Region-Based Image Retrieval Revisited

Region-based image retrieval (RBIR) technique is revisited. In early attempts at RBIR in the late 90s, researchers found many ways to specify region-based queries and spatial relationships; however, the way to characterize the regions, such as by using color histograms, were very poor at that time. Here, we revisit RBIR by incorporating semantic specification of objects and intuitive specification of spatial relationships. Our contributions are the following. First, to support multiple aspects of semantic object specification (category, instance, and attribute), we propose a multitask CNN feature that allows us to use deep learning technique and to jointly handle multi-aspect object specification. Second, to help users specify spatial relationships among objects in an intuitive way, we propose recommendation techniques of spatial relationships. In particular, by mining the search results, a system can recommend feasible spatial relationships among the objects. The system also can recommend likely spatial relationships by assigned object category names based on language prior. Moreover, object-level inverted indexing supports very fast shortlist generation, and re-ranking based on spatial constraints provides users with instant RBIR experiences.Comment: To appear in ACM Multimedia 2017 (Oral

ＤＮＡ修復経路におけるＲＵＮＸ１／ＡＭＬ１の機能解析

神戸松蔭女子学院大学RUNX1の癌抑制遺伝子としての機能を解明することを目的として本研究を実施した。その結果、造血幹細胞において、RUNX1のC端欠失変異はDNA二重鎖切断への修復能を低下させることがわかった。また、RUNX1は、DNA損傷応答分子Gadd45aを転写レベルで制御していることがわかった。さらに、RUNX1のC端変異を有する骨髄異形成症候群患者では骨髄単核球中のGadd45の遺伝子発現量が低下していた。本研究を通してRUNX1は、DNA損傷、とくにDNA二重鎖切断からの修復過程に重要な働きを有しており、RUNX1の機能抑制型変異が、DNA損傷の蓄積と白血病の発症をもたらす可能性が考えられた。We found that the C-terminal deletion mutant of RUNX1 attenuates DNA-damage repair responses in hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells. Bone marrow cells from MDS/AML patients harboring the RUNX1-C-terminal mutation showed significantly lower levels of GADD45A expression compared with those from MDS/AML patients with wild-type RUNX1. As for this mechanism, we found that RUNX1 directly regulates the transcription of GADD45A. These results suggest Gadd45a dysfunction due to RUNX1 mutations can cause additional mutation(s) required for multi-step leukemogenesis.科学研究費助成事業　研究成果報告書研究分担者:金倉譲[大阪大学]、織谷健司[大阪大学

Efficient Image Retrieval via Decoupling Diffusion into Online and Offline Processing

Diffusion is commonly used as a ranking or re-ranking method in retrieval tasks to achieve higher retrieval performance, and has attracted lots of attention in recent years. A downside to diffusion is that it performs slowly in comparison to the naive k-NN search, which causes a non-trivial online computational cost on large datasets. To overcome this weakness, we propose a novel diffusion technique in this paper. In our work, instead of applying diffusion to the query, we pre-compute the diffusion results of each element in the database, making the online search a simple linear combination on top of the k-NN search process. Our proposed method becomes 10~ times faster in terms of online search speed. Moreover, we propose to use late truncation instead of early truncation in previous works to achieve better retrieval performance.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 201

Study on impact of the water resources management on projected future change of drought

学位の種別: 課程博士審査委員会委員 : (主査)東京大学准教授 芳村 圭, 東京大学教授 沖 大幹, 東京大学教授 古米 弘明, 東京大学准教授 渡部 雅浩, 東京大学准教授 竹内 渉University of Tokyo(東京大学

Heterologous and High Production of Ergothioneine in Escherichia coli

Ergothioneine (ERG) is a histidine-derived thiol compound suggested to function as an antioxidant and cytoprotectant in humans. Therefore, experimental trials have been conducted applying ERG from mushrooms in dietary supplements and as a cosmetic additive. However, this method of producing ERG is expensive; therefore, alternative methods for ERG supply are required. Five Mycobacterium smegmatis genes, egtABCDE, have been confirmed to be responsible for ERG biosynthesis. This enabled us to develop practical fermentative ERG production by microorganisms. In this study, we carried out heterologous and high-level production of ERG in Escherichia coli using the egt genes from M. smegmatis. By high production of each of the Egt enzymes and elimination of bottlenecks in the substrate supply, we succeeded in constructing a production system that yielded 24 mg/L (104 μM) secreted ERG

Chiral phonons: circularly polarized Raman spectroscopy and ab initio\textit{ab initio} calculations in a chiral crystal tellurium

Recently, phonons with chirality (chiral phonons) have attracted significant attention. Chiral phonons exhibit angular and pseudo-angular momenta. In circularly polarized Raman spectroscopy, the peak split of the $\Gamma_3$ mode is detectable along the principal axis of the chiral crystal in the backscattering configuration. In addition, peak splitting occurs when the pseudo-angular momenta of the incident and scattered circularly polarized light are reversed. Until now, chiral phonons in binary crystals have been observed, whereas those in unary crystals have not been observed. Here, we observe chiral phonons in a chiral unary crystal Te. The pseudo-angular momentum of the phonon is obtained in Te by an $\textit{ab initio}$ calculation. From this calculation, we verified the conservation law of pseudo-angular momentum in Raman scattering. From this conservation law, we determined the handedness of the chiral crystals. We also evaluated the true chirality of the phonons using a measure with symmetry similar to that of an electric toroidal monopole

Development of the Community Water Model (CWatM v1.04) – a high-resolution hydrological model for global and regional assessment of integrated water resources management

We develop a new large-scale hydrological and water resources model, the Community Water Model (CWatM), which can simulate hydrology both globally and regionally at different resolutions from 30 arcmin to 30 arcsec at daily time steps. CWatM is open source in the Python programming environment and has a modular structure. It uses global, freely available data in the netCDF4 file format for reading, storage, and production of data in a compact way. CWatM includes general surface and groundwater hydrological processes but also takes into account human activities, such as water use and reservoir regulation, by calculating water demands, water use, and return flows. Reservoirs and lakes are included in the model scheme. CWatM is used in the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP), which compares global model outputs. The flexible model structure allows for dynamic interaction with hydro-economic and water quality models for the assessment and evaluation of water management options. Furthermore, the novelty of CWatM is its combination of state-of-the-art hydrological modeling, modular programming, an online user manual and automatic source code documentation, global and regional assessments at different spatial resolutions, and a potential community to add to, change, and expand the open-source project. CWatM also strives to build a community learning environment which is able to freely use an open-source hydrological model and flexible coupling possibilities to other sectoral models, such as energy and agriculture