DeepACO: Neural-enhanced Ant Systems for Combinatorial Optimization

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a meta-heuristic algorithm that has been successfully applied to various Combinatorial Optimization Problems (COPs). Traditionally, customizing ACO for a specific problem requires the expert design of knowledge-driven heuristics. In this paper, we propose DeepACO, a generic framework that leverages deep reinforcement learning to automate heuristic designs. DeepACO serves to strengthen the heuristic measures of existing ACO algorithms and dispense with laborious manual design in future ACO applications. As a neural-enhanced meta-heuristic, DeepACO consistently outperforms its ACO counterparts on eight COPs using a single neural model and a single set of hyperparameters. As a Neural Combinatorial Optimization method, DeepACO performs better than or on par with problem-specific methods on canonical routing problems. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/henry-yeh/DeepACO.Comment: Accepted at NeurIPS 202

Characterization of ovarian clear cell carcinoma using target drug-based molecular biomarkers: implications for personalized cancer therapy

Information of antibodies used in immunohistochemistry. Table S2A. Relationship with clinicopathological factors-HGSC. Table S2B. Relationship with clinicopathological factors-CCC. Table S3 Association molecular biomarkers expression and platinum-based chemotherapeutic response. Table S4. Comparison of molecular biomarkers between recurrent and disease-free patients. (DOCX 42 kb

Inflammatory bowel disease is causally related to irritable bowel syndrome: a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study

IntroductionInflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are lifelong digestive diseases that severely impact patients’ quality of life. The existence of a causal association between IBS and IBD remains unclear. This study aimed to determine the direction of causality between IBD and IBS by quantifying their genome-wide genetic associations and performing bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses.MethodsGenome-wide association studies (GWAS) among a predominantly European patient cohort identified independent genetic variants associated with IBS and IBD. Two separate databases (a large GWAS meta-analysis and the FinnGen cohort) for both IBS and IBD were consulted to retrieve statistics on instrument-outcome associations. MR analyses included inverse-variance-weighted, weighted-median, MR-Egger regression, MR Pleiotropy RESidual Sum and Outlier (MR-PRESSO) methods, and sensitivity analyses were performed. The MR analyses were carried out for each outcome data, followed by a fixed-effect meta-analysis.ResultsGenetically predicted IBD was associated with an increased risk of IBS. Odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for samples of 211,551 (17,302 individuals with IBD), 192,789 (7,476 Crohn’s disease cases), and 201,143 (10,293 ulcerative colitis cases) individuals were 1.20 (1.00, 1.04), 1.02 (1.01, 1.03), and 1.01 (0.99, 1.03), respectively. After outlier correction using MR-PRESSO, the odds ratio for ulcerative colitis was 1.03 (1.02, 1.05) (p = 0.001). However, an association between genetically influenced IBS and IBD was not identified.DiscussionThis study confirms that IBD is causally related to IBS, which may interfere with the diagnosis and treatment of both diseases

Methanesulphonic acid in aerosols along a cruise path from China to the Arctic Ocean: Spatial and temporal distributions and link with iodine

Methanesulphonic acid (MSA) may play an important role in the climate change occurring in response to the warming of the Arctic Ocean. However, the spatial and temporal distributions of MSA in this region are poorly understood. We report on the MSA content of aerosols over oceans measured during the 3rd Chinese National Arctic Research Expedition (CHINARE2008) from July to September, 2008. Results show that the aerosol MSA content can be influenced by multiple processes in different areas. In coastal regions, airborne pollutants, especially nitric oxide, may strongly influence the oxidation of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and increase the concentration of aerosol MSA. In remote areas of the Pacific and Arctic oceans, changes in plankton will indirectly influence the airborne MSA concentration. Moreover, we found fairly similar trends in the variation of the concentrations of total iodine (TI) and MSA in the Arctic during CHINARE2008, suggesting that iodine and MSA may come from similar sources in the Arctic. Compared with the findings from other two cruises, CHINARE1999 and CHINARE2012, we found that sea ice is an extremely important factor that influences the aerosol MSA content in the Arctic. In addition, MSA concentrations may increase in the Arctic in the future caused by sea ice melting due to global warming

Parity Splitting and Polarized-Illumination Selection of Plasmonic Higher-Order Topological States

Topological states, originated from interactions between internal degree of freedoms (like spin and orbital) in each site and crystalline symmetries, offer a new paradigm to manipulate electrons and classical waves. The accessibility of spin degree of freedom has motivated much attention on spin-related topological physics. However, intriguing topological physics related to atomic-orbital parity, another binary degree of freedom, have not been exploited since accessing approaches on atomic orbitals are not well developed. Here, we theoretically discover spectral splitting of atomic-orbital-parity-dependent second-order topological states on a designer-plasmonic Kagome metasurface, and experimentally demonstrate it by exploiting the easy controllability of metaatoms. Unlike previous demonstrations on Hermitian higher-order topological insulators, radiative non-Hermicity of the metasurface enables far-field access into metaatomic-orbital-parity-dependent topological states with polarized illuminations. The atomic-orbital parity degree of freedom may generate more intriguing topological physics by interacting with different crystalline symmetries, and promise applications in polarization-multiplexing topological lasing and quantum emitters.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure