Symbol as Points: Panoptic Symbol Spotting via Point-based Representation

This work studies the problem of panoptic symbol spotting, which is to spot and parse both countable object instances (windows, doors, tables, etc.) and uncountable stuff (wall, railing, etc.) from computer-aided design (CAD) drawings. Existing methods typically involve either rasterizing the vector graphics into images and using image-based methods for symbol spotting, or directly building graphs and using graph neural networks for symbol recognition. In this paper, we take a different approach, which treats graphic primitives as a set of 2D points that are locally connected and use point cloud segmentation methods to tackle it. Specifically, we utilize a point transformer to extract the primitive features and append a mask2former-like spotting head to predict the final output. To better use the local connection information of primitives and enhance their discriminability, we further propose the attention with connection module (ACM) and contrastive connection learning scheme (CCL). Finally, we propose a KNN interpolation mechanism for the mask attention module of the spotting head to better handle primitive mask downsampling, which is primitive-level in contrast to pixel-level for the image. Our approach, named SymPoint, is simple yet effective, outperforming recent state-of-the-art method GAT-CADNet by an absolute increase of 9.6% PQ and 10.4% RQ on the FloorPlanCAD dataset. The source code and models will be available at https://github.com/nicehuster/SymPoint.Comment: ICLR 202

Targeted in vivo extracellular matrix formation promotes neovascularization in a rodent model of myocardial infarction.

BackgroundThe extracellular matrix plays an important role in tissue regeneration. We investigated whether extracellular matrix protein fragments could be targeted with antibodies to ischemically injured myocardium to promote angiogenesis and myocardial repair.Methodology/principal findingsFour peptides, 2 derived from fibronectin and 2 derived from Type IV Collagen, were assessed for in vitro and in vivo tendencies for angiogenesis. Three of the four peptides--Hep I, Hep III, RGD--were identified and shown to increase endothelial cell attachment, proliferation, migration and cell activation in vitro. By chemically conjugating these peptides to an anti-myosin heavy chain antibody, the peptides could be administered intravenously and specifically targeted to the site of the myocardial infarction. When administered into Sprague-Dawley rats that underwent ischemia-reperfusion myocardial infarction, these peptides produced statistically significantly higher levels of angiogenesis and arteriogenesis 6 weeks post treatment.Conclusions/significanceWe demonstrated that antibody-targeted ECM-derived peptides alone can be used to sufficiently alter the extracellular matrix microenvironment to induce a dramatic angiogenic response in the myocardial infarct area. Our results indicate a potentially new non-invasive strategy for repairing damaged tissue, as well as a novel tool for investigating in vivo cell biology

Co-processing of raw and washed air pollution control residues from energy-from-waste facilities in the cement kiln

Co-processing of industrial wastes as alternative raw materials in cement manufacture is an example of industrial symbiosis for improved material resource efficiency. Since co-processing introduces impurities from wastes, such as air pollution control residue (APCR) from municipal solid waste combustion, into the cement kiln, a better understanding of their environmental impacts and effects on cement manufacturing and quality is needed. Portland cement clinkers containing 5–35% raw or 5–34% washed APCR were prepared, with formation of all typical minerals, but with effects on clinkering reactions, and increased 2CaO·SiO2 and decreased 3CaO·SiO2 and 3CaO·Al2O3. Raw APCR affected the shape of the 2CaO·SiO2 and 3CaO·SiO2 grains, and cement paste from clinker made with 35% APCR exhibited negligible 28d strength. Pastes from the clinkers with lower contents of APCR or washed APCR had strengths that were lower than that of the control at 7d, similar at 28d (∼90 MPa) and higher at 6 m (up to 120 MPa), consistent with their 2CaO·SiO2 and 3CaO·SiO2 contents. Utilization of minerals in APCR thus comes with a trade-off against cement quality. Volatilisation of S, Cl, Pb was reduced by washing, which fully eliminated volatilisation of Zn. Zn was found mainly in the interstitial phases of the clinker, in solid solution in 4CaO·Al2O3·Fe2O3 or 3CaO·Al2O3. Further investigation is required to determine whether Zn and other incorporated elements may be released from the cement paste when these phases react with water. APCR co-processing may reduce CO2 emissions by avoiding CaCO3 decomposition, but this is an uncertain benefit, which may be outweighed by the detrimental effects of APCR alkalis, Cl, S and metals on cement production and quality. Life cycle environmental impacts associated with washing, and dispersal of contaminants in the built environment through construction materials, are additional concerns

Bifurcation of Safe Basins and Chaos in Nonlinear Vibroimpact Oscillator under Harmonic and Bounded Noise Excitations

The erosion of the safe basins and chaotic motions of a nonlinear vibroimpact oscillator under both harmonic and bounded random noise is studied. Using the Melnikov method, the system’s Melnikov integral is computed and the parametric threshold for chaotic motions is obtained. Using the Monte-Carlo and Runge-Kutta methods, the erosion of the safe basins is also discussed. The sudden change in the character of the stochastic safe basins when the bifurcation parameter of the system passes through a critical value may be defined as an alternative stochastic bifurcation. It is founded that random noise may destroy the integrity of the safe basins, bring forward the occurrence of the stochastic bifurcation, and make the parametric threshold for motions vary in a larger region, hence making the system become more unsafely and chaotic motions may occur more easily

Squirrel: A Scalable Secure Two-Party Computation Framework for Training Gradient Boosting Decision Tree

Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) and its variants are widely used in industry, due to their strong interpretability. Secure multi-party computation allows multiple data owners to compute a function jointly while keeping their input private. In this work, we present Squirrel, a two-party GBDT training framework on a vertically split dataset, where two data owners each hold different features of the same data samples. Squirrel is private against semi-honest adversaries, and no sensitive intermediate information is revealed during the training process. Squirrel is also scalable to datasets with millions of samples even under a Wide Area Network (WAN). Squirrel achieves its high performance via several novel co-designs of the GBDT algorithms and advanced cryptography. Especially, 1) we propose a new and efficient mechanism to hide the sample distribution on each node using oblivious transfer. 2) We propose a highly optimized method for gradient aggregation using lattice-based homomorphic encryption (HE). Our empirical results show that our method can be three orders of magnitude faster than the existing HE approaches. 3) We propose a novel protocol to evaluate the sigmoid func- tion on secretly shared values, showing 19×-200×-fold im- provements over two existing methods. Combining all these improvements, Squirrel costs less than 6 seconds per tree on a dataset with 50 thousands samples which outperforms Pivot (VLDB 2020) by more than 28×. We also show that Squirrel can scale up to datasets with more than one million samples, e.g., about 170 seconds per tree over a WAN

Metabolic features of orbital adipose tissue in patients with thyroid eye disease

BackgroundThyroid eye disease (TED) is the most frequent orbital disease in adults and is characterized by the accumulation of orbital adipose tissue (OAT). It can lead to eyelid retraction or even vision loss. Orbital decompression surgery serves as the primary treatment for inactive TED by removing the excess OAT. However, there is a lack of alternative treatments to surgery due to the unclear understanding of the pathogenesis, particularly the metabolic features. Accordingly, our study was implemented to explore the content and features of metabolites of OATs from TED patients.MethodThe OATs used in the current study were obtained from the orbital decompression surgery of seven patients with inactive TED. We also collected control OATs from eye surgical samples of five individuals with no history of autoimmune thyroid diseases, TED, or under non-inflammatory conditions. The liquid chromatography mass spectrometer was used for the measurements of the targeted metabolites. Afterwards, we performed differential metabolite assay analysis and related pathway enrichment analysis.ResultsIn our study, a total of 149 metabolite profiles were detected in all participants. There were significant differences in several metabolite profiles between the TED group and the control group, mainly including uric acid, oxidized glutathione, taurine, dGMP, oxidized glutathione 2, uracil, hexose-phosphate, 1-methylnicotinamide, D-sedoheptulose 1,7-bisphosphate, and uridine 5′-monophosphate (all p-value < 0.05). The TED-related pathways identified included purine metabolism, beta-alanine metabolism, glutathione metabolism (p-values < 0.05). Our study found overlaps and differences including uric acid and uracil, which are in accordance with metabolites found in blood of patients with TED from previous study and several newly discovered metabolite by our study such as hexose-phosphate, 1-methylnicotinamide, D-sedoheptulose 1,7-bisphosphate, compared to those tested from blood, OAT, or urine samples reported in previous studies.ConclusionThe findings of our study shed light on the metabolic features of OAT in individuals with TED. These results may help identify new treatment targets for TED, providing potential avenues for developing alternative treatments beyond ophthalmic surgery