Mixed Neural Voxels for Fast Multi-view Video Synthesis

Synthesizing high-fidelity videos from real-world multi-view input is challenging because of the complexities of real-world environments and highly dynamic motions. Previous works based on neural radiance fields have demonstrated high-quality reconstructions of dynamic scenes. However, training such models on real-world scenes is time-consuming, usually taking days or weeks. In this paper, we present a novel method named MixVoxels to better represent the dynamic scenes with fast training speed and competitive rendering qualities. The proposed MixVoxels represents the 4D dynamic scenes as a mixture of static and dynamic voxels and processes them with different networks. In this way, the computation of the required modalities for static voxels can be processed by a lightweight model, which essentially reduces the amount of computation, especially for many daily dynamic scenes dominated by the static background. To separate the two kinds of voxels, we propose a novel variation field to estimate the temporal variance of each voxel. For the dynamic voxels, we design an inner-product time query method to efficiently query multiple time steps, which is essential to recover the high-dynamic motions. As a result, with 15 minutes of training for dynamic scenes with inputs of 300-frame videos, MixVoxels achieves better PSNR than previous methods. Codes and trained models are available at https://github.com/fengres/mixvoxelsComment: ICCV 2023 (Oral

Expression of p53 in the Effects of Artesunate on Induction of Apoptosis and Inhibition of Proliferation in Rat Primary Hepatic Stellate Cells

BACKGROUND: Activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) plays an important role in the development of cirrhosis through the increased production of collagen. p53, the "guardian of the genome", is a transcription factor that can bind to promoter regions of hundreds of genes where it either activates or suppresses gene expression. Thereby, p53 serves as a tumor suppressor by inducing cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, senescence and DNA repair. Artesunate is a derivative of Artemisinin, Scholars had found it had more extensive pharmacological effects past 10 years. However, little is known about the expression of p53 in the effects of Artesunate on induction of apoptosis and inhibition of proliferation in rat HSCs. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Isolated and cultured rat primary HSCs in the flask for 10 days to make cells activated. HSCs were divided into two groups: experimental groups and control groups, experimental groups included with various concentrations of Artesunate (125, 150, 175, 200, 225 µmol/L) for 24, 48 and 72 hours. Analysis of MTT revealed that activated HSCs treated with various concentrations of Artesunate (150-225 µmol/L) were inhibited on dose and time-effect relationships; Concentration of hydroxyproline in supernatant was detected by digestive method; Analysis of flow cytometry demonstrated that Artesunate could arrest cell cycle in G1 and induce apoptosis; The nuclear morphological changes in apoptotic cells were evaluated with DNA staining by Hoechst 33258 dye; The expression of p53 were up-regulated showed by western blotting and RT-PCR. CONCLUSION: Artesunate could inhibit HSCs proliferation in dose-dependent and time-dependent manners in vitro through increase the expression of p53

Qwen-VL: A Frontier Large Vision-Language Model with Versatile Abilities

We introduce the Qwen-VL series, a set of large-scale vision-language models designed to perceive and understand both text and images. Comprising Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat, these models exhibit remarkable performance in tasks like image captioning, question answering, visual localization, and flexible interaction. The evaluation covers a wide range of tasks including zero-shot captioning, visual or document visual question answering, and grounding. We demonstrate the Qwen-VL outperforms existing Large Vision Language Models (LVLMs). We present their architecture, training, capabilities, and performance, highlighting their contributions to advancing multimodal artificial intelligence. Code, demo and models are available at https://github.com/QwenLM/Qwen-VL.Comment: Code, demo and models are available at https://github.com/QwenLM/Qwen-V

Periodontal health: A national cross‐sectional study of knowledge, attitudes and practices for the public oral health strategy in China

Aim To assess the status of periodontal health knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) among Chinese adults. Materials and Methods A cross‐sectional study was conducted in a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 50,991) aged 20 years or older from ten provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. Percentages of Chinese adults with correct periodontal knowledge, positive periodontal attitudes, and practices were estimated. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to examine the related factors. Results Less than 20% of Chinese adults were knowledgeable about periodontal disease. Very few (2.6%) of Chinese adults use dental floss ≥once a day and undergo scaling ≥once a year and visit a dentist (6.4%) in the case of gingival bleeding. Periodontal health KAP was associated with gender, age, body mass index, marital status, place of residence, education level, income, smoking status, and history of periodontal disease. Conclusions Periodontal health KAP are generally poor among the Chinese adult population. Community‐based health strategies to improve periodontal health KAP need to be implemented. Increasing knowledge of periodontal disease, the cultivation of correct practices in response to gingival bleeding, and the development of good habits concerning the use of dental floss and regular scaling should be public oral health priorities

USED: Universal Speaker Extraction and Diarization

Speaker extraction and diarization are two crucial enabling techniques for speech applications. Speaker extraction aims to extract a target speaker's voice from a multi-talk mixture, while speaker diarization demarcates speech segments by speaker, identifying `who spoke when'. The previous studies have typically treated the two tasks independently. However, the two tasks share a similar objective, that is to disentangle the speakers in the spectral domain for the former but in the temporal domain for the latter. It is logical to believe that the speaker turns obtained from speaker diarization can benefit speaker extraction, while the extracted speech offers more accurate speaker turns than the mixture speech. In this paper, we propose a unified framework called Universal Speaker Extraction and Diarization (USED). We extend the existing speaker extraction model to simultaneously extract the waveforms of all speakers. We also employ a scenario-aware differentiated loss function to address the problem of sparsely overlapped speech in real-world conversations. We show that the USED model significantly outperforms the baselines for both speaker extraction and diarization tasks, in both highly overlapped and sparsely overlapped scenarios. Audio samples are available at https://ajyy.github.io/demo/USED/.Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 202

High quality factor cold sintered Li2MoO4BaFe12O19 composites for microwave applications

Ceramics-ceramic composites in series (1-x)Li2MoO4-xBaFe12O19 (LMO-BF12, 0.00 ≤ x ≤ 0.15) have been cold sintered at 120 °C and their structure and properties characterized. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) confirmed that compositions were dual phase and had a dense microstructure. Composites in the xBF12-(1-x)LMO (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.15) series resonated at MW frequencies (∼6 GHz) with 5.6≤εr ≤ 5.8 and Qf = 16,000–22,000 GHz, despite the black colour of compositions with x > 0. The permeability of the composites was measured in the X band (∼8 GHz) and showed an increase from 0.94 (x = 0.05) to 1.02 (x = 0.15). Finite element modelling revealed that the volume fraction of BF12 dictates the conductivity of the material, with a percolation threshold at 10 vol% BF12 but changes in εr as a function of x were readily explained using a series mixing model. In summary, these composites are considered suitable for the fabrication of dual mode or enhanced bandwidth microstrip patch antennas

A Novel Label-Free Optical Biosensor Using Synthetic Oligonucleotides from E. coli O157:H7: Elementary Sensitivity Tests

SiO2-TiO2 thin films for use as fiber optic guiding layers of optical DNA biosensors were fabricated by the sol-gel dip coating technique. The chemical structure and the surface morphology of the films were characterized before immobilization. Single probe DNA strands were immobilized on the surface and the porosity of the films before the hybridization process was measured. Refractive index values of the films were measured using a Metricon 2010 prism coupler. On the surface of each film, 12 different spots were taken for measurement and calculation of the mean refractive index values with their standard deviations. The increased refractive index values after the immobilization of single DNA strands indicated that immobilization was successfully achieved. A further refractive index increase after the hybridization with target single DNA strands showed the possibility of detection of the E. coli O157:H7 EDL933 species using strands of 20-mers (5′-TAATATCGGTTGCGGAGGTG -3′) sequence

Hantavirus Brno loanvirus is highly specific to the common noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula) and widespread in Central Europe.

Bat-associated hantaviruses have been detected in Asia, Africa and Europe. Recently, a novel hantavirus (Brno loanvirus, BRNV) was identified in common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) in the Czech Republic, but nothing is known about its geographical range and prevalence. The objective of this study was to evaluate the distribution and host specificity of BRNV by testing bats from neighbouring countries Germany, Austria and Poland. One thousand forty-seven bats representing 21 species from Germany, 464 bats representing 18 species from Austria and 77 bats representing 12 species from Poland were screened by L segment broad-spectrum nested reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or by BRNV-specific real-time RT-PCR. Three common noctules from Germany, one common noctule from Austria and three common noctules from Poland were positive in the hantavirus RNA screening. Conventional RT-PCR and primer walking resulted in the amplification of partial L segment and (almost) complete S and M segment coding sequences for samples from Germany and partial L segment sequences for samples from Poland. Phylogenetic analysis of these nucleotide sequences showed highest similarity to BRNV from Czech Republic. The exclusive detection of BRNV in common noctules from different countries suggests high host specificity. The RNA detection rate in common noctules ranged between 1 of 207 (0.5%; Austria), 3 of 245 (1.2%; Germany) and 3 of 20 (15%; Poland). In conclusion, this study demonstrates a broader distribution of BRNV in common noctules in Central Europe, but at low to moderate prevalence. Additional studies are needed to prove the zoonotic potential of this hantavirus and evaluate its transmission within bat populations