SENSE: a Shared Encoder Network for Scene-flow Estimation

We introduce a compact network for holistic scene flow estimation, called SENSE, which shares common encoder features among four closely-related tasks: optical flow estimation, disparity estimation from stereo, occlusion estimation, and semantic segmentation. Our key insight is that sharing features makes the network more compact, induces better feature representations, and can better exploit interactions among these tasks to handle partially labeled data. With a shared encoder, we can flexibly add decoders for different tasks during training. This modular design leads to a compact and efficient model at inference time. Exploiting the interactions among these tasks allows us to introduce distillation and self-supervised losses in addition to supervised losses, which can better handle partially labeled real-world data. SENSE achieves state-of-the-art results on several optical flow benchmarks and runs as fast as networks specifically designed for optical flow. It also compares favorably against the state of the art on stereo and scene flow, while consuming much less memory.Comment: ICCV 2019 Ora

Neural 3D Video Synthesis

We propose a novel approach for 3D video synthesis that is able to represent multi-view video recordings of a dynamic real-world scene in a compact, yet expressive representation that enables high-quality view synthesis and motion interpolation. Our approach takes the high quality and compactness of static neural radiance fields in a new direction: to a model-free, dynamic setting. At the core of our approach is a novel time-conditioned neural radiance fields that represents scene dynamics using a set of compact latent codes. To exploit the fact that changes between adjacent frames of a video are typically small and locally consistent, we propose two novel strategies for efficient training of our neural network: 1) An efficient hierarchical training scheme, and 2) an importance sampling strategy that selects the next rays for training based on the temporal variation of the input videos. In combination, these two strategies significantly boost the training speed, lead to fast convergence of the training process, and enable high quality results. Our learned representation is highly compact and able to represent a 10 second 30 FPS multi-view video recording by 18 cameras with a model size of just 28MB. We demonstrate that our method can render high-fidelity wide-angle novel views at over 1K resolution, even for highly complex and dynamic scenes. We perform an extensive qualitative and quantitative evaluation that shows that our approach outperforms the current state of the art. We include additional video and information at: https://neural-3d-video.github.io/Comment: Project website: https://neural-3d-video.github.io

Corrigendum: Modified Xiaoyaosan (MXYS) Exerts Anti-depressive Effects by Rectifying the Brain Blood Oxygen Level-Dependent FMRI Signals and Improving Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Mice

As the traditional Chinese herbal formula, Xiaoyaosan and its modified formula have been described in many previous studies with definite anti-depressive effects, but its underlying mechanism remains mystery. Previous work in our lab has demonstrated that depression induced by chronic stress could generate brain blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals disorder, accompanied by the impairment of hippocampal neuronal plasticity, decrease of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and reduction of the number and complexity of adult neurons in the dentate gyrus. We hypothesized that herbal formula based on Xiaoyaosan could exert anti-depressive effects through restoring these neurobiological dysfunctions and rectifying BOLD-fMRI signals. To test this hypothesis, we examined the effect of modified Xiaoyaosan (MXYS) on depressive-like behaviors, as well as hippocampal neurogenesis and BOLD signals in a mice model of chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS)-induced depression. MXYS exerted anti-depressant effects on CUMS-induced depression that were similar to the effects of classical antidepressants drug (fluoxetine hydrochloride), with a significant alleviation of depressive-like behaviors, an improvement of hippocampal neurogenesis, and a reversal of activation of BOLD in the limbic system, particularly in the hippocampus. These results suggested that MXYS attenuated CUMS-induced depressive behaviors by rectifying the BOLD signals in the mice hippocampus. These novel results demonstrated that MXYS had anti-depressive effects accompanied by improving BOLD signals and hippocampal neurogenesis, which suggested that BOLD-fMRI signals in brain regions could be a key component for the evaluation of novel antidepressant drugs

Pollen tube emergence is mediated by ovary-expressed ALCATRAZ in cucumber

Pollen tube guidance within female tissues of flowering plants can be divided into preovular guidance, ovular guidance and a connecting stage called pollen tube emergence. As yet, no female factor has been identified to positively regulate this transition process. In this study, we show that an ovary-expressed bHLH transcription factor Cucumis sativus ALCATRAZ (CsALC) functions in pollen tube emergence in cucumber. CsALC knockout mutants showed diminished pollen tube emergence, extremely reduced entry into ovules, and a 95% reduction in female fertility. Further examination showed two rapid alkalinization factors CsRALF4 and CsRALF19 were less expressed in Csalc ovaries compared to WT. Besides the loss of male fertility derived from precocious pollen tube rupture as in Arabidopsis, Csralf4 Csralf19 double mutants exhibited a 60% decrease in female fertility due to reduced pollen tube distribution and decreased ovule targeting efficiency. In brief, CsALC regulates female fertility and promotes CsRALF4/19 expression in the ovary during pollen tube guidance in cucumber. Pollen tube growth is guided towards ovules. Here the authors show that a bHLH transcriptional factor CsALC functions in pollen tube emergence towards ovules to regulate female fertility in cucumber and promotes the expression of two rapid alkalinization factors CsRALF4/19 in the ovary

Modified Xiaoyaosan (MXYS) Exerts Anti-depressive Effects by Rectifying the Brain Blood Oxygen Level-Dependent fMRI Signals and Improving Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Mice

As the traditional Chinese herbal formula, Xiaoyaosan and its modified formula have been described in many previous studies with definite anti-depressive effects, but its underlying mechanism remains mystery. Previous work in our lab has demonstrated that depression induced by chronic stress could generate brain blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals disorder, accompanied by the impairment of hippocampal neuronal plasticity, decrease of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and reduction of the number and complexity of adult neurons in the dentate gyrus. We hypothesized that herbal formula based on Xiaoyaosan could exert anti-depressive effects through restoring these neurobiological dysfunctions and rectifying BOLD-fMRI signals. To test this hypothesis, we examined the effect of modified Xiaoyaosan (MXYS) on depressive-like behaviors, as well as hippocampal neurogenesis and BOLD signals in a mice model of chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS)-induced depression. MXYS exerted anti-depressant effects on CUMS-induced depression that were similar to the effects of classical antidepressants drug (fluoxetine hydrochloride), with a significant alleviation of depressive-like behaviors, an improvement of hippocampal neurogenesis, and a reversal of activation of BOLD in the limbic system, particularly in the hippocampus. These results suggested that MXYS attenuated CUMS-induced depressive behaviors by rectifying the BOLD signals in the mice hippocampus. These novel results demonstrated that MXYS had anti-depressive effects accompanied by improving BOLD signals and hippocampal neurogenesis, which suggested that BOLD-fMRI signals in brain regions could be a key component for the evaluation of novel antidepressant drugs