green publicity could positively enhance green behavior via improving the corporate internal perception of risk and opportunity and improving the corporate perception of external environment actors. The heterogeneity tests showed that type of publicity channels, corporate ownership, and corporate scale made different effects on the results. Further analysis proved that government-led publicity could enhance the function of formal environmental regulation. It implies that government-led publicity can be a good compensation for formal regulations and stimulate green behavior. This paper demonstrates a new factor of enhancing corporate behavior and contributed new evidence of China’s green development story

Does Government-Led Publicity Enhance Corporate Green Behavior? Empirical Evidence from Green Xuanguan in China

Promoting green behavior among corporations is essential to the green transition of industrial sectors in China. There is a unique government-led green publicity institution, &lsquo;Xuanguan&lsquo;, that expects to accelerate the green idea and policy spread top-down in the economic system in China. However, few studies discussed its role in formulating corporate green behavior. By constructing an integrated model of Government-led publicity-Internal and external perception-Corporate green behavior, this paper explored the effect of government-led green publicity on corporate green behavior, based on the survey data of 199 industrial manufacturing corporations in Henan Province, China. A structural equation model (SEM) was adopted to detect the influence and influential path. The results found that government-led green publicity could positively enhance green behavior via improving the corporate internal perception of risk and opportunity and improving the corporate perception of external environment actors. The heterogeneity tests showed that type of publicity channels, corporate ownership, and corporate scale made different effects on the results. Further analysis proved that government-led publicity could enhance the function of formal environmental regulation. It implies that government-led publicity can be a good compensation for formal regulations and stimulate green behavior. This paper demonstrates a new factor of enhancing corporate behavior and contributed new evidence of China&rsquo;s green development story

An Iron(II) Ylide Complex as a Masked Open-Shell Iron Alkylidene Species in Its Alkylidene-Transfer Reactions with Alkenes

Transition-metal alkylidenes are important reactive organometallic intermediates, and our current knowledge on them has been mainly restricted to those with closed-shell electronic configurations. In this study, we present an exploration on open-shell iron alkylidenes with a weak-field tripodal amido-phosphine-amido ligand. We found that a high-spin (amido-phosphine-amido)­iron­(II) complex can react with (<i>p</i>-tolyl)₂CN₂ to afford a high-spin (amido-ylide-amido)­iron­(II) complex, <b>2</b>, which could transfer its alkylidene moiety to a variety of alkenes, either the electron-rich or electron-deficient ones, to form cyclopropane derivatives. The reaction of <b>2</b> with <i>cis</i>-β-deuterio-styrene gave deuterated cyclopropane derivatives with partial loss of the stereochemical integrity with respect to the <i>cis</i>-styrene. Kinetic study on the cyclopropanation reaction of <b>2</b> with 4-fluoro-styrene disclosed the activation parameters of Δ<i>H</i>^⧧ = 23 ± 1 kcal/mol and Δ<i>S</i>^⧧ = −20 ± 3 cal/mol/K, which are comparable to those of the cyclopropanation reactions involving transition-metal alkylidenes. However, the cyclopropanation of <i>para</i>-substituted styrenes by <b>2</b> shows a nonlinear Hammett plot of log­(<i>k</i>_X/<i>k</i>_H) vs σ_p. By introduction of a radical parameter, a linear plot of log­(<i>k</i>_X/<i>k</i>_H) vs 0.59σ_p + 0.55σ_c^• was obtained, which suggests the “nucleophilic” radical nature of the transition state of the cyclopropanation step. In corroboration with the experimental observations, density functional theory calculation on the reaction of <b>2</b> with styrene suggests the involvement of an open-shell (amido-phosphine-amido)­iron alkylidene intermediate that is higher in energy than its (amido-ylide-amido)­iron­(II) precursor and an “outer-sphere” radical-type mechanism for the cyclopropanation step. The negative charge distribution on the alkylidene carbon atoms of the open-shell states (<i>S</i> = 2 and 1) explains the high activity of the cyclopropanation reaction toward electron-deficient alkenes. The study demonstrates the unique activity of open-shell iron alkylidene species beyond its closed-shell analogues, thus pointing out their potential synthetic usage in catalysis

Protective immunity induced by Eimeria common antigen 14–3-3 against Eimeria tenella, Eimeria acervulina and Eimeria maxima

Abstract Background Avian coccidiosis is often caused by co-infection with several species of Eimeria worldwide. Developing a multivalent vaccine with an antigen common to multiple Eimeria species is a promising strategy for controlling clinical common co-infection of Eimeria. In the previous study, 14–3-3 was identified as one of the immunogenic common antigen in E. tenella, E. acervulina and E. maxima. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of Ea14–3-3 in the form of DNA vaccine against infection with three species of Eimeria both individually and simultaneously. Results After vaccination with pVAX-Ea14–3-3, the Ea14–3-3 gene was transcribed and expressed in the injected muscles. Vaccination with pVAX-Ea14–3-3 significantly increased the proportion of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes and produced a strong IgY response in immunized chickens. Similarly, pVAX-Ea14–3-3 stimulated the chicken’s splenocytes to produce high levels of Th1-type (IFN-γ, IL-2) and Th2-type (IL-4) cytokines. The vaccine-induced immune response was responsible to increase weight gain, decreased the oocyst output, and alleviated enteric lesions significantly in immunized chickens as compared to control group, in addition to induce moderate anti-coccidial index (ACI). Conclusion These results indicate that Ea14–3-3 is highly immunogenic and capable to induce significant immune responses. Furthermore, Ea14–3-3 antigen can provide effective protection against infection with Eimeria tenella, Eimeria acervulina, Eimeria maxima both individually and in combination with three Eimeria species. Significant outcomes of our study provide an effective candidate antigen for developing a multivalent Eimeria vaccine against mixed infection with various Eimeria species under natural conditions

Rothia nasimurium as a Cause of Disease: First Isolation from Farmed Chickens

Rothia nasimurium is a facultative anaerobic Gram-positive coccus belonging to the Rothia genus of the Micrococcaceae family. While Rothia nasimurium is considered an opportunistic pathogen, to date few studies have investigated its pathogenicity and drug resistance. In January 2022, chickens at a poultry farm in China&rsquo;s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region became ill and died. Treatment with commonly used Chinese medicines and antibiotics was ineffective, causing economic losses to the poultry farm. In order to determine the cause of the disease in these poultry farm chickens, the isolation and identification of the pathogens in the livers and other internal organs of the sick and dead chickens were performed. Further, animal pathogenicity tests, antibiotic susceptibility tests, and the detection of antibiotic resistance genes were carried out to analyze the pathogenicity and drug resistance of the identified pathogens. A Gram-positive coccus was isolated from the livers of the diseased chickens. The isolate was resistant to 17 antibiotics, including ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, and florfenicol, and was only sensitive to penicillin, amikacin, and tigecycline, to varying degrees. The results of the drug resistance gene testing indicated that the isolated bacterium carried 13 kinds of resistance genes. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry, morphological observations, biochemical tests, and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis were performed on the isolated bacterium, and it was determined that the isolated bacterial strain was Rothia nasimurium. The animal pathogenicity tests showed that the isolate caused feather loss and death in chicks; the clinical symptoms and necropsy lesions of the test chicks were consistent with those observed in the farmed chickens. A review of the literature revealed that, to date, there are no reports of infection with Rothia nasimurium in chickens. Thus, in this study, Rothia nasimurium was isolated from chickens for the first time and an investigation of the biological characteristics of the bacterium was carried out in order to provide a reference for the clinical treatment, prevention, and control of Rothia nasimurium infection

An Iron(II) Ylide Complex as a Masked Open-Shell Iron Alkylidene Species in Its Alkylidene-Transfer Reactions with Alkenes

Transition-metal alkylidenes are important reactive organometallic intermediates, and our current knowledge on them has been mainly restricted to those with closed-shell electronic configurations. In this study, we present an exploration on open-shell iron alkylidenes with a weak-field tripodal amido-phosphine-amido ligand. We found that a high-spin (amido-phosphine-amido)­iron­(II) complex can react with (<i>p</i>-tolyl)₂CN₂ to afford a high-spin (amido-ylide-amido)­iron­(II) complex, <b>2</b>, which could transfer its alkylidene moiety to a variety of alkenes, either the electron-rich or electron-deficient ones, to form cyclopropane derivatives. The reaction of <b>2</b> with <i>cis</i>-β-deuterio-styrene gave deuterated cyclopropane derivatives with partial loss of the stereochemical integrity with respect to the <i>cis</i>-styrene. Kinetic study on the cyclopropanation reaction of <b>2</b> with 4-fluoro-styrene disclosed the activation parameters of Δ<i>H</i>^⧧ = 23 ± 1 kcal/mol and Δ<i>S</i>^⧧ = −20 ± 3 cal/mol/K, which are comparable to those of the cyclopropanation reactions involving transition-metal alkylidenes. However, the cyclopropanation of <i>para</i>-substituted styrenes by <b>2</b> shows a nonlinear Hammett plot of log­(<i>k</i>_X/<i>k</i>_H) vs σ_p. By introduction of a radical parameter, a linear plot of log­(<i>k</i>_X/<i>k</i>_H) vs 0.59σ_p + 0.55σ_c^• was obtained, which suggests the “nucleophilic” radical nature of the transition state of the cyclopropanation step. In corroboration with the experimental observations, density functional theory calculation on the reaction of <b>2</b> with styrene suggests the involvement of an open-shell (amido-phosphine-amido)­iron alkylidene intermediate that is higher in energy than its (amido-ylide-amido)­iron­(II) precursor and an “outer-sphere” radical-type mechanism for the cyclopropanation step. The negative charge distribution on the alkylidene carbon atoms of the open-shell states (<i>S</i> = 2 and 1) explains the high activity of the cyclopropanation reaction toward electron-deficient alkenes. The study demonstrates the unique activity of open-shell iron alkylidene species beyond its closed-shell analogues, thus pointing out their potential synthetic usage in catalysis

Disentangling A Single MR Modality

Disentangling anatomical and contrast information from medical images has gained attention recently, demonstrating benefits for various image analysis tasks. Current methods learn disentangled representations using either paired multi-modal images with the same underlying anatomy or auxiliary labels (e.g., manual delineations) to provide inductive bias for disentanglement. However, these requirements could significantly increase the time and cost in data collection and limit the applicability of these methods when such data are not available. Moreover, these methods generally do not guarantee disentanglement. In this paper, we present a novel framework that learns theoretically and practically superior disentanglement from single modality magnetic resonance images. Moreover, we propose a new information-based metric to quantitatively evaluate disentanglement. Comparisons over existing disentangling methods demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior performance in both disentanglement and cross-domain image-to-image translation tasks