Debiased-CAM for bias-agnostic faithful visual explanations of deep convolutional networks

Class activation maps (CAMs) explain convolutional neural network predictions by identifying salient pixels, but they become misaligned and misleading when explaining predictions on images under bias, such as images blurred accidentally or deliberately for privacy protection, or images with improper white balance. Despite model fine-tuning to improve prediction performance on these biased images, we demonstrate that CAM explanations become more deviated and unfaithful with increased image bias. We present Debiased-CAM to recover explanation faithfulness across various bias types and levels by training a multi-input, multi-task model with auxiliary tasks for CAM and bias level predictions. With CAM as a prediction task, explanations are made tunable by retraining the main model layers and made faithful by self-supervised learning from CAMs of unbiased images. The model provides representative, bias-agnostic CAM explanations about the predictions on biased images as if generated from their unbiased form. In four simulation studies with different biases and prediction tasks, Debiased-CAM improved both CAM faithfulness and task performance. We further conducted two controlled user studies to validate its truthfulness and helpfulness, respectively. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of participant responses confirmed Debiased-CAM as more truthful and helpful. Debiased-CAM thus provides a basis to generate more faithful and relevant explanations for a wide range of real-world applications with various sources of bias

dsRNA Virus Model Molecule and the Mechanism of PRRs and its Research Progress in Female Reproductive Tract Infections

Female animal genital tract opening on the body surface, prone to bacterial, viral, parasitic, and other pathogenic microorganism infections, leading to genital tract infectious diseases, such as endometritis, cervicitis, vaginitis, etc. Severe infection can lead to infertility, abortion, and even fetal death. Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is an important model molecule, which is widely present in the genome of viruses and generated in the process of virus replication. In mammals, dsRNA is considered to be an innate immune response signal for viral infection, which binds to the corresponding pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs) In vivo and then exerts biological functions. This review summarizes the signal transduction pathway induced by the binding of dsRNA model molecules to PRRs, research status of female genital tract infections and research progress of dsRNA in simulating viral infection in the female genital tract

Neural Chinese Word Segmentation with Lexicon and Unlabeled Data via Posterior Regularization

Existing methods for CWS usually rely on a large number of labeled sentences to train word segmentation models, which are expensive and time-consuming to annotate. Luckily, the unlabeled data is usually easy to collect and many high-quality Chinese lexicons are off-the-shelf, both of which can provide useful information for CWS. In this paper, we propose a neural approach for Chinese word segmentation which can exploit both lexicon and unlabeled data. Our approach is based on a variant of posterior regularization algorithm, and the unlabeled data and lexicon are incorporated into model training as indirect supervision by regularizing the prediction space of CWS models. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark datasets in both in-domain and cross-domain scenarios validate the effectiveness of our approach.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures, accepted by the 2019 World Wide Web Conference (WWW '19

Modulation of Metabolome and Bacterial Community in Whole Crop Corn Silage by Inoculating Homofermentative Lactobacillus plantarum and Heterofermentative Lactobacillus buchneri

The present study investigated the species level based microbial community and metabolome in corn silage inoculated with or without homofermentative Lactobacillus plantarum and heterofermentative Lactobacillus buchneri using the PacBio SMRT Sequencing and time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOF/MS). Chopped whole crop corn was treated with (1) deionized water (control), (2) Lactobacillus plantarum, or (3) Lactobacillus buchneri. The chopped whole crop corn was ensiled in vacuum-sealed polyethylene bags containing 300 g of fresh forge for 90 days, with three replicates for each treatment. The results showed that a total of 979 substances were detected, and 316 different metabolites were identified. Some metabolites with antimicrobial activity were detected in whole crop corn silage, such as catechol, 3-phenyllactic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, azelaic acid, 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid and 4-hydroxycinnamic acid. Catechol, pyrogallol and ferulic acid with antioxidant property, 4-hydroxybutyrate with nervine activity, and linoleic acid with cholesterol lowering effects, were detected in present study. In addition, a flavoring agent of myristic acid and a depression mitigation substance of phenylethylamine were also found in this study. Samples treated with inoculants presented more biofunctional metabolites of organic acids, amino acids and phenolic acids than untreated samples. The Lactobacillus species covered over 98% after ensiling, and were mainly comprised by the L. acetotolerans, L. silagei, L. parafarraginis, L. buchneri and L. odoratitofui. As compared to the control silage, inoculation of L. plantarum increased the relative abundances of L. acetotolerans, L. buchneri and L. parafarraginis, and a considerable decline in the proportion of L. silagei was observed; whereas an obvious decrease in L. acetotolerans and increases in L. odoratitofui and L. farciminis were observed in the L. buchneri inoculated silage. Therefore, inoculation of L. plantarum and L. buchneri regulated the microbial composition and metabolome of the corn silage with different behaviors. The present results indicated that profiling of silage microbiome and metabolome might improve our current understanding of the biological process underlying silage formation

Spin dynamics in van der Waals magnetic systems

The discovery of atomic monolayer magnetic materials has stimulated intense research activities in the two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) materials community. The field is growing rapidly and there has been a large class of 2D vdW magnetic compounds with unique properties, which provides an ideal platform to study magnetism in the atomically thin limit. In parallel, based on tunneling magnetoresistance and magneto-optical effect in 2D vdW magnets and their heterostructures, emerging concepts of spintronic and optoelectronic applications such as spin tunnel field-effect transistors and spin-filtering devices are explored. While the magnetic ground state has been extensively investigated, reliable characterization and control of spin dynamics play a crucial role in designing ultrafast spintronic devices. Ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) allows direct measurements of magnetic excitations, which provides insight into the key parameters of magnetic properties such as exchange interaction, magnetic anisotropy, gyromagnetic ratio, spin–orbit coupling, damping rate, and domain structure. In this review article, we present an overview of the essential progress in probing spin dynamics of 2D vdW magnets using FMR techniques. Given the dynamic nature of this field, we focus mainly on broadband FMR, optical FMR, and spin-torque FMR, and their applications in studying prototypical 2D vdW magnets. We conclude with the recent advances in laboratory- and synchrotron-based FMR techniques and their opportunities to broaden the horizon of research pathways into atomically thin magnets

Bazhu Decoction, a Traditional Chinese Medical Formula, Ameliorates Cognitive Deficits in the 5xFAD Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder associated with aging. There are currently no effective treatments for AD. Bazhu decoction (BZD), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula, has been employed clinically to alleviate AD. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms are still unclear. Here we found that middle- and high-doses of BZD ameliorated the behavioral aspects of 5xFAD transgenic mice in elevated plus maze, Y maze and Morris water maze tests. Moreover, BZD reduced the protein levels of BACE1 and PS1, resulting in a reduction of Aβ plaques. We also identified a beneficial effect of BZD on oxidative stress by attenuating MDA levels and SOD activity in the brains of 5xFAD mice. Together, these results indicate that BZD produces a dose-dependent positive effect on 5xFAD transgenic mouse model by decreasing APP processing and Aβ plaques, and by ameliorating oxidative damage. BZD may play a protective role in the cognitive and anxiety impairments and may be a complementary therapeutic option for AD

Debias CAM code and experiments data

Code and experimental data for the Debiased-CAM project