Ground-A-Video: Zero-shot Grounded Video Editing using Text-to-image Diffusion Models

Recent endeavors in video editing have showcased promising results in single-attribute editing or style transfer tasks, either by training text-to-video (T2V) models on text-video data or adopting training-free methods. However, when confronted with the complexities of multi-attribute editing scenarios, they exhibit shortcomings such as omitting or overlooking intended attribute changes, modifying the wrong elements of the input video, and failing to preserve regions of the input video that should remain intact. To address this, here we present a novel grounding-guided video-to-video translation framework called Ground-A-Video for multi-attribute video editing. Ground-A-Video attains temporally consistent multi-attribute editing of input videos in a training-free manner without aforementioned shortcomings. Central to our method is the introduction of Cross-Frame Gated Attention which incorporates groundings information into the latent representations in a temporally consistent fashion, along with Modulated Cross-Attention and optical flow guided inverted latents smoothing. Extensive experiments and applications demonstrate that Ground-A-Video's zero-shot capacity outperforms other baseline methods in terms of edit-accuracy and frame consistency. Further results and code are available at our project page (http://ground-a-video.github.io).Comment: Accepted to ICLR 2024, Project Page: http://ground-a-video.github.i

Conversational hierarchy for interaction with virtual assistant

User interfaces for conversations, e.g., with virtual assistants, typically model conversation as a back-and-forth exchange between participants, e.g., without regard to the type or topic of conversation. Under this user interface, a filter, refinement, or query by the user is added as a new inline block or a full-page refresh, making the user interface cumbersome to use. This disclosure describes techniques that model conversation as a hierarchy, e.g., with major and minor conversational turns. The user interface is designed around this hierarchy, and a flow between the front-end and the back-end of conversations informs user interactions and client-side page interactions

Research Update: Recent progress in the development of effective dielectrics for high-output triboelectric nanogenerator

A new energy generating device, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), was discovered in 2012 and thereafter, many applications such as portable power sources and self-powered, appropriate for portable electronic devices. So far, rapid development of device fabrication technologies and mechanical system designs significantly increased the instantaneous output power up to several tens of mW/cm2. This article provides a comprehensive review of effective dielectrics used so far in TENGs for further enhancement in output power, as well as the fundamental issues regarding the materials. Finally, we show some strategies for obtaining the properties that the materials should have as effective dielectrics.ope

Effects of education on low-phosphate diet and phosphate binder intake to control serum phosphate among maintenance hemodialysis patients: A randomized controlled trial.

Background:For phosphate control, patient education is essential due to the limited clearance of phosphate by dialysis. However, well-designed randomized controlled trials about dietary and phosphate binder education have been scarce. Methods:We enrolled maintenance hemodialysis patients and randomized them into an education group (n = 48) or a control group (n = 22). We assessed the patients' drug compliance and their knowledge about the phosphate binder using a questionnaire. Results:The primary goal was to increase the number of patients who reached a calcium-phosphorus product of lower than 55. In the education group, 36 (75.0%) patients achieved the primary goal, as compared with 16 (72.7%) in the control group (P = 0.430). The education increased the proportion of patients who properly took the phosphate binder (22.9% vs. 3.5%, P = 0.087), but not to statistical significance. Education did not affect the amount of dietary phosphate intake per body weight (education vs. control: -1.18 ± 3.54 vs. -0.88 ± 2.04 mg/kg, P = 0.851). However, the dietary phosphate-to-protein ratio tended to be lower in the education group (-0.64 ± 2.04 vs. 0.65 ± 3.55, P = 0.193). The education on phosphate restriction affected neither the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment score (0.17 ± 4.58 vs. -0.86 ± 3.86, P = 0.363) nor the level of dietary protein intake (-0.03 ± 0.33 vs. -0.09 ± 0.18, P = 0.569). Conclusion:Education did not affect the calcium-phosphate product. Education on the proper timing of phosphate binder intake and the dietary phosphate-to-protein ratio showed marginal efficacy

SF3B2 DOWNREGULATION PROTECTS CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM NEURONS FROM INFLAMMATORY INJURY

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic and inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS), characterized by demyelination of axons and neuronal injury. Patients with MS suffer from physical disabilities, vision problems, and even cognitive impairments. Although the immunomodulatory therapy has been widely used in MS patients to mitigate symptoms, there is currently no definite treatment to prevent axonal degeneration, which is associated with long term disability. Splicing factor 3B subunit 2 (SF3B2), a component of the spliceosome complex, has been identified as a potential therapeutic target for neuroprotection. Reduction in SF3B2 protein by RNAi has been shown to be sufficient to preserve rat sensory neuronal cell viability against chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) in vitro1. However, the effect of SF3B2 knockdown on CNS neurons and its underlying mechanism are unknown. In this study, I hypothesized that downregulation of SF3B2 can also protect the CNS neurons against inflammation and explored the molecular pathway by which it exerts protective effects. I used experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a widely utilized in vivo model for neurodegeneration that shows retinal ganglion cell (RGC) loss and optic nerve (ON) injury. I utilized a cell culture system with primary mouse cortical neurons which can recapitulate the inflammatory environment of active lesions in EAE was first optimized, and assayed the effect of decreased SF3B2 in neuroprotection. Data showed that reduction of SF3B2 by intravitreal delivery of AAV2-PHP.eb-SF3B2 shRNA resulted in substantially improved survival of RGCs in EAE mice compared to AAV2-PHP.eb-GFP control (p<0.01). This was associated with higher density of myelinated axons and fewer degenerating axons in their optic nerves. We also found that primary mouse cortical neurons infected with lentiviral SF3B2 shRNA were able to elongate their axons more robustly and their viability was preserved during exposure to inflammatory insult caused by Lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated microglia compared to lentiviral scrambled shRNA control. Further, qPCR data revealed that necroptosis and injury-response upon exposure to inflammatory stress were suppressed by SF3B2 reduction. These findings suggest that SF3B2 can be a promising molecular target to prevent degeneration in CNS neurons from inflammatory toxicity

Synthetic chloride transporters with the binding mode observed in a ClC chloride channel

A series of synthetic molecules bearing the same hydrogen bonding mode observed in StClC were prepared and their transport ability of chloride ion across a lipid membrane was systematically optimized.close4

On the Von Neumann Entropy of Graphs

The von Neumann entropy of a graph is a spectral complexity measure that has recently found applications in complex networks analysis and pattern recognition. Two variants of the von Neumann entropy exist based on the graph Laplacian and normalized graph Laplacian, respectively. Due to its computational complexity, previous works have proposed to approximate the von Neumann entropy, effectively reducing it to the computation of simple node degree statistics. Unfortunately, a number of issues surrounding the von Neumann entropy remain unsolved to date, including the interpretation of this spectral measure in terms of structural patterns, understanding the relation between its two variants, and evaluating the quality of the corresponding approximations. In this paper we aim to answer these questions by first analysing and comparing the quadratic approximations of the two variants and then performing an extensive set of experiments on both synthetic and real-world graphs. We find that 1) the two entropies lead to the emergence of similar structures, but with some significant differences; 2) the correlation between them ranges from weakly positive to strongly negative, depending on the topology of the underlying graph; 3) the quadratic approximations fail to capture the presence of non-trivial structural patterns that seem to influence the value of the exact entropies; 4) the quality of the approximations, as well as which variant of the von Neumann entropy is better approximated, depends on the topology of the underlying graph

Multipotent adult hippocampal progenitor cells maintained as neurospheres favor differentiation toward glial lineages

Adult hippocampal progenitor cells (AHPCs) are generally maintained as a dispersed monolayer population of multipotent neural progenitors. To better understand cell-cell interactions among neural progenitors and their influences on cellular characteristics, we generated free-floating cellular aggregates, or neurospheres, from the adherent monolayer population of AHPCs. Results from in vitro analyses demonstrated that both populations of AHPCs were highly proliferative under maintenance conditions, but AHPCs formed in neurospheres favored differentiation along a glial lineage and displayed greater migrational activity, than the traditionally cultured AHPCs. To study the plasticity of AHPCs from both populations in vivo, we transplanted GFP-expressing AHPCs via intraocular injection into the developing rat eyes. Both AHPC populations were capable of surviving and integrating into the developing host central nervous system, but considerably more GFP-positive cells were observed in the retinas transplanted with neurosphere AHPCs, compared to adherent AHPCs. These results suggest that the culture configuration during maintenance for neural progenitor cells (NPCs) influences cell fate and motility in vitro as well as in vivo. Our findings have implication for understanding different cellular characteristics of NPCs according to distinct intercellular architectures and for developing cell-based therapeutic strategies using lineage-committed NPCs