SYENet: A Simple Yet Effective Network for Multiple Low-Level Vision Tasks with Real-time Performance on Mobile Device

With the rapid development of AI hardware accelerators, applying deep learning-based algorithms to solve various low-level vision tasks on mobile devices has gradually become possible. However, two main problems still need to be solved: task-specific algorithms make it difficult to integrate them into a single neural network architecture, and large amounts of parameters make it difficult to achieve real-time inference. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel network, SYENet, with only $~$6K parameters, to handle multiple low-level vision tasks on mobile devices in a real-time manner. The SYENet consists of two asymmetrical branches with simple building blocks. To effectively connect the results by asymmetrical branches, a Quadratic Connection Unit(QCU) is proposed. Furthermore, to improve performance, a new Outlier-Aware Loss is proposed to process the image. The proposed method proves its superior performance with the best PSNR as compared with other networks in real-time applications such as Image Signal Processing(ISP), Low-Light Enhancement(LLE), and Super-Resolution(SR) with 2K60FPS throughput on Qualcomm 8 Gen 1 mobile SoC(System-on-Chip). Particularly, for ISP task, SYENet got the highest score in MAI 2022 Learned Smartphone ISP challenge

Micro Processes Study on Structure Change in N-Pentadecane Thin Film Adsorbed on Substrate: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation

It is experimentally found that adsorbed thin film consists of chain molecules changes its structure when it is heated at temperature lower than the melting point; but the molecular micro processes are remaining unknown; here we investigated the micro processes of structure change in n-pentadecane thin film adsorbed on substrate by use of molecular dynamics simulation. We found that, at temperature 200K (lower than the melting point), the isotropic amorphous thin film becomes a crystalline thin film in which molecule chains parallel to the substrate with relaxation time of about 12000ps; however, at temperature 290K (also lower than the melting point), the thin film structure changed essentially, the molecule chains changed their orientation from parallel to the substrate becomes nearly perpendicular to the substrate with relaxation time of about 5000ps

Lnc RNA HOTAIR functions as a competing endogenous RNA to regulate HER2 expression by sponging miR-331-3p in gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: Accumulating evidence indicates that the long non-coding RNA HOTAIR plays a critical role in cancer progression and metastasis. However, the overall biological role and clinical significance of HOTAIR in gastric carcinogenesis remains largely unknown. METHODS: HOTAIR expression was measured in 78 paired cancerous and noncancerous tissue samples by real-time PCR. The effects of HOTAIR on gastric cancer cells were studied by overexpression and RNA interference approaches in vitro and in vivo. Insights of the mechanism of competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) were gained from bioinformatic analysis, luciferase assays and RNA binding protein immunoprecipitation (RIP). The positive HOTAIR/HER2 interaction was identified and verified by immunohistochemistry assay and bivariate correlation analysis. RESULTS: HOTAIR upregulation was associated with larger tumor size, advanced pathological stage and extensive metastasis, and also correlated with shorter overall survival of gastric cancer patients. Furthermore, HOTAIR overexpression promoted the proliferation, migration and invasion of gastric carcinoma cells, while HOTAIR depletion inhibited both cell invasion and cell viability, and induced growth arrest in vitro and in vivo. In particular, HOTAIR may act as a ceRNA, effectively becoming a sink for miR-331-3p, thereby modulating the derepression of HER2 and imposing an additional level of post-transcriptional regulation. Finally, the positive HOTAIR/HER2 correlation was significantly associated with advanced gastric cancers. CONCLUSIONS: HOTAIR overexpression represents a biomarker of poor prognosis in gastric cancer, and may confer malignant phenotype to tumor cells. The ceRNA regulatory network involving HOTAIR and the positive interaction between HOTAIR and HER2 may contribute to a better understanding of gastric cancer pathogenesis and facilitate the development of lncRNA-directed diagnostics and therapeutics against this disease

Variation of specific proteins, mitochondria and fatty acid composition in gill of Scylla serrata (Crustacea, Decapoda) under low temperature adaptation

【英文摘要】The mud crab Scylla serrata is an important commercial crustacean inhabiting estuarine water along the coast of southeast China. Metabolism in the gill is affected continuously by fluctuating water temperature and, therefore, the ability to cope with temperature change is essential to maintain physiological function. This experiment was conducted to help understand the mechanism of low temperature adaptation in S. serrata gill. In this study, 40 healthy juvenile male S. serrata from the same broodstock were grouped randomly into four groups, which were kept at 5 °C, 10 °C, 15 °C and 27 °C, with the same feeding regime during a 3-week adaptation period. Two-dimensional electrophoresis of the proteome was conducted to separate the specific proteins responsible for low temperature adaptation. Variations in the mitochondria were observed using transmission electron microscopy, and fatty acid composition was determined using gas chromatography. The results showed that different numbers of specific proteins were expressed under different low temperature adaptation, with more expressed at 5 °C and 10 °C than at 15 °C. Mitochondrial morphology also varied under different low temperature adaptation, but there was no linear relationship between microbial density and adaptation temperature. The composition of different fatty acids in the gill varied considerably with adaptation temperature, but elongation of the carbon chain and transition from fatty acids occurred at lower temperatures. Thus, changes in the specific proteins, mitochondria and fatty acid composition of the gill were the positive effects of low temperature on metabolism, leading to improved adaptation ability in S. serrata

Superior performance of aptamer in tumor penetration over antibody : implication of aptamer-based theranostics in solid tumors

Insufficient penetration of therapeutic agents into tumor tissues results in inadequate drug distribution and lower intracellular concentration of drugs, leading to the increase of drug resistance and resultant failure of cancer treatment. Targeted drug delivery to solid tumors followed by complete drug penetration and durable retention will significantly improve clinical outcomes of cancer therapy. Monoclonal antibodies have been commonly used in clinic for cancer treatment, but their limitation of penetrating into tumor tissues still remains because of their large size. Aptamers, as "chemical antibodies", are 15-20 times smaller than antibodies. To explore whether aptamers are superior to antibodies in terms of tumor penetration, we carried out the first comprehensive study to compare the performance of an EpCAM aptamer with an EpCAM antibody in theranostic applications. Penetration and retention were studied in in vitro three-dimensional tumorspheres, in vivo live animal imaging and mouse colorectal cancer xenograft model. We found that the EpCAM aptamer can not only effectively penetrate into the tumorsphere cores but can also be retained by tumor sphere cells for at least 24 h, while limited tumor penetration by EpCAM antibody was observed after 4 h incubation. As observed from in vivo live animal imaging, EpCAM aptamers displayed a maximum tumor uptake at around 10 min followed by a rapid clearance after 80 min, while the signal of peak uptake and disappearance of antibody appeared at 3 h and 6 h after intravenous injection, respectively. The signal of PEGylated EpCAM aptamers in xenograft tumors was sustained for 26 h, which was 4.3-fold longer than that of the EpCAM antibody. Consistently, there were 1.67-fold and 6.6-fold higher accumulation of PEGylated aptamer in xenograft tumors than that of antibody, at 3 h and 24 h after intravenous administration, respectively. In addition, the aptamer achieved at least a 4-time better tumor penetration in xenograft tumors than that of the antibody at a 200 μm distances from the blood vessels 3 h after intravenous injection. Taken together, these data indicate that aptmers are superior to antibodies in cancer theranostics due to their better tumor penetration, more homogeneous distribution and longer retention in tumor sites. Thus, aptamers are promising agents for targeted tumor therapeutics and molecular imaging

Conditionally Immortalized Mouse Embryonic Fibroblasts Retain Proliferative Activity without Compromising Multipotent Differentiation Potential

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multipotent cells which reside in many tissues and can give rise to multiple lineages including bone, cartilage and adipose. Although MSCs have attracted significant attention for basic and translational research, primary MSCs have limited life span in culture which hampers MSCs' broader applications. Here, we investigate if mouse mesenchymal progenitors can be conditionally immortalized with SV40 large T antigen and maintain long-term cell proliferation without compromising their multipotency. Using the system which expresses SV40 large T antigen flanked with Cre/loxP sites, we demonstrate that mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) can be efficiently immortalized by SV40 large T antigen. The conditionally immortalized MEFs (iMEFs) exhibit an enhanced proliferative activity and maintain long-term cell proliferation, which can be reversed by Cre recombinase. The iMEFs express most MSC markers and retain multipotency as they can differentiate into osteogenic, chondrogenic and adipogenic lineages under appropriate differentiation conditions in vitro and in vivo. The removal of SV40 large T reduces the differentiation potential of iMEFs possibly due to the decreased progenitor expansion. Furthermore, the iMEFs are apparently not tumorigenic when they are subcutaneously injected into athymic nude mice. Thus, the conditionally immortalized iMEFs not only maintain long-term cell proliferation but also retain the ability to differentiate into multiple lineages. Our results suggest that the reversible immortalization strategy using SV40 large T antigen may be an efficient and safe approach to establishing long-term cell culture of primary mesenchymal progenitors for basic and translational research, as well as for potential clinical applications

Learned Smartphone ISP on Mobile GPUs with Deep Learning, Mobile AI & AIM 2022 Challenge: Report

The role of mobile cameras increased dramatically over the past few years, leading to more and more research in automatic image quality enhancement and RAW photo processing. In this Mobile AI challenge, the target was to develop an efficient end-to-end AI-based image signal processing (ISP) pipeline replacing the standard mobile ISPs that can run on modern smartphone GPUs using TensorFlow Lite. The participants were provided with a large-scale Fujifilm UltraISP dataset consisting of thousands of paired photos captured with a normal mobile camera sensor and a professional 102MP medium-format FujiFilm GFX100 camera. The runtime of the resulting models was evaluated on the Snapdragon's 8 Gen 1 GPU that provides excellent acceleration results for the majority of common deep learning ops. The proposed solutions are compatible with all recent mobile GPUs, being able to process Full HD photos in less than 20-50 milliseconds while achieving high fidelity results. A detailed description of all models developed in this challenge is provided in this paper

Recommender Systems

The ongoing rapid expansion of the Internet greatly increases the necessity of effective recommender systems for filtering the abundant information. Extensive research for recommender systems is conducted by a broad range of communities including social and computer scientists, physicists, and interdisciplinary researchers. Despite substantial theoretical and practical achievements, unification and comparison of different approaches are lacking, which impedes further advances. In this article, we review recent developments in recommender systems and discuss the major challenges. We compare and evaluate available algorithms and examine their roles in the future developments. In addition to algorithms, physical aspects are described to illustrate macroscopic behavior of recommender systems. Potential impacts and future directions are discussed. We emphasize that recommendation has a great scientific depth and combines diverse research fields which makes it of interests for physicists as well as interdisciplinary researchers.Comment: 97 pages, 20 figures (To appear in Physics Reports

3-(3-Pyridylmethylidene)-2-indolinone Reduces the Severity of Colonic Injury in a Murine Model of Experimental Colitis

Nrf2 is the key transcription factor regulating the antioxidant response which is crucial for cytoprotection against extracellular stresses. Numerous in vivo studies indicate that Nrf2 plays a protective role in anti-inflammatory response. 3-(3-Pyridylmethylidene)-2-indolinone (PMID) is a synthesized derivative of 2-indolinone compounds. Our previous study suggested that PMID induces the activation of Nrf2/ARE pathway, then protecting against oxidative stress-mediated cell death. However, little is known regarding the anti-inflammatory properties of PMID in severe inflammatory phenotypes. In the present study we determined if PMID treatment protects mice from dextran sodium sulphate- (DSS-) induced colitis. The result suggests that treatment with PMID prior to colitis induction significantly reduced body weight loss, shortened colon length, and decreased disease activity index compared to control mice. Histopathological analysis of the colon revealed attenuated inflammation in PMID pretreated animals. The levels of inflammatory markers in colon tissue and serum were reduced associated with inhibition of NF-κB activation. The expression levels of Nrf2-dependent genes such as HO-1, NQO1, and Nrf2 were increased in PMID pretreated mice. However, PMID pretreatment did not prevent DSS-induced colitis in Nrf2 knockout mice. These data indicate that PMID pretreatment in mice confers protection against DSS-induced colitis in Nrf2-dependent manner, suggesting a potential role of PMID in anti-inflammatory response