3DHacker: Spectrum-based Decision Boundary Generation for Hard-label 3D Point Cloud Attack

With the maturity of depth sensors, the vulnerability of 3D point cloud models has received increasing attention in various applications such as autonomous driving and robot navigation. Previous 3D adversarial attackers either follow the white-box setting to iteratively update the coordinate perturbations based on gradients, or utilize the output model logits to estimate noisy gradients in the black-box setting. However, these attack methods are hard to be deployed in real-world scenarios since realistic 3D applications will not share any model details to users. Therefore, we explore a more challenging yet practical 3D attack setting, \textit{i.e.}, attacking point clouds with black-box hard labels, in which the attacker can only have access to the prediction label of the input. To tackle this setting, we propose a novel 3D attack method, termed \textbf{3D} \textbf{H}ard-label att\textbf{acker} (\textbf{3DHacker}), based on the developed decision boundary algorithm to generate adversarial samples solely with the knowledge of class labels. Specifically, to construct the class-aware model decision boundary, 3DHacker first randomly fuses two point clouds of different classes in the spectral domain to craft their intermediate sample with high imperceptibility, then projects it onto the decision boundary via binary search. To restrict the final perturbation size, 3DHacker further introduces an iterative optimization strategy to move the intermediate sample along the decision boundary for generating adversarial point clouds with smallest trivial perturbations. Extensive evaluations show that, even in the challenging hard-label setting, 3DHacker still competitively outperforms existing 3D attacks regarding the attack performance as well as adversary quality.Comment: Accepted by ICCV 202

Effects of sintering temperatures on the microstructure and mechanical properties of S390 powder metallurgy high-speed steel

High-performance complex gear cutters and high-temperature bearings are just some of the applications where high-speed steels (HSSs) shine as a preferred material choice owing to their high hardness and outstanding wear resistance. In this work, the effects of sintering temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties of S390 HSS prepared via spark plasma sintering (SPS) were investigated with a range of sintering temperatures from 930°C to 1,090°C, a uniaxial pressure of 50 MPa, and a holding time of 5 min. The results demonstrated that the improvements in density, hardness, red hardness, and three-point bending strength were confirmed as the sintering temperature increased from 930°C to 1,090°C. Temperature-induced microstructure evolutions were assessed for their contribution to property enhancement, such as powders with varying dimensions and carbides with diverse morphology and diameter. The specimen with the best comprehensive mechanical properties (67.1 HRC and 1,196.67 MPa) was prepared at 1,050°C via SPS. The wear coefficients decreased as the sintering temperature increased, and the observation results of worn surfaces of test pins confirmed that abrasive wear and oxidation wear dominated the wear experiments. Furthermore, the wear mechanism of dense and porous SPS HSS was illustrated and analyzed in terms of the debris and trapped carbides

Investigation of HIFU-induced anti-tumor immunity in a murine tumor model

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is an emerging non-invasive treatment modality for localized treatment of cancers. While current clinical strategies employ HIFU exclusively for thermal ablation of the target sites, biological responses associated with both thermal and mechanical damage from focused ultrasound have not been thoroughly investigated. In particular, endogenous danger signals from HIFU-damaged tumor cells may trigger the activation of dendritic cells. This response may play a critical role in a HIFU-elicited anti-tumor immune response which can be harnessed for more effective treatment.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Mice bearing MC-38 colon adenocarcinoma tumors were treated with thermal and mechanical HIFU exposure settings in order to independently observe HIFU-induced effects on the host's immunological response. <it>In vivo </it>dendritic cell activity was assessed along with the host's response to challenge tumor growth.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Thermal and mechanical HIFU were found to increase CD11c+ cells 3.1-fold and 4-fold, respectively, as compared to 1.5-fold observed for DC injection alone. In addition, thermal and mechanical HIFU increased CFSE+ DC accumulation in draining lymph nodes 5-fold and 10-fold, respectively. Moreover, focused ultrasound treatments not only caused a reduction in the growth of primary tumors, with tumor volume decreasing by 85% for thermal HIFU and 43% for mechanical HIFU, but they also provided protection against subcutaneous tumor re-challenge. Further immunological assays confirmed an enhanced CTL activity and increased tumor-specific IFN-γ-secreting cells in the mice treated by focused ultrasound, with cytotoxicity induced by mechanical HIFU reaching as high as 27% at a 10:1 effector:target ratio.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These studies present initial encouraging results confirming that focused ultrasound treatment can elicit a systemic anti-tumor immune response, and they suggest that this immunity is closely related to dendritic cell activation. Because DC activation was more pronounced when tumor cells were mechanically lysed by focused ultrasound treatment, mechanical HIFU in particular may be employed as a potential strategy in combination with subsequent thermal ablations for increasing the efficacy of HIFU cancer treatment by enhancing the host's anti-tumor immunity.</p

A new extended matrix KP hierarchy and its solutions

With the square eigenfunctions symmetry constraint, we introduce a new extended matrix KP hierarchy and its Lax representation from the matrix KP hierarchy by adding a new $\tau_B$ flow. The extended KP hierarchy contains two time series ${t_A}$ and ${\tau_B}$ and eigenfunctions and adjoint eigenfunctions as components. The extended matrix KP hierarchy and its $t_A$-reduction and $\tau_B$ reduction include two types of matrix KP hierarchy with self-consistent sources and two types of (1+1)-dimensional reduced matrix KP hierarchy with self-consistent sources. In particular, the first type and second type of the 2+1 AKNS equation and the Davey-Stewartson equation with self-consistent sources are deduced from the extended matrix KP hierarchy. The generalized dressing approach for solving the extended matrix KP hierarchy is proposed and some solutions are presented. The soliton solutions of two types of 2+1-dimensional AKNS equation with self-consistent sources and two types of Davey-Stewartson equation with self-consistent sources are studied.Comment: 17 page

A Mitochondria-Dependent Pathway Mediates the Apoptosis of GSE-Induced Yeast

Grapefruit seed extract (GSE), which has powerful anti-fungal activity, can induce apoptosis in S. cerevisiae. The yeast cells underwent apoptosis as determined by testing for apoptotic markers of DNA cleavage and typical chromatin condensation by Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase–mediated dUTP Nick End Labeling (TUNEL) and 4,6′-diaminidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) staining and electron microscopy. The changes of ΔΨmt (mitochondrial transmembrane potential) and ROS (reactive oxygen species) indicated that the mitochondria took part in the apoptotic process. Changes in this process detected by metabonomics and proteomics revealed that the yeast cells tenaciously resisted adversity. Proteins related to redox, cellular structure, membrane, energy and DNA repair were significantly increased. In this study, the relative changes in the levels of proteins and metabolites showed the tenacious resistance of yeast cells. However, GSE induced apoptosis in the yeast cells by destruction of the mitochondrial 60 S ribosomal protein, L14-A, and prevented the conversion of pantothenic acid to coenzyme A (CoA). The relationship between the proteins and metabolites was analyzed by orthogonal projections to latent structures (OPLS). We found that the changes of the metabolites and the protein changes had relevant consistency

Graphene-Based Nanocomposites for Energy Storage

Since the first report of using micromechanical cleavage method to produce graphene sheets in 2004, graphene/graphene-based nanocomposites have attracted wide attention both for fundamental aspects as well as applications in advanced energy storage and conversion systems. In comparison to other materials, graphene-based nanostructured materials have unique 2D structure, high electronic mobility, exceptional electronic and thermal conductivities, excellent optical transmittance, good mechanical strength, and ultrahigh surface area. Therefore, they are considered as attractive materials for hydrogen (H2) storage and high-performance electrochemical energy storage devices, such as supercapacitors, rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries, Li–sulfur batteries, Li–air batteries, sodium (Na)-ion batteries, Na–air batteries, zinc (Zn)–air batteries, and vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB), etc., as they can improve the efficiency, capacity, gravimetric energy/power densities, and cycle life of these energy storage devices. In this article, recent progress reported on the synthesis and fabrication of graphene nanocomposite materials for applications in these aforementioned various energy storage systems is reviewed. Importantly, the prospects and future challenges in both scalable manufacturing and more energy storage-related applications are discussed