ElixirNet: Relation-aware Network Architecture Adaptation for Medical Lesion Detection

Most advances in medical lesion detection network are limited to subtle modification on the conventional detection network designed for natural images. However, there exists a vast domain gap between medical images and natural images where the medical image detection often suffers from several domain-specific challenges, such as high lesion/background similarity, dominant tiny lesions, and severe class imbalance. Is a hand-crafted detection network tailored for natural image undoubtedly good enough over a discrepant medical lesion domain? Is there more powerful operations, filters, and sub-networks that better fit the medical lesion detection problem to be discovered? In this paper, we introduce a novel ElixirNet that includes three components: 1) TruncatedRPN balances positive and negative data for false positive reduction; 2) Auto-lesion Block is automatically customized for medical images to incorporate relation-aware operations among region proposals, and leads to more suitable and efficient classification and localization. 3) Relation transfer module incorporates the semantic relationship and transfers the relevant contextual information with an interpretable the graph thus alleviates the problem of lack of annotations for all types of lesions. Experiments on DeepLesion and Kits19 prove the effectiveness of ElixirNet, achieving improvement of both sensitivity and precision over FPN with fewer parameters.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure, AAAI202

Phosphomolybdic acid-responsive Pickering emulsions stabilized by ionic liquid functionalized Janus nanosheets

<p><b>A</b> Representative photomicrographs of Caspase-3 immunofluorescence staining (400×). <b>B</b> Quantification of Caspase-3 fluorescence intensity in different groups. <b>C</b> Representative Western blot band of Caspase-3 activation in the ischemic cortex at 24 h after reperfusion. <b>D</b> Effect of LBP (40 mg/kg) on the Caspase-3 activation in MCAO mice cortex at 24 h after reperfusion. Data are expressed as mean±SEM (n = 6). ^##P<0.01 vs. sham-operated group; **P<0.01 vs. vehicle group.</p

The Impact of Online Public Opinion Dissemination on the “Wraparound Involvement” of College Students' Academic Qualifications: A Comparative Study of Shandong X University and Henan Y University as an Example

The 21st century is the information age. The rapid development of new media has brought about sweeping changes to society, and while helping to improve the quality of higher education, a phenomenon of “hostage-type involution” of college students' academic qualifications has also emerged. This paper adopts the research methods of literature analysis and case study analysis and selects Shandong X University and Henan Y University as examples for comparative analysis under the “college entrance examination province”. The evolution of the above phenomenon has reached a white-hot stage, invariably affecting the physical and mental health development of college students and, at the same time, arousing the great concern of the school, society and the state, which needs to deeply explore the reasons for the formation of hostage-type involution of the network public opinion dissemination to the college students' blind pursuit of academic qualifications. Finally, we propose effective strategies and suggestions for universities and social media to manage the construction of online public opinion and to help students establish a correct view of pursuing academic qualifications according to various reasons

An Improved Fuzzy PID Control Method Considering Hydrogen Fuel Cell Voltage-Output Characteristics for a Hydrogen Vehicle Power System

The hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) vehicle is an important clean energy vehicle which has prospects for development. The behavior of the hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) vehicle power system, and in particular, the proton-exchange membrane fuel cell, has been extensively studied as of recent. The development of the dynamic system modeling technology is of paramount importance for HFC vehicle studies; however, it is hampered by the separation of the electrochemical properties and dynamic properties. In addition, the established model matching the follow-up control method lacks applicability. In attempts to counter these obstructions, we proposed an improved fuzzy (Proportional Integral Derivative) PID control method considering HFC voltage-output characteristics. By developing both the electrochemical and dynamic model for HFC vehicle, we can realize the coordinated control of HFC and power cell. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental results in the two models. The proposed control algorithm has a good control effect in all stages of HFC vehicle operation

Age effect of deafening on stereotyped song maintenance in adult male bengalese finches Lonchura striata domestica

Birdsong is a complex learned vocal behavior that relies on auditory experience for development. However, it appears that among different species of close-ended songbirds, there are some variations in the necessity of auditory feedback for maintaining stereotyped adult song. In zebra finches, the deterioration of adult songs following deafness depends on the birds’ age. It is unknown whether this age effect is a general rule in other avian species as well. Therefore, we chose Bengalese finches, whose songs show more complexity and have much heavier dependency on auditory feedback than that of zebra finches, to compare the degree of song degradation after hearing loss in old (over 18 months old) and young adult birds (5–6 months old). We found that both syllable sequence and syllable phonology were much less severely affected by deafening in old adults than that in young ones. Moreover, young adults almost lost their capability to sing trills over 6 months following deafening, while old birds continued to sing plenty of trills and trilled syllables after the same period of deafening. Our results suggest that age plays an important role in affecting the dependency of adult song maintenance on auditory feedback in Bengalese finches. Furthermore, the age dependency may be a general phenomenon in different species of close-ended songbirds [Current Zoology 55(3):212–218, 2009]

Long intergenic non-coding RNAs (LincRNAs) identified by RNA-seq in breast cancer.

In an attempt to find the correlation of aberrant expression of long intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs) with cancer, twenty-five samples of breast cancer tissue and respective adjacent normal tissue were studied for the expression of lincRNAs by RNA-seq. Among the 538 lincRNAs studied, 124 lincRNAs were exclusively expressed in cancer adjacent tissues and 62 lincRNAs were exclusively expressed in the cancer tissues. Furthermore, the expression of 134 lincRNAs was higher while 272 lower in breast cancer tissue compared with adjacent tissue. The expression of four selected lincRNAs (BC2, BC4, BC5, and BC8) was validated by semi-quantitative and real-time PCR. It was revealed that expression of lincRNA-BC5 was positively correlated with patients' age, pathological stage, and progesterone receptor concentration, while lincRNA-BC8 was negatively correlated with progesterone receptor expression. Higher expression of lincRNA-BC4 was seen in advanced breast cancer grade. LincRNA-BC2 showed no specific changes in the pathological features studied. Interactions between selected lincRNAs and breast cancer associated proteins were highly suggested by RPIseq based on the specific secondary structure. The results demonstrated that this group of lincRNAs was aberrantly expressed in breast cancer. They might play important roles in the function of oncogenes or tumor suppressors affecting the development and progression of breast cancer

Effects of the Bone/Bone Marrow Microenvironments on Prostate Cancer Cells and CD59 Expression

Objective. To evaluate the effects of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSCs) and osteoblasts (hFOB1.19) on PC3 prostate cancer cells. Methods. To simulate the in vivo interaction between the bone/bone marrow microenvironments and prostate cancer cells, we established cocultures of PC3 cells with hBMSC or hFOB1.19 cells and evaluated their effects on the proliferation, cell cycle distribution, cell migration, and invasion of PC3 cells. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction was used to detect CD59 mRNA expression in PC3 cells. The expression of receptor activator of nuclear factor- (NF-) κB (RANK), RANK ligand (RANKL), osteoprotegerin (OPG), CD59, NF-κB (p50 subunit), and cyclin D1 in PC3 cells was analyzed by immunofluorescence and western blotting. Results. hBMSCs and hFOB1.19 cells enhanced the proliferation, migration, and invasion of PC3 cells; increased the proportion of PC3 cells in the S and G2/M phases of the cell cycle; and upregulated RANK, RANKL, OPG, CD59, cyclin D1, and NF-κB (p50 subunit) expression by PC3 cells. The RANKL inhibitor, scutellarin, inhibited these effects in PC3-hFOB1.19 cocultures. Conclusion. hBMSCs and hFOB1.19 cells modulate the phenotype of PC3 prostate cancer cells and the expression of CD59 by activating the RANK/RANKL/OPG signaling pathway

Clinic pathologic characteristics of patients with breast cancer.

a<p>According to the AJCC (American Joint Committee on Cancer) staging system <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0103270#pone.0103270-Edge1" target="_blank">[42]</a>.</p

The second structure predicted by <i>RNAfold</i>.

<p>(A) The second structure of lincRNA-BC2 predicted by <i>RNAfold</i>. (B) The second structure of lincRNA-BC2 predicted by <i>RNAfold</i>. (C) The second structure of lincRNA-BC2 predicted by <i>RNAfold</i>. (D) The second structure of lincRNA-BC2 predicted by <i>RNAfold</i>.</p