Serial dependence in timing at the perceptual level being modulated by working memory

Recent experiences bias the perception of following stimuli, as has been verified in various kinds of experiments in visual perception. This phenomenon, known as serial dependence, may reflect mechanisms to maintain perceptual stability. In the current study, we examined several key properties of serial dependence in temporal perception. Firstly, we examined the source of the serial dependence effect in temporal perception. We found that perception without motor reproduction is sufficient to induce the sequential effect; motor reproduction caused a stronger effect and is achieved by biasing the perception of the future target duration rather than directly influencing the subsequent movement. Secondly, we ask how working memory influences serial dependence in a temporal reproduction task. By varying the delay time between standard duration and the reproduction, we showed that the strength of serial dependence is enhanced as the delay increased. Those features of serial dependence are consistent with what has been observed in visual perceptual tasks, for example, orientation perception or location perception. The similarities between the visual and the timing tasks may suggest a similar neural coding mechanism of magnitude between the visual stimuli and the duration

On the global kinematic positioning variations during the September 2017 solar flare events

Several X-class solar flares (SFs) with different intensities and locations on the solar disk occurred in September 2017. Among them, the X9.3 SF on 6 September 2017 was the most intensive SF in the 24th solar cycle. In this study, we investigated and compared the ionospheric response to the different X-class SFs and their impacts on the Global Positioning System (GPS) kinematic precise point positioning (PPP) solutions. We aim to study the mechanism behind the positioning degradation from the perspective of the impacts of the SF-induced ionosphere disturbance on the GPS data processing. By comparing the sudden ionospheric disturbance (SID) induced by the SFs, we observed that the SID is controlled by the intensity, the location, and the duration time of the SF. We found that the SID induced by the SF may deteriorate the cycle slip (CS) detection algorithms seriously. The threshold of the CS detection observables is sensitive to the SID, making the CS easier to be falsely detected. On the other hand, for the SF that occurred during the recovery phase of the geomagnetic storm, as the case of the X8.2 SF, the effects of the SF can reduce the precision of the GPS measurements, thus affecting the positioning accuracy. These mechanisms are essential and significant for the accuracy and stability of the kinematic PPP solution obtained with GPS during the SF events.The study is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 42004012 and 42004025), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (No. ZR2020QD048), State Key Laboratory of Geo-Information Engineering (No. SKLGIE2019-Z-2-2), State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth's Dynamics (No. SKLGED-2021-3-4), and by the project RTI2018-094295-B-I00 funded by the MCIN/AEI 10.13039/501100011033, which is cofunded by the FEDER programme. We appreciate the discussion on the amplitude scintillation and IF-sigma from high-rate geodetic GNSS data with Dr. Xiaomin Luo from China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) and Prof. Juan, J. M. from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. The authors are also thankful to the reviewers for the instructive comments and suggestions on the manuscript.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Exploring Vision Transformers as Diffusion Learners

Score-based diffusion models have captured widespread attention and funded fast progress of recent vision generative tasks. In this paper, we focus on diffusion model backbone which has been much neglected before. We systematically explore vision Transformers as diffusion learners for various generative tasks. With our improvements the performance of vanilla ViT-based backbone (IU-ViT) is boosted to be on par with traditional U-Net-based methods. We further provide a hypothesis on the implication of disentangling the generative backbone as an encoder-decoder structure and show proof-of-concept experiments verifying the effectiveness of a stronger encoder for generative tasks with ASymmetriC ENcoder Decoder (ASCEND). Our improvements achieve competitive results on CIFAR-10, CelebA, LSUN, CUB Bird and large-resolution text-to-image tasks. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to successfully train a single diffusion model on text-to-image task beyond 64x64 resolution. We hope this will motivate people to rethink the modeling choices and the training pipelines for diffusion-based generative models

Expression of aquaporin 5 in primary carcinoma and lymph node metastatic carcinoma of non‑small cell lung cancer

Aquaporin 5 (AQP5), a water channel protein, is highly expressed in non‑small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues. AQP5 expression in lung cancer tissues is associated with a poor prognosis. The present study aimed to analyze the expression of AQP5 and investigate its role in primary and lymph node metastatic NSCLCs. An immunohistochemical labeled streptavidin-biotin method was used to determine the expression of AQP5 in 94 cases of NSCLC primary carcinoma, which included 51 cases accompanied by lymph node metastasis. The results revealed that the expression of AQP5 was significantly higher in adenocarcinomas compared with squamous cell carcinomas (P=0.002). In addition, the percentage of AQP5 expression in the primary carcinomas with lymph node metastasis was significantly higher compared with those without lymph node metastasis (P=0.024). However, no statistically significant difference in the percentage of AQP5 expression was observed between the metastatic and the primary carcinomas (P=0.377). The expression of AQP5 exhibited a correlation with the tumor‑node‑metastasis staging of NSCLC (P=0.027). The percentage of AQP5 expression in stage III and IV tumors was higher than that in stage I and II tumors. In addition, AQP5 expression was correlated with the survival rate of NSCLC patients (P=0.051). In conclusion, the results of the present study provide evidence for the AQP5‑facilitated incidence, progression and metastasis of NSCLC.published_or_final_versio

The Mechanism for GNSS-Based Kinematic Positioning Degradation at High-Latitudes Under the March 2015 Great Storm

In this study, we focus on the kinematic precise point positioning (PPP) solutions at high-latitudes during the March 2015 great geomagnetic storm. We aim to discover the mechanism behind the positioning degradation from the perspective of the impacts of the storm-induced ionospheric disturbance on the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) data processing. We observed that the phase scintillation dominated the amplitude scintillation at high-latitudes and the variation pattern of the rate of total electron content index (ROTI) was consistent with that of the phase scintillation during the storm. The kinematic PPP errors at high-latitudes were almost three times larger than those at the middle- and low-latitude, which were accompanied by large ROTI variations. From the perspective of GNSS data processing, the large positioning errors were also found to be related to the large number of satellites experiencing cycle slips (CSs). Based on the lock time from the ionospheric scintillation monitoring receiver, we found that a large amount of the CSs was falsely detected under the conventional threshold of the CS detector. By increasing such threshold, the kinematic positioning accuracy at high-latitudes can be improved to obtain similar magnitude as at middle- and low-latitude. The improved positioning accuracy may suggest that the ionospheric disturbance induced by the geomagnetic storm at high-latitudes has minor effects on triggering the CSs. Therefore, precise positioning can be achieved at high-latitudes under geomagnetic storms, given that the CS problem is well addressed.The study is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.42004012, 42004025), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (No.ZR2020QD048), the State Key Laboratory of GeoInformation Engineering (No.SKLGIE2019-Z-2-2), the State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth's Dynamics (No. SKLGED-2021-3-4) and by the project RTI2018-094295-B-I00 funded by the MCIN/AEI 10.13039/501100011033, which is co-funded by the FEDER programme.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Evaluation of precipitable water vapor from five reanalysis products with ground-based GNSS observations

At present, the global reliability and accuracy of Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) from different reanalysis products have not been comprehensively evaluated. In this study, PWV values derived by 268 Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) stations around the world covering the period from 2016 to 2018 are used to evaluate the accuracies of PWV values from five reanalysis products. The temporal and spatial evolution is not taken into account in this analysis, although the temporal and spatial evolution of atmospheric flows is one of the most important information elements available in numerical weather prediction products. The evaluation results present that five reanalysis products with PWV accuracy from high to low are in the order of the fifth generation of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis (ERA5), ERA-Interim, Japanese 55-year Reanalysis (JRA-55), National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR), and NCEP/DOE (Department of Energy) according to root mean square error (RMSE), bias and correlation coefficient. The ERA5 has the smallest RMSE value of 1.84 mm, while NCEP/NCAR and NCEP/DOE have bigger RMSE values of 3.34 mm and 3.51 mm, respectively. The findings demonstrate that ERA5 and two NCEP reanalysis products have the best and worst performance, respectively, among five reanalysis products. The differences in the accuracy of the five reanalysis products are mainly attributed to the differences in the spatial resolution of reanalysis products. There are some large absolute biases greater than 4 mm between GNSS PWV values and the PWV values of five reanalysis products in the southwest of South America and western China due to the limit of terrains and fewer observations. The accuracies of five reanalysis products are compared in different climatic zones. The results indicate that the absolute accuracies of five reanalysis products are highest in the polar regions and lowest in the tropics. Furthermore, the effects of different seasons on the accuracies of five reanalysis products are also analyzed, which indicates that RMSE values of five reanalysis products in summer and in winter are the largest and the smallest in the temperate regions. Evaluation results from five reanalysis products can help us to learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of the five released water vapor products and promote their applications.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Neutrophil Extracellular Traps Formation and Citrullinated Histones 3 Levels in Patients with Kawasaki Disease

Background: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a vasculitis associated with vascular injury and autoimmune response. Inflammatory factors stimulate neutrophils to produce web-like structures called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Citrullinated histone 3 (H3Cit) is one of the main protein components of neutrophil extracellular traps involved in the process of NETosis. The levels of NETs and H3Cit in the KD are not known.Objective: To determine the changes in the levels of NETs and H3Cit in KD.Methods: Children with KD were recruited and divided into the acute KD and the sub-acute KD group according to the disease phase and whether intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) was used or not. Peripheral venous blood was taken before and after the IVIG administration and sent for the examination of NETs by flow cytometry. The level of H3Cit was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).Results: The counts of NETs in the acute KD group significantly increased compared with the healthy controls (p<0.01). The level of H3Cit was significantly higher in the acute KD group than in the healthy control subjects. Of note, both the counts of NETs and the level of H3Cit decreased in the KD patients treated with IVIG compared with the acute KD group (p<0.01).Conclusion: Acute KD is characterized by an increased formation of NETs and high levels of H3Cit. IVIG significantly inhibited NETs formation and also reduced the level of plasma H3Cit in children with KD

Seasonal Land Fallowing Policy in Response to Groundwater Overdraft in the North China Plain

The Seasonal Land Fallowing Policy (SLFP), designed to mitigate serious groundwater overdraft in the North China Plain, was introduced in Hebei Province in 2014. This paper offers a comprehensive review and assessment of its implementation status, effectiveness and challenges. Based on data at both macro and micro levels, we witnessed the rapid expansion of the SLFP from 2014 to 2019. With a high targeting efficiency, the SLFP reduced groundwater consumption and contributed to real water saving. However, further analysis is needed on the influence of the SLFP on water levels. As a means of payment for ecosystem services, the currentsubsidy offered by the SLFP is not sufficiently flexible to reflect the heterogeneity in farmers’ opportunity cost. Obstacles to the effective and sustainable implementation of the SLFP include unstable and ineligible participants, insufficient incentive for farmers to shift surplus labour to off-farm jobs, and underuse of fallowed land. Based on these challenges, this paper offers policy suggestions to further aid the SLFP’s effective and sustainable implementation in the future