Topological polaritons from photonic Dirac cones coupled to excitons in a magnetic field

We introduce an alternative scheme for creating topological polaritons (topolaritons) by exploiting the presence of photonic Dirac cones in photonic crystals with triangular lattice symmetry. As recently proposed, topolariton states can emerge from a coupling between photons and excitons combined with a periodic exciton potential and a magnetic field to open up a topological gap. We show that in photonic crystals the opening of the gap can be substantially simplified close to photonic Dirac points. Coupling to Zeeman-split excitons breaks time reversal symmetry and allows to gap out the Dirac cones in a nontrival way, leading to a topological gap similar to the strength of the periodic exciton potential. Compared to the original topolariton proposal [T. Karzig et al., Phys. Rev. X 5, 031001 (2015)], this scheme significantly increases the size of the topological gap over a wide range of parameters. Moreover, the gap opening mechanism highlights an interesting connection between topolaritons and the scheme of [F. D. M. Haldane and S. Raghu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 013904 (2008)] to create topological photons in magneto-optically active materials

The Unique Cost of Human Eye Gaze in Cognitive Control: Being Human-Specific and Body-Related?

This study investigated the eye gaze cost in cognitive control and whether it is human-specific and body-related. In Experiment 1, we explored whether there was a cost of human eye gaze in cognitive control and extended it by focusing on the role of emotion in the cost. Stroop effect was found to be larger in eye-gaze condition than vertical grating condition, and to be comparable across positive, negative, and neutral trials. In Experiment 2, we explored whether the eye gaze cost in cognitive control was limited to human eyes. No larger Stroop effect was found in feline eye-gaze condition, neither the modulating role of emotion. In Experiment 3, we explored whether the mouth could elicit a cost in Stroop effect. Stroop effect was not significantly larger in mouth condition compared to vertical grating condition, nor across positive, negative, and neutral conditions. The results suggest that: (1) There is a robust cost of eye gaze in cognitive control; (2) Such eye-gaze cost was specific to human eyes but not to animal eyes; (3) Only human eyes could have such eye-gaze costs but not human mouth. This study supported the notion that presentation of social cues, such as human eyes, could influence attentional processing, and provided preliminary evidence that the human eye plays an important role in cognitive processing

CATR: Combinatorial-Dependence Audio-Queried Transformer for Audio-Visual Video Segmentation

Audio-visual video segmentation~(AVVS) aims to generate pixel-level maps of sound-producing objects within image frames and ensure the maps faithfully adhere to the given audio, such as identifying and segmenting a singing person in a video. However, existing methods exhibit two limitations: 1) they address video temporal features and audio-visual interactive features separately, disregarding the inherent spatial-temporal dependence of combined audio and video, and 2) they inadequately introduce audio constraints and object-level information during the decoding stage, resulting in segmentation outcomes that fail to comply with audio directives. To tackle these issues, we propose a decoupled audio-video transformer that combines audio and video features from their respective temporal and spatial dimensions, capturing their combined dependence. To optimize memory consumption, we design a block, which, when stacked, enables capturing audio-visual fine-grained combinatorial-dependence in a memory-efficient manner. Additionally, we introduce audio-constrained queries during the decoding phase. These queries contain rich object-level information, ensuring the decoded mask adheres to the sounds. Experimental results confirm our approach's effectiveness, with our framework achieving a new SOTA performance on all three datasets using two backbones. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/aspirinone/CATR.github.io}Comment: accepted by ACM MM 202

Exploring the interfacial coupling between graphene and the antiferromagnetic insulator MnPSe3_3

Interfacial coupling between graphene and other 2D materials can give rise to intriguing physical phenomena. In particular, several theoretical studies predict that the interplay between graphene and an antiferromagnetic insulator could lead to the emergence of quantum anomalous Hall phases. However, such phases have not been observed experimentally yet, and further experimental studies are needed to reveal the interaction between graphene and antiferromagnetic insulators. Here, we report the study in heterostructures composed of graphene and the antiferromagnetic insulator MnPSe$_3$. It is found that the MnPSe$_3$ has little impact on the quantum Hall phases apart from doping graphene via interfacial charge transfer. However, the magnetic order can contribute indirectly via process like Kondo effect, as evidenced by the observed minimum in the temperature-resistance curve between 20-40 K, far below the N\'eel temperature (70 K)

Explore Synergistic Interaction Across Frames for Interactive Video Object Segmentation

Interactive Video Object Segmentation (iVOS) is a challenging task that requires real-time human-computer interaction. To improve the user experience, it is important to consider the user's input habits, segmentation quality, running time and memory consumption.However, existing methods compromise user experience with single input mode and slow running speed. Specifically, these methods only allow the user to interact with one single frame, which limits the expression of the user's intent.To overcome these limitations and better align with people's usage habits, we propose a framework that can accept multiple frames simultaneously and explore synergistic interaction across frames (SIAF). Concretely, we designed the Across-Frame Interaction Module that enables users to annotate different objects freely on multiple frames. The AFI module will migrate scribble information among multiple interactive frames and generate multi-frame masks. Additionally, we employ the id-queried mechanism to process multiple objects in batches. Furthermore, for a more efficient propagation and lightweight model, we design a truncated re-propagation strategy to replace the previous multi-round fusion module, which employs an across-round memory that stores important interaction information. Our SwinB-SIAF achieves new state-of-the-art performance on DAVIS 2017 (89.6%, J&F@60). Moreover, our R50-SIAF is more than 3 faster than the state-of-the-art competitor under challenging multi-object scenarios

Pursuing Equilibrium of Medical Resources via Data Empowerment in Parallel Healthcare System

The imbalance between the supply and demand of healthcare resources is a global challenge, which is particularly severe in developing countries. Governments and academic communities have made various efforts to increase healthcare supply and improve resource allocation. However, these efforts often remain passive and inflexible. Alongside these issues, the emergence of the parallel healthcare system has the potential to solve these problems by unlocking the data value. The parallel healthcare system comprises Medicine-Oriented Operating Systems (MOOS), Medicine-Oriented Scenario Engineering (MOSE), and Medicine-Oriented Large Models (MOLMs), which could collect, circulate, and empower data. In this paper, we propose that achieving equilibrium in medical resource allocation is possible through parallel healthcare systems via data empowerment. The supply-demand relationship can be balanced in parallel healthcare systems by (1) increasing the supply provided by digital and robotic doctors in MOOS, (2) identifying individual and potential demands by proactive diagnosis and treatment in MOSE, and (3) improving supply-demand matching using large models in MOLMs. To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, we present a case study optimizing resource allocation from the perspective of facility accessibility. Results demonstrate that the parallel healthcare system could result in up to 300% improvement in accessibility

Wave-graphene: a full-auxetic carbon semiconductor with high flexibility and optical UV absorption

The abundant bonding possibilities of Carbon stimulate the design of numerous carbon allotropes, promising the foundation for exploring structure-functionality relationships. Herein, utilizing the space bending strategy, we successfully engineered a two-dimensional carbon allotrope with pure sp2 hybridization, named "Wave-graphene" from the unique wave-like ripple structure. The novel Wave-graphene exhibits full-auxetic behavior due to anisotropic mechanical response, possessing both negative and zero Poisson's ratios. The fundamental mechanism can be attributed to the fact that highly buckled out-of-plane structures lead to anisotropic responses of in-plane nonlinear interactions, which further lead to anisotropy of lattice vibrations. In addition, Wave-graphene is found having quasi-direct wide bandgap of 2.01 eV, the excellent optical transparency and the high flexibility. The successful design of Wave-graphene with excellent outstanding multifunctional properties shows that the utilization of space bending strategies can provide more degrees of freedom for designing novel materials, further enriching the carbon material family and supplementing its versatility

Emerging ctDNA detection strategies in clinical cancer theranostics

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) is naked DNA molecules shed from the tumor cells into the peripheral blood circulation. They contain tumor‐specific gene mutations and other valuable information. ctDNA is considered to be one of the most significant analytes in liquid biopsies. Over the past decades, numerous researchers have developed various detection strategies to perform quantitative or qualitative ctDNA analysis, including PCR‐based detection and sequencing‐based detection. More and more studies have illustrated the great value of ctDNA as a biomarker in the diagnosis, prognosis and heterogeneity of tumor. In this review, we first outlined the development of digital PCR (dPCR)‐based and next generation sequencing (NGS)‐based ctDNA detection systems. Besides, we presented the introduction of the emerging ctDNA analysis strategies based on various biosensors, such as electrochemical biosensors, fluorescent biosensors, surface plasmon resonance and Raman spectroscopy, as well as their applications in the field of biomedicine. Finally, we summarized the essentials of the preceding discussions, and the existing challenges and prospects for the future are also involved

Superfolded configuration induced low thermal conductivity in two-dimensional carbon allotropes revealed via machine learning force constant potential

Understanding the fundamental link between structure and functionalization is crucial for the design and optimization of functional materials, since different structural configurations could trigger materials to demonstrate diverse physical, chemical, and electronic properties. However, the correlation between crystal structure and thermal conductivity (\k{appa}) remains enigmatic. In this study, taking two-dimensional (2D) carbon allotropes as study cases, we utilize phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) along with machine learning force constant potential to thoroughly explore the complex folding structure of pure sp2 hybridized carbon materials from the perspective of crystal structure, mode-level phonon resolved thermal transport, and atomic interactions, with the goal of identifying the underlying relationship between 2D geometry and \k{appa}. We propose two potential structure evolution mechanisms for targeted thermal transport properties: in-plane and out-of-plane folding evolutions, which are generally applicable to 2D carbon allotropes. It is revealed that the folded structure produces strong symmetry breaking, and simultaneously produces exceptionally strongly suppressed phonon group velocities, strong phonon-phonon scattering, and weak phonon hydrodynamics, which ultimately lead to low \k{appa}. The insight into the folded effect of atomic structures on thermal transport deepens our understanding of the relationship between structure and functionalization, which offers straightforward guidance for designing novel nanomaterials with targeted \k{appa}, as well as propel developments in materials science and engineering