Identification of the regulatory roles of water qualities on the spatio-temporal dynamics of microbiota communities in the water and fish guts in the Heilongjiang River

The Heilongjiang River is one of the largest rivers in the cool temperate zone and has an abundant fish source. To date, the microbiota community in water samples and fish guts from the Heilongjiang River is still unclear. In the present study, water samples and fish guts were collected from four locations of the Heilongjiang River during both the dry season and the wet season to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of microbiota communities in the water environment and fish guts through 16s ribosome RNA sequencing. The water qualities showed seasonal changes in which the pH value, dissolved oxygen, and total dissolved solids were generally higher during the dry season, and the water temperature was higher during the wet season. RDA indicated that higher pH values, dissolved oxygen, and total dissolved solids promoted the formation of microbiota communities in the water samples of the dry season, while higher water temperature positively regulated the formation of microbiota communities in the water samples of the wet season. LEFSe identified five biomarkers with the most abundant difference at the genus level, of which TM7a was upregulated in the water samples of the dry season, and SM1A02, Rheinheimera, Gemmatimonas, and Vogesella were upregulated in the water samples of the wet season. Pearson analysis revealed that higher pH values and dissolved oxygen positively regulated the formation of TM7a and negatively regulated the formation of SM1A02, Rheinheimera, Gemmatimonas, and Vogesella (p < 0.05), while higher water temperature had the opposite regulatory roles in the formation of these biomarkers. The relative abundance of microbiota diversity in fish guts varies greatly between different fish species, even if the fishes were collected from the same water source, indicating that dietary habits and fish species may be key factors, affecting the formation and construction of microbiome community in fish gut. P. glenii, P. lagowskii, G. cynocephalus, and L. waleckii were the main fish resources, which were collected and identified from at least six sample points. RDA indicated that the microbiota in the water environment regulated the formation of microbiota community in the guts of G. cynocephalus and L. waleckii and had limited regulated effects on P. glenii and P. lagowskii. The present study identified the regulatory effects of water qualities on the formation of microbiota communities in the water samples and fish guts, providing valuable evidence for the protection of fish resources in the Heilongjiang River

WebRPG: Automatic Web Rendering Parameters Generation for Visual Presentation

In the era of content creation revolution propelled by advancements in generative models, the field of web design remains unexplored despite its critical role in modern digital communication. The web design process is complex and often time-consuming, especially for those with limited expertise. In this paper, we introduce Web Rendering Parameters Generation (WebRPG), a new task that aims at automating the generation for visual presentation of web pages based on their HTML code. WebRPG would contribute to a faster web development workflow. Since there is no existing benchmark available, we develop a new dataset for WebRPG through an automated pipeline. Moreover, we present baseline models, utilizing VAE to manage numerous elements and rendering parameters, along with custom HTML embedding for capturing essential semantic and hierarchical information from HTML. Extensive experiments, including customized quantitative evaluations for this specific task, are conducted to evaluate the quality of the generated results.Comment: Accepted at ECCV 2024. The dataset and code can be accessed at https://github.com/AlibabaResearch/AdvancedLiterateMachinery/tree/main/DocumentUnderstanding/WebRP

Exploring how sensory dominance modulated by modality-specific expectation: an event-related potential study

The Colavita visual dominance effect refers to the phenomenon in which tend to respond only or preferentially to visual stimuli of bimodal audiovisual stimulus. Previous evidence has indicated that sensory dominance can be modulated by top-down expectation. However, it remains unclear how expectations directed toward a single sensory modality influence Colavita visual dominance at the electrophysiology level. Using event-related potential (ERP) measurements, we investigated how modality expectation modulates sensory dominance by manipulating the different unimodal target probabilities used in previous related Colavita studies. For the behavioral results, a significantly larger visual dominance effect was found when the modality expectation was directed to the visual sensory condition (40% V:10% A). Further ERPs results revealed that the mean amplitude of P2 (200–250 ms) in the central-parietal region was larger in the visual precedence auditory response (V_A) type than in the auditory precedence visual response (A_V) type when modality expectation was directed to visual sensory stimuli (40% V:10% A). In contrast, the mean amplitude of N2 (290–330 ms) in the frontal region was larger for the V_A type than in the A_V type when modality expectation was directed to the auditory sensory stimuli (10% V:40% A). Additionally, for the A_V type N1 (150–170 ms) in the frontal region was larger in visual versus auditory expectation condition. Overall, the study tentatively suggested that increasing unimodal target probability may lead to greater top-down expectation direct to target modality stimulus, and then sensory dominance emerges in the late phase when participant response to visual stimuli of bimodal audiovisual stimulus

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

An in situ digital background calibration algorithm for multi-channel R-βR ladder DACs

The R-2R resistor ladder is one of the best topologies for implementing compact-sized digital-to-analog converter (DAC) arrays in implantable neuro-stimulators. However, it has a limited resolution and considerable inter-channel variation due to component mismatches. To avoid losing analog information, we present sub-radix-2 DAC implemented by the R-βR resistor ladder in this paper. The digital successive approximation register (DSAR) algorithm corrects the transfer function of DACs based on their actual bit weights. Furthermore, a low-cost in situ adaptive bit-weight calibration (ABC) algorithm drives the analog output error between two DACs to zero by adjusting their bit weights automatically. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can calibrate the non-linear transfer function of each DAC and the gain error among multiple channels in the background

Observer-based control for piecewise-affine systems with both input and output quantization

This technical note is concerned with the problem of simultaneous design of observers and controllers for a class of piecewise-affine systems against signal quantization occurring in both measurement output and control input channels. The general scenario is considered that system state and estimated state may not be in the same operating region. By a novel quantization-error-dependent Lyapunov function, the stability and H∞ performance criteria are first established for the augmented system composed of a closed-loop control system and an estimation error system with the aid of S-procedure involving the region partition information of the original system. Then, by the cone complementary linearization algorithm, the desired observer and controller gains are solved simultaneously such that the resulting closed-loop system is asymptotically stable with a prescribed H∞ performance index. Finally, a networked single-link robot arm is utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy