238 research outputs found
The optimal connection model for blood vessels segmentation and the MEA-Net
Vascular diseases have long been regarded as a significant health concern.
Accurately detecting the location, shape, and afflicted regions of blood
vessels from a diverse range of medical images has proven to be a major
challenge. Obtaining blood vessels that retain their correct topological
structures is currently a crucial research issue. Numerous efforts have sought
to reinforce neural networks' learning of vascular geometric features,
including measures to ensure the correct topological structure of the
segmentation result's vessel centerline. Typically, these methods extract
topological features from the network's segmentation result and then apply
regular constraints to reinforce the accuracy of critical components and the
overall topological structure. However, as blood vessels are three-dimensional
structures, it is essential to achieve complete local vessel segmentation,
which necessitates enhancing the segmentation of vessel boundaries.
Furthermore, current methods are limited to handling 2D blood vessel
fragmentation cases. Our proposed boundary attention module directly extracts
boundary voxels from the network's segmentation result. Additionally, we have
established an optimal connection model based on minimal surfaces to determine
the connection order between blood vessels. Our method achieves
state-of-the-art performance in 3D multi-class vascular segmentation tasks, as
evidenced by the high values of Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and
Normalized Surface Dice (NSD) metrics. Furthermore, our approach improves the
Betti error, LR error, and BR error indicators of vessel richness and
structural integrity by more than 10% compared to other methods, and
effectively addresses vessel fragmentation and yields blood vessels with a more
precise topological structure.Comment: 19 page
Knowledge-refined Denoising Network for Robust Recommendation
Knowledge graph (KG), which contains rich side information, becomes an
essential part to boost the recommendation performance and improve its
explainability. However, existing knowledge-aware recommendation methods
directly perform information propagation on KG and user-item bipartite graph,
ignoring the impacts of \textit{task-irrelevant knowledge propagation} and
\textit{vulnerability to interaction noise}, which limits their performance. To
solve these issues, we propose a robust knowledge-aware recommendation
framework, called \textit{Knowledge-refined Denoising Network} (KRDN), to prune
the task-irrelevant knowledge associations and noisy implicit feedback
simultaneously. KRDN consists of an adaptive knowledge refining strategy and a
contrastive denoising mechanism, which are able to automatically distill
high-quality KG triplets for aggregation and prune noisy implicit feedback
respectively. Besides, we also design the self-adapted loss function and the
gradient estimator for model optimization. The experimental results on three
benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of KRDN over
the state-of-the-art knowledge-aware methods like KGIN, MCCLK, and KGCL, and
also outperform robust recommendation models like SGL and SimGCL
Systematic HydrogenâBond Manipulations To Establish Polysaccharide StructureâProperty Correlations
A dense hydrogenâbond network is responsible for the mechanical and structural properties of polysaccharides. Random derivatization alters the properties of the bulk material by disrupting the hydrogen bonds, but obstructs detailed structureâfunction correlations. We have prepared wellâdefined unnatural oligosaccharides including methylated, deoxygenated, deoxyfluorinated, as well as carboxymethylated cellulose and chitin analogues with full control over the degree and pattern of substitution. Molecular dynamics simulations and crystallographic analysis show how distinct hydrogenâbond modifications drastically affect the solubility, aggregation behavior, and crystallinity of carbohydrate materials. This systematic approach to establishing detailed structureâproperty correlations will guide the synthesis of novel, tailorâmade carbohydrate materials
Systematic HydrogenâBond Manipulations To Establish Polysaccharide StructureâProperty Correlations
A dense hydrogenâbond network is responsible for the mechanical and structural properties of polysaccharides. Random derivatization alters the properties of the bulk material by disrupting the hydrogen bonds, but obstructs detailed structureâfunction correlations. We have prepared wellâdefined unnatural oligosaccharides including methylated, deoxygenated, deoxyfluorinated, as well as carboxymethylated cellulose and chitin analogues with full control over the degree and pattern of substitution. Molecular dynamics simulations and crystallographic analysis show how distinct hydrogenâbond modifications drastically affect the solubility, aggregation behavior, and crystallinity of carbohydrate materials. This systematic approach to establishing detailed structureâproperty correlations will guide the synthesis of novel, tailorâmade carbohydrate materials
Exploring the Molecular Conformation Space by Soft MoleculeâSurface Collision
Biomolecules function by adopting multiple conformations. Such dynamics are governed by the conformation landscape whose study requires characterization of the ground and excited conformation states. Here, the conformational landscape of a molecule is sampled by exciting an initial gas-phase molecular conformer into diverse conformation states, using soft molecule-surface collision (0.5-5.0 eV). The resulting ground and excited molecular conformations, adsorbed on the surface, are imaged at the single-molecule level. This technique permits the exploration of oligosaccharide conformations, until now, limited by the high flexibility of oligosaccharides and ensemble-averaged analytical methods. As a model for cellulose, cellohexaose chains are observed in two conformational extremes, the typical "extended" chain and the atypical "coiled" chain-the latter identified as the gas-phase conformer preserved on the surface. Observing conformations between these two extremes reveals the physical properties of cellohexaose, behaving as a rigid ribbon that becomes flexible when twisted. The conformation space of any molecule that can be electrosprayed can now be explored
Abundance of kinless hubs within soil microbial networks are associated with high functional potential in agricultural ecosystems
Microbial taxa within complex ecological networks can be classified by their universal roles based on their level of connectivity with other taxa. Highly connected taxa within an ecological network (kinless hubs) are theoretically expected to support higher levels of ecosystem functions than less connected taxa (peripherals). Empirical evidence of the role of kinless hubs in regulating the functional potential of soil microbial communities, however, is largely unexplored and poorly understood in agricultural ecosystems. Here, we built a correlation network of fungal and bacterial taxa using a large-scale survey consisting of 243 soil samples across functionally and economically important agricultural ecosystems (wheat and maize); and found that the relative abundance of taxa classified as kinless hubs within the ecological network are positively and significantly correlated with the abundance of functional genes including genes for C fixation, C degradation, C methanol, N cycling, P cycling and S cycling. Structural equation modeling of multiple soil properties further indicated that kinless hubs, but not provincial, connector or peripheral taxa, had direct significant and positive relationships with the abundance of multiple functional genes. Our findings provide novel evidence that the relative abundance of soil taxa classified as kinless hubs within microbial networks are associated with high functional potential, with implications for understanding and managing (through manipulating microbial key species) agricultural ecosystems at a large spatial scale
Select2Col: Leveraging Spatial-Temporal Importance of Semantic Information for Efficient Collaborative Perception
Collaboration by leveraging the shared semantic information plays a crucial
role in overcoming the perception capability limitations of isolated agents.
However, existing collaborative perception methods tend to focus solely on the
spatial features of semantic information, while neglecting the importance of
the temporal dimension. Consequently, the potential benefits of collaboration
remain underutilized. In this article, we propose Select2Col, a novel
collaborative perception framework that takes into account the
{s}patial-t{e}mpora{l} importanc{e} of semanti{c} informa{t}ion. Within the
Select2Col, we develop a collaborator selection method that utilizes a
lightweight graph neural network (GNN) to estimate the importance of semantic
information (IoSI) in enhancing perception performance, thereby identifying
contributive collaborators while excluding those that bring negative impact.
Moreover, we present a semantic information fusion algorithm called HPHA
(historical prior hybrid attention), which integrates multi-scale attention and
short-term attention modules to capture the IoSI in feature representation from
the spatial and temporal dimensions respectively, and assigns IoSI-consistent
weights for efficient fusion of information from selected collaborators.
Extensive experiments on two open datasets demonstrate that our proposed
Select2Col significantly improves the perception performance compared to
state-of-the-art approaches. The code associated with this research is publicly
available at https://github.com/huangqzj/Select2Col/
Synergistic effects of hybrid conductive nanofillers on the performance of 3D printed highly elastic strain sensors
In this work, thermoplastic polyurethane based conductive polymer composites containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and synthesized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were used to fabricate highly elastic strain sensors via fused deposition modeling. The printability of the materials was improved with the introduction of the nanofillers, and the size and content of the AgNPs significantly influenced the sensing performance of the 3D printed sensors. When the CNTs:AgNPs weight ratio was 5:1, the sensors exhibited outstanding performance with high sensitivity (GF = 43260 at 250% strain), high linearity (R 2 = 0.97 within 50% strain), fast response (~57 ms), and excellent repeatability (1000 cycles) due to synergistic effects. A modeling study based on the Simmons' tunneling theory was also undertaken to analyze the sensing mechanism. The sensor was applied to monitor diverse joint movements and facial motion, showing its potential for application in intelligent robots, prosthetics, and wear-able devices where customizability are usually demanded
Metal-free photoanodes for CâH functionalization
Organic semiconductors, such as carbon nitride, when employed as powders, show attractive photocatalytic properties, but their photoelectrochemical performance suffers from low charge transport capability, charge carrier recombination, and self-oxidation. High film-substrate affinity and well-designed heterojunction structures may address these issues, achieved through advanced film generation techniques. Here, we introduce a spin coating pretreatment of a conductive substrate with a multipurpose polymer and a supramolecular precursor, followed by chemical vapor deposition for the synthesis of dual-layer carbon nitride photoelectrodes. These photoelectrodes are composed of a porous microtubular top layer and an interlayer between the porous film and the conductive substrate. The polymer improves the polymerization degree of carbon nitride and introduces C-C bonds to increase its electrical conductivity. These carbon nitride photoelectrodes exhibit state-of-the-art photoelectrochemical performance and achieve high yield in C-H functionalization. This carbon nitride photoelectrode synthesis strategy may be readily adapted to other reported processes to optimize their performance
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