9,150 research outputs found
Optimal control of risk process in a regime-switching environment
This paper is concerned with cost optimization of an insurance company. The
surplus of the insurance company is modeled by a controlled regime switching
diffusion, where the regime switching mechanism provides the fluctuations of
the random environment. The goal is to find an optimal control that minimizes
the total cost up to a stochastic exit time. A weaker sufficient condition than
that of (Fleming and Soner 2006, Section V.2) for the continuity of the value
function is obtained. Further, the value function is shown to be a viscosity
solution of a Hamilton-Jacobian-Bellman equation.Comment: Keywords: Regime switching diffusion, continuity of the value
function, exit time control, viscosity solutio
The electronic structure of intrinsic magnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4 quantum wires
The ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic nanostructure are crucial for
fundamental spintronics devices, motivated by its potential application in
spintronics, we theoretically investigate the electronic structure of the
ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of the cylindrical intrinsically
magnetic topological insulator quantum wires for both
cases. We demonstrate that a few surface states exist between the bulk band gap
in the ferromagnetic phase, with only one spin branch. In the antiferromagnetic
phase, we show that three coexistent states exist between the energy gaps of
the quantum wires
Cloze Test Helps: Effective Video Anomaly Detection via Learning to Complete Video Events
As a vital topic in media content interpretation, video anomaly detection
(VAD) has made fruitful progress via deep neural network (DNN). However,
existing methods usually follow a reconstruction or frame prediction routine.
They suffer from two gaps: (1) They cannot localize video activities in a both
precise and comprehensive manner. (2) They lack sufficient abilities to utilize
high-level semantics and temporal context information. Inspired by
frequently-used cloze test in language study, we propose a brand-new VAD
solution named Video Event Completion (VEC) to bridge gaps above: First, we
propose a novel pipeline to achieve both precise and comprehensive enclosure of
video activities. Appearance and motion are exploited as mutually complimentary
cues to localize regions of interest (RoIs). A normalized spatio-temporal cube
(STC) is built from each RoI as a video event, which lays the foundation of VEC
and serves as a basic processing unit. Second, we encourage DNN to capture
high-level semantics by solving a visual cloze test. To build such a visual
cloze test, a certain patch of STC is erased to yield an incomplete event (IE).
The DNN learns to restore the original video event from the IE by inferring the
missing patch. Third, to incorporate richer motion dynamics, another DNN is
trained to infer erased patches' optical flow. Finally, two ensemble strategies
using different types of IE and modalities are proposed to boost VAD
performance, so as to fully exploit the temporal context and modality
information for VAD. VEC can consistently outperform state-of-the-art methods
by a notable margin (typically 1.5%-5% AUROC) on commonly-used VAD benchmarks.
Our codes and results can be verified at github.com/yuguangnudt/VEC_VAD.Comment: To be published as an oral paper in Proceedings of the 28th ACM
International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM '20). 9 pages, 7 figure
Degradable gene delivery systems based on Pluronics-modified low-molecular-weight polyethylenimine: preparation, characterization, intracellular trafficking, and cellular distribution
Wei Fan1,2,*, Xin Wu1,*, Baoyue Ding3,*, Jing Gao4, Zhen Cai1, Wei Zhang1, Dongfeng Yin1, Xiang Wang1, Quangang Zhu1, Jiyong Liu1, Xueying Ding4, Shen Gao1 1Department of Pharmaceutics, Changhai Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 2Department of Pharmaceutics, The 425th Hospital of PLA, Sanya, 3Department of Pharmaceutics, Medical College of Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, 4Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workBackground: Cationic copolymers consisting of polycations linked to nonionic amphiphilic block polymers have been evaluated as nonviral gene delivery systems, and a large number of different polymers and copolymers of linear, branched, and dendrimeric architectures have been tested in terms of their suitability and efficacy for in vitro and in vivo transfection. However, the discovery of new potent materials still largely relies on empiric approaches rather than a rational design. The authors investigated the relationship between the polymers' structures and their biological performance, including DNA compaction, toxicity, transfection efficiency, and the effect of cellular uptake.Methods: This article reports the synthesis and characterization of a series of cationic copolymers obtained by grafting polyethyleneimine with nonionic amphiphilic surfactant polyether-Pluronic® consisting of hydrophilic ethylene oxide and hydrophobic propylene oxide blocks. Transgene expression, cytotoxicity, localization of plasmids, and cellular uptake of these copolymers were evaluated following in vitro transfection of HeLa cell lines with various individual components of the copolymers.Results: Pluronics can exhibit biological activity including effects on enhancing DNA cellular uptake, nuclear translocation, and gene expression. The Pluronics with a higher hydrophilic-lipophilic balance value lead to homogeneous distribution in the cytoplasm; those with a lower hydrophilic-lipophilic balance value prefer to localize in the nucleus.Conclusion: This Pluronic-polyethyleneimine system may be worth exploring as components in the cationic copolymers as the DNA or small interfering RNA/microRNA delivery system in the near future.Keywords: Pluronics, gene transfer, nonviral vectors, transfection efficiency, cellular uptak
Adequate 25(OH)D moderates the relationship between dietary inflammatory potential and cardiovascular health risk during the second trimester of pregnancy
BackgroundPro-inflammatory diets play an important role in developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Vitamin D has been demonstrated to have an anti-inflammatory effect and promote cardiovascular health (CVH). However, it is unclear whether adequate vitamin D during pregnancy protects against poor CVH caused by pro-inflammatory diets.ObjectiveTo investigate the association of pro-inflammatory diets with the cardiovascular risk (CVR) among pregnant women and whether such association was modified by vitamin D status.MethodsThe study was based on a prospective birth cohort that included 3,713 pregnant women between 16 and 23 gestational weeks. In total, 25(OH)D concentrations and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) were measured from the collected blood. The dietary inflammatory potential was evaluated using the empirical dietary inflammatory pattern (EDIP) score based on a validated food frequency questionnaire. Gestational CVR was evaluated using the CVR score based on five “clinical” CVR metrics, including body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol, glucose levels, and smoking status.ResultsThe proportion of women with a CVR score >0 was 54.3%. We observed a positive association between the EDIP score and CVR score. Compared with the lowest quartile, the CVR score (β = −0.114, 95% CI, −0.217, −0.011) and hs-CRP levels (β = −0.280, 95% CI, −0.495, −0.065) were lower in the highest quartile (P for trend <0.05). Increased CVR connected with high EDIP score was observed only in women with 25(OH)D concentrations <50 nmol/L (RR = 1.85; 95% CI: 1.35, 2.54). Mediation analysis revealed that the proportion of association between the EDIP score and CVR score mediated by 25(OH)D was 28.7%, and the proportion of the association between 25(OH)D and the CVR score mediated by hs-CRP was 21.9%.ConclusionThe higher dietary inflammatory potential was associated with an increased CVR during pregnancy by promoting inflammation. Adequate vitamin D could exert anti-inflammatory effects and modify such association
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