Towards A Robust Group-level Emotion Recognition via Uncertainty-Aware Learning

Group-level emotion recognition (GER) is an inseparable part of human behavior analysis, aiming to recognize an overall emotion in a multi-person scene. However, the existing methods are devoted to combing diverse emotion cues while ignoring the inherent uncertainties under unconstrained environments, such as congestion and occlusion occurring within a group. Additionally, since only group-level labels are available, inconsistent emotion predictions among individuals in one group can confuse the network. In this paper, we propose an uncertainty-aware learning (UAL) method to extract more robust representations for GER. By explicitly modeling the uncertainty of each individual, we utilize stochastic embedding drawn from a Gaussian distribution instead of deterministic point embedding. This representation captures the probabilities of different emotions and generates diverse predictions through this stochasticity during the inference stage. Furthermore, uncertainty-sensitive scores are adaptively assigned as the fusion weights of individuals' face within each group. Moreover, we develop an image enhancement module to enhance the model's robustness against severe noise. The overall three-branch model, encompassing face, object, and scene component, is guided by a proportional-weighted fusion strategy and integrates the proposed uncertainty-aware method to produce the final group-level output. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization ability of our method across three widely used databases.Comment: 11 pages,3 figure

Effects of Mesoporous Size and Structure on Solidification Characteristics of Solar Salt

The effects of mesoporous size and structure on the solidification characteristics of mixed nitrate were simulated by molecular dynamics (MD). The solar salt models of different scales are established by using material Studio software, and the models are exported to the Lammps software package for simulation calculation. The changes of parameters such as radial distribution function, potential energy temperature curve, freezing point, and phase transformation latent heat are summarized, and the micro mechanism of solar salt solidification characteristics at the nanoscale is analyzed. The results show that the freezing point of solar salt increases first and then decreases with the increase of nanopore size, and finally tends to be stable with the increase of nanopore size. The enthalpy of solidification decreases with the increase of scale

Analysis of patent application attention: a network analysis method

Patent is an important embodiment of innovation. Before patent application, many people will check a patent application process on the Internet to understand the steps of a patent application. In fact, these people’s search is also a means to understand whether innovative enterprises or individuals imply the importance of innovation. It has become a new crucial problem to obtain more information about time-series data. Research has found that the concept of VG can provide deeper information in time-series data so that it can understand the information of patent applications more comprehensively. After analyzing the data from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2018, we find: i) there are very few peaks and valleys, and 80% of searches are in the normal range. ii) according to the central value of the ranking, it can be found that the peaks of the annual patent application search times time series occurred in December last year, after January, February of this year or after August-October, and iii) after clustering the time series data, we find that the attention of people shows noticeable segmentation effect.Published versionThis paper is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71871159, in part by the Fujian innovation strategy research plan project under Grant 2020R0021, in part by the Fujian Social Science Planning Project under Grant FJ2020B024, in part by the 2nd Fujian Young Eagle Program Youth Top Talent Program, and in part by the Fujian science and technology economic integration service platform. The Academy-Locality Cooperation Project of the Chinese Academy of Engineering under Grant 2021-FJZD-4

Root exudates from grafted-root watermelon showed a certain contribution in inhibiting Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. niveum.

Grafting watermelon onto bottle gourd rootstock is commonly used method to generate resistance to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. niveum (FON), but knowledge of the effect of the root exudates of grafted watermelon on this soil-borne pathogen in rhizosphere remains limited. To investigate the root exudate profiles of the own-root bottle gourd, grafted-root watermelon and own-root watermelon, recirculating hydroponic culture system was developed to continuously trap these root exudates. Both conidial germination and growth of FON were significantly decreased in the presence of root exudates from the grafted-root watermelon compared with the own-root watermelon. HPLC analysis revealed that the composition of the root exudates released by the grafted-root watermelon differed not only from the own-root watermelon but also from the bottle gourd rootstock plants. We identified salicylic acid in all 3 root exudates, chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid in root exudates from own-root bottle gourd and grafted-root watermelon but not own-root watermelon, and abundant cinnamic acid only in own-root watermelon root exudates. The chlorogenic and caffeic acid were candidates for potentiating the enhanced resistance of the grafted watermelon to FON, therefore we tested the effects of the two compounds on the conidial germination and growth of FON. Both phenolic acids inhibited FON conidial germination and growth in a dose-dependent manner, and FON was much more susceptible to chlorogenic acid than to caffeic acid. In conclusion, the key factor in attaining the resistance to Fusarium wilt is grafting on the non-host root stock, however, the root exudates profile also showed some contribution in inhibiting FON. These results will help to better clarify the disease resistance mechanisms of grafted-root watermelon based on plant-microbe communication and will guide the improvement of strategies against Fusarium-mediated wilt of watermelon plants

Magnetic nanochain integrated microfluidic biochips

Microfluidic biochips hold great potential for liquid analysis in biomedical research and clinical diagnosis. However, the lack of integrated on-chip liquid mixing, bioseparation and signal transduction presents a major challenge in achieving rapid, ultrasensitive bioanalysis in simple microfluidic configurations. Here we report magnetic nanochain integrated microfluidic chip built upon the synergistic functions of the nanochains as nanoscale stir bars for rapid liquid mixing and as capturing agents for specific bioseparation. The use of magnetic nanochains enables a simple planar design of the microchip consisting of flat channels free of common built-in components, such as liquid mixers and surface-anchored sensing elements. The microfluidic assay, using surface-enhanced Raman scattering nanoprobes for signal transduction, allows for streamlined parallel analysis of multiple specimens with greatly improved assay kinetics and delivers ultrasensitive identification and quantification of a panel of cancer protein biomarkers and bacterial species in 1 μl of body fluids within 8 min.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Published versio