Perceptual Quality Assessment of Omnidirectional Audio-visual Signals

Omnidirectional videos (ODVs) play an increasingly important role in the application fields of medical, education, advertising, tourism, etc. Assessing the quality of ODVs is significant for service-providers to improve the user's Quality of Experience (QoE). However, most existing quality assessment studies for ODVs only focus on the visual distortions of videos, while ignoring that the overall QoE also depends on the accompanying audio signals. In this paper, we first establish a large-scale audio-visual quality assessment dataset for omnidirectional videos, which includes 375 distorted omnidirectional audio-visual (A/V) sequences generated from 15 high-quality pristine omnidirectional A/V contents, and the corresponding perceptual audio-visual quality scores. Then, we design three baseline methods for full-reference omnidirectional audio-visual quality assessment (OAVQA), which combine existing state-of-the-art single-mode audio and video QA models via multimodal fusion strategies. We validate the effectiveness of the A/V multimodal fusion method for OAVQA on our dataset, which provides a new benchmark for omnidirectional QoE evaluation. Our dataset is available at https://github.com/iamazxl/OAVQA.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, to be published in CICAI202

Integrable Rosochatius deformations of higher-order constrained flows and the soliton hierarchy with self-consistent sources

We propose a systematic method to generalize the integrable Rosochatius deformations for finite dimensional integrable Hamiltonian systems to integrable Rosochatius deformations for infinite dimensional integrable equations. Infinite number of the integrable Rosochatius deformed higher-order constrained flows of some soliton hierarchies, which includes the generalized integrable H$\acute{e}$non-Heiles system, and the integrable Rosochatius deformations of the KdV hierarchy with self-consistent sources, of the AKNS hierarchy with self-consistent sources and of the mKdV hierarchy with self-consistent sources as well as their Lax representations are presented.Comment: 18 pages. to appear in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge

NTIRE 2023 Quality Assessment of Video Enhancement Challenge

This paper reports on the NTIRE 2023 Quality Assessment of Video Enhancement Challenge, which will be held in conjunction with the New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement Workshop (NTIRE) at CVPR 2023. This challenge is to address a major challenge in the field of video processing, namely, video quality assessment (VQA) for enhanced videos. The challenge uses the VQA Dataset for Perceptual Video Enhancement (VDPVE), which has a total of 1211 enhanced videos, including 600 videos with color, brightness, and contrast enhancements, 310 videos with deblurring, and 301 deshaked videos. The challenge has a total of 167 registered participants. 61 participating teams submitted their prediction results during the development phase, with a total of 3168 submissions. A total of 176 submissions were submitted by 37 participating teams during the final testing phase. Finally, 19 participating teams submitted their models and fact sheets, and detailed the methods they used. Some methods have achieved better results than baseline methods, and the winning methods have demonstrated superior prediction performance

ADNP promotes neural differentiation by modulating Wnt/beta-catenin signaling

ADNP (Activity Dependent Neuroprotective Protein) is a neuroprotective protein whose aberrant expression has been frequently linked to neural developmental disorders, including the Helsmoortel-Van der Aa syndrome (also called the ADNP syndrome). However, its role in neural development and pathology remains unclear. Here, we show that ADNP is required for neural induction and differentiation by enhancing Wnt signaling. Mechanistically, ADNP functions to stabilize beta -Catenin through binding to its armadillo domain which prevents its association with key components of the degradation complex: Axin and APC. Loss of ADNP promotes the formation of the degradation complex and beta -Catenin degradation via ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, resulting in down-regulation of key neuroectoderm developmental genes. In addition, adnp gene disruption in zebrafish leads to defective neurogenesis and reduced Wnt signaling. Our work provides important insights into the role of ADNP in neural development and the pathology of the Helsmoortel-Van der Aa syndrome caused by ADNP gene mutation. ADNP has been connected to neural developmental disorders. Here, the authors uncover a role for ADNP in neural induction and differentiation via beta -Catenin stabilization, with ADNP disruption in zebrafish leading to defective neurogenesis and decreased Wnt signaling

Construction and immunogenicity of a ∆apxIC/ompP2 mutant of <i>Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae</i> and <i>Haemophilus parasuis</i>

The apxIC genes of the Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae serovar 5 (SC-1), encoding the ApxIactivating proteins, was deleted by a method involving sucrose counter-selection. In this study, a mutant strain of A. pleuropneumoniae (SC-1) was constructed and named DapxIC/ ompP2. The mutant strain contained foreign DNA in the deletion site of ompP2 gene of Haemophilus parasuis. It showed no haemolytic activity and lower virulence of cytotoxicity in mice compared with the parent strain, and its safety and immunogenicity were also evaluated in mice. The LD50 data shown that the mutant strain was attenuated 30-fold, compared with the parent strain (LD50 of the mutant strain and parent strain in mice were determined to be 1.0 × 107 CFU and 3.5 × 105 CFU respectively). The mutant strain that was attenuated could secrete inactivated ApxIA RTX toxins with complete antigenicity and could be used as a candidate live vaccine strain against infections of A. pleuropneumoniae and H. parasuis.</em

Comprehensive Evaluation of Salt Tolerance in Asparagus Germplasm Accessions (Asparagus officinalis L.) at Different Growth Stages

The screening and cultivation of salt-tolerant crops are becoming more and more important owing to the constant increase in the saline soil area worldwide. Asparagus (A. officinalis L.) is a highly nutritious vegetable crop and widely consumed globally for a long time; however, little research has been done on asparagus. In this study, the salt tolerance of 95 asparagus germplasm accessions was evaluated at three growth stages (germination, seedling, and adult stages) under both salt-stressed and control conditions. Results showed that the growth parameters of most germplasm accessions were obviously inhibited by salt stress. The mean value of the seed germination rate at the germination stage decreased by half under salt-stressed conditions, the mean salt-injury index at the seedling stage reached 57.68%, and the fresh weight of the aboveground part (FWA) and the dry weight of the aboveground part (DWA) decreased the most among the traits determined at the adult stage by more than 60%. Our study screened out 30, 19, and 18 tolerant germplasm accessions (including highly salt-tolerant and salt-tolerant germplasm accessions) at the germination stage, seedling stage, and adult stage, respectively. Among them, two germplasm accessions (Ji08-2 and Jx1502) were simultaneously identified to be tolerant in all three growth stages, while other germplasm accessions were tolerant only at one or two stages. Thus, the salt tolerance of asparagus has periodic characteristics and changes throughout the lifecycle, and the identification of salt tolerance at all the main growth stages facilitates adequate assessment and application of tolerant germplasm accessions