Dreamland:

I was attracted by the interaction between dream and reality. Not long before I started my thesis, I read Freud’s book, The Interpretation of Dreams, and it quite interested me. In Freud’s theory, the complete personality is composed of id, ego and super-ego. The id is the set of coordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. The super-ego can stop one from doing certain things that one’s id may want to do. These three parts dominate a human’s mental life, including dreaming. Dreams have the power of censorship, which occurs when the super-ego tries to suppress the id. Freud thought the essence of the dream is the fulfillment of wishes; wishes that come from people’s instinctive desires without disguise. However, not all wishes are reasonable and achievable. To pass the censor and fulfill unreasonable wishes in a dream, a human’s brain has to put on a disguise. This is why most dreamlands look absurd, but with deep exploration, one will find out the hint of those covered wishes. The relationship between dream and reality is similar to that of a mirror and reflection. In my work, I wanted to create an environment that would depict the interaction between dreams and reality. I wished to give viewers the experience of feeling the abstract definition of “dreamland,” instead of a specific view of a particular dreamland. I chose painting and installation work as the format to build the “Dreamland” environment because visual plays a big part in dreams and painting is the best and most straightforward way to access the visual sense. Installation work has rich expressive capacity and can be suitable for representing abstract ideas. I also saw installation work as one of the current most popular art forms, so I wanted to try it in my final school project

VITAL: VIsual Tracking via Adversarial Learning

The tracking-by-detection framework consists of two stages, i.e., drawing samples around the target object in the first stage and classifying each sample as the target object or as background in the second stage. The performance of existing trackers using deep classification networks is limited by two aspects. First, the positive samples in each frame are highly spatially overlapped, and they fail to capture rich appearance variations. Second, there exists extreme class imbalance between positive and negative samples. This paper presents the VITAL algorithm to address these two problems via adversarial learning. To augment positive samples, we use a generative network to randomly generate masks, which are applied to adaptively dropout input features to capture a variety of appearance changes. With the use of adversarial learning, our network identifies the mask that maintains the most robust features of the target objects over a long temporal span. In addition, to handle the issue of class imbalance, we propose a high-order cost sensitive loss to decrease the effect of easy negative samples to facilitate training the classification network. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed tracker performs favorably against state-of-the-art approaches.Comment: Spotlight in CVPR 201

Ultrafine Mn3O4 nanowires synthesized by colloidal method as electrode materials for supercapacitors with a wide voltage range

Manganese oxide is considered an ideal pseudo-capacitive electrode material for supercapacitors due to its low cost, environmental friendliness and large theoretical capacity. However, it is difficult to obtain manganese electrodes with a high specific capacitance and a large voltage range. In this study, ultrafine Mn3O4 nanowires with an average diameter of 4.0 nm were synthesized using a colloidal method. They have a large specific surface area of 175.1 m2 g−1, and can provide numerous active sites to enhance their specific capacitances. They also show a large pore volume of 0.7960 cm3 g−1, which can provide essential channels for ion transport during charging and discharging processes. The supercapacitor electrode made of these ultrafine Mn3O4 nanowires exhibits a predominant surface capacitive behavior during charge/discharge processes, and achieves a large specific capacitance of 433.1 F g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1 with a very wide voltage range from -0.5 to 1.1 V in 1 M Na2SO4 electrolyte. An asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) was assembled using a cathode electrode made of these ultrafine Mn3O4 nanowires and an active carbon (AC) anode electrode, and a high energy density of 26.68 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 442 W kg−1 was achieved. The ASC showed a good cycling stability, and its capacitance value was still maintained at 75.8% after 64,000 charge/discharge cycles

Hierarchically nanostructured Zn0.76C0.24S@Co(OH)2 for high-performance hybrid supercapacitor

It is a great challenge to achieve both high specific capacity and high energy density of supercapacitors by designing and constructing hybrid electrode materials through a simple but effective process. In this paper, we proposed a hierarchically nanostructured hybrid material combining Zn0.76Co0.24S (ZCS) nanoparticles and Co(OH)2 (CH) nanosheets using a two-step hydrothermal synthesis strategy. Synergistic effects between ZCS nanoparticles and CH nanosheets result in efficient ion transports during the charge-discharge process, thus achieving a good electrochemical performance of the supercapacitor. The synthesized ZCS@CH hybrid exhibits a high specific capacity of 1152.0 C g-1 at a current density of 0.5 A g-1 in 2 M KOH electrolyte. Its capacity retention rate is maintained at ∼ 70.0% when the current density is changed from 1 A g-1 to 10 A g-1. A hybrid supercapacitor (HSC) assembled from ZCS@CH as the cathode and active carbon (AC) as the anode displays a capacitance of 155.7 F g-1 at 0.5 A g-1, with a remarkable cycling stability of 91.3% after 12,000cycles. Meanwhile, this HSC shows a high energy density of 62.5 Wh kg-1 at a power density of 425.0 W kg-1, proving that the developed ZCS@CH is a promising electrode material for energy storage applications

Neuromorphic electro-stimulation based on atomically thin semiconductor for damage-free inflammation inhibition

Abstract Inflammation, caused by accumulation of inflammatory cytokines from immunocytes, is prevalent in a variety of diseases. Electro-stimulation emerges as a promising candidate for inflammatory inhibition. Although electroacupuncture is free from surgical injury, it faces the challenges of imprecise pathways/current spikes, and insufficiently defined mechanisms, while non-optimal pathway or spike would require high current amplitude, which makes electro-stimulation usually accompanied by damage and complications. Here, we propose a neuromorphic electro-stimulation based on atomically thin semiconductor floating-gate memory interdigital circuit. Direct stimulation is achieved by wrapping sympathetic chain with flexible electrodes and floating-gate memory are programmable to fire bionic spikes, thus minimizing nerve damage. A substantial decrease (73.5%) in inflammatory cytokine IL-6 occurred, which also enabled better efficacy than commercial stimulator at record-low currents with damage-free to sympathetic neurons. Additionally, using transgenic mice, the anti-inflammation effect is determined by β2 adrenergic signaling from myeloid cell lineage (monocytes/macrophages and granulocytes)

Genetic variants in the EPCAM gene is associated with the prognosis of transarterial chemoembolization treated hepatocellular carcinoma with portal vein tumor thrombus.

The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EPCAM) is involved in the tumorigenesis and progression of many malignancies, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of EPCAM have been reported to be with the risk and prognosis of several malignancies. However, the association of SNPs in EPCAM gene with the prognosis of HCC patients has never been investigated. In this study, two functional SNPs (rs1126497 and rs1421) in the EPCAM gene were selected and genotyped in a cohort of 448 unresectable Chinese HCC patients treated by TACE. The association of the two SNPs with the overall survival (OS) of patients was assessed by univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards model and Kaplan-Meier curve. Our data showed that there was no significant association between either SNP and OS of patients. However, in the stratified analysis, the variant-containing genotypes (WV+VV) of SNP rs1126497 exhibited a significant association with poorer OS in HCC patients who had portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT) in multivariate analysis of Cox proportional hazard model (hazard ratio, 1.71; 95% confidence interval, 1.16-2.53, P = 0.007), and in Kaplan-Meier curve analysis (P = 0.023), comparing to those carrying wild-type genotype. Our results suggest that SNP rs1126497 in the EPCAM gene may serve as an independent prognosis biomarker for unresectable HCC patient with PVTT, which warranted further validating investigation

MnCo2O4/Ni3S4 nanocomposite for hybrid supercapacitor with superior energy density and long-term cycling stability

MnCo2O4 is regarded as a good electrode material for supercapacitor due to its high specific capacity and good structural stability. However, its poor electrical conductivity limits its wide-range applications. To solve this issue, we integrated the MnCo2O4 with Ni3S4, which has a good electrical conductivity, and synthesized a MnCo2O4/Ni3S4 nanocomposite using a two-step hydrothermal process. Comparing with individual MnCo2O4 and Ni3S4, the MnCo2O4/Ni3S4 nanocomposite showed a higher specific capacity and a better cycling stability as the electrode for the supercapacitor. The specific capacity value of the MnCo2O4/Ni3S4 electrode was 904.7 C g−1 at 1 A g−1 with a potential window of 0–0.55 V. A hybrid supercapacitor (HSC), assembled using MnCo2O4/Ni3S4 and active carbon as the cathode and anode, respectively, showed a capacitance of 116.4 F g−1 at 1 A g−1, and a high energy density of 50.7 Wh kg−1 at 405.8 W kg−1. Long-term electrochemical stability tests showed an obvious increase of the HSC’s capacitance after 5500 charge/discharge cycles, reached a maximum value of ∼162.7% of its initial value after 25,000 cycles, and then remained a stable value up to 64,000 cycles. Simultaneously, its energy density was increased to 54.2 Wh kg−1 at 380.3 W kg−1 after 64,000 cycles

Colloidal synthesis of flower-like Zn doped Ni(OH)2@CNTs at room-temperature for hybrid supercapacitor with high rate capability and energy density

Transition metal oxides and hydroxides are typically applied as electrode materials for supercapacitors, but it is often difficult to achieve both their high power density and energy density simultaneously. Herein, electrodes of flower-like Zn doped Ni(OH)2 combined with carbon nanotubes (i.e., Zn doped Ni(OH)2@CNTs) were in-situ synthesized using a colloidal synthesis method at room-temperature, assisted by cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) and NaBH4. This electrode exhibits an excellent electrochemical performance, achieving a high specific capacity of 750.5 C g-1 at 0.5 A g-1 and maintaining 72.9% of its initial value when the current density is increased from 1 A g-1 to 10 A g-1. A hybrid supercapacitor (HSC) assembled using the Zn doped Ni(OH)2@CNTs as the positive electrode and an active carbon as the negative electrode exhibits a capacity of 201.7 C g−1 at 1 A g-1 and an energy density of 51.3 Wh kg-1 at a power density of 409.6 W kg-1. After running for 50,000 cycles at a current density of 6 A g-1, the capacity of the HSC becomes 115.8% of its initial value. Moreover, this HSC maintains a high energy density of 29.33 Wh kg-1 at a high power density of 16.5 kW kg-1 after cycling for 50,000 times, which indicates its suitability for energy storage applications