Quantized Consensus ADMM for Multi-Agent Distributed Optimization

Multi-agent distributed optimization over a network minimizes a global objective formed by a sum of local convex functions using only local computation and communication. We develop and analyze a quantized distributed algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) when inter-agent communications are subject to finite capacity and other practical constraints. While existing quantized ADMM approaches only work for quadratic local objectives, the proposed algorithm can deal with more general objective functions (possibly non-smooth) including the LASSO. Under certain convexity assumptions, our algorithm converges to a consensus within $\log_{1+\eta}\Omega$ iterations, where $\eta>0$ depends on the local objectives and the network topology, and $\Omega$ is a polynomial determined by the quantization resolution, the distance between initial and optimal variable values, the local objective functions and the network topology. A tight upper bound on the consensus error is also obtained which does not depend on the size of the network.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures; to be submitted to IEEE Trans. Signal Processing. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1307.5561 by other author

The Rbm38-p63 feedback loop is critical for tumor suppression and longevity.

The RNA-binding protein Rbm38 is a target of p63 tumor suppressor and can in-turn repress p63 expression via mRNA stability. Thus, Rbm38 and p63 form a negative feedback loop. To investigate the biological significance of the Rbm38-p63 loop in vivo, a cohort of WT, Rbm38-/-, TAp63+/-, and Rbm38-/-;TAp63+/- mice were generated and monitored throughout their lifespan. While mice deficient in Rbm38 or TAp63 alone died mostly from spontaneous tumors, compound Rbm38-/-;TAp63+/- mice had an extended lifespan along with reduced tumor incidence. We also found that loss-of-Rbm38 markedly decreased the percentage of liver steatosis in TAp63+/- mice. Moreover, we found that Rbm38 deficiency extends the lifespan of tumor-free TAp63+/- mice along with reduced expression of senescence-associated biomarkers. Consistent with this, Rbm38-/-;TAp63+/- MEFs were resistant, whereas Rbm38-/- or TAp63+/- MEFs were prone, to cellular senescence. Importantly, we showed that the levels of inflammatory cytokines (IL17D and Tnfsf15) were significantly reduced by Rbm38 deficiency in senescence-resistant Rbm38-/-;TAp63+/- mouse livers and MEFs. Together, our data suggest that Rbm38 and p63 function as intergenic suppressors in aging and tumorigenesis and that the Rbm38-p63 loop may be explored for enhancing longevity and cancer management

Skeleton based action recognition using translation-scale invariant image mapping and multi-scale deep cnn

This paper presents an image classification based approach for skeleton-based video action recognition problem. Firstly, A dataset independent translation-scale invariant image mapping method is proposed, which transformes the skeleton videos to colour images, named skeleton-images. Secondly, A multi-scale deep convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture is proposed which could be built and fine-tuned on the powerful pre-trained CNNs, e.g., AlexNet, VGGNet, ResNet etal.. Even though the skeleton-images are very different from natural images, the fine-tune strategy still works well. At last, we prove that our method could also work well on 2D skeleton video data. We achieve the state-of-the-art results on the popular benchmard datasets e.g. NTU RGB+D, UTD-MHAD, MSRC-12, and G3D. Especially on the largest and challenge NTU RGB+D, UTD-MHAD, and MSRC-12 dataset, our method outperforms other methods by a large margion, which proves the efficacy of the proposed method

Prospective, randomized and controlled trial to investigate the effect of two application methods for local anesthesia on the patients

Local infiltration anesthesia (LIA) plays a key role in routine dermatological surgery. The smooth process of surgery and the high satisfaction from patient depend on greatly on the qualified and pain-relieved LIA. In our study, by using a painless mixture of Lidocaine and Ropivacaine highly diluted with an isoionic solution, the comparison of slowly performed (0.5 ml / second) hand-actuated local anesthesia (HA) and subcutaneous infusion local anesthesia (SIA) was performed. We found very low pain scores, but in contrast to our expectations, no statistical significant difference of pain scores at the needling, injection/infusion, during and after operations. This means HA can be applied with low pain. This study is limited to these both infiltration methods and the use of the special solution of local anesthetics. However, comparison to other local anesthetic drugs is not possible in this study. By using SIA, one person could offer anesthesia to several patients at the same time. Furthermore, many patients preferred this kind of semi-automatic anesthesia. SIA is able to develop as an effective anesthetic method. The limitations of SIA consisted of requirement for constant supervision and the experience of operators’ experience, which still need further improvements and standardizations in the future. We believe SIA is a promising local anesthesia method in dermatological surgery with a broad application area. In another aspect, the impact of 6 factors (age, gender, defect size, dose of anesthetic solution, duration of the procedure, the severity of anxiety/nervousness) on the analgesia effect in both HA and SIA group were investigated. Results showed age, gender and defect size did have certain influence on the analgesia effect in HA group. Particularly duration of the procedure and the severity of anxiety/nervousness had significant impact on the analgesia effect in both two groups at all four timings. The results proved the importance of shortening the anesthetic procedure and relieving the anxiety before surgery