Balanced Order Batching with Task-Oriented Graph Clustering

Balanced order batching problem (BOBP) arises from the process of warehouse picking in Cainiao, the largest logistics platform in China. Batching orders together in the picking process to form a single picking route, reduces travel distance. The reason for its importance is that order picking is a labor intensive process and, by using good batching methods, substantial savings can be obtained. The BOBP is a NP-hard combinational optimization problem and designing a good problem-specific heuristic under the quasi-real-time system response requirement is non-trivial. In this paper, rather than designing heuristics, we propose an end-to-end learning and optimization framework named Balanced Task-orientated Graph Clustering Network (BTOGCN) to solve the BOBP by reducing it to balanced graph clustering optimization problem. In BTOGCN, a task-oriented estimator network is introduced to guide the type-aware heterogeneous graph clustering networks to find a better clustering result related to the BOBP objective. Through comprehensive experiments on single-graph and multi-graphs, we show: 1) our balanced task-oriented graph clustering network can directly utilize the guidance of target signal and outperforms the two-stage deep embedding and deep clustering method; 2) our method obtains an average 4.57m and 0.13m picking distance ("m" is the abbreviation of the meter (the SI base unit of length)) reduction than the expert-designed algorithm on single and multi-graph set and has a good generalization ability to apply in practical scenario.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Progress on adaptive optics for multimodal OCT and confocal microscopy

We present our progress on image-guided (sensor-less) adaptive optics for multi-modal imaging of retinal tissue using high numerical aperture OCT and confocal microscopy using a custom developed instrument. Images of ex vivo tissues are compared to data acquired in vivo

Scutellarin Ameliorates Renal Injury via Increasing CCN1 Expression and Suppressing NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation in Hyperuricemic Mice

Considerable evidences have indicated that elevated uric acid (UA) was involved in renal tubular injury leading to hyperuricemic nephropathy (HN). Scutellarin is a biologically active flavonoid derived from the Chinese traditional herb Erigeron breviscapus Hand-Mazz, which has been widely used in the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. In the present study, we analyzed the effect of scutellarin on HN, by using C57BL/6 mice and human renal tubular epithelial cell line HK-2 which was subjected to adenine/potassium oxonate and UA to mimic a HN injury. The HN mice showed a significant decrease in renal function with the increased SCr and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) (p < 0.05). Hematoxylin-eosin staining results showed a histological injury in HN mice kidney tissues with severe tubular damage. Scutellarin dose dependently alleviated the renal injury of the HN model (p < 0.05), and a dose of 20 mg/kg/day remarkably reduced the Scr level (26.10 +/- 3.23 mu mol/ml vs. 48.39 +/- 7.51 mu mol/ml, p < 0.05) and BUN (151.12 +/- 30.24 mmol/L vs. 210.43 +/- 45.67 mmol/L, p < 0.05) compared with the HN model group. Similarly, scutellarin decreased NGAL, Kim-1, cystatin C, and IL-18 protein expression levels in HN mouse (p < 0.05). Overexpressed CCN1 could not induce NLRP3 inflammasome activation, with no change of mRNA and protein expression levels of NLRP3, ASC, and pro-caspase-1 compared with the control HK-2. However, HK-2 showed a significant NLRP3 inflammasome activation and apoptosis. Importantly, knockdown of CCN1 not only aggravated NLRP3 inflammasome activation and apoptosis but also abrogated the protective effect of scutellarin in UA-induced HK-2 injury. Thus, scutellarin might alleviate HN progression via a mechanism involved in CCN1 regulation on NLRP3 inflammasome activation

The Advantage of Low-Delta Electroencephalogram Phase Feature for Reconstructing the Center-Out Reaching Hand Movements

It is an emerging frontier of research on the use of neural signals for prosthesis control, in order to restore lost function to amputees and patients after spinal cord injury. Compared to the invasive neural signal based brain-machine interface (BMI), a non-invasive alternative, i.e., the electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BMI would be more widely accepted by the patients above. Ideally, a real-time continuous neuroprosthestic control is required for practical applications. However, conventional EEG-based BMIs mainly deal with the discrete brain activity classification. Until recently, the literature has reported several attempts for achieving the real-time continuous control by reconstructing the continuous movement parameters (e.g., speed, position, etc.) from the EEG recordings, and the low-frequency band EEG is consistently reported to encode the continuous motor control information. Previous studies with executed movement tasks have extensively relied on the amplitude representation of such slow oscillations of EEG signals for building models to decode kinematic parameters. Inspired by the recent successes of instantaneous phase of low-frequency invasive brain signals in the motor control and sensory processing domains, this study examines the extension of such a slow-oscillation phase representation to the reconstructing two-dimensional hand movements, with the non-invasive EEG signals for the first time. The data for analysis are collected on five healthy subjects performing 2D hand center-out reaching along four directions in two sessions. On representative channels over the cortices encoding the execution information of reaching movements, we show that the low-delta EEG phase representation is characterized by higher signal-to-noise ratio and stronger modulation by the movement tasks, compared to the low-delta EEG amplitude representation. Furthermore, we have tested the low-delta EEG phase representation with two commonly used linear decoding models. The results demonstrate that the low-delta EEG phase based decoders lead to superior performance for 2D executed movement reconstruction to its amplitude based counterparts, as well as the other-frequency band amplitude and power based features. Thus, our study contributes to improve the movement reconstruction from EEG by introducing a new feature set based on the low-delta EEG phase patterns, and demonstrates its potential for continuous fine motion control of neuroprostheses

Development of genomic phenotype and immunophenotype of acute respiratory distress syndrome using autophagy and metabolism-related genes.

BackgroundDistinguishing ARDS phenotypes is of great importance for its precise treatment. In the study, we attempted to ascertain its phenotypes based on metabolic and autophagy-related genes and infiltrated immune cells.MethodsTranscription datasets of ARDS patients were obtained from Gene expression omnibus (GEO), autophagy and metabolic-related genes were from the Human Autophagy Database and the GeneCards Database, respectively. Autophagy and metabolism-related differentially expressed genes (AMRDEGs) were further identified by machine learning and processed for constructing the nomogram and the risk prediction model. Functional enrichment analyses of differentially expressed genes were performed between high- and low-risk groups. According to the protein-protein interaction network, these hub genes closely linked to increased risk of ARDS were identified with CytoHubba. ssGSEA and CIBERSORT was applied to analyze the infiltration pattern of immune cells in ARDS. Afterwards, immunologically characterized and molecular phenotypes were constructed according to infiltrated immune cells and hub genes.ResultsA total of 26 AMRDEGs were obtained, and CTSB and EEF2 were identified as crucial AMRDEGs. The predictive capability of the risk score, calculated based on the expression levels of CTSB and EEF2, was robust for ARDS in both the discovery cohort (AUC = 1) and the validation cohort (AUC = 0.826). The mean risk score was determined to be 2.231332, and based on this score, patients were classified into high-risk and low-risk groups. 371 differential genes in high- and low-risk groups were analyzed. ITGAM, TYROBP, ITGB2, SPI1, PLEK, FGR, MPO, S100A12, HCK, and MYC were identified as hub genes. A total of 12 infiltrated immune cells were differentially expressed and have correlations with hub genes. According to hub genes and implanted immune cells, ARDS patients were divided into two different molecular phenotypes (Group 1: n = 38; Group 2: n = 19) and two immune phenotypes (Cluster1: n = 22; Cluster2: n = 35), respectively.ConclusionThis study picked up hub genes of ARDS related to autophagy and metabolism and clustered ARDS patients into different molecular phenotypes and immunophenotypes, providing insights into the precision medicine of treating patients with ARDS

Common Molecular Etiologies Are Rare in Nonsyndromic Tibetan Chinese Patients with Hearing Impairment

Background: Thirty thousand infants are born every year with congenital hearing impairment in mainland China. Racial and regional factors are important in clinical diagnosis of genetic deafness. However, molecular etiology of hearing impairment in the Tibetan Chinese population living in the Tibetan Plateau has not been investigated. To provide appropriate genetic testing and counseling to Tibetan families, we investigated molecular etiology of nonsyndromic deafness in this population. Methods: A total of 114 unrelated deaf Tibetan children from the Tibet Autonomous Region were enrolled. Five prominent deafness-related genes, GJB2, SLC26A4, GJB6, POU3F4, and mtDNA 12S rRNA, were analyzed. Inner ear development was evaluated by temporal CT. A total of 106 Tibetan hearing normal individuals were included as genetic controls. For radiological comparison, 120 patients, mainly of Han ethnicity, with sensorineural hearing loss were analyzed by temporal CT. Results: None of the Tibetan patients carried diallelic GJB2 or SLC26A4 mutations. Two patients with a history of aminoglycoside usage carried homogeneous mtDNA 12S rRNA A1555G mutation. Two controls were homozygous for 12S rRNA A1555G. There were no mutations in GJB6 or POU3F4. A diagnosis of inner ear malformation was made in 20.18 % of the Tibetan patients and 21.67 % of the Han deaf group. Enlarged vestibular aqueduct, the most common inner ear deformity, was not found in theTibetan patients, but was seen in 18.33 % of the Han patients. Common molecular etiologies

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data