Time-series momentum: Is it there?

Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier

Formulation and pharmacokinetic evaluation of a paclitaxel nanosuspension for intravenous delivery

Paclitaxel is a diterpenoid isolated from Taxus brevifolia. It is effective for various cancers, especially ovarian and breast cancer. Due to its aqueous insolubility, it is administered dissolved in ethanol and Cremophor® EL (BASF, Ludwigshafen, Germany), which can cause serious allergic reactions. In order to eliminate Cremophor EL, paclitaxel was formulated as a nanosuspension by high-pressure homogenization. The nanosuspension was lyophilized to obtain the dry paclitaxel nanoparticles (average size, 214.4 ± 15.03 nm), which enhanced both the physical and chemical stability of paclitaxel nanoparticles. Paclitaxel dissolution was also enhanced by the nanosuspension. Differential scanning calorimetry showed that the crystallinity of paclitaxel was preserved during the high-pressure homogenization process. The pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution of paclitaxel were compared after intravenous administration of paclitaxel nanosuspension and paclitaxel injection. In rat plasma, paclitaxel nanosuspension exhibited a significantly (P < 0.01) reduced area under the concentration curve (AUC)0–∞ (20.343 ± 9.119 μg · h · mL−1 vs 5.196 ± 1.426 μg · h · mL−1), greater clearance (2.050 ± 0.616 L · kg−1 · h−1 vs 0.556 ± 0.190 L · kg−1 · h−1), and shorter elimination half-life (5.646 ± 2.941 vs 3.774 ± 1.352 hours) compared with the paclitaxel solution. In contrast, the paclitaxel nanosuspension resulted in a significantly greater AUC0–∞ in liver, lung, and spleen (all P < 0.01), but not in heart or kidney

Indium Phosphide Bismide

Indium phosphide bismide is a new member to the dilute bismide family. Since the first synthesis by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) in 2013, it has cut a figure for its abnormal properties comparing with other dilute bismides. Bismuth (Bi) incorporation is always a difficulty for epitaxial growth of dilute. In this chapter, it shows how to regulate MBE growth parameters and their influence on Bi incorporation in InP1−xBix. Structural, electronic and optical properties are systematically reviewed. Thermal annealing to study Bi thermal stability and its effect on physical properties is performed. InP1−xBix shows strong and broad photoluminescence at room temperature, which is a potential candidate for fabricating super-luminescence diodes applied for enhancing spatial resolution in optical coherence tomography. Quaternary phosphide bismide, including InGaPBi and InAlPBi, is briefly introduced in this chapter

Achieving Adversarial Robustness via Sparsity

Network pruning has been known to produce compact models without much accuracy degradation. However, how the pruning process affects a network's robustness and the working mechanism behind remain unresolved. In this work, we theoretically prove that the sparsity of network weights is closely associated with model robustness. Through experiments on a variety of adversarial pruning methods, we find that weights sparsity will not hurt but improve robustness, where both weights inheritance from the lottery ticket and adversarial training improve model robustness in network pruning. Based on these findings, we propose a novel adversarial training method called inverse weights inheritance, which imposes sparse weights distribution on a large network by inheriting weights from a small network, thereby improving the robustness of the large network