Local Implicit Normalizing Flow for Arbitrary-Scale Image Super-Resolution

Flow-based methods have demonstrated promising results in addressing the ill-posed nature of super-resolution (SR) by learning the distribution of high-resolution (HR) images with the normalizing flow. However, these methods can only perform a predefined fixed-scale SR, limiting their potential in real-world applications. Meanwhile, arbitrary-scale SR has gained more attention and achieved great progress. Nonetheless, previous arbitrary-scale SR methods ignore the ill-posed problem and train the model with per-pixel L1 loss, leading to blurry SR outputs. In this work, we propose "Local Implicit Normalizing Flow" (LINF) as a unified solution to the above problems. LINF models the distribution of texture details under different scaling factors with normalizing flow. Thus, LINF can generate photo-realistic HR images with rich texture details in arbitrary scale factors. We evaluate LINF with extensive experiments and show that LINF achieves the state-of-the-art perceptual quality compared with prior arbitrary-scale SR methods.Comment: CVPR 2023 camera-ready versio

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Atrial fibrillation genetic risk differentiates cardioembolic stroke from other stroke subtypes

AbstractObjectiveWe sought to assess whether genetic risk factors for atrial fibrillation can explain cardioembolic stroke risk.MethodsWe evaluated genetic correlations between a prior genetic study of AF and AF in the presence of cardioembolic stroke using genome-wide genotypes from the Stroke Genetics Network (N = 3,190 AF cases, 3,000 cardioembolic stroke cases, and 28,026 referents). We tested whether a previously-validated AF polygenic risk score (PRS) associated with cardioembolic and other stroke subtypes after accounting for AF clinical risk factors.ResultsWe observed strong correlation between previously reported genetic risk for AF, AF in the presence of stroke, and cardioembolic stroke (Pearson’s r=0.77 and 0.76, respectively, across SNPs with p &lt; 4.4 × 10−4 in the prior AF meta-analysis). An AF PRS, adjusted for clinical AF risk factors, was associated with cardioembolic stroke (odds ratio (OR) per standard deviation (sd) = 1.40, p = 1.45×10−48), explaining ∼20% of the heritable component of cardioembolic stroke risk. The AF PRS was also associated with stroke of undetermined cause (OR per sd = 1.07, p = 0.004), but no other primary stroke subtypes (all p &gt; 0.1).ConclusionsGenetic risk for AF is associated with cardioembolic stroke, independent of clinical risk factors. Studies are warranted to determine whether AF genetic risk can serve as a biomarker for strokes caused by AF.</jats:sec

Bronsted acidic ionic liquid-catalyzed dehydrative formation of isosorbide from sorbitol: introduction of a continuous process

A highly efficient synthesis of isosorbide from sorbitol was developed using Bronsted acidic ionic liquids (BILs) as the catalyst for the first time. The structure-performance relationship was discussed extensively and a proper value of the Gutmann acceptor number (AN) rather than the inherent of acidity was found to be essential for an optimized yield of isosorbide. In addition, the excellent behavior of preferred BIL-4 in the consecutive recycling tests renders the construction of a continuous process probable. Systematic optimization demonstrated that a yield of 82% of isosorbide with a purity of 99.3% could be reached at balance.</p

Using cognitive affective interaction model to construct on-line game for creativity

[[abstract]]The paper constructed an online game for Creativity. The development of the game is based on the Cognitive Affective Interaction Model that was designed to help students develop the skills for divergent and creative thinking. First, we proposed a framework for designing creativity games. Then, an online game system is constructed with the strategies of teaching for creativity. We proved that the creativity of the learners can be improved by the proposed game-based learning system. Conclusively, game-based learning creates a new opportunity for creativity.