Two Moving-Angled 1-Branes with Electric Fields in a Partially Compact Spacetime

In this article we consider two $m1$-branes at angle in the presence of the background electric fields, in a partially compact spacetime. The branes have motions along a common direction that is perpendicular to both of them. Using the boundary state formalism, we calculate their interaction amplitude. Some special cases of this interaction will be studied in detail.Comment: 10 pages, no figure, Late

Towards Generalizable Morph Attack Detection with Consistency Regularization

Though recent studies have made significant progress in morph attack detection by virtue of deep neural networks, they often fail to generalize well to unseen morph attacks. With numerous morph attacks emerging frequently, generalizable morph attack detection has gained significant attention. This paper focuses on enhancing the generalization capability of morph attack detection from the perspective of consistency regularization. Consistency regularization operates under the premise that generalizable morph attack detection should output consistent predictions irrespective of the possible variations that may occur in the input space. In this work, to reach this objective, two simple yet effective morph-wise augmentations are proposed to explore a wide space of realistic morph transformations in our consistency regularization. Then, the model is regularized to learn consistently at the logit as well as embedding levels across a wide range of morph-wise augmented images. The proposed consistency regularization aligns the abstraction in the hidden layers of our model across the morph attack images which are generated from diverse domains in the wild. Experimental results demonstrate the superior generalization and robustness performance of our proposed method compared to the state-of-the-art studies.Comment: Accepted to the IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB), 202

Leak detection using cepstrum of cross-correlation of transient pressure wave signals

A new leak detection method is proposed here which is based on the cepstrum of the cross-correlation of the pressure signals from two transducers. Computational simulations of leaks with different properties, size, position and shape, in a straight pipe and a T-Junction network were studied. The proposed method was successful in estimating leakages and the pipeline features with a high precision. For the results with a straight pipe, this method is considerably more accurate than using the cross-correlation leak detection method or the cepstrum method alone. However, the results obtained by cepstrum and cepstrum of cross-correlation for the T-Junction case were quite accurate, while cepstrum alone showed a slightly better precision

AAFACE: Attribute-aware Attentional Network for Face Recognition

In this paper, we present a new multi-branch neural network that simultaneously performs soft biometric (SB) prediction as an auxiliary modality and face recognition (FR) as the main task. Our proposed network named AAFace utilizes SB attributes to enhance the discriminative ability of FR representation. To achieve this goal, we propose an attribute-aware attentional integration (AAI) module to perform weighted integration of FR with SB feature maps. Our proposed AAI module is not only fully context-aware but also capable of learning complex relationships between input features by means of the sequential multi-scale channel and spatial sub-modules. Experimental results verify the superiority of our proposed network compared with the state-of-the-art (SoTA) SB prediction and FR methods.Comment: Accepted to $30^{th}$ IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2023) as an oral presentatio

Immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 in vaccinated patients receiving checkpoint blockade immunotherapy for cancer

Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 has been successful in protecting patients with cancer from severe infections, but how immune responses against COVID-19 vaccination interact with those elicited during cancer immunotherapy has not been fully described. Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) disrupts inhibitory pathways in immune cells to improve function and induce tumor immunity but can often cause serious immune related adverse events (IRAEs). Because COVID-19 vaccination and ICB both boost immune responses, it is imperative to understand if combining these regimens causes synergistic enhancement of the immune system. Specifically, whether ICB impacts anti-vaccine immunity in previously vaccinated patients is important since a large percentage of newly diagnosed cancer patients eligible for immunotherapy will have already been vaccinated against COVID-19. To address this, we investigated the influence of ICB on SARS-CoV-2-spike protein (SP) antibody titers and T cell responses in cancer patients previously vaccinated against COVID-19. Human blood samples were collected from 29 vaccinated patients and 12 unvaccinated control patients at baseline (prior to ICB) and following two rounds of ICB infusion. Anti-SARS-CoV-2-SP IgG titers and T cell responses were quantified. Compared to responses at baseline, there was no significant difference in these immune responses after immunotherapy in vaccinated individuals (P=0.4583, P=0.4571, respectively). We interpret these results as evidence that ICB immunotherapy does not significantly enhance SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody titers or T cell responses. Although our study lacks corresponding IRAE rates, the results provide humoral and cellular immunological data that support recent reports documenting the clinical safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccination in patients receiving ICB. Additional longitudinal prospective studies, such as the VOICE study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT04715438) and CAPTURE study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03226886), are warranted and will provide broader safety and immunological data defining the effect of systemic cancer therapies on COVID-19 immunity

Mechanical design and development of TES bolometer detector arrays for the Advanced ACTPol experiment

The next generation Advanced ACTPol (AdvACT) experiment is currently underway and will consist of four Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometer arrays, with three operating together, totaling ~5800 detectors on the sky. Building on experience gained with the ACTPol detector arrays, AdvACT will utilize various new technologies, including 150mm detector wafers equipped with multichroic pixels, allowing for a more densely packed focal plane. Each set of detectors includes a feedhorn array of stacked silicon wafers which form a spline profile leading to each pixel. This is then followed by a waveguide interface plate, detector wafer, back short cavity plate, and backshort cap. Each array is housed in a custom designed structure manufactured from high purity copper and then gold plated. In addition to the detector array assembly, the array package also encloses cryogenic readout electronics. We present the full mechanical design of the AdvACT high frequency (HF) detector array package along with a detailed look at the detector array stack assemblies. This experiment will also make use of extensive hardware and software previously developed for ACT, which will be modified to incorporate the new AdvACT instruments. Therefore, we discuss the integration of all AdvACT arrays with pre-existing ACTPol infrastructure.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference proceeding

Mining treatment patterns of glucose-lowering medications for type 2 diabetes in the Netherlands

Rationale and objectives Different classes of glucose-lowering medications are used for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) management. It is unclear how often these medications are prescribed in clinical practice. In this study, we aimed to describe treatment patterns of glucose-lowering medications in patients with T2DM in the Netherlands. Methods We studied a cohort of 73 819 patients with T2DM, aged ≥45 years with a first prescription for oral glucose-lowering medication between 2011 and 2017. We used the NControl database with dispensing data from 800 pharmacies in the Netherlands. Prevalence of each glucose-lowering medication class during 6 years after the index date was calculated. Using SQL Server, we identified stepwise patterns of medication prescription in this population. Findings During the study period, prevalence of biguanides (BIGU) decreased from 95.6% to 80.8% and use of sulfonylureas (SU) increased from 27.3% to 42.3%. 55.2% of all patient