GATOR: Graph-Aware Transformer with Motion-Disentangled Regression for Human Mesh Recovery from a 2D Pose

3D human mesh recovery from a 2D pose plays an important role in various applications. However, it is hard for existing methods to simultaneously capture the multiple relations during the evolution from skeleton to mesh, including joint-joint, joint-vertex and vertex-vertex relations, which often leads to implausible results. To address this issue, we propose a novel solution, called GATOR, that contains an encoder of Graph-Aware Transformer (GAT) and a decoder with Motion-Disentangled Regression (MDR) to explore these multiple relations. Specifically, GAT combines a GCN and a graph-aware self-attention in parallel to capture physical and hidden joint-joint relations. Furthermore, MDR models joint-vertex and vertex-vertex interactions to explore joint and vertex relations. Based on the clustering characteristics of vertex offset fields, MDR regresses the vertices by composing the predicted base motions. Extensive experiments show that GATOR achieves state-of-the-art performance on two challenging benchmarks.Comment: Accepted by ICASSP 202

The correlation between the expression of differentiated embryo-chondrocyte expressed gene l and oral squamous cell carcinoma

BACKGROUND: This study aims to explore the correlation between expression of differentiated embryo-chondrocyte expressed gene l (DEC1) and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), which could provide the reference for treatment and prognosis assessment of OSCC. METHODS: The expression of DEC1 in tissues from 56 primary OSCC patients and 20 normal oral mucosa samples were detected using real-time polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemical methods, respectively. RESULTS: The results showed that the positive expression rate of DEC1 in the OSCC group was significantly higher than that in the normal group (P <0.05); further, the expression of DEC1 in different OSCC groups was statistically significant (P <0.05). The expression of DEC1 in the 1-year recurrence OSCC group was significantly higher than other groups. The expression of DEC1 in the 3-years no recurrence OSCC group was the lowest. CONCLUSIONS: The expression of DEC1 was associated with the incidence of OSCC and there was a negative correlation between the expression of DEC1 and the prognosis of OSCC

Co-Evolution of Pose and Mesh for 3D Human Body Estimation from Video

Despite significant progress in single image-based 3D human mesh recovery, accurately and smoothly recovering 3D human motion from a video remains challenging. Existing video-based methods generally recover human mesh by estimating the complex pose and shape parameters from coupled image features, whose high complexity and low representation ability often result in inconsistent pose motion and limited shape patterns. To alleviate this issue, we introduce 3D pose as the intermediary and propose a Pose and Mesh Co-Evolution network (PMCE) that decouples this task into two parts: 1) video-based 3D human pose estimation and 2) mesh vertices regression from the estimated 3D pose and temporal image feature. Specifically, we propose a two-stream encoder that estimates mid-frame 3D pose and extracts a temporal image feature from the input image sequence. In addition, we design a co-evolution decoder that performs pose and mesh interactions with the image-guided Adaptive Layer Normalization (AdaLN) to make pose and mesh fit the human body shape. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed PMCE outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods in terms of both per-frame accuracy and temporal consistency on three benchmark datasets: 3DPW, Human3.6M, and MPI-INF-3DHP. Our code is available at https://github.com/kasvii/PMCE.Comment: Accepted by ICCV 2023. Project page: https://kasvii.github.io/PMC

Cold hardiness of Phauda flammans (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae) larvae

This study aimed to determine the cold hardiness of Phauda flammans (Lepidoptera: Zygaenidae) larvae. Supercooling points of the 1st–6th instar larvae of P. flammans ranged from –7.7 to –13.0 °C. The lethal temperatures were –8 °C for 1st, –5 °C for 2nd, and –7 °C for 3rd–6th instars. Lethal times at the instar-specific lethal temperatures were 12 h for 1st, 14 h for 2nd, 15 h for 3rd, 17 h for 4th, and 18 h for 5th–6th instars. The times required for all larvae to die in an incubator at 5 °C were 30 d for 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th instars, and 25 d for 2nd and 6th instars. The findings suggest that P. flammans is a chill-intolerant species, and larvae will die if the air temperature decreases to –5 to –8 °C for 12–18 h or to 5 °C for 25–30 d. Such conditions are, however, unlikely to occur in southern China

5-Hydroxyhexanoic Acid Predicts Early Renal Functional Decline in Type 2 Diabetes Patients with Microalbuminuria

Background/Aims: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a leading cause of end-stage renal disease. Microalbuminuria (MA) is widely used to predict early progressive renal function decline (ERFD) of DN in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) patients, but the sensitivity and specificity of MA have been questioned. Here, we determined the urine metabolites differences between T2D patients with MA who maintained stable renal function and those who progressed to ERFD in order to identify specific biomarkers of the progression of renal dysfunction. Methods: A total of 102 T2D patients with MA and normal renal function at baseline were followed up for 5–6 years. Of these, 52 patients were selected and classified into two groups according to the later renal function; 25 patients who experienced ERFD were regarded as the progressive group, while 27 patients who maintained stable renal function were considered as the stable group. In the pilot study, untargeted, broad-spectrum urine metabolomics was performed on the urine of 12 subjects from the progressive group (5 patients as “progressors”) and stable group (7 patients as “non-progressors”) to discover candidate markers. We then used a targeted metabolomics analysis to identify the selected markers in the urine of an additional 40 patients (20 from the progressive group as cases, and 20 from the stable group as controls) in the validation study. Results: A total of 318 known metabolites were detected in the pilot study and 6 metabolites with significant difference between progressors and non-progressors were identified. The levels of 4 metabolites, including azelaic acid, adipic acid, 5-hydroxyhexanoic acid, and L-tryptophan decreased significantly, while levels of L-pyroglutamic acid and D-norvaline increased observably in the progressors compared with non-progressors. Furthermore, in the validation study, 6 metabolites were confirmed by quantitative measurements and their concentrations were consistent with the changes in the pilot study. Concentrations of L-pyroglutamic acid and D-norvaline still increased in the cases, but were not statistically significant. Of the 4 metabolites with decreased concentrations among the cases, only 5-hydroxyhexanoic acid remained statistically significant while the other 3 metabolites did not differ between cases and controls. Conclusion: We have identified urine metabolites and shown that 5-hydroxyhexanoic acid can be used as a predictor of progression of ERFD in T2D patients with MA. This finding provides the new perspective that 5-hydroxyhexanoic acid may be useful to identify T2D patients with MA who are at risk of ERFD

Comparison of gene expression profiles in Bacillus megaterium treated tobacco leaves using microarray

The MP agent, prepared from Bacillus megaterium isolated from the soil near tobacco fields, can improve metabolic products, and hence the aroma, of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) leaf. To explore genes regulating metabolic responses in tobacco leaf, we used microarrays to analyze differentially expressed genes in tobacco leaves subjected to various treatments. The expressed genes were classified into six groups based on their expression profile. In total, 753 genes were significantly differentially expressed between microorganism-treated and water-treated samples. Gene ontology (GO) analyses showed that most of these genes were involved in metabolic and cellular processes. Some upregulated genes were related to the plant defense response, such as NtMMP1 and NtACRE231. Some genes were involved in metabolism responses, such as NtDXS. Semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR analysis of NtMMP1 and quantitative RT-PCR analysis of NtDXS showed that their expression levels increased after MP agent treatment, confirming the microarray results. We evaluated NtMMP1 and NtDXS in terms of their associations with Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Phylogenetic analyses of NtMMP1, NtACRE231, and NtDXS revealed their relationships with homologs in other species. These microarray data increase our understanding of the mechanisms by which MP agent induces a metabolic response in tobacco leavesKey words: Nicotiana tabacum, Microarray, MP agent, plant defense response, aroma