Planting a SEED of Vision in Large Language Model

We present SEED, an elaborate image tokenizer that empowers Large Language Models (LLMs) with the emergent ability to SEE and Draw at the same time. Research on image tokenizers has previously reached an impasse, as frameworks employing quantized visual tokens have lost prominence due to subpar performance and convergence in multimodal comprehension (compared to BLIP-2, etc.) or generation (compared to Stable Diffusion, etc.). Despite the limitations, we remain confident in its natural capacity to unify visual and textual representations, facilitating scalable multimodal training with LLM's original recipe. In this study, we identify two crucial principles for the architecture and training of SEED that effectively ease subsequent alignment with LLMs. (1) Image tokens should be independent of 2D physical patch positions and instead be produced with a 1D causal dependency, exhibiting intrinsic interdependence that aligns with the left-to-right autoregressive prediction mechanism in LLMs. (2) Image tokens should capture high-level semantics consistent with the degree of semantic abstraction in words, and be optimized for both discriminativeness and reconstruction during the tokenizer training phase. As a result, the off-the-shelf LLM is able to perform both image-to-text and text-to-image generation by incorporating our SEED through efficient LoRA tuning. Comprehensive multimodal pretraining and instruction tuning, which may yield improved results, are reserved for future investigation. This version of SEED was trained in 5.7 days using only 64 V100 GPUs and 5M publicly available image-text pairs. Our preliminary study emphasizes the great potential of discrete visual tokens in versatile multimodal LLMs and the importance of proper image tokenizers in broader research.Comment: Technical Report; Project released at: https://github.com/AILab-CVC/SEE

Subjective attitudes moderate the social connectedness in esports gaming during COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study.

Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: The authors thank the professional online survey platform-Credamo for data provided in this article.BACKGROUND: Electronic sports (esports) has become a practical intervention for young people craving social connections since the COVID-19 pandemic. Past studies have shown an equivocal role of esports participation in boosting social ties or social connectedness. It is unclear if their relationship is affected by subjective attitudes of gamers. Moreover, the present COVID-19 pandemic may further modify this relationship to a greater extent. OBJECTIVE: This study primarily aimed to investigate the moderating effect of participants' subjective attitudes toward esports gaming on the relationship between in-game interaction during esports participation and participants' anticipated social connectedness among Chinese young adults during the COVID-19 lockdown periods in China. METHODS: We conducted a nationwide online questionnaire survey through the Credamo platform among 550 Chinese young adults in the present study. The Social Connectedness Scale-Revised was used to assess participants' social connectedness levels. RESULTS: Four hundred and fifty-three participants were included in the final analysis. The effective response rate was 82.4%. Our results showed that the esports participation measured by in-game communication frequency among participants, as an independent factor, was negatively associated with participants' social connectedness scores (β = -0.13, p < 0.05). However, when the moderating effect of subjective attitudes toward esports gaming was considered, the association between communication frequency and social connectedness scores was turned into the opposite direction with a larger effect size (β = 0.35, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our primary finding revealed that a positive mindset in esports gaming is indispensable in boosting social connectedness. Overall, our study provided supporting evidence for the benefits of esports on individuals' social connectedness. In future circumstances similar to the COVID-19 era, playing esports games is strongly encouraged in an attempt to maintain social connections and relieve psychological stress. In the meantime, we believe that having a positive esports experience, often associated with a positive mindset during gaming, can better promote social connectedness. Nevertheless, the amount of time spent on gaming per day should be of great concern, as esports games can be addictive, especially for teenagers and college students

Studies on the spray dried lactose as carrier for dry powder inhalation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the spray dried lactose as carrier for dry powder inhalation (DPI). The lactose particles were prepared by spray drying, then the particle size, shape and crystal form were characterized by laser diffraction, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The spray dried lactose particles were spherical and amorphous, but would transfer to crystal form when storage humidity was above 32%. Thus, the humidity of the storage environment should be controlled below 30% strictly in order to maintain the amorphous nature of spray dried lactose which is a great benefit to DPI development

Understanding Complete Oxidation of Methane on Spinel Oxides at Molecular Level

It is crucial to develop a catalyst made of earth-abundant elements highly active for a complete oxidation of methane at a relatively low temperature. NiCo2O4 consisting of earth-abundant elements which can completely oxidize methane in the temperature range of 350–550 °C. Being a cost-effective catalyst, NiCo2O4 exhibits activity higher than precious-metal-based catalysts. Here we report that the higher catalytic activity at the relatively low temperature results from the integration of nickel cations, cobalt cations and surface lattice oxygen atoms/oxygen vacancies at the atomic scale. In situ studies of complete oxidation of methane on NiCo2O4 and theoretical simulations show that methane dissociates to methyl on nickel cations and then couple with surface lattice oxygen atoms to form –CH3O with a following dehydrogenation to −CH2O; a following oxidative dehydrogenation forms CHO; CHO is transformed to product molecules through two different sub-pathways including dehydrogenation of OCHO and CO oxidation

Heterogeneous Supersaturation in Mixed Perovskites

Thin-film solar cells based on hybrid lead halide perovskites have achieved certified power conversion efficiencies exceeding 24%, approaching those of crystalline silicon. This motivates deeper studies of the mechanisms that determine their performance. Twin defect sites have been proposed as a source of traps in perovskites, yet their origin and influence on photovoltaic performance remain unclear. It is found that twin defects-observed herein via both transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction-are correlated with the amount of antisolvent added to the perovskite and that twin defects in the highest-performing perovskite photovoltaics are suppressed. Heterogeneous supersaturation nucleation is discussed as a contributor to efficient perovskite-based optoelectronic devices.The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for support of this research (MOST 106‐2917‐I‐564‐007 and MOST 107‐2221‐E‐007‐055‐MY3). This publication is based in part on work supported by the US Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (Grant Award No. N00014‐17‐1‐2524), the Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence Program, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. M.I.S. acknowledges the support of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, administered by the Government of Canada

A Green and Efficient Solvent for Simultaneously Leaching Co and Li from Spent Li-Ion Batteries: Dicarboxylated Polyethylene Glycol

Recovery of high-valued metals such as Li and Co from spent Li-ion batteries is quite important for sustainability reasons. The novelty of this work was based on the view of molecular design, proposing a strategy that inserts another group between two −COOH groups on an organic acid to activate them. On this basis, a novel solvent dicarboxylated polyethylene glycol (dcPEG), i.e., HOOC–CH2(CH2CH2O)nCH2–COOH, was chosen to leach Li and Co from LiCoO2. Expectedly, HOOC–CH2(CH2CH2O)nCH2–COOH (n = 250), which was denoted as dcPEG250, showed appealing leaching performance without the help of H2O2 and quaternary ammonium salt. It can simultaneously extract Co and Li, and the leaching efficiency reached as high as almost 100% under the proper conditions. The excellent performance was ascribed to structural feature of dcPEG. The presence of main chain (CH2CH2O)n extended the distance between two −COOH groups at the ends, limited their intramolecular interaction, and activated the −COOH groups. Accordingly, the active H atom on the −COOH group can react with LiCoO2, and the active O atoms on ether (C–O–C) and carbonyl (CO) groups can coordinate with metals. In a word, this work could not only provide a promising solvent but also inspire researchers to engineer more novel solvents from the view of molecular design

Data_Sheet_1_Exploring possible benefits of Litsea cubeba Pers. extract on growth, meat quality, and gut flora in white-feather broilers.pdf

White-feather broiler chickens are the dominant species in global poultry meat production. Yet there is growing concern about their health, quality, and growth efficiency. While feed additives, often antibiotics or synthetic chemicals, are used to maintain the health of the animals, drug resistance limits their use. Litsea cubeba (Lour.) Pers., a traditional Chinese herb with antibiotic-like benefits but without the risk of drug resistance, has not yet been explored as an additive to broiler diets. In the present study, broilers of the AA+ hybrid strain were randomly divided into three groups of 16: a control group (regular feed), a low-dose group (1.25 g/kg added L. cubeba extract), and a high-dose group (2.50 g/kg added L. cubeba extract). After 35 days, we found that the extract had no effect on growth. However, gut flora analysis revealed that both doses of the extract had a positive influence on amino acid content and minor unsaturated fatty acids, thus improving the flavor and nutritional value of the meat. These findings suggest that L. cubeba extract, at either dose, could serve as a sustainable alternative to antibiotics, thus reducing the risk of drug resistance while improving meat quality, nutrition, and flavor.</p

Efficient upgrading of CO to C3 fuel using asymmetric C-C coupling active sites

The electroreduction of C1 feedgas to high-energy-density fuels provides an attractive avenue to the storage of renewable electricity. Much progress has been made to improve selectivity to C1 and C2 products, however, the selectivity to desirable high-energy-density C3 products remains relatively low. We reason that C3 electrosynthesis relies on a higher-order reaction pathway that requires the formation of multiple carbon-carbon (C-C) bonds, and thus pursue a strategy explicitly designed to couple C2 with C1 intermediates. We develop an approach wherein neighboring copper atoms having distinct electronic structures interact with two adsorbates to catalyze an asymmetric reaction. We achieve a record n-propanol Faradaic efficiency (FE) of (33 ± 1)% with a conversion rate of (4.5 ± 0.1) mA cm-2, and a record n-propanol cathodic energy conversion efficiency (EEcathodic half-cell) of 21%. The FE and EEcathodic half-cell represent a 1.3× improvement relative to previously-published CO-to-n-propanol electroreduction reports.This work was supported by the Ontario Research Fund Research-Excellence Program, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, the CIFAR Bio- Inspired Solar Energy program, and University of Toronto Connaught grant