An Unsupervised Generative Neural Approach for InSAR Phase Filtering and Coherence Estimation

Phase filtering and pixel quality (coherence) estimation is critical in producing Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images, as it removes spatial inconsistencies (residues) and immensely improves the subsequent unwrapping. Large amount of InSAR data facilitates Wide Area Monitoring (WAM) over geographical regions. Advances in parallel computing have accelerated Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), giving them advantages over human performance on visual pattern recognition, which makes CNNs a good choice for WAM. Nevertheless, this research is largely unexplored. We thus propose "GenInSAR", a CNN-based generative model for joint phase filtering and coherence estimation, that directly learns the InSAR data distribution. GenInSAR's unsupervised training on satellite and simulated noisy InSAR images outperforms other five related methods in total residue reduction (over 16.5% better on average) with less over-smoothing/artefacts around branch cuts. GenInSAR's Phase, and Coherence Root-Mean-Squared-Error and Phase Cosine Error have average improvements of 0.54, 0.07, and 0.05 respectively compared to the related methods.Comment: to be published in a future issue of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letter

Energy-aware Scheduling of Surveillance in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks involve a large number of sensor nodes with limited energy supply, which impacts the behavior of their application. In wireless multimedia sensor networks, sensor nodes are equipped with audio and visual information collection modules. Multimedia contents are ubiquitously retrieved in surveillance applications. To solve the energy problems during target surveillance with wireless multimedia sensor networks, an energy-aware sensor scheduling method is proposed in this paper. Sensor nodes which acquire acoustic signals are deployed randomly in the sensing fields. Target localization is based on the signal energy feature provided by multiple sensor nodes, employing particle swarm optimization (PSO). During the target surveillance procedure, sensor nodes are adaptively grouped in a totally distributed manner. Specially, the target motion information is extracted by a forecasting algorithm, which is based on the hidden Markov model (HMM). The forecasting results are utilized to awaken sensor node in the vicinity of future target position. According to the two properties, signal energy feature and residual energy, the sensor nodes decide whether to participate in target detection separately with a fuzzy control approach. Meanwhile, the local routing scheme of data transmission towards the observer is discussed. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of energy-aware scheduling of surveillance in wireless multimedia sensor network, where significant energy saving is achieved by the sensor awakening approach and data transmission paths are calculated with low computational complexity

Bacterium-like particles derived from probiotics: progress, challenges and prospects

Bacterium-like particles (BLPs) are hollow peptidoglycan particles obtained from food-grade Lactococcus lactis inactivated by hot acid. With the advantage of easy preparation, high safety, great stability, high loading capacity, and high mucosal delivery efficiency, BLPs can load and display proteins on the surface with the help of protein anchor (PA), making BLPs a proper delivery system. Owning to these features, BLPs are widely used in the development of adjuvants, vaccine carriers, virus/antigens purification, and enzyme immobilization. This review has attempted to gather a full understanding of the technical composition, characteristics, applications. The mechanism by which BLPs induces superior adaptive immune responses is also discussed. Besides, this review tracked the latest developments in the field of BLPs, including Lactobacillus-derived BLPs and novel anchors. Finally, the main limitations and proposed breakthrough points to further enhance the immunogenicity of BLPs vaccines were discussed, providing directions for future research. We hope that further developments in the field of antigen delivery of subunit vaccines or others will benefit from BLPs

A novel CpG ODN compound adjuvant enhances immune response to spike subunit vaccines of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus

CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (CpG ODNs) boost the humoral and cellular immune responses to antigens through interaction with Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9). These CpG ODNs have been extensively utilized in human vaccines. In our study, we evaluated five B-type CpG ODNs that have stimulatory effects on pigs by measuring the proliferation of porcine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and assessing interferon gamma (IFN-γ) secretion. Furthermore, this study examined the immunoenhancing effects of the MF59 and CpG ODNs compound adjuvant in mouse and piglet models of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) subunit vaccine administration. The in vitro screening revealed that the CpG ODN named CpG5 significantly stimulated the proliferation of porcine PBMCs and elevated IFN-γ secretion levels. In the mouse vaccination model, CpG5 compound adjuvant significantly bolstered the humoral and cellular immune responses to the PEDV subunit vaccines, leading to Th1 immune responses characterized by increased IFN-γ and IgG2a levels. In piglets, the neutralizing antibody titer was significantly enhanced with CpG5 compound adjuvant, alongside a considerable increase in CD8+ T lymphocytes proportion. The combination of MF59 adjuvant and CpG5 exhibits a synergistic effect, resulting in an earlier, more intense, and long-lasting immune response in subunit vaccines for PEDV. This combination holds significant promise as a robust candidate for the development of vaccine adjuvant

Genetics of complement proteins among Swedish newborns

Complement proteins play an important role in the body's immune processes and involve in the pathology of many diseases in human, such as major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. Understanding the genetics of those proteins is an important step toward unraveling their effects on psychiatric disorders.  The complement protein levels differ between neonates and adults. There are many studies investigating the genetic architecture of the complement proteins, but evidence about the genetics of neonatal complement proteins is scarce. In this study, I investigated the SNPs and haplotypes that are associated with the five complement proteins, C1q, C3, C4, CFB, and CFH among newborns. I also compared the effects of the identified SNPs among neonates and adults. This study uses 75 samples from Swedish newborns whose blood were primarily collected for Phenylketonuria screening. Genotype data and protein levels were measured from dried blood spots. To investigate the genetics of the complement proteins, I first conducted single SNPs association analyses. The single SNPs used in this study was derived from previous research of European adult samples and has been shown to be significantly associated with the target protein. Then, after imputing the SNPs for the MHC region, I conducted haplotype analysis in the MHC region for the five complement proteins. Finally, I compared the effects of the variants identified in the single SNPs association analysis with the effects that were reported for adult protein levels in previous studies. The results of single SNP association analysis showed that among the 14 SNPs that were associated with adult protein levels, SNP rs4151669 that associated with complement factor B (CFB) was significantly associated with the target protein in the neonatal population. Some SNPs (rs8283, rs4151669 and rs10737680) may have opposite effects in the two populations. This study found 86 haplotypes potentially associated with the complement proteins. Among them, the haplotype “H840” which located at chr6:32594217-32597172 was significantly associated with five complement proteins. This study provides evidence for the genetic component of the 5 complement protein levels among neonates. The results also suggested that the genetic influence of the complement protein among adult and neonatal population are different

Genetics of complement proteins among Swedish newborns

Complement proteins play an important role in the body's immune processes and involve in the pathology of many diseases in human, such as major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. Understanding the genetics of those proteins is an important step toward unraveling their effects on psychiatric disorders.  The complement protein levels differ between neonates and adults. There are many studies investigating the genetic architecture of the complement proteins, but evidence about the genetics of neonatal complement proteins is scarce. In this study, I investigated the SNPs and haplotypes that are associated with the five complement proteins, C1q, C3, C4, CFB, and CFH among newborns. I also compared the effects of the identified SNPs among neonates and adults. This study uses 75 samples from Swedish newborns whose blood were primarily collected for Phenylketonuria screening. Genotype data and protein levels were measured from dried blood spots. To investigate the genetics of the complement proteins, I first conducted single SNPs association analyses. The single SNPs used in this study was derived from previous research of European adult samples and has been shown to be significantly associated with the target protein. Then, after imputing the SNPs for the MHC region, I conducted haplotype analysis in the MHC region for the five complement proteins. Finally, I compared the effects of the variants identified in the single SNPs association analysis with the effects that were reported for adult protein levels in previous studies. The results of single SNP association analysis showed that among the 14 SNPs that were associated with adult protein levels, SNP rs4151669 that associated with complement factor B (CFB) was significantly associated with the target protein in the neonatal population. Some SNPs (rs8283, rs4151669 and rs10737680) may have opposite effects in the two populations. This study found 86 haplotypes potentially associated with the complement proteins. Among them, the haplotype “H840” which located at chr6:32594217-32597172 was significantly associated with five complement proteins. This study provides evidence for the genetic component of the 5 complement protein levels among neonates. The results also suggested that the genetic influence of the complement protein among adult and neonatal population are different