A Miniature 3-DoF Flexible Parallel Robotic Wrist Using NiTi Wires for Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgery

Gastrointestinal endoscopic surgery (GES) has high requirements for instruments' size and distal dexterity, because of the narrow endoscopic channel and long, tortuous human gastrointestinal tract. This paper utilized Nickel-Titanium (NiTi) wires to develop a miniature 3-DoF (pitch-yaw-translation) flexible parallel robotic wrist (FPRW). Additionally, we assembled an electric knife on the wrist's connection interface and then teleoperated it to perform an endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) on porcine stomachs. The effective performance in each ESD workflow proves that the designed FPRW has sufficient workspace, high distal dexterity, and high positioning accuracy.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022 workshop: Frontiers of Endoluminal Intervention: Clinical opportunities and technical challenge

An effective approach for the dual-resource flexible job shop scheduling problem considering loading and unloading

Many manufacturing systems need more than one type of resource to co-work with. Commonly studied flexible job shop scheduling problems merely consider the main resource such as machines and ignore the impact of other types of resource. As a result, scheduling solutions may not put into practice. This paper therefore studies the dual resource constrained flexible job shop scheduling problem when loading and unloading time (DRFJSP-LU) of the fixtures is considered. It formulates a multi-objective mathematical model to jointly minimize the makespan and the total setup time. Considering the influence of resource requirement similarity among different operations, we propose a similarity-based scheduling algorithm for setup-time reduction (SSA4STR) and then an improved non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) to optimize the DRFJSP-LU. Experimental results show that the SSA4STR can effectively reduce the loading and unloading time of fixtures while ensuring a level of makespan. The experiments also verify that the scheduling solution with multiple resources has a greater guiding effect on production than the scheduling result with a single resource

Detecting Generated Images by Real Images Only

As deep learning technology continues to evolve, the images yielded by generative models are becoming more and more realistic, triggering people to question the authenticity of images. Existing generated image detection methods detect visual artifacts in generated images or learn discriminative features from both real and generated images by massive training. This learning paradigm will result in efficiency and generalization issues, making detection methods always lag behind generation methods. This paper approaches the generated image detection problem from a new perspective: Start from real images. By finding the commonality of real images and mapping them to a dense subspace in feature space, the goal is that generated images, regardless of their generative model, are then projected outside the subspace. As a result, images from different generative models can be detected, solving some long-existing problems in the field. Experimental results show that although our method was trained only by real images and uses 99.9\% less training data than other deep learning-based methods, it can compete with state-of-the-art methods and shows excellent performance in detecting emerging generative models with high inference efficiency. Moreover, the proposed method shows robustness against various post-processing. These advantages allow the method to be used in real-world scenarios

D-Unet: A Dual-encoder U-Net for Image Splicing Forgery Detection and Localization

Recently, many detection methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been proposed for image splicing forgery detection. Most of these detection methods focus on the local patches or local objects. In fact, image splicing forgery detection is a global binary classification task that distinguishes the tampered and non-tampered regions by image fingerprints. However, some specific image contents are hardly retained by CNN-based detection networks, but if included, would improve the detection accuracy of the networks. To resolve these issues, we propose a novel network called dual-encoder U-Net (D-Unet) for image splicing forgery detection, which employs an unfixed encoder and a fixed encoder. The unfixed encoder autonomously learns the image fingerprints that differentiate between the tampered and non-tampered regions, whereas the fixed encoder intentionally provides the direction information that assists the learning and detection of the network. This dual-encoder is followed by a spatial pyramid global-feature extraction module that expands the global insight of D-Unet for classifying the tampered and non-tampered regions more accurately. In an experimental comparison study of D-Unet and state-of-the-art methods, D-Unet outperformed the other methods in image-level and pixel-level detection, without requiring pre-training or training on a large number of forgery images. Moreover, it was stably robust to different attacks.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure

Development of Diagnostic SCAR Markers for Genomic DNA Amplifications in Breast Carcinoma by DNA Cloning of High-GC RAMP-PCR Fragments

Cancer is genetically heterogeneous regarding to molecular genetic characteristics and pathogenic pathways. A wide spectrum of biomarkers, including DNA markers, is used in determining genomic instability, molecular subtype determination and disease prognosis, and estimating sensitivity to different drugs in clinical practice. In a previous study, we developed highly effective DNA markers using improved random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) with high-GC primers, which is a valuable approach for the genetic authentication of medicinal plants. In this study, we applied this effective DNA marker technique to generate genetic fingerprints that detect genomic alterations in human breast cancer tissues and then developed sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) markers. Three SCAR markers (BC10-1, BC13-4 and BC31-2) had high levels of genomic DNA amplification in breast cancer. The PHKG2 and RNF40 genes are either overlapping or close to the sequences of SCAR marker BC13-4, while SCAR marker BC10-1 is in the intron and overlap the DPEP1 gene, suggesting that alterations in the expression of these genes could contribute to cancer progression. Screening of breast cancer cell lines showed that the mRNA expression levels for the PHKG2 and DPEP1 were lower in non-tumorigenic mammary epithelial cell MCF10A, but elevated in other cell lines. The DPEP1 mRNA level in invasive ductal carcinoma specimens was significantly higher than that of the adjacent normal tissues in women. Taken together, high-GC RAMP-PCR provides greater efficacy in measuring genomic DNA amplifications, deletion or copy number variations. Furthermore, SCAR markers BC10-1 and BC13-4 might be useful diagnostic markers for breast cancer carcinomas

Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor affects the distribution and clonality of TRGV and TRDV repertoire of T cells and graft-versus-host disease

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The immune modulatory effect of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) on T cells resulted in an unexpected low incidence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (allo-PBSCT). Recent data indicated that gamma delta⁺T cells might participate in mediating graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. However, whether G-CSF could influence the T cell receptors (TCR) of gamma delta⁺T cells (<it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>repertoire) remains unclear. To further characterize this feature, we compared the distribution and clonality of <it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>repertoire of T cells before and after G-CSF mobilization and investigated the association between the changes of TCR repertoire and GVHD in patients undergoing G-CSF mobilized allo-PBSCT.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) sizes of three <it>TRGV </it>and eight <it>TRDV </it>subfamily genes were analyzed in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 20 donors before and after G-CSF mobilization, using RT-PCR and genescan technique. To determine the expression levels of <it>TRGV </it>subfamily genes, we performed quantitative analysis of <it>TRGV</it>I~III subfamilies by real-time PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The expression levels of three <it>TRGV </it>subfamilies were significantly decreased after G-CSF mobilization (<it>P </it>= 0.015, 0.009 and 0.006, respectively). The pattern of <it>TRGV </it>subfamily expression levels was <it>TRGV</it>II ><it>TRGV </it>I ><it>TRGV </it>III before mobilization, and changed to <it>TRGV </it>I ><it>TRGV </it>II ><it>TRGV </it>III after G-CSF mobilization. The expression frequencies of <it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>subfamilies changed at different levels after G-CSF mobilization. Most <it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>subfamilies revealed polyclonality from pre-G-CSF-mobilized and G-CSF-mobilized samples. Oligoclonality was detected in <it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>subfamilies in 3 donors before mobilization and in another 4 donors after G-CSF mobilization, distributed in <it>TRGV</it>II, <it>TRDV</it>1, <it>TRDV</it>3 and <it>TRDV</it>6, respectively. Significant positive association was observed between the invariable clonality of <it>TRDV</it>1 gene repertoire after G-CSF mobilization and low incidence of GVHD in recipients (<it>P </it>= 0.015, <it>OR </it>= 0.047).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>G-CSF mobilization not only influences the distribution and expression levels of <it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>repertoire, but also changes the clonality of gamma delta⁺T cells. This alteration of <it>TRGV </it>and <it>TRDV </it>repertoire might play a role in mediating GVHD in G-CSF mobilized allo-PBSCT.</p

Long-term nitrogen fertilization decreased the abundance of inorganic phosphate solubilizing bacteria in an alkaline soil

Inorganic phosphate solubilizing bacteria (iPSB) are essential to facilitate phosphorus (P) mobilization in alkaline soil, however, the phylogenetic structure of iPSB communities remains poorly characterized. Thus, we use a reference iPSB database to analyze the distribution of iPSB communities based on 16S rRNA gene illumina sequencing. Additionally, a noval pqqC primer was developed to quantify iPSB abundance. In our study, an alkaline soil with 27-year fertilization treatment was selected. The percentage of iPSB was 1.10 similar to 2.87% per sample, and the dominant iPSB genera were closely related to Arthrobacter, Bacillus, Brevibacterium and Streptomyces. Long-term P fertilization had no significant effect on the abundance of iPSB communities. Rather than P and potassium (K) additions, long-term nitrogen (N) fertilization decreased the iPSB abundance, which was validated by reduced relative abundance of pqqC gene (pqqC/16S). The decreased iPSB abundance was strongly related to pH decline and total N increase, revealing that the long-term N additions may cause pH decline and subsequent P releases relatively decreasing the demands of the iPSB community. The methodology and understanding obtained here provides insights into the ecology of inorganic P solubilizers and how to manipulate for better P use efficiency