Energy Confused Adversarial Metric Learning for Zero-Shot Image Retrieval and Clustering

Deep metric learning has been widely applied in many computer vision tasks, and recently, it is more attractive in \emph{zero-shot image retrieval and clustering}(ZSRC) where a good embedding is requested such that the unseen classes can be distinguished well. Most existing works deem this 'good' embedding just to be the discriminative one and thus race to devise powerful metric objectives or hard-sample mining strategies for leaning discriminative embedding. However, in this paper, we first emphasize that the generalization ability is a core ingredient of this 'good' embedding as well and largely affects the metric performance in zero-shot settings as a matter of fact. Then, we propose the Energy Confused Adversarial Metric Learning(ECAML) framework to explicitly optimize a robust metric. It is mainly achieved by introducing an interesting Energy Confusion regularization term, which daringly breaks away from the traditional metric learning idea of discriminative objective devising, and seeks to 'confuse' the learned model so as to encourage its generalization ability by reducing overfitting on the seen classes. We train this confusion term together with the conventional metric objective in an adversarial manner. Although it seems weird to 'confuse' the network, we show that our ECAML indeed serves as an efficient regularization technique for metric learning and is applicable to various conventional metric methods. This paper empirically and experimentally demonstrates the importance of learning embedding with good generalization, achieving state-of-the-art performances on the popular CUB, CARS, Stanford Online Products and In-Shop datasets for ZSRC tasks. \textcolor[rgb]{1, 0, 0}{Code available at http://www.bhchen.cn/}.Comment: AAAI 2019, Spotligh

Accelerate sampling in atomistic energy landscapes using topology-based coarse-grained models

We describe a multiscale enhanced sampling (MSES) method where efficient topology-based coarse-grained models are coupled with all-atom ones to enhance the sampling of atomistic protein energy landscape. The bias from the coupling is removed by Hamiltonian replica exchange, thus allowing one to benefit simultaneously from faster transitions of coarse-grained modeling and accuracy of atomistic force fields. The method is demonstrated by calculating the conformational equilibria of several small but nontrivial β-hairpins with varied stabilities

A Preliminary Probe into Lin Shu’s Creative Translation

Lin Shu is a renowned translator in Chinese history for his abundant influential translating works. He plays a very important role in introducing western literature to China and is well known for his unique translating methods. Nevertheless, his creative translation approaches of omission, addition and alteration also make him target of sharp criticism. This paper, through a deliberate comparison between Lin Shu’s versions and the original works, finds that many of Lin Shu’s omission, addition and alteration of the original is out of his careful consideration rather than arbitrary behaviors. The concrete examples and full analysis revealed that Lin Shu is quite creative in the translation process. His translation can be considered as a creative rebellion against the original. A careful study shows that it is Lin Shu’s illiteracy of foreign languages and the use of classical Chinese that make his translation a big hit shortly after their publication and give Lin Shu and his translation a special status in the literary world of China

Estimating heterogeneous agents behavior in a two-market financial system

In this paper, we propose a two-market empirical model with heterogeneous agents based on Chiarella et al. (2012). Using monthly data of French and US stock markets, the regression shows that individual markets have feature of two-regime switching process. By including inter-market traders whose trading decision is based on fundamental value of foreign market, the two-market model has a better capability in explaining both markets with domestic fundamental traders turning to be significant. The existence of inter-market traders implies that the two markets impact each other through their fundamental and hence share some common set of factors, which provides foundation of market interactions, such as market co-movement

Klotho inhibits growth and promotes apoptosis in human lung cancer cell line A549

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Klotho, as a new anti-aging gene, can shed into circulation and act as a multi-functional humoral factor that influences multiple biological processes. Recently, published studies suggest that klotho can also serve as a potential tumor suppressor. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects and possible mechanisms of action of klotho in human lung cancer cell line A549.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this study, plasmids encoding klotho or klotho specific shRNAs were constructed to overexpress or knockdown klotho in vitro. A549 cells were respectively treated with pCMV6-MYC-KL or klotho specific shRNAs. The MTT assay was used to evaluate the cytotoxic effects of klotho and flow cytometry was utilized to observe and detect the apoptosis of A549 cells induced by klotho. The activation of IGF-1/insulin signal pathways in A549 cells treated by pCMV6-MYC-KL or shRNAs were evaluated by western blotting. The expression levels of bcl-2 and bax transcripts were evaluated by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overexpression of klotho reduced the proliferation of lung cancer A549 cells, whereas klotho silencing in A549 cells enhanced proliferation. Klotho did not show any effects on HEK-293 cells. Klotho overexpression in A549 cells was associated with reduced IGF-1/insulin-induced phosphorylation of IGF-1R (IGF-1 receptor)/IR (insulin receptor) (<it>P </it>< 0.01). Overexpression of klotho can promote the apoptosis of A549 cells (<it>P </it>< 0.01). Overexpression of klotho, a bcl family gene bax, was found up-regulated and bcl-2, an anti-apoptosis gene, was found down-regulated (<it>P </it>< 0.01). In contrast, bax and bcl-2 were found down-regulated (<it>P </it>< 0.05) and up-regulated (<it>P </it>< 0.01), respectively when silencing klotho using shRNAs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Klotho can inhibit proliferation and increase apoptosis of A549 cells, this may be partly due to the inhibition of IGF-1/insulin pathways and involving regulating the expression of the apoptosis-related genes bax/bcl-2. Thus, klotho can serve as a potential tumor suppressor in A549 cells.</p