Accurate Single Stage Detector Using Recurrent Rolling Convolution

Most of the recent successful methods in accurate object detection and localization used some variants of R-CNN style two stage Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) where plausible regions were proposed in the first stage then followed by a second stage for decision refinement. Despite the simplicity of training and the efficiency in deployment, the single stage detection methods have not been as competitive when evaluated in benchmarks consider mAP for high IoU thresholds. In this paper, we proposed a novel single stage end-to-end trainable object detection network to overcome this limitation. We achieved this by introducing Recurrent Rolling Convolution (RRC) architecture over multi-scale feature maps to construct object classifiers and bounding box regressors which are "deep in context". We evaluated our method in the challenging KITTI dataset which measures methods under IoU threshold of 0.7. We showed that with RRC, a single reduced VGG-16 based model already significantly outperformed all the previously published results. At the time this paper was written our models ranked the first in KITTI car detection (the hard level), the first in cyclist detection and the second in pedestrian detection. These results were not reached by the previous single stage methods. The code is publicly available.Comment: CVPR 201

High mobility group box-1 in hypothalamic paraventricular nuclei attenuates sympathetic tone in rats at post-myocardial infarction

Background: Inflammation is associated with increased sympathetic drive in cardiovascular diseases. The paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus is a key regulator of sympathetic nerve activity at post-myocardial infarction (MI). High mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) exhibits inflammatory cytokine like activity in the extracellular space. Inflammation is associated with increased sympathetic drive in cardiovscular diseases. However, the role of HMGB1 in sympathetic nerve activity at post-MI remains unknown. The aim of the present study is to determine the role and mechanism of HMGB1 in the PVN, in terms of sympathetic activity and arrhythmia after MI. Methods: Sprague-Dawley rats underwent left anterior descending coronary artery ligation to induce MI. Anti-HMGB1 polyclonal antibody or control IgG was bilaterally microinjected into the PVN (5 μL every second day for seven consecutive days). Then, renal sympathetic nerve activity (RSNA) was recorded. The association between ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) and MI was evaluated using programmedelectrophysiological stimulation. After performing electrophysiological experiments in vivo, immunohistochemistry was used to detect the distribution of HMGB1, while Western blot was used to detect the expression of HMGB1 and p-ERK in the PVN of MI rats. Results: HMGB1 and p-ERK were upregulated in the PVN in rats at post-MI. Moreover, bilateral PVN microinjection of anti-HMGB1 polyclonal antibody reversed the expression of HMGB1 and p-ERK, and consequently decreased the baseline RSNA and inducible VAs, when compared to those in sham rats. Conclusions: These results suggest that MI causes the translocation of HMGB1 in the PVN, which leads to sympathetic overactivation through the ERK1/2 signaling pathway. The bilateral PVN microinjection of anti-HMGB1 antibody can be an effective therapy for MI-induced arrhythmia

Treatment with a neutralizing anti-murine interleukin-17 antibody after the onset of coxsackievirus b3-induced viral myocarditis reduces myocardium inflammation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recently, some studies indicate that interleukin (IL)-17, known as a T cell (Th17)-derived proinflammatory cytokine, is the major mediator of tissue inflammation in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Viral myocarditis (VMC) is a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease, but the role for IL-17 in VMC is not well defined.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using IL-17 monoclonal antibody (IL-17mAb)-treated VMC mice, we tested the pathogenic role of IL-17 in the development of VMC. VMC mice were treated with monoclonal rat anti-murine IL-17 antibody (anti-IL-17) or rat IgG_2Aisotype control or phosphate-buffered solution 3 days after Coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) injection. Normal mice without any manipulation were taken as normal control. The survival rates of mice were monitored and heart pathology was examined histologically. IL-17, IL-6, and TNF-α mRNA of the myocardium were assessed by semi-quantitative RT-PCR. Systemic IL-17, IL-6, and TNF-α level were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and local myocardium IL-17 expression was analyzed using immunohistochemical staining. Flow cytometric analysis was used to evaluate the frequencies of Th17 subsets in CD4⁺T cells. Results showed that neutralization of IL-17 with anti-IL-17 can ameliorate clinical symptoms, defer disease course, decrease serum IL-17 level, without declining the IL-17, IL-6 and TNF-α mRNA transcript level and serum IL-6, TNF-α level. The differentiation and proliferation of the Th17 cells were unchanged.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our data suggest that IL-17 is crucially involved in the pathogenesis of murine VMC, IL-17 inhibition might ameliorate the myocardium inflammation after the onset of VMC.</p

Bag of Tricks for Training Data Extraction from Language Models

With the advance of language models, privacy protection is receiving more attention. Training data extraction is therefore of great importance, as it can serve as a potential tool to assess privacy leakage. However, due to the difficulty of this task, most of the existing methods are proof-of-concept and still not effective enough. In this paper, we investigate and benchmark tricks for improving training data extraction using a publicly available dataset. Because most existing extraction methods use a pipeline of generating-then-ranking, i.e., generating text candidates as potential training data and then ranking them based on specific criteria, our research focuses on the tricks for both text generation (e.g., sampling strategy) and text ranking (e.g., token-level criteria). The experimental results show that several previously overlooked tricks can be crucial to the success of training data extraction. Based on the GPT-Neo 1.3B evaluation results, our proposed tricks outperform the baseline by a large margin in most cases, providing a much stronger baseline for future research. The code is available at https://github.com/weichen-yu/LM-Extraction.Comment: ICML 202

Distinct different expression of Th17 and Th9 cells in coxsackie virus B3-induced mice viral myocarditis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recently, a new subset of CD4⁺T helper(Th) cell that predominantly secret cytokine interleukin-9(IL-9) is identified, termed Th9 cell. It has been reported to participate in tissue inflammation and autoimmune responses, and induce disease which differed from Th17 cells. Th17 cells have been shown to play a critical role in viral myocarditis (VMC), but whether Th9 cells are involved in the pathogenesis of VMC remains unclear.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>BALB/c mice were intraperitoneally (i.p) injected with coxsackie virus B3(CVB3) for establishing VMC models. Control mice were treated with phosphate-buffered saline i.p. On day 0,7,14,21,28,35,42 after injection, myocardial histopathological changes were evaluated by hematoxylin-eosin staining. Splenic Th17 and Th9 cells subsets were analyzed by flow cytometry. And cardiac IL-17, IL-9 mRNA were measured by semi-quantitative reverse transcription-PCR and nested PCR, respectively. Results showed the levels of Th17 cells and IL-17 mRNA obviously increased in VMC mice on 7 day after infection, peaked on day 28, and highly persisted to at least day 42 (p < 0.05). While the frequencies of Th9 cells and IL-9 mRNA showed no significant difference between VMC and control group throughout the course of the experiment(p > 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>It was differentiated Th17 but not Th9 cells significantly elevated in the development of CVB3-induced VMC. The microenvironment of VMC seemed to contribute to the differentiation and proliferation of Th17 rather than Th9 cells. Our preliminary data implied Th9 cells could not protect against VMC nor promote the disease.</p

Effects of Aromatic Ammoniums on Methyl Ammonium Lead Iodide Hybrid Perovskite Materials

The introduction of bulky ammoniums into methyl ammonium lead iodide hybrid perovskites (MAPbI3) has emerged as a promising strategy to improve the properties of these materials. In the present work, we studied the effects of several aromatic ammoniums onto the structural, electronic, and optical properties of MAPbI3. Although powder XRD data suggest that the bulky cations are not involved in the bulk phase of the MAPbI3, a surprisingly large effect of the bulky cations onto the photoluminescence properties was observed