Nobel-Prize-winning papers are significantly more highly-cited but not more disruptive than non-prize-winning counterparts

Using citation data of 557 Nobel prize winning papers and the same number of their non-prize winning counterparts in the same journal issues, we examined if the prize-winning papers have higher academic disruption than their counterparts. The results show that overall, the former group is significantly more highly-cited but not more disruptive than the latter. Moreover, the results are not consistent with existing knowledge that the numbers of authors and references negatively correlate with the disruption of papers

Flipbot: Learning Continuous Paper Flipping via Coarse-to-Fine Exteroceptive-Proprioceptive Exploration

This paper tackles the task of singulating and grasping paper-like deformable objects. We refer to such tasks as paper-flipping. In contrast to manipulating deformable objects that lack compression strength (such as shirts and ropes), minor variations in the physical properties of the paper-like deformable objects significantly impact the results, making manipulation highly challenging. Here, we present Flipbot, a novel solution for flipping paper-like deformable objects. Flipbot allows the robot to capture object physical properties by integrating exteroceptive and proprioceptive perceptions that are indispensable for manipulating deformable objects. Furthermore, by incorporating a proposed coarse-to-fine exploration process, the system is capable of learning the optimal control parameters for effective paper-flipping through proprioceptive and exteroceptive inputs. We deploy our method on a real-world robot with a soft gripper and learn in a self-supervised manner. The resulting policy demonstrates the effectiveness of Flipbot on paper-flipping tasks with various settings beyond the reach of prior studies, including but not limited to flipping pages throughout a book and emptying paper sheets in a box.Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 202

Learn to Grasp via Intention Discovery and its Application to Challenging Clutter

Humans excel in grasping objects through diverse and robust policies, many of which are so probabilistically rare that exploration-based learning methods hardly observe and learn. Inspired by the human learning process, we propose a method to extract and exploit latent intents from demonstrations, and then learn diverse and robust grasping policies through self-exploration. The resulting policy can grasp challenging objects in various environments with an off-the-shelf parallel gripper. The key component is a learned intention estimator, which maps gripper pose and visual sensory to a set of sub-intents covering important phases of the grasping movement. Sub-intents can be used to build an intrinsic reward to guide policy learning. The learned policy demonstrates remarkable zero-shot generalization from simulation to the real world while retaining its robustness against states that have never been encountered during training, novel objects such as protractors and user manuals, and environments such as the cluttered conveyor.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L

Designing a Programming Contract Library for Java

Programmers are now developing large and complex software systems, so it’s important to have software that is consistent, efficient, and robust. Programming contracts allow developers to specify preconditions, postconditions, and invariants in order to more easily identify programming errors. The design by contract principle [1] was first used in the Eiffel programming language [2], and has since been extended to libraries in many other languages. The purpose of my project is to design a programming contract library for Java. The library supports a set of preconditions, postconditions, and invariants that are specified in Java annotations. It incorporates contract checking for objects of classes following the bean notation [3]. The library also supports checking for user-defined functions as contract conditions. This feature allows the user to check for complex contract conditions. In addition to these, the library supports contracts using lambdas in Java 8 [4], which to our knowledge has not been done in previous works on Java contracts. While the results show us that enabling contracts lowers the performance of the system, especially when lambda contracts are used, we also demonstrate how careful design can significantly reduce the overhead

ERRA: An Embodied Representation and Reasoning Architecture for Long-horizon Language-conditioned Manipulation Tasks

This letter introduces ERRA, an embodied learning architecture that enables robots to jointly obtain three fundamental capabilities (reasoning, planning, and interaction) for solving long-horizon language-conditioned manipulation tasks. ERRA is based on tightly-coupled probabilistic inferences at two granularity levels. Coarse-resolution inference is formulated as sequence generation through a large language model, which infers action language from natural language instruction and environment state. The robot then zooms to the fine-resolution inference part to perform the concrete action corresponding to the action language. Fine-resolution inference is constructed as a Markov decision process, which takes action language and environmental sensing as observations and outputs the action. The results of action execution in environments provide feedback for subsequent coarse-resolution reasoning. Such coarse-to-fine inference allows the robot to decompose and achieve long-horizon tasks interactively. In extensive experiments, we show that ERRA can complete various long-horizon manipulation tasks specified by abstract language instructions. We also demonstrate successful generalization to the novel but similar natural language instructions.Comment: Accepted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L

TAK1 inhibition mitigates intracerebral hemorrhage-induced brain injury through reduction of oxidative stress and neuronal pyroptosis via the NRF2 signaling pathway

IntroductionIntracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) often triggers oxidative stress through reactive oxygen species (ROS). Transforming growth factor-β-activated kinase 1 (TAK1) plays a pivotal role in regulating oxidative stress and inflammation across various diseases. 5Z-7-Oxozeaenol (OZ), a specific inhibitor of TAK1, has exhibited therapeutic effects in various conditions. However, the impact of OZ following ICH and its underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. This study aimed to explore the possible role of OZ in ICH and its underlying mechanisms by inhibiting oxidative stress-mediated pyroptosis. MethodsAdult male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to an ICH model, followed by treatment with OZ. Neurobehavioral function, blood-brain barrier integrity, neuronal pyroptosis, and oxidative stress markers were assessed using various techniques including behavioral tests, immunofluorescence staining, western blotting, transmission electron microscopy, and biochemical assays.ResultsOur study revealed that OZ administration significantly inhibited phosphorylated TAK1 expression post-ICH. Furthermore, TAK1 blockade by OZ attenuated blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption, neuroinflammation, and oxidative damage while enhancing neurobehavioral function. Mechanistically, OZ administration markedly reduced ROS production and oxidative stress by facilitating nuclear factor-erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NRF2) nuclear translocation. This was accompanied by a subsequent suppression of the NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) activation-mediated inflammatory cascade and neuronal pyroptosis. DiscussionOur findings highlight that OZ alleviates brain injury and oxidative stress-mediated pyroptosis via the NRF2 pathway. Inhibition of TAK1 emerges as a promising approach for managing ICH

Exploring the Potential Transmission Risk of Schistosomiasis Japonica in the Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River, China

Vector snails are important in the life cycle of schisosomiasis, the need to understand the ecologic factors that could enhance snails’ survival and trigger schistosomiasis transmission necessitated this study. Therefore, the potential risk of schistosomiasis transmission was explored in Zhangjiagang region, a non-endemic area in lower reaches of Yangtze River, eastern of China. The key indictors, including snail survival rate, spawn rate, hatching rate and gland development, were investigated through the designed experiments, routine snail and infectious source surveillance. The results showed that there was no significant difference in surviving rate, spawn rate, hatching rate and gland development between groups of simulated environments in laboratory, similar finding in field experiments, which suggested that snails stand a high possibility to survive in these non-endemic areas once they spread into these areas from other places. And no snails and infectious source were found either in the previous routine monitoring in the past decades and the snail surveillance we conducted from 2007 to 2013. Therefore, there is little risk in the study areas in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. However, the sporadic and imported cases are still seen in a few areas adjacent to the endemic or transmission interrupted areas as the important infectious source, thus become a risk of schistosomisis transmission or re-emergence in these areas where the snail exists. Hence, maintaining routine monitoring and surveillance can be one of the effective and efficient ways to prevent the re-emergence of Schistosomiasis

Antisense oligonucleotide targeting Livin induces apoptosis of human bladder cancer cell via a mechanism involving caspase 3

BACKGROUND AND AIM: in recent years, Livin, a new member of IAPs family, is found to be a key molecule in cancers. Researchers consider Livin may become a new target for tumor therapy; however, the role of it in bladder cancer is still unclear. The purpose of this article is to investigate Antisense Oligonucleotide (ASODN) of Livin on treating bladder cancer cell and underlying mechanisms. METHODS: Phosphorathioate modifying was used to synthesize antisense oligonucleotides targeting Livin, followed by transfection into human bladder cancer cell 5637. After transfection, Livin mRNA and protein level, cell proliferation and apoptosis changes, caspase3 level and its effect on human bladder cancer transplantable tumor in nude mice were measured. RESULT: results showed Livin ASODN effectively inhibited Livin expression and tumor cell proliferation, and these effects probably through enhanced caspase3 activity and apoptosis of tumor cells. In nude mice transplantable tumor model, Livin expressions were inhibited meanwhile caspase3 expression was increased. Tumor growth slowed down and apoptosis was enhanced. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that Livin plays an important role in inhibiting apoptosis of bladder cancer cells. Livin ASODN may promote cell apoptosis, inhibit bladder cancer growth, and become one of the methods of gene therapy for bladder cancer

Ultrasensitive piezoelectric sensor based on two-dimensional Na2Cl crystals with periodic atom vacancies

Pursuing ultrasensitivity of pressure sensors has been a long-standing goal. Here, we report a piezoelectric sensor that exhibits supreme pressure-sensing performance, including a peak sensitivity up to 3.5*10^6 kPa^-1 in the pressure range of 1-100 mPa and a detection limit of less than 1 mPa, superior to the current state-of-the-art pressure sensors. These properties are attributed to the high percentage of periodic atom vacancies in the two-dimensional Na2Cl crystals formed within multilayered graphene oxide membrane in the sensor, which provides giant polarization with high stability. The sensor can even clearly detect the airflow fluctuations surrounding a flapping butterfly, which have long been the elusive tiny signals in the famous "butterfly effect". The finding represents a step towards next-generation pressure sensors for various precision applications

Electroweak Supersymmetry around the Electroweak Scale

Inspired by the phenomenological constraints, LHC supersymmetry and Higgs searches, dark matter search as well as string model building, we propose the electroweak supersymmetry around the electroweak scale: the squarks and/or gluinos are around a few TeV while the sleptons, sneutrinos, bino and winos are within one TeV. The Higgsinos can be either heavy or light. We consider bino as the dominant component of dark matter candidate, and the observed dark matter relic density is achieved via the neutralino-stau coannihilations. Considering the Generalized Minimal Supergravity (GmSUGRA), we show explicitly that the electroweak supersymmetry can be realized, and the gauge coupling unification can be preserved. With two Scenarios, we study the viable parameter spaces that satisfy all the current phenomenological constraints, and we present the concrete benchmark points. Furthermore, we comment on the fine-tuning problem and LHC searches.Comment: RevTex4, 28 pages, 8 figures, 8 tables, version to appear in EPJ