Weighted-Sampling Audio Adversarial Example Attack

Recent studies have highlighted audio adversarial examples as a ubiquitous threat to state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition systems. Thorough studies on how to effectively generate adversarial examples are essential to prevent potential attacks. Despite many research on this, the efficiency and the robustness of existing works are not yet satisfactory. In this paper, we propose~\textit{weighted-sampling audio adversarial examples}, focusing on the numbers and the weights of distortion to reinforce the attack. Further, we apply a denoising method in the loss function to make the adversarial attack more imperceptible. Experiments show that our method is the first in the field to generate audio adversarial examples with low noise and high audio robustness at the minute time-consuming level.Comment: https://aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2020GB/AAAI-LiuXL.9260.pd

Quantum coherent plasmon in silver nanowires: a real-time TDDFT study

A plasmon-like phenomenon, arising from coinciding resonant excitations of different electronic characteristics in 1D silver nanowires, has been proposed based on theoretical linear absorption spectra. Such a molecular plasmon holds the potential for anisotropic nanoplasmonic applications. However, its dynamical nature remains unexplored. In this work, quantum dynamics of longitudinal and transverse excitations in 1D silver nanowires are carried out within the real-time time-dependent density functional theory framework. The anisotropic electron dynamics confirm that the transverse transitions of different electronic characteristics are collective in nature and oscillate in-phase with respect to each other. Analysis of the time evolutions of participating one-electron wave functions suggests that the transverse transitions form a coherent wave packet that gives rise to a strong plasmon resonance at the molecular level

Surgical outcomes of endoscopic thyroidectomy approaches for thyroid cancer: a systematic review and network meta-analysis

ObjectivesThis network meta-analysis assesses the outcomes of seven endoscopic approaches, offering valuable insights for researchers and practitioners in choosing the best method for thyroid cancer patients.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted in the PubMed, Embase and Web of Science databases up to March 2023. The analysis included seven endoscopic approaches, with a focus on their respective outcomes through network meta-analysis.ResultsThis meta-analysis included 44 studies involving 8,672 patients. The axillo-bilateral breast approach (ABBA) and unilateral axillo-breast approach (UABA) showed advantages in terms of reduced operative time compared to other approaches (MD = 19.66 minutes, 95% CI = -31.66 to 70.98; MD = 30.32 minutes, 95% CI = -1.45 to 62.09, respectively). The UABA and anterior chest approach (ACA) exhibited superiority in controlling intraoperative bleeding (MD = -3.37 mL, 95% CI = -22.58 to 15.85; MD = -13.77 mL, 95% CI = -28.85 1.31, respectively). UABA and ACA also showed advantages in reducing hospital stays (MD = -0.39 days, 95% CI = -1.48 to 0.71; MD = -0.26 days, 95% CI = -1.33 to 0.81, respectively). The transoral approach (OA) yielded results comparable to those of conventional open thyroidectomy (COT) and outperformed other endoscopic surgeries with regards to lymph node retrieval and metastatic lymph node assessment. For the stimulated serum thyroglobulin (TG) levels, no significant difference was observed between bilateral axillo-breast approach (BABA) and OA compared to COT. However, chest-breast approach (CBA) showed significantly lower levels than COT (MD=-0.40 ng/ml, 95% CI =-0.72 to -0.09). Patients in the gasless unilateral transaxillary approach (GUA) group experienced a significant improvement in cosmetic satisfaction (MD=-2.08, 95% CI =-3.35 to -0.82). Importantly, no significant difference was observed in the incidence of surgical complications between endoscopic thyroidectomy and COT.ConclusionEndoscopic thyroid surgery is a safe and effective choice for thyroid cancer patients. Different approaches have their advantages, allowing personalized selection based on the patient’s needs. ABBA and UABA have shorter operative times, while UABA and ACA excel at controlling bleeding and shortening hospital stays. OA shows promise for lymph node assessment. These findings contribute to the growing evidence supporting endoscopic methods, expanding treatment options for thyroid cancer patients

A proteome map of primary cultured rat Schwann cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Schwann cells (SCs) are the principal glial cells of the peripheral nervous system with a wide range of biological functions. SCs play a key role in peripheral nerve regeneration and are involved in several hereditary peripheral neuropathies. The objective of this study was to gain new insight into the whole protein composition of SCs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two-dimensional liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (2D LC-MS/MS) was performed to identify the protein expressions in primary cultured SCs of rats. We identified a total of 1,232 proteins, which were categorized into 20 functional classes. We also used quantitative real time RT-PCR and Western blot analysis to validate some of proteomics-identified proteins.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We showed for the first time the proteome map of SCs. Our data could serve as a reference library to provide basic information for understanding SC biology.</p

Increased Rho kinase activity predicts worse cardiovascular outcome in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients

Background: Few clinical studies have assessed Rho kinase (ROCK) in patients with dia­betes mellitus (DM) and ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). This study aimed to determine whether ROCK activity in circulating leukocytes is increased in STEMI patients with DM and whether ROCK activity predicts the onset of cardiovascular events. Methods: Blood samples were collected from 60 STEMI patients, divided into non-diabetes mellitus (NDM) and DM groups. Main outcome measures were all-cause mortality, readmission for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), congestive heart failure (CHF), or stroke from pres­entation to approximately 5 years (mean: 41.3 ± 19.6 months; range: 3–60 months). Results: Compared with the NDM group (n = 34), ROCK1 activity was greater in the DM group (n = 26) (33.14 ± 11.31 vs. 26.24 ± 11.06, p = 0.021), while ROCK2 activity was not different between the groups. There occurred 3 deaths, and 10 readmissions with ACS, 4 with CHF and 2 with stroke during the follow-up period. Patients with a high ROCK1 activity on admission had a 3-fold risk of cardiovascular events (RR 3.15, 95% CI 1.04–9.58) compared with those with low ROCK1 activity. Patients with history of stroke had almost a 4-fold risk of cardiovascular events (RR 3.74; 95% CI 1.02–13.80). Conclusions: ROCK1 activity was increased in STEMI patients with DM, which suggests that ROCK1 activity may be a useful diagnostic and prognostic marker of cardiovascular events for these patients. ROCK1 activity might help identify a subset of STEMI patients at particularly high risk

No driver, No Regulation? --Online Legal Driving Behavior Monitoring for Self-driving Vehicles

Defined traffic laws must be respected by all vehicles. However, it is essential to know which behaviors violate the current laws, especially when a responsibility issue is involved in an accident. This brings challenges of digitizing human-driver-oriented traffic laws and monitoring vehicles' behaviors continuously. To address these challenges, this paper aims to digitize traffic law comprehensively and provide an application for online monitoring of legal driving behavior for autonomous vehicles. This paper introduces a layered trigger domain-based traffic law digitization architecture with digitization-classified discussions and detailed atomic propositions for online monitoring. The principal laws on a highway and at an intersection are taken as examples, and the corresponding logic and atomic propositions are introduced in detail. Finally, the digitized traffic laws are verified on the Chinese highway and intersection datasets, and defined thresholds are further discussed according to the driving behaviors in the considered dataset. This study can help manufacturers and the government in defining specifications and laws and can also be used as a useful reference in traffic laws compliance decision-making. Source code is available on https://github.com/SOTIF-AVLab/DOTL.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figure

The Chronus Quantum (ChronusQ) Software Package

The Chronus Quantum (ChronusQ) software package is an open source (under the GNU General Public License v2) software infrastructure which targets the solution of challenging problems that arise in ab initio electronic structure theory. Special emphasis is placed on the consistent treatment of time dependence and spin in the electronic wave function, as well as the inclusion of relativistic effects in said treatments. In addition, ChronusQ provides support for the inclusion of uniform finite magnetic fields as external perturbations through the use of gauge-including atomic orbitals (GIAO). ChronusQ is a parallel electronic structure code written in modern C++ which utilizes both message passing (MPI) and shared memory (OpenMP) parallelism. In addition to the examination of the current state of code base itself, a discussion regarding ongoing developments and developer contributions will also be provided.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figure