Photoemission study of some novel materials: rare earth/transition metal interface, Ba06K04BiO3 and AlPdMn

Synchrotron radiation photoemission spectroscopy and low energy electron diffraction (LEED) are applied to explore several novel materials: (a) Ce epitaxial growth on W (110) surfaces; (b) Eu epitaxial growth on Ta (110) surfaces; (c) Sm epitaxial growth on Ta (110) surfaces; (d) quasicrystalline AlPdMn; (e) superconducting Ba[subscript]1-xK[subscript] xBiO[subscript]3. In the case of rare earth overlayers on transition metal surface, resonance photoemission spectroscopy is used to enhance the 4f features. The metal surface phase transition is investigated on an atomic-scale. In the case of quasicrystalline AlPdMn and superconducting Ba[subscript]1-xK[subscript] xBiO[subscript]3 the electronic structures are investigated by angle-resolved photoemission;We have grown thin Ce films epitaxially on W(110) up to multiple layers. In the first monolayer, a continuous [gamma]-[alpha]-like phase transition is observed. The epitaxial orientation is the Nishiyama-Wassermann type. Above one monolayer the film transforms to normal [gamma] phase Ce with a 30 degree rotational phase transition. The thick film is unusually oriented with Ce (011) parallel to the substrate (110) (Homma-Yang-Schuller orientation);Photoemission and LEED studies of Eu(110) surfaces have successfully determined that the Eu(110) surface exhibits an fcc-bcc-like phase transition. The Eu(110) surface top layer is reconstructed to hexagonal-close-packed plane. This surface phase transition might be similar to the bulk martensitic phase transitions of bcc metals;Combining both photoemission and LEED observations we find a Sm surface divalent-to-trivalent phase transition occurred on the Ta(110) substrate. At submonolayer coverage the surface is divalent with no ordered overlayer structure. The single monolayer Sm overlayer transfers from divalent to trivalent and the structure is ordered hexagonal. The lattice is expanded 6% relative to the ideal close-packed Sm(0001) surface. The second monolayer is divalent and this top layer is reconstructed. The reconstruction of the surface top layer results a 5 x 5 LEED pattern;The angular-resolved energy distributions for photoelectrons emitted from the fivefold surface of single crystal icosahedral AlPdMn are presented. A quasi-periodic upward dispersion of 300 meV of a spectral feature at 2.3 eV binding energy is observed with 13 eV photon energy. A distinct pseudo gap feature is observed with a density of states near the Fermi level that decreases as a power Law; LEED studies confirm the existence of quasicrystalline order at the surface;The electronic structure of Ba[subscript]0.6K[subscript]0.4BiO[subscript]3 is investigated by angle-resolved photoemission on a single crystal (001) surface. The results show metallic character with a featureless low density of states within 1.5 eV of the Fermi level. Most of the DOS is located between 1.5 and 5.5 eV binding energy below E[subscript] F. Three flat bandlike features in between about 2.6 eV and 5.0 eV are observed. A fourth weak feature around 6.6 eV is also identified. Compared with the LAPW band structure calculation, there is a rigid downward shift of the complete band structure by an energy of order 1 eV and K doping might introduce disorder features

Spatial Influence of Geographical Factors on Soil Erosion in Fuyang County, China

AbstractThe effect of geographical factors on soil erosion is an important aspect of the monitoring environment changes. The spatial relationship between soil erosion and its geographical factors was carried out. The results showed that soil erosion exhibited high selectivity of geographical factors. 94.5% of soil erosion occurred in areas less than 500 m, 85.3% presented on the areas between 15°- 35°, 57.2% distributed on southern slope, and 76.8% of strong erosion were found in garden land. It provided a basis for governing soil erosion, which was an important significance to local economic development

Real-Time Rotation-Invariant Face Detection with Progressive Calibration Networks

Rotation-invariant face detection, i.e. detecting faces with arbitrary rotation-in-plane (RIP) angles, is widely required in unconstrained applications but still remains as a challenging task, due to the large variations of face appearances. Most existing methods compromise with speed or accuracy to handle the large RIP variations. To address this problem more efficiently, we propose Progressive Calibration Networks (PCN) to perform rotation-invariant face detection in a coarse-to-fine manner. PCN consists of three stages, each of which not only distinguishes the faces from non-faces, but also calibrates the RIP orientation of each face candidate to upright progressively. By dividing the calibration process into several progressive steps and only predicting coarse orientations in early stages, PCN can achieve precise and fast calibration. By performing binary classification of face vs. non-face with gradually decreasing RIP ranges, PCN can accurately detect faces with full $360^{\circ}$ RIP angles. Such designs lead to a real-time rotation-invariant face detector. The experiments on multi-oriented FDDB and a challenging subset of WIDER FACE containing rotated faces in the wild show that our PCN achieves quite promising performance.Comment: Accepted by The IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2018). Code: \url{https://github.com/Jack-CV/PCN

Double-dose icotinib may induce the emergence of the EGFR exon 20 T790M mutation in non-small cell lung cancer patients harboring EGFR-sensitive mutation

BackgroundAcquired resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) inevitably occurs in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients harboring EGFR-sensitive mutations. There are approximately half of the patients who developed resistance to EGFR-TKIs treatment, the mechanism of which remains undiscovered. We occasionally found that double-dose icotinib as further-line salvage treatment may induce the emerging mutation of EGFR exon 20 T790M in NSCLC patients. The present study, therefore, was conducted to explore the probability of the emerging T790M mutation after exposure to double-dose icotinib in metastatic NSCLC patients.Patients and MethodsMetastatic NSCLC patients who received double-dose icotinib as salvage treatment after progression on first-generation TKIs and systematic chemotherapy were screened. Thereafter, patients who received a repeated next-generation sequencing (NGS) test with tumor sample were further enrolled. The procedure of NGS was performed with the standard criteria. Finally, the clinical characteristics, treatment procedures, and outcomes of eligible patients were reviewed and presented.ResultsThree patients have been detected with the emerging T790M mutation after double-dose icotinib exposure, with a mutation frequency of 19.6%, 8.2%, and 87.5%. During the treatment of targetable TKIs including almonertinib or osimertinib, partial response was observed in two patients, and stable disease was observed in the other. The progression-free survival by targetable TKIs for the patients was 3.7+ months (still in extension), 4.9+ months (still in extension), and 6.3 months. Manageable adverse events were observed during the treatment of TKIs.ConclusionThe results of the present study revealed that the emerging EGFR exon 20 T790M mutation might be induced by double-dose icotinib exposure in further-line treatment. Patients with the emerging T790M mutation responded well to the treatment of targetable TKIs including almonertinib or osimertinib

Learning Representations for New Sound Classes With Continual Self-Supervised Learning

In this paper, we work on a sound recognition system that continually incorporates new sound classes. Our main goal is to develop a framework where the model can be updated without relying on labeled data. For this purpose, we propose adopting representation learning, where an encoder is trained using unlabeled data. This learning framework enables the study and implementation of a practically relevant use case where only a small amount of the labels is available in a continual learning context. We also make the empirical observation that a similarity-based representation learning method within this framework is robust to forgetting even if no explicit mechanism against forgetting is employed. We show that this approach obtains similar performance compared to several distillation-based continual learning methods when employed on self-supervised representation learning methods.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Signal Processing Letter

Clinicopathological significance of SOX4 expression in primary gallbladder carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Aim</p> <p>SOX4, as a member of the SRY-related HMG-box (SOX) transcription factor family, has been demonstrated to be involved in tumorigenesis of many human malignancies; however, its role in primary gallbladder carcinoma (PGC) is still largely unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate SOX4 expression in PGC and its prognostic significance.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>From 1997 to 2006, 136 patients underwent resection for PGC. The median follow-up was 12.8 months. Immunostainings for SOX4 were performed on these archival tissues. The correlation of SOX4 expression with clinicopathological features including survival was analyzed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>SOX4 was expressed in 75.0% (102/136) of PGC but not in the normal epithelium of the gallbladder. In addition, the over-expression of SOX4 was significantly associated with low histologic grade (<it>P </it>= 0.02), low pathologic T stage (<it>P </it>= 0.02), and early clinical stage (<it>P </it>= 0.03). The levels of SOX4 immunostainings in PGC tissues with positive nodal metastasis were also significantly lower than those without (<it>P </it>= 0.01). Moreover, Kaplan-Meier curves showed that SOX4 over-expression was significantly related to better overall (<it>P </it>= 0.008) and disease-free survival (<it>P </it>= 0.01). Furthermore, multivariate analyses showed that SOX4 expression was an independent risk factor for both overall (<it>P </it>= 0.03, hazard ratio, 3.682) and disease-free survival (<it>P </it>= 0.04, hazard ratio, 2.215).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our data indicate for the first time that the over-expression of SOX4 in PGC was significantly correlated with favorable clinicopathologic features and was an independent prognostic factor for better overall and disease-free survival in patients. Therefore, SOX4 might be an auxiliary parameter for predicting malignant behavior for PGC.</p> <p>Virtual slides</p> <p>The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: <url>http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/1534825818694957</url>.</p