Real-Time Illegal Parking Detection System Based on Deep Learning

The increasing illegal parking has become more and more serious. Nowadays the methods of detecting illegally parked vehicles are based on background segmentation. However, this method is weakly robust and sensitive to environment. Benefitting from deep learning, this paper proposes a novel illegal vehicle parking detection system. Illegal vehicles captured by camera are firstly located and classified by the famous Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) algorithm. To improve the performance, we propose to optimize SSD by adjusting the aspect ratio of default box to accommodate with our dataset better. After that, a tracking and analysis of movement is adopted to judge the illegal vehicles in the region of interest (ROI). Experiments show that the system can achieve a 99% accuracy and real-time (25FPS) detection with strong robustness in complex environments.Comment: 5pages,6figure

The comprehensive environmental efficiency of socioeconomic sectors in China: An analysis based on a non-separable bad output SBM

The increasingly high frequency of heavy air pollution in most regions of China signals the urgent need for the transition to an environmentally friendly production performance by socioeconomic sectors for the sake of people's health and sustainable development. Focusing on CO2 and major air pollutants, this paper presents a comprehensive environmental efficiency index based on evaluating the environmental efficiency of major socioeconomic sectors, including agriculture, power, industry, residential and transportation, at the province level in China in 2010 based on a slack-based measure DEA model with non-separable bad output and weights determined by the coefficient of variation method. In terms of the environment, 5, 16, 6, 7 and 4 provinces operated along the production frontier for the agricultural, power, industrial, residential and transportation sectors, respectively, in China in 2010, whereas Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Ningxia, Hubei and Yunnan showed lowest efficiency correspondingly. The comprehensive environmental efficiency index varied from 0.3863 to 0.9261 for 30 provinces in China, with a nationwide average of 0.6383 in 2010; Shanghai ranked at the top, and Shanxi was last. Regional disparities in environmental efficiency were identified. A more detailed inefficiency decomposition and benchmarking analysis provided insight for understanding the source of comprehensive environmental inefficiency and, more specifically, the reduction potential for CO2 and air pollutants. Some specific research and policy implications were uncovered from this work

Life-cycle water uses for energy consumption of Chinese households from 2002 to 2015

China's household energy demands' life-cycle water uses from 2002 to 2015 are quantified with an Input-Output analysis disaggregating rural and urban impacts. 9.73 and 1.60 km3 of water was withdrawn and consumed respectively in the life cycle of Chinese household energy demands in 2015, which was dominated by power and heat uses. An average urbanite's household energy uses, including coal, gas, petroleum products, power and heat, require about four times of life-cycle water uses than its rural counterpart. Among all upstream sectors, while agricultural sectors accounted for the largest shares for all energy uses, oil and gas extraction made significant contributions to petroleum products and gas consumption. A Structural Decomposition Analysis is conducted to disentangle the impacts of four driving factors, i.e. population, demand, economic structure and technology. Population change reduced energy consumption's life-cycle water use for rural households but increased that for urban households. Each economic sector's water intensity decreases, which represent technology advancement, played the dominant role curbing household energy consumption's life-cycle water uses. While power and heat dominates the household energy use profile, urbanization is accompanied by household consumption shifting from coal to gas and petroleum products. In order to reduce household energy consumption's impacts and reliance on water resources, it is imperative to reduce energy production'swater use by adopting water-saving technologies, such as air cooling, as well as to reduce upstream sectors' water intensities, such as by promoting drip irrigation

Transcriptional up-regulation of relaxin-3 by Nur77 attenuates β-adrenergic agonist-induced apoptosis in cardiomyocytes.

The relaxin family peptides have been shown to exert several beneficial effects on the heart, including anti-apoptosis, anti-fibrosis, and anti-hypertrophy activity. Understanding their regulation might provide new opportunities for therapeutic interventions, but the molecular mechanism(s) coordinating relaxin expression in the heart remain largely obscured. Previous work demonstrated a role for the orphan nuclear receptor Nur77 in regulating cardiomyocyte apoptosis. We therefore investigated Nur77 in the hopes of identifying novel relaxin regulators. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) data indicated that ectopic expression of orphan nuclear receptor Nur77 markedly increased the expression of latexin-3 (RLN3), but not relaxin-1 (RLN1), in neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes (NRVMs). Furthermore, we found that the -adrenergic agonist isoproterenol (ISO) markedly stimulated RLN3 expression, and this stimulation was significantly attenuated in Nur77 knockdown cardiomyocytes and Nur77 knockout hearts. We showed that Nur77 significantly increased RLN3 promoter activity via specific binding to the RLN3 promoter, as demonstrated by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) and chromatin immuno-precipitation (ChIP) assays. Furthermore, we found that Nur77 overexpression potently inhibited ISO-induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis, whereas this protective effect was significantly attenuated in RLN3 knockdown cardiomyocytes, suggesting that Nur77-induced RLN3 expression is an important mediator for the suppression of cardiomyocyte apoptosis. These findings show that Nur77 regulates RLN3 expression, therefore suppressing apoptosis in the heart, and suggest that activation of Nur77 may represent a useful therapeutic strategy for inhibition of cardiac fibrosis and heart failure. © 2018 You et al

A novel 4-(1,3,4-thiadiazole-2-ylthio)pyrimidine derivative inhibits cell proliferation by suppressing the MEK/ERK signaling pathway in colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common types of malignant cancers worldwide. Although molecularly targeted therapies have significantly improved treatment outcomes, most of these target inhibitors are resistant. Novel inhibitors as potential anti-cancer drug candidates are still needed to be discovered. Therefore, in the present study, we synthesized a novel 4-(1,3,4-thiadiazole-2-ylthio)pyrimidine derivative (compound 4) using fragment- and structure-based techniques and then investigated the anti-cancer effect and underlying mechanism of anti-CRC. The results revealed that compound 4 significantly inhibited HCT116 cell proliferation with IC50 values of 8.04 ± 0.94 µmol L–1 after 48 h and 5.52 ± 0.42 µmol L–1 after 72 h, respectively. Compound 4 also inhibited colony formation, migration, and invasion of HCT116 cells in a dose-dependent manner, as well as inducing cell apoptosis and arresting the cell cycle in the G2/M phase. In addition, compound 4 was able to inhibit the activation of the MEK/ERK signaling in HCT116 cells. And compound 4 yielded the same effects as the MEK inhibitor U0126 on cell apoptosis and MEK/ERK-related proteins. These findings suggested that compound 4 inhibited cell proliferation and growth, and induced cell apoptosis, indicating its use as e a novel and potent anti-cancer agent against CRC via the MEK/ERK signaling pathway

Therapeutic application of quercetin in aging-related diseases: SIRT1 as a potential mechanism

Quercetin, a naturally non-toxic flavonoid within the safe dose range with antioxidant, anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory properties, plays an important role in the treatment of aging-related diseases. Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), a member of NAD+-dependent deacetylase enzyme family, is extensively explored as a potential therapeutic target for attenuating aging-induced disorders. SIRT1 possess beneficial effects against aging-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Huntington’s disease (HD), Depression, Osteoporosis, Myocardial ischemia (M/I) and reperfusion (MI/R), Atherosclerosis (AS), and Diabetes. Previous studies have reported that aging increases tissue susceptibility, whereas, SIRT1 regulates cellular senescence and multiple aging-related cellular processes, including SIRT1/Keap1/Nrf2/HO-1 and SIRTI/PI3K/Akt/GSK-3β mediated oxidative stress, SIRT1/NF-κB and SIRT1/NLRP3 regulated inflammatory response, SIRT1/PGC1α/eIF2α/ATF4/CHOP and SIRT1/PKD1/CREB controlled phosphorylation, SIRT1-PINK1-Parkin mediated mitochondrial damage, SIRT1/FoxO mediated autophagy, and SIRT1/FoxG1/CREB/BDNF/Trkβ-catenin mediated neuroprotective effects. In this review, we summarized the role of SIRT1 in the improvement of the attenuation effect of quercetin on aging-related diseases and the relationship between relevant signaling pathways regulated by SIRT1. Moreover, the functional regulation of quercetin in aging-related markers such as oxidative stress, inflammatory response, mitochondrial function, autophagy and apoptosis through SIRT1 was discussed. Finally, the prospects of an extracellular vesicles (EVs) as quercetin loading and delivery, and SIRT1-mediated EVs as signal carriers for treating aging-related diseases, as well as discussed the ferroptosis alleviation effects of quercetin to protect against aging-related disease via activating SIRT1. Generally, SIRT1 may serve as a promising therapeutic target in the treatment of aging-related diseases via inhibiting oxidative stress, reducing inflammatory responses, and restoring mitochondrial dysfunction

The antiparasitic drug ivermectin is a novel FXR ligand that regulates metabolism

Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) has important roles in maintaining bile acid and cholesterol homeostasis. Here we report that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin is a ligand for nuclear FXR. We identify ivermectin using a high-throughput compound library screening and show that it induces the transcriptional activity of the FXR with distinctive properties in modulating coregulator recruitment. The crystal structure of ivermectin complexed with the ligand-binding domain of FXR reveals a unique binding mode of ivermectin in the FXR ligand-binding pocket, including the highly dynamic AF-2 helix and an expanded ligand-binding pocket. Treatment of wild-type mice, but not of FXR-null mice, with ivermectin decreases serum glucose and cholesterol levels, suggesting that ivermectin regulates metabolism through FXR. Our results establish FXR as the first mammalian protein targeted by ivermectin with high selectivity. Considering that ivermectin is a widely used clinical drug, our findings reveal a safe template for the design of novel FXR ligands

A novel bioinformatics pipeline for identification and characterization of fusion transcripts in breast cancer and normal cell lines

SnowShoes-FTD, developed for fusion transcript detection in paired-end mRNA-Seq data, employs multiple steps of false positive filtering to nominate fusion transcripts with near 100% confidence. Unique features include: (i) identification of multiple fusion isoforms from two gene partners; (ii) prediction of genomic rearrangements; (iii) identification of exon fusion boundaries; (iv) generation of a 5′–3′ fusion spanning sequence for PCR validation; and (v) prediction of the protein sequences, including frame shift and amino acid insertions. We applied SnowShoes-FTD to identify 50 fusion candidates in 22 breast cancer and 9 non-transformed cell lines. Five additional fusion candidates with two isoforms were confirmed. In all, 30 of 55 fusion candidates had in-frame protein products. No fusion transcripts were detected in non-transformed cells. Consideration of the possible functions of a subset of predicted fusion proteins suggests several potentially important functions in transformation, including a possible new mechanism for overexpression of ERBB2 in a HER-positive cell line. The source code of SnowShoes-FTD is provided in two formats: one configured to run on the Sun Grid Engine for parallelization, and the other formatted to run on a single LINUX node. Executables in PERL are available for download from our web site: http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/mayo/research/biostat/stand-alone-packages.cfm

Temporal change in India’s imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in international trade

In India, rapid industrialization and reorganization of the global supply chain are driving economic growth, accompanied by increasing exports and carbon emissions. India is poised to succeed China as the next world manufactory, which will lead to huge emissions in the country. To formulate appropriate emission mitigation measures, it is necessary to further understand the temporal change in India’s emissions at the sectoral level from both the production and consumption perspectives. However, existing studies that have estimated emissions in India have paid less attention to the link among original emitters, final producers and final consumers and to its temporal change. Based on an emission inventory compiled in this study, we trace emission flows from original emitters to final producers and then to final consumers through the international supply chain by using an environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model. This study finds that both production-based and consumption-based emissions in India increased constantly from 2000 to 2014, and production-based emissions had higher growth rates due to the increased coal share. The major receivers of India’s exported emissions were developed countries (e.g., the European Union and the United States), while the main sources of India’s imported emissions were developing countries (e.g., China and Russia). From 2011 to 2014, India’s net exported emissions increased by 29.2% because of the decrease of imported emissions. Moreover, intermediate products (63% and 73.7%) were the major contributors to exported and imported emissions, most of which were embodied in manufacturing products (48.8% and 65.7%, respectively). Therefore, international cooperation to optimize the energy and trade structure and to improve energy efficiency can be effective in mitigating carbon emissions in India