DopplerBAS: Binaural Audio Synthesis Addressing Doppler Effect

Recently, binaural audio synthesis (BAS) has emerged as a promising research field for its applications in augmented and virtual realities. Binaural audio helps users orient themselves and establish immersion by providing the brain with interaural time differences reflecting spatial information. However, existing BAS methods are limited in terms of phase estimation, which is crucial for spatial hearing. In this paper, we propose the \textbf{DopplerBAS} method to explicitly address the Doppler effect of the moving sound source. Specifically, we calculate the radial relative velocity of the moving speaker in spherical coordinates, which further guides the synthesis of binaural audio. This simple method introduces no additional hyper-parameters and does not modify the loss functions, and is plug-and-play: it scales well to different types of backbones. DopperBAS distinctly improves the representative WarpNet and BinauralGrad backbones in the phase error metric and reaches a new state of the art (SOTA): 0.780 (versus the current SOTA 0.807). Experiments and ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2023 short paper; key words: binaural audio, stereophonic soun

BlockEmulator: An Emulator Enabling to Test Blockchain Sharding Protocols

Numerous blockchain simulators have been proposed to allow researchers to simulate mainstream blockchains. However, we have not yet found a testbed that enables researchers to develop and evaluate their new consensus algorithms or new protocols for blockchain sharding systems. To fill this gap, we develop BlockEmulator, which is designed as an experimental platform, particularly for emulating blockchain sharding mechanisms. BlockEmulator adopts a lightweight blockchain architecture such that developers can only focus on implementing their new protocols or mechanisms. Using layered modules and useful programming interfaces offered by BlockEmulator, researchers can implement a new protocol with minimum effort. Through experiments, we test various functionalities of BlockEmulator in two steps. Firstly, we prove the correctness of the emulation results yielded by BlockEmulator by comparing the theoretical analysis with the observed experiment results. Secondly, other experimental results demonstrate that BlockEmulator can facilitate the measurement of a series of metrics, including throughput, transaction confirmation latency, cross-shard transaction ratio, the queuing size of transaction pools, workload distribution across blockchain shards, etc. We have made BlockEmulator open-source in Github

Long Non-Coding RNA MEG3 Functions as a Competing Endogenous RNA to Regulate HOXA11 Expression by Sponging miR-181a in Multiple Myeloma

Background/Aims: Long non-coding RNA maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) has been reported to play an essential role in cancer progression and metastasis. However, the overall biological role and regulatory mechanism of MEG3 in multiple myeloma (MM) development and progression remains largely ill-defined. Methods: MEG3 and miR-181a expression of MM patients were analyzed by publicly available MM data sets. Cell counting kit-8 and flow cytometry analysis were used to identify the function of MEG3 on MM in vitro. Additionally, we conducted tumor formation experiments in mice models to explain the role of MEG3 on MM in vivo. Then, several mechanism experiments, including dual-luciferase reporter assay and RNA immunoprecipitation were performed to evaluate the emulative relationship between MEG3 and miR-181a. Results: In this research, we found that MEG3 was downregulated in MM patients, which was linked with tumor progression. In addition, we demonstrated that miR-181a was overexpressed in MM patients in consistent with its cancer-promoting function. Importantly, several mechanism experiments revealed that MEG3, acting as an endogenous competitive RNA, could contend with miR-181a to inhibit tumor progression. Furthermore, as the target mRNA of miR-181a, homeobox gene A11(HOXA11) could be positively regulated by MEG3 through sponging miR-181a competitively in vitro. Conclusion: Our present work supplies the first discovery of a MEG3/miR-181a/HOXA11 regulatory network in MM and highlights that MEG3 may serve as a promising target for MM therapy in the future

B Cells Regulate Neutrophilia during Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection and BCG Vaccination by Modulating the Interleukin-17 Response

We have previously demonstrated that B cells can shape the immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, including the level of neutrophil infiltration and granulomatous inflammation at the site of infection. The present study examined the mechanisms by which B cells regulate the host neutrophilic response upon exposure to mycobacteria and how neutrophilia may influence vaccine efficacy. To address these questions, a murine aerosol infection tuberculosis (TB) model and an intradermal (ID) ear BCG immunization mouse model, involving both the μMT strain and B cell-depleted C57BL/6 mice, were used. IL (interleukin)-17 neutralization and neutrophil depletion experiments using these systems provide evidence that B cells can regulate neutrophilia by modulating the IL-17 response during M. tuberculosis infection and BCG immunization. Exuberant neutrophilia at the site of immunization in B cell-deficient mice adversely affects dendritic cell (DC) migration to the draining lymph nodes and attenuates the development of the vaccine-induced Th1 response. The results suggest that B cells are required for the development of optimal protective anti-TB immunity upon BCG vaccination by regulating the IL-17/neutrophilic response. Administration of sera derived from M. tuberculosis-infected C57BL/6 wild-type mice reverses the lung neutrophilia phenotype in tuberculous μMT mice. Together, these observations provide insight into the mechanisms by which B cells and humoral immunity modulate vaccine-induced Th1 response and regulate neutrophila during M. tuberculosis infection and BCG immunization. © 2013 Kozakiewicz et al

An open science resource for establishing reliability and reproducibility in functional connectomics

Efforts to identify meaningful functional imaging-based biomarkers are limited by the ability to reliably characterize inter-individual differences in human brain function. Although a growing number of connectomics-based measures are reported to have moderate to high test-retest reliability, the variability in data acquisition, experimental designs, and analytic methods precludes the ability to generalize results. The Consortium for Reliability and Reproducibility (CoRR) is working to address this challenge and establish test-retest reliability as a minimum standard for methods development in functional connectomics. Specifically, CoRR has aggregated 1,629 typical individuals’ resting state fMRI (rfMRI) data (5,093 rfMRI scans) from 18 international sites, and is openly sharing them via the International Data-sharing Neuroimaging Initiative (INDI). To allow researchers to generate various estimates of reliability and reproducibility, a variety of data acquisition procedures and experimental designs are included. Similarly, to enable users to assess the impact of commonly encountered artifacts (for example, motion) on characterizations of inter-individual variation, datasets of varying quality are included

The association between alcohol drinking and glycemic management among people with type 2 diabetes in China

Abstract Introduction To investigate the association between alcohol drinking and glycemic management among adult patients with type 2 diabetes in regional China. Materials and Methods In this cross‐sectional survey conducted in Nanjing Municipality of China in 2018, adult type 2 diabetes patients were randomly selected from urban and rural communities. The outcome variable was the glycemic management status. The explanatory measure was alcohol drinking. Mixed‐effects regression models were employed to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for examining the associations of alcohol drinking with glycemic management among type 2 diabetes patients. Results Among the overall 5,663 participants, the glycemic management rate was 39.8% (95% CI = 38.5, 41.1), with 41.2% (95% CI = 39.7, 42.7), 43.9% (95% CI = 38.9, 48.8), and 34.1% (95% CI = 31.5, 36.7) for non‐drinkers, mild/moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers, respectively. After adjustment for potential confounders and community‐level clustering effect, heavy and mild/moderate alcohol drinkers were at 0.76 (95% CI = 0.66, 0.89) and 1.04 (95% CI = 0.87, 1.28) times odds to have glycemia under control than non‐drinkers among the overall participants. Furthermore, when stratified separately by gender and use of anti‐diabetes agents, the scenario within men, either regular or irregular users of anti‐diabetes agents was the same as that for overall participants, while the association between alcohol drinking and glycemic management became non‐significant among women. Conclusions Heavy alcohol drinking might have a negative effect on glycemic management among patients with type 2 diabetes irrespective of the use of anti‐diabetes agents in regional China. This study has important public health implications regarding precision intervention on patients' glycemia control for type 2 diabetes management

Interfacial Engineering of Attractive Pickering Emulsion Gel-Templated Porous Materials for Enhanced Solar Vapor Generation

Solar vapor generation is emerging as one of the most important sustainable techniques for harvesting clean water using abundant and green solar energy. The rational design of solar evaporators to realize high solar evaporation performances has become a great challenge. Here, a porous solar evaporator with integrative optimization of photothermal convention, water transport and thermal management is developed using attractive Pickering emulsions gels (APEG) as templated and followed by interfacial engineering on a molecular scale. The APEG-templated porous evaporators (APEG-TPEs) are intrinsically thermal insulation materials with a thermal conductivity = 0.039 W·m−1·K−1. After hydrolysis, t-butyl groups on the inner-surface are transformed to carboxylic acid groups, making the inner-surface hydrophilic and facilitating water transport through the inter-connected pores. The introduction of polypyrrole layer endows the porous materials with a high light absorption of ~97%, which could effectively convert solar irradiation to heat. Due to the versatility of the APEG systems, the composition, compressive modulus, porosity of APEG-TPEs could be well controlled and a high solar evaporation efficiency of 69% with an evaporation rate of 1.1 kg·m−2·h−1 is achieved under simulated solar irradiation. The interface-engineered APEG-TPEs are promising in clean water harvesting and could inspire the future development of solar evaporators

Verbal creativity correlates with the temporal variability of brain networks during the resting state

Creativity is the ability to see the world in new ways. Creative individuals exhibit the ability to switch between different modes of thinking and shift their mental focus. This suggests a connection between creativity and dynamic interactions of brain networks. We report here the first investigation into the relationship between the reconfiguration of dynamic brain networks during the resting state and verbal creativity using two fMRI datasets involving 574 subjects. We find that verbal creativity correlates with temporal variability of the functional-connectivity (FC) patterns of the lateral prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, and the parahippocampal gyrus. High variability of these regions indicates flexible connectivity patterns which may facilitate executive functions. Furthermore, verbal creativity correlates with the temporal variability of FC patterns within the default mode network (DMN), between the DMN and attention/sensorimotor network, and between control and sensory networks. High variability of FCs between the DMN and attention networks characterizes frequent adjustments of attention. Finally, dynamic interaction between the cerebellum and task control network also contributes to verbal creativity, suggesting a relationship between the cerebellum and creativity. This study reveals a close relationship between verbal creativity and high variability of cortical networks involved in spontaneous thought, attention and cognitive control

Identification and analysis of seashells in sea sand using computer vision and machine learning

Due to the shortage and high price of river sand, the use of sea sand as a fine aggregate for concrete is gradually being considered. Seashells are fragile and have an undesirable effect on the compressive strength of concrete. However, the exact effect of seashells is still unclear and quality control of concrete is not possible since there are no effective methods for seashell characterization. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of segmenting photos of sea sand and analyzing seashells by using three typical machine learning methods, i.e., PointRend, DeepLab v3 + , and Weka. A new imaging method was proposed to avoid overlapping sea sand particles and preserve the smallest particles with sufficient resolution. A total of 960 photos were captured, and 2199 seashells were labeled, of which 80% and 20% were used for model training and validation, respectively. As a result, PointRend could efficiently recognize seashells with different shapes, sizes, and surface textures. It also had the highest Intersection over Union (IOU) and pixel accuracy (PA) scores due to the well-defined boundaries of the seashells, followed by DeepLab v3 + and Weka. From the segmentation results, the size of the seashells showed a left-skewed distribution with a mean diameter of 0.747 mm, which was smaller than the size of the sea sand. There was also considerable variation in the irregularity and roundness of the seashells. As the size of the seashells increased, their shapes became more irregular. The automated analysis of the seashells can provide further insights into the effect of shells on the properties of concrete