AssistSR: Task-oriented Video Segment Retrieval for Personal AI Assistant

It is still a pipe dream that personal AI assistants on the phone and AR glasses can assist our daily life in addressing our questions like ``how to adjust the date for this watch?'' and ``how to set its heating duration? (while pointing at an oven)''. The queries used in conventional tasks (i.e. Video Question Answering, Video Retrieval, Moment Localization) are often factoid and based on pure text. In contrast, we present a new task called Task-oriented Question-driven Video Segment Retrieval (TQVSR). Each of our questions is an image-box-text query that focuses on affordance of items in our daily life and expects relevant answer segments to be retrieved from a corpus of instructional video-transcript segments. To support the study of this TQVSR task, we construct a new dataset called AssistSR. We design novel guidelines to create high-quality samples. This dataset contains 3.2k multimodal questions on 1.6k video segments from instructional videos on diverse daily-used items. To address TQVSR, we develop a simple yet effective model called Dual Multimodal Encoders (DME) that significantly outperforms several baseline methods while still having large room for improvement in the future. Moreover, we present detailed ablation analyses. Code and data are available at \url{https://github.com/StanLei52/TQVSR}.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figure

A Collaborative Demand-Controlled Operation Strategy for a Multi-Energy System

The multi-energy system is a promising energy-efficient technology to supply electric and thermal energy to end-users simultaneously, which can realize the energy cascade utilization. However, it is challenging to optimize the operation of multi-energy systems due to their inherent structural complexity, as well as the highly coupled nature of multiple energy flows and the uncertainty of renewable energy generation. This paper proposed a collaborative demand-controlled operation strategy for a multi-energy system, which consists of an upper-level model and a lower-level model. In the upper-level model, a robust linear optimization method is adopted to optimize the system operation in a day-ahead stage. In the lower-level model, a stochastic rolling optimization method is applied to achieve a dynamic adjustment to cope with the fluctuation in both renewable electricity generation and electric load. The multiple energy demand-controlled strategy is also applied in the optimal operation strategy to achieve load shifting and to create flexibility in energy demand despite the “source-load” imbalance power fluctuation. A case study is carried out and simulation results verify the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed model of the coordinated operation framework

Cyanidin-3-O-glucoside ameliorates cadmium induced uterine epithelium proliferation in mice

Cadmium (Cd) is an environmental pollutant and endocrine disrupter, abundantly present in water, food, and soil. Accumulation of Cd in the body can negatively affect female reproduction; especially the uterus is exceptionally sensitive to the toxic actions of Cd. The anthocyanin cyanidin-3-O-glucoside (C3G) is a naturally occurring phenolic compound in fruits and plants that can antagonize the toxic effects of Cd. This capacity makes C3G a possible candidate to prevent Cd-induced female infertility. The present study aimed to investigate: 1) whether C3G intake could prevent Cd-induced female reproductive toxicity, and 2) the underlying mechanisms responsible for this protective effect. The results of our study indicated that Cd exposure did not affect ovarian function, but induced hypertrophy of the uterine endometrium. Oral intake of C3G markedly reduced the effects of Cd exposure on the thickness of the uterine epithelium cells. Transcriptomic analysis of the endometrium revealed that C3G intake had anti-estrogenic effects, attenuating Cd-induced endometrial epithelial cell proliferation by inhibiting estrogen-responsive genes, enhancing epithelial progesterone receptor expression, and regulating Klf4 expression. The current findings implicate that C3G has the potential to be used as a dietary supplement based on its capacity to intervene in Cd-induced female reproductive toxicity

Pharmaceutical Intermediate-Modified Gold Nanoparticles: Against Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria and Wound-Healing Application <i>via</i> an Electrospun Scaffold

Remedying a multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria wound infection is a major challenge due to the inability of conventional antibiotics to treat such infections against MDR bacteria. Thus, developing wound dressings for wound care, particularly against MDR bacteria, is in huge demand. Here, we present a strategy in designing wound dressings: we use a small molecule (6-aminopenicillanic acid, APA)-coated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to inhibit MDR bacteria. We dope the AuNPs into electrospun fibers of poly­(ε-caprolactone) (PCL)/gelatin to yield materials that guard against wound infection by MDR bacteria. We systematically evaluate the bactericidal activity of the AuNPs and wound-healing capability <i>via</i> the electrospun scaffold. APA-modified AuNPs (Au_APA) exhibit remarkable antibacterial activity even when confronted with MDR bacteria. Meanwhile, Au_APA has outstanding biocompatibility. Moreover, an <i>in vivo</i> bacteria-infected wound-healing experiment indicates that it has a striking ability to remedy a MDR bacteria wound infection. This wound scaffold can assist the wound care for bacterial infections