Structural Prior Guided Generative Adversarial Transformers for Low-Light Image Enhancement

We propose an effective Structural Prior guided Generative Adversarial Transformer (SPGAT) to solve low-light image enhancement. Our SPGAT mainly contains a generator with two discriminators and a structural prior estimator (SPE). The generator is based on a U-shaped Transformer which is used to explore non-local information for better clear image restoration. The SPE is used to explore useful structures from images to guide the generator for better structural detail estimation. To generate more realistic images, we develop a new structural prior guided adversarial learning method by building the skip connections between the generator and discriminators so that the discriminators can better discriminate between real and fake features. Finally, we propose a parallel windows-based Swin Transformer block to aggregate different level hierarchical features for high-quality image restoration. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SPGAT performs favorably against recent state-of-the-art methods on both synthetic and real-world datasets

Tighter uncertainty relations based on (α,β,γ)(\alpha,\beta,\gamma) modified weighted Wigner-Yanase-Dyson skew information of quantum channels

We use a novel formation to illustrate the ($\alpha,\beta,\gamma$) modified weighted Wigner-Yanase-Dyson (($\alpha,\beta,\gamma$) MWWYD) skew information of quantum channels. By using operator norm inequalities, we explore the sum uncertainty relations for arbitrary $N$ quantum channels and for unitary channels. These uncertainty inequalities are shown to be tighter than the existing ones by a detailed example. Our results are also applicable to the modified weighted Wigner-Yanase-Dyson (MWWYD) skew information and the ($\alpha,\gamma$) modified weighted Wigner-Yanase-Dyson (($\alpha,\gamma$) MWWYD) skew information of quantum channels as special cases.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Effect of cadmium on the defense response of Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas to Listonella anguillarum challenge

Heavy metal pollution can affect the immune capability of organisms. We evaluated the effect of cadmium (Cd) on the defense responses of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas to Listonella anguillarum challenge. The activities of several important defensive enzymes, including superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), acid phosphatase (ACP), Na+, K+ -ATPase in gills and hepatopancreas, and phenoloxidase-like (POL) enzyme in hemolymph were assayed. In addition, the expression levels of several genes, including heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), metallothionein (MT), and bactericidal/permeability increasing (BPI) protein were quantified by fluorescent quantitative PCR. The enzyme activities of SOD, ACP, POL, and GPx in hepatopancreas, and the expression of HSP90 were down-regulated, whereas GPx activity in the gill, Na+, K+-ATPase activities in both tissues, and MT expression was increased in Cdexposed oysters post L. anguillarum challenge. However, BPI expression was not significantly altered by co-stress of L. anguillarum infection and cadmium exposure. Our results suggest that cadmium exposure alters the oysters' immune responses and energy metabolism following vibrio infection.Heavy metal pollution can affect the immune capability of organisms. We evaluated the effect of cadmium (Cd) on the defense responses of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas to Listonella anguillarum challenge. The activities of several important defensive enzymes, including superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), acid phosphatase (ACP), Na+, K+ -ATPase in gills and hepatopancreas, and phenoloxidase-like (POL) enzyme in hemolymph were assayed. In addition, the expression levels of several genes, including heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), metallothionein (MT), and bactericidal/permeability increasing (BPI) protein were quantified by fluorescent quantitative PCR. The enzyme activities of SOD, ACP, POL, and GPx in hepatopancreas, and the expression of HSP90 were down-regulated, whereas GPx activity in the gill, Na+, K+-ATPase activities in both tissues, and MT expression was increased in Cdexposed oysters post L. anguillarum challenge. However, BPI expression was not significantly altered by co-stress of L. anguillarum infection and cadmium exposure. Our results suggest that cadmium exposure alters the oysters' immune responses and energy metabolism following vibrio infection

FastHiC: a fast and accurate algorithm to detect long-range chromosomal interactions from Hi-C data

Motivation: How chromatin folds in three-dimensional (3D) space is closely related to transcription regulation. As powerful tools to study such 3D chromatin conformation, the recently developed Hi-C technologies enable a genome-wide measurement of pair-wise chromatin interaction. However, methods for the detection of biologically meaningful chromatin interactions, i.e. peak calling, from Hi-C data, are still under development. In our previous work, we have developed a novel hidden Markov random field (HMRF) based Bayesian method, which through explicitly modeling the non-negligible spatial dependency among adjacent pairs of loci manifesting in high resolution Hi-C data, achieves substantially improved robustness and enhanced statistical power in peak calling. Superior to peak callers that ignore spatial dependency both methodologically and in performance, our previous Bayesian framework suffers from heavy computational costs due to intensive computation incurred by modeling the correlated peak status of neighboring loci pairs and the inference of hidden dependency structure

Inhibitory effect of tetramethylpyrazine combined with propranolol on murine hemangioma endothelial cells

Purpose: To study the inhibitory effect of different doses of tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) combined with the beta-blocker, propranolol (Pro) on hemangioma endothelial (EOMA) cells. Methods: EOMA cells were cultured in vitro with varying doses of TMP and Pro (5, 10, 20 and 40 uM). The effect of treatments on cell proliferation was assessed by MTT assay, while cell apoptosis was assayed by flow cytometry. The expressions of Bcl-2, Bax, p-mTOR), total-mammalian target of rapamycin (t-mTOR, p-p70S6) and total-p70 ribosomal protein S6 (t-p70S6) proteins were determined using Western blot. Results: MTT data showed that when used alone, TMP had no significant inhibitory effect on EOMA cells (p > 0.05). However, when TMP was combined with propranolol, there was significant inhibition of EOMA cells, and that the inhibition is dependent on TMP dose. Flow cytometry results showed that the combination of TMP and Pro induced EOMA cell apoptosis dose-dependently (p < 0.05). Moreover, TMP dose-dependently inhibited the phosphorylation of mTOR and p70S6 in EOMA cells, and enhanced Bax expression, but downregulated Bcl-2 (p < 0.05). Conclusion: These results suggest that TMP enhances the inhibitory influence of Pro p-mTOR and pp-70S6 in EOMA cells in a dose-dependent manner. Thus, TMP may enhance Pro-induced inhibition of the growth of endothelial cells, and promote apoptosis through suppression of activation of PI3K/AKT signal route. These findings provide a theoretical basis for the clinical application of TMP/Pro combination for the treatment of hemangioma

An Incremental Unified Framework for Small Defect Inspection

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven defect inspection is pivotal in industrial manufacturing. Yet, many methods, tailored to specific pipelines, grapple with diverse product portfolios and evolving processes. Addressing this, we present the Incremental Unified Framework (IUF), which can reduce the feature conflict problem when continuously integrating new objects in the pipeline, making it advantageous in object-incremental learning scenarios. Employing a state-of-the-art transformer, we introduce Object-Aware Self-Attention (OASA) to delineate distinct semantic boundaries. Semantic Compression Loss (SCL) is integrated to optimize non-primary semantic space, enhancing network adaptability for novel objects. Additionally, we prioritize retaining the features of established objects during weight updates. Demonstrating prowess in both image and pixel-level defect inspection, our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance, proving indispensable for dynamic and scalable industrial inspections. Our code will be released at \url{https://github.com/jqtangust/IUF}

The new genetic environment of cfr on plasmid pBS-02 in a Bacillus strain

Sir, The gene cfr, encoding a 23S rRNA methyltransferase, confers resistance to five chemically unrelated antimicrobial classes, including phenicols, lincosamides, oxazolidinones, pleuromutilins and streptogramin A (PhLOPSA), and has been observed mainly in staphylococcal isolates over the past decade.1–3 Our previous study reported a cfr-carrying plasmid, pBS-01, in a novel strain (BS-01) of a Bacillus species isolated from a pig farm in China.4 In our routine surveillance study on antimicrobial resistance in farm animals in 2010, another florfenicol and chloramphenicol-resistant Bacillus species strain (named BS-02) from swine faeces was identified. Gram staining, sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA and API 50CH testing associated with the API 20E system (bioMérieux, France) showed that BS-02 had an identical profile to that of strain BS-01, which suggested that BS-02 also belongs to a novel Bacillus species. Despite their identical profiles, more than six PFGE band differences were observed between BS-01 and BS-02 (data not shown), indicating that they belong to different clonal types of the same species