MAFW: A Large-scale, Multi-modal, Compound Affective Database for Dynamic Facial Expression Recognition in the Wild

Dynamic facial expression recognition (FER) databases provide important data support for affective computing and applications. However, most FER databases are annotated with several basic mutually exclusive emotional categories and contain only one modality, e.g., videos. The monotonous labels and modality cannot accurately imitate human emotions and fulfill applications in the real world. In this paper, we propose MAFW, a large-scale multi-modal compound affective database with 10,045 video-audio clips in the wild. Each clip is annotated with a compound emotional category and a couple of sentences that describe the subjects' affective behaviors in the clip. For the compound emotion annotation, each clip is categorized into one or more of the 11 widely-used emotions, i.e., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness, surprise, contempt, anxiety, helplessness, and disappointment. To ensure high quality of the labels, we filter out the unreliable annotations by an Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, and then obtain 11 single-label emotion categories and 32 multi-label emotion categories. To the best of our knowledge, MAFW is the first in-the-wild multi-modal database annotated with compound emotion annotations and emotion-related captions. Additionally, we also propose a novel Transformer-based expression snippet feature learning method to recognize the compound emotions leveraging the expression-change relations among different emotions and modalities. Extensive experiments on MAFW database show the advantages of the proposed method over other state-of-the-art methods for both uni- and multi-modal FER. Our MAFW database is publicly available from https://mafw-database.github.io/MAFW.Comment: This paper has been accepted by ACM MM'2

Integrative genomic and transcriptomic analysis for pinpointing recurrent alterations of plant homeodomain genes and their clinical significance in breast cancer

A wide range of the epigenetic effectors that regulate chromatin modification, gene expression, genomic stability, and DNA repair contain structurally conserved domains called plant homeodomain (PHD) fingers. Alternations of several PHD finger-containing proteins (PHFs) due to genomic amplification, mutations, deletions, and translocations have been linked directly to various types of cancer. However, little is known about the genomic landscape and the clinical significance of PHFs in breast cancer. Hence, we performed a large-scale genomic and transcriptomic analysis of 98 PHF genes in breast cancer using TCGA and METABRIC datasets and correlated the recurrent alterations with clinicopathological features and survival of patients. Different subtypes of breast cancer had different patterns of copy number and expression for each PHF. We identified a subset of PHF genes that was recurrently altered with high prevalence, including PYGO2 (pygopus family PHD finger 2), ZMYND8 (zinc finger, MYND-type containing 8), ASXL1 (additional sex combs like 1) and CHD3 (chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 3). Copy number increase and overexpression of ZMYND8 were more prevalent in Luminal B subtypes and were significantly associated with shorter survival of breast cancer patients. ZMYND8 was also involved in a positive feedback circuit of the estrogen receptor (ER) pathway, and the expression of ZMYND8 was repressed by the bromodomain and extra terminal (BET) inhibitor in breast cancer. Our findings suggest a promising avenue for future research—to focus on a subset of PHFs to better understand the molecular mechanisms and to identify therapeutic targets in breast cancer

Activation of Orexin System Stimulates CaMKII Expression

Hyperactivity of the orexin system within the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) has been shown to contribute to increased sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) and blood pressure (BP) in rodent animals. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we test the hypothesis that orexin system activation stimulates calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII) expression and activation, and stimulation of CaMKII expressing PVN neurons increases SNA and BP. Real-time PCR and/or western blot were carried out to test the effect of orexin-A administration on CaMKII expression in the PVN of normal Sprague Dawley (SD) rats and orexin receptor 1 (OX1R) expressing PC12 cells. Immunostaining was performed to assess OX1R cellular localization in the PVN of SD rats as well as orexin-A treatment on CaMKII activation in cultured hypothalamic neurons. In vivo sympathetic nerve recordings were employed to test the impact of optogenetic stimulation of CaMKII-expressing PVN neurons on the renal SNA (RSNA) and BP. The results showed that intracerebroventricular injection of orexin-A into the SD rat increases mRNA expression of CaMKII subunits in the PVN. In addition, Orexin-A treatment increases CaMKII expression and its phosphorylation in OX1R-expressing PC12 cells. Furthermore, Orexin-A treatment increases CaMKII activation in cultured hypothalamic neurons from neonatal SD rats. Finally, optogenetic excitation of PVN CaMKII-expressing neurons results in robust increases in RSNA and BP in SD rats. Our results suggest that increased orexin system activity activates CaMKII expression in cardiovascular relevant regions, and this may be relevant to the downstream cardiovascular effects of CaMKII

Effects of Mongolian Medicine Modified Sugmul-7 on Hyperplasia of the Breast

Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the mechanism of regulating the endocrine function of hyperplasia breast in rats with Mongolian Medicine Modified Sugmul-7 (MMMS-7) by Proteomics and provide an experimental basis for its development and clinical application. Methods: Ninety female SD rats were randomly divided into 6 groups: the intact group – the animal group that was injected with neither estradiol, nor progesterone, nor administered Mongolian Medicine Modified Sugmul-7; the negative control group – the group injected with estradiol and progesterone; the positive control group - injected with estradiol, progesterone and administered mastodynon 0.06 g/kg; and the treatment groups – injected with estradiol and progesterone, each in their respective dose groups. After the start of the experiment, each rat except the intact group was intra peritoneally injected with estradiol 25d and progesterone 6d at a standard dose of 0.3 mg / kg for a total of 31 days. Results: Four differential proteins were found through proteomic analysis, namely Ppp3cb, Cacybp, Gstz1, and Nmd3 and their 5 related pathways. Conclusions: The above pathways are all known to be related to the treatment of breast hyperplasia caused by endocrine disorders. Treatment with Mongolian Medicine Modified Sugmul-7 is completed through regulation of the gastrointestinal and endocrine systems

Incorporating productivity loss in health economic evaluations : a review of guidelines and practices worldwide for research agenda in China

Introduction: Productivity loss may contribute to a large proportion of costs of health conditions in an economic evaluation from a societal perspective, but there is currently a lack of methodological consensus on how productivity loss should be measured and valued. Despite the research progress surrounding this issue in other countries, it has been rarely discussed in China. Methods: We reviewed the official guidelines on economic evaluations in different countries and regions and screened the literature to summarise the extent to which productivity loss was incorporated in economic evaluations and the underlying methodological challenges. Results: A total of 48 guidelines from 46 countries/regions were included. Although 32 (67%) guidelines recommend excluding productivity loss in the base case analysis, 23 (48%) guidelines recommend including productivity loss in the base case or additional analyses. Through a review of systematic reviews and the economic evaluation studies included in these reviews, we found that the average probability of incorporating productivity loss in an economic evaluation was 10.2%. Among the economic evaluations (n=478) that explicitly considered productivity loss, most (n=455) considered losses from paid work, while only a few studies (n=23) considered unpaid work losses. Recognising the existing methodological challenges and the specific context of China, we proposed a practical research agenda and a disease list for progress on this topic, including the development of the disease list comprehensively consisting of health conditions where the productivity loss should be incorporated into economic evaluations. Conclusion: An increasing number of guidelines recommend the inclusion of productivity loss in the base case or additional analyses of economic evaluation. We optimistically expect that more Chinese researchers notice the importance of incorporating productivity loss in economic evaluations and anticipate guidelines that may be suitable for Chinese practitioners and decision-makers that facilitate the advancement of research on productivity loss measurement and valuation

Unveiling the link between systemic inflammation markers and cognitive performance among older adults in the US: A population-based study using NHANES 2011–2014 data

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the association between systemic inflammation markers and cognitive performance among older US adults. Methods: This cross-sectional study assessed 3,632 older participants from the 2011–2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The main analysis included participants aged over 60 years. Systemic inflammation markers were quantified by calculating the composite inflammation indicators from the blood routine count, and cognitive performance was assessed using Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer\u27s Disease (CERAD) test, Animal Fluency test (AFT), and Digit Symbol Substitution test (DSST). Results: There were 2,743 individuals enrolled in the current analysis. The overall mean age was 64.9 years and 48.7 % were males. The levels of SIRI and PIV were significant negative associated with scores of CERAD, CERAD delayed recall, and DSST in the unadjusted models. Moreover, SII were significant negative associated with scores of CERAD and CERAD delayed recall. After adjusting the covariates of demographics, lifestyle factors, history of chronic diseases and BMI, significant negative association were observed between systematic inflammation markers and cognitive performance. Additionally, a progressive and significant decrease in the score of cognitive performance assessments with the increased levels of SIRI, SII, and PIV were respectively observed. Finally, the correlation between systemic inflammation markers and cognitive performance were evidenced in the sensitive analysis. Conclusion: Findings support a strong inverse correlation between systemic inflammation markers and cognitive performance, suggesting that addressing inflammation could be a promising avenue for enhancing cognitive health and mitigating age-related cognitive decline

Adaptive Scheduling in MIMO-based Heterogeneous Ad hoc Networks

Abstract-The demands for data rate and transmission reliability constantly increase with the explosive use of wireless devices and the advancement of mobile computing techniques. Multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technique is considered as one of the most promising wireless technologies that can significantly improve transmission capacity and reliability. Many emerging mobile wireless applications require peer-to-peer transmissions over an ad hoc network, where the nodes often have different number of antennas, and the channel condition and network topology vary over time. It is important and challenging to develop efficient schemes to coordinate transmission resource sharing among a heterogeneous group of nodes over an infrastructure-free mobile ad hoc network. In this work, we propose a holistic scheduling algorithm that can adaptively select different transmission strategies based on the node types and channel conditions to effectively relieve the bottleneck effect caused by nodes with smaller antenna arrays, and avoid the transmission failure due to the violation of lower degree of freedom constraint resulted from the channel dependency. The algorithm also takes advantage of channel information to opportunistically schedule cooperative spatial multiplexed transmissions between nodes and provide special transmission support for higher priority nodes with weak channels, so that the data rate of the network can be maximized while user transmission quality requirement is supported. The performance of our algorithm is studied through extensive simulations and the results demonstrate that our algorithm is very effective in handling node heterogeneity and channel constraint, and can significantly increase the throughput while reducing the transmission delay

H2S-based fluorescent imaging for pathophysiological processes

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), as an important endogenous signaling molecule, plays a vital role in many physiological processes. The abnormal behaviors of hydrogen sulfide in organisms may lead to various pathophysiological processes. Monitoring the changes in hydrogen sulfide is helpful for pre-warning and treating these pathophysiological processes. Fluorescence imaging techniques can be used to observe changes in the concentration of analytes in organisms in real-time. Therefore, employing fluorescent probes imaging to investigate the behaviors of hydrogen sulfide in pathophysiological processes is vital. This paper reviews the design strategy and sensing mechanisms of hydrogen sulfide-based fluorescent probes, focusing on imaging applications in various pathophysiological processes, including neurodegenerative diseases, inflammation, apoptosis, oxidative stress, organ injury, and diabetes. This review not only demonstrates the specific value of hydrogen sulfide fluorescent probes in preclinical studies but also illuminates the potential application in clinical diagnostics