Dynamical Modelling and a Decentralized Adaptive Controller for a 12-Tetrahedral Rolling Robot

The 12-tetrahedral robot is an addressable reconfigurable technology (ART)-based variable geometry truss mechanism with twenty-six extensible struts and nine nodes arranged in a tetrahedral mesh. The robot has the capability of reconfiguring shape and dimension for environment sensing requirements, which makes it suitable for space exploration and environmental perception. In this paper, we have derived a dynamics model and presented a decentralized adaptive controller for a 12-tetrahedral robot. First, the robot is divided into the node and the strut subsystems, and the kinetic and the potential energy are calculated for the two subsystems. Then, the dynamics model is achieved by applying the Lagrangian formalism on the total energy of the robot. Since the dynamics is too complicated for implementing model-based controllers, a two-layer controller is presented to control the robot, in which the planning layer determines gait and trajectory of the robot, and the executive layer adopts the decentralized adaptive control strategy and consists of twenty-six strut controllers. Each strut controller regulates the movement of the corresponding strut without information exchange with other struts. Co-simulations based on ADAMS and Matlab have been conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed controller

Generation of a Fully Human scFv that binds Tumor-Specific Glycoforms

Tumor-specific glycosylation changes are an attractive target for the development of diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Periostin is a glycoprotein with high expression in many tumors of epithelial origin including ovarian cancer. Strategies to target the peptide portion of periostin as a diagnostic or therapeutic biomarker for cancer are limited due to increased expression of periostin in non-cancerous inflammatory conditions. Here, we have screened for antibody fragments that recognize the tumor-specific glycosylation present on glycoforms of periostin containing bisecting N-glycans in ovarian cancer using a yeast-display library of antibody fragments, while subtracting those that bind to the periostin protein with glycoforms found in non-malignant cell types. We generated a biotinylated form of a fully human scFv antibody (scFvC9) that targets the bisecting N-glycans expressed by cancer cells. Validation studies in vitro and in vivo using scFvC9 indicate this antibody can be useful for the development of diagnostic, imaging, and therapeutic applications for cancers that express the antigen

The glycosyltransferase GnT-III activates Notch signaling and drives stem cell expansion to promote the growth and invasion of ovarian cancer

Glycosylation changes associated with cellular transformation can facilitate the growth and progression of tumors. Previously we discovered that the gene Mgat3 encoding the glycosyltransferase GnT-III is elevated in epithelial ovarian carcinomas (EOCs) and leads to the production of abnormal truncated N-linked glycan structures instead of the typical bisected forms. In this study, we are interested in discovering how these abnormal glycans impact the growth and progression of ovarian cancer. We have discovered using stable shRNA gene suppression that GnT-III expression controls the expansion of side-population cells, also known as cancer stem cells. More specifically, we found that GnT-III expression regulates the levels and activation of the heavily glycosylated Notch receptor involved in normal and malignant development. Suppression of GnT-III in EOC cell lines and primary tumor-derived cells resulted in an inhibition of Notch signaling that was more potent than phar-macologic blockage of Notch activation via γ-secretase inhibition. The inhibition resulted from the redirection of the Notch receptor to the lysosome, a novel mechanism. These findings demonstrate a new role for bisecting glycosylation in the control of Notch transport and demonstrate the therapeutic potential of inhibiting GnT-III as a treatment for controlling EOC growth and recurrence

SAR2EO: A High-resolution Image Translation Framework with Denoising Enhancement

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to electro-optical (EO) image translation is a fundamental task in remote sensing that can enrich the dataset by fusing information from different sources. Recently, many methods have been proposed to tackle this task, but they are still difficult to complete the conversion from low-resolution images to high-resolution images. Thus, we propose a framework, SAR2EO, aiming at addressing this challenge. Firstly, to generate high-quality EO images, we adopt the coarse-to-fine generator, multi-scale discriminators, and improved adversarial loss in the pix2pixHD model to increase the synthesis quality. Secondly, we introduce a denoising module to remove the noise in SAR images, which helps to suppress the noise while preserving the structural information of the images. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, we conduct experiments on the dataset of the Multi-modal Aerial View Imagery Challenge (MAVIC), which consists of large-scale SAR and EO image pairs. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed framework, and we win the first place in the MAVIC held in CVPR PBVS 2023

Value of loop electrosurgical excision procedure conization and imaging for the diagnosis of papillary squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix

BackgroundLoop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP) conization and hysterectomy are performed for some patients with papillary squamous cell carcinoma (PSCC), whereas only hysterectomy is performed for others. We aimed to determine the optimal management for PSCC.MethodsPatients diagnosed with PSCC by colposcopy-directed biopsy between June 2008 and January 2020 who underwent LEEP conization and hysterectomy or only hysterectomy at our hospital were enrolled. Results of cervical cytology, high-risk human papillomavirus testing, transvaginal sonography, pelvic magnetic resonance imaging, LEEP, hysterectomy, and pathology testing of colposcopy-directed biopsy samples were analyzed.ResultsA total of 379 women were diagnosed with PSCC by colposcopy-directed biopsy; 174 underwent LEEP before hysterectomy and 205 underwent only hysterectomy. Patients underwent and did not undergo LEEP were aged 47 ± 11 years and 52 ± 11 years, respectively. Among women who underwent LEEP, the agreement between LEEP and hysterectomy pathology was 85.1%. For women who underwent only hysterectomy, the agreement between preoperative clinical staging and pathological staging after hysterectomy was 82.4%. For patients with preoperative imaging indicative of malignancy, the accuracy of LEEP for diagnosing and staging PSCC was 88.5%, whereas for the hysterectomy-only group, it was 86.2%. For patients without malignancy detected with imaging, the accuracy of LEEP for diagnosing and staging PSCC was 81.6%; however, for those who did not undergo LEEP, it was 70.0%.ConclusionFor women diagnosed with PSCC by colposcopy-directed biopsy, LEEP conization is necessary for an accurate diagnosis when imaging does not indicate cancer; however, LEEP is not necessary when imaging indicates cancer

Exploring the Naturalness of AI-Generated Images

The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence-Generated Images (AGIs) has greatly expanded the Image Naturalness Assessment (INA) problem. Different from early definitions that mainly focus on tone-mapped images with limited distortions (e.g., exposure, contrast, and color reproduction), INA on AI-generated images is especially challenging as it has more diverse contents and could be affected by factors from multiple perspectives, including low-level technical distortions and high-level rationality distortions. In this paper, we take the first step to benchmark and assess the visual naturalness of AI-generated images. First, we construct the AI-Generated Image Naturalness (AGIN) database by conducting a large-scale subjective study to collect human opinions on the overall naturalness as well as perceptions from technical and rationality perspectives. AGIN verifies that naturalness is universally and disparately affected by technical and rationality distortions. Second, we propose the Joint Objective Image Naturalness evaluaTor (JOINT), to automatically predict the naturalness of AGIs that aligns human ratings. Specifically, JOINT imitates human reasoning in naturalness evaluation by jointly learning both technical and rationality features. We demonstrate that JOINT significantly outperforms baselines for providing more subjectively consistent results on naturalness assessment.Comment: 33 page

Novel Role for the Golgi Membrane Protein TMEM165 in Control of Migration and Invasion for Breast Carcinoma

The TMEM165 gene encodes for a multiple pass membrane protein localized in the Golgi that has been linked to congenital disorders of glycosylation. The TMEM165 protein is a putative ion transporter that regulates H+/Ca++/Mn++ homeostasis and pH in the Golgi. Previously, we identified TMEM165 as a potential biomarker for breast carcinoma in a glycoproteomic study using late stage invasive ductal carcinoma tissues with patient-matched adjacent normal tissues. The TMEM165 protein was not detected in non-malignant matched breast tissues and was detected in invasive ductal breast carcinoma tissues by mass spectrometry. Our hypothesis is that the TMEM165 protein confers a growth advantage to breast cancer. In this preliminary study we have investigated the expression of TMEM165 in earlier stage invasive ductal carcinoma and ductal carcinoma in situ cases. We created a CRISPR/Cas9 knockout of TMEM165 in the human invasive breast cancer cell line MDAMB231. Our results indicate that removal of TMEM165 in these cells results in a significant reduction of cell migration, tumor growth, and tumor vascularization in vivo. Furthermore, we find that TMEM165 expression alters the glycosylation of breast cancer cells and these changes promote the invasion and growth of breast cancer by altering the expression levels of key glycoproteins involved in regulation of the epithelial to mesenchymal transition such as E-cadherin. These studies illustrate new potential functions for this Golgi membrane protein in the control of breast cancer growth and invasion

The Late Paleocene–Eocene Extension and Differential Denudation in the Eastern Daqingshan Mountains Around the Northeastern Margin of the Ordos Block, Western North China Craton, Constrained by Apatite (U-Th)/He Thermochronology

The initial timing of extension during the Cenozoic around the northeastern margin of the Ordos Block, western North China Craton (NCC), is still poorly constrained. Apatite (U-Th)/He low-temperature thermochronology was thus applied on eight pre-Cenozoic granitic and gneissic samples transecting the eastern Daqingshan Mountains, northeastern margin of the Ordos Block, to investigate the denudation and cooling event related to the onset of extension therein. Four mean corrected AHe ages in the southern part are overlapped within the standard deviations of 50.0 ± 0.4 to 45.0 ± 8.0 Ma. However, three mean corrected AHe ages in the northern part are prominently older of 99.2 ± 11.0 to 86.6 ± 17.1 Ma, with the rest one of 56.1 ± 8.6 Ma. Altogether, they show a younger-older-younger-older pattern along the transect correlated with the normal faults. AHe thermal history modeling results further demonstrate extensive cooling during the Late Cretaceous but differential cooling during the Late Paleocene–Eocene. The Late Cretaceous extensive cooling in the eastern Daqingshan Mountains, as well as the contemporaneous deposition hiatus in both the eastern Daqingshan Mountains and the Hohhot Depression, together indicates overall denudation in the northeastern margin of the Ordos Block at that time. The Late Paleocene–Eocene differential cooling is probably induced by the tilting of the eastern Daqingshan Mountains as a result of the extension suggested by the distribution of AHe ages. It corresponds to the syn-tectonic subsidence in the Hohhot Depression, indicating a basin-mountain coupling. Regional comparative analysis manifests similar extension around the Ordos Block and more widely across the NCC during the Late Paleocene–Eocene. Temporally, kinematically, and dynamically coupled with this regional extension event, the subduction of the Izanagi-Pacific plate probably plays a major role. However, the contribution of the India-Asia collision could not be ignored

Middle Jurassic ooidal ironstones (southern Tibet): Formation processes and implications for the paleoceanography of eastern Neo-Tethys

The major facies changes documented in shallow-marine sediments of the northern Indian passive margin of Neo-Tethys throughout the Jurassic, from widespread platform carbonates in the Early Jurassic to organic-rich black shales in the Late Jurassic, imply a substantial turnover in oceanic conditions. All along the Tethys (Tibetan) Himalaya, from the Zanskar Range to southern Tibet, a peculiar interval characterized by ooidal ironstones of Dingjie Formation (Ferruginous Oolite Formation, FOF) marks the base of the organic-rich Spiti Shale. This laterally-extensive ooidal ironstone interval is a fundamental testimony of the mechanisms that led to major paleoceanographic changes that occurred in the eastern Neo-Tethys during the Middle Jurassic. In this article, we illustrate in detail the petrology, mineralogy, and geochemistry of ooidal ironstones and the major element contents of the entire Lanongla section. The FOF is characterized by significantly high contents of Fe2O3 (56.80% ± 9.07%, n = 7) and P2O5 (1.72% ± 1.19%, n = 7). In contrast, the Fe2O3 and P2O5 contents average 3.58% and 0.15% in the overlain carbonates of Lanongla Fm., and 5.55% and 0.16% in the overlying Spiti Shale. The ooidal ironstones are mainly composed of iron ooids with a few quartz grains and bioclasts cemented by sparry calcite. The iron ooids consist of concentric dark layers of francolite (carbonate fluorapatite), hence enriched in Ca, P, and F, and bright layers of chamosite, enriched in Fe, Si, Al, and Mg. Precipitation of francolite ensued from oversaturation of phosphorous ascribed to intensified upwelling, high biogenous productivity, and degradation of organic matter, whereas the formation of chamosite reflects enhanced continental weathering and erosion leading to increased Fe input to the ocean during transgressive stages characterized by low sedimentation rate and scarce oxygenation at the seafloor. Modern upwelling zones in outer shelf or slope areas perform similar geochemical characteristics to those as observed in this study. Under the Mesozoic greenhouse background, fluctuating redox conditions induced the alternate growth of francolite under anoxic conditions and of chamosite under suboxic conditions. Ooids were thus formed on the seafloor during continued resuspension and vertical oscillations of the chemocline rather than from interstitial waters after burial. The mineralogy of iron ooids indicates mainly reducing conditions in the water column, suggesting that extensive upwelling along the continental margin of eastern Neo-Tethys contributed significantly to the transition from carbonate deposits to organic-rich black shales during the Jurassic, as testified by the transition from well-oxygenated in Lanongla Fm. To a reduceing condition in Spiti Shale indicated by the Mn/Al ratios compared to PAAS