2,496 research outputs found
Regenerating Arbitrary Video Sequences with Distillation Path-Finding
If the video has long been mentioned as a widespread visualization form, the
animation sequence in the video is mentioned as storytelling for people.
Producing an animation requires intensive human labor from skilled professional
artists to obtain plausible animation in both content and motion direction,
incredibly for animations with complex content, multiple moving objects, and
dense movement. This paper presents an interactive framework to generate new
sequences according to the users' preference on the starting frame. The
critical contrast of our approach versus prior work and existing commercial
applications is that novel sequences with arbitrary starting frame are produced
by our system with a consistent degree in both content and motion direction. To
achieve this effectively, we first learn the feature correlation on the
frameset of the given video through a proposed network called RSFNet. Then, we
develop a novel path-finding algorithm, SDPF, which formulates the knowledge of
motion directions of the source video to estimate the smooth and plausible
sequences. The extensive experiments show that our framework can produce new
animations on the cartoon and natural scenes and advance prior works and
commercial applications to enable users to obtain more predictable results.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on
Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), January 2023. Project website:
http://graphics.csie.ncku.edu.tw/SDP
Human mobility increased with vaccine coverage and attenuated the protection of COVID-19 vaccination: a longitudinal study of 107 countries
Background: The World Health Organization has raised concerns that vaccinated people may reduce physical and social distancing more than necessary. With imperfect vaccine protection and the lifting of mobility restrictions, understanding how human mobility responded to vaccination and its potential consequence is critical. We estimated vaccination-induced mobility (VM) and examined whether it attenuates the effect of COVID-19 vaccination on controlling case growth. Methods: We collected a longitudinal data set of 107 countries between 15 February 2020 and 6 February 2022 from Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Our World in Data, and World Development Indicators. We measured mobility in four categories of location: retail and recreational places, transit stations, grocery stores and pharmacies, and workplaces. We applied panel data models to address unobserved country characteristics and used Gelbach decomposition to evaluate the extent to which VM has offset vaccination effectiveness. Results: Across locations, a 10-percentage-point (pp) increase in vaccine coverage was associated with a 1.4-4.3 pp increase in mobility (P < 0.001). VM was greater in lower-income countries (up to 7.9 pps; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 5.3 to 10.5, P < 0.001) and in earlier stages of vaccine rollouts (up to 19.2 pps; 95% CI = 15.1 to 23.2%, P < 0.001). VM decreased the effectiveness of vaccines in controlling case growth by 33.4% in retail and recreation places (P < 0.001), 26.4% in transit stations (P < 0.001), and 15.4% in grocery stores and pharmacies (P = 0.002). Conclusions: VM provides support for the Peltzman effect; it attenuates but does not completely counter vaccine effectiveness. Our study findings suggest strategies for mitigating the unintended consequences of VM, including reducing short-term mobility responses after vaccination, prioritizing mobility in grocery-type places and workplaces, and accelerating rollouts at earlier stages of vaccination, especially in lower-income countries
RIDCP: Revitalizing Real Image Dehazing via High-Quality Codebook Priors
Existing dehazing approaches struggle to process real-world hazy images owing
to the lack of paired real data and robust priors. In this work, we present a
new paradigm for real image dehazing from the perspectives of synthesizing more
realistic hazy data and introducing more robust priors into the network.
Specifically, (1) instead of adopting the de facto physical scattering model,
we rethink the degradation of real hazy images and propose a phenomenological
pipeline considering diverse degradation types. (2) We propose a Real Image
Dehazing network via high-quality Codebook Priors (RIDCP). Firstly, a VQGAN is
pre-trained on a large-scale high-quality dataset to obtain the discrete
codebook, encapsulating high-quality priors (HQPs). After replacing the
negative effects brought by haze with HQPs, the decoder equipped with a novel
normalized feature alignment module can effectively utilize high-quality
features and produce clean results. However, although our degradation pipeline
drastically mitigates the domain gap between synthetic and real data, it is
still intractable to avoid it, which challenges HQPs matching in the wild.
Thus, we re-calculate the distance when matching the features to the HQPs by a
controllable matching operation, which facilitates finding better counterparts.
We provide a recommendation to control the matching based on an explainable
solution. Users can also flexibly adjust the enhancement degree as per their
preference. Extensive experiments verify the effectiveness of our data
synthesis pipeline and the superior performance of RIDCP in real image
dehazing.Comment: Acceptted by CVPR 202
Carthamus tinctorius Enhances the Antitumor Activity of Dendritic Cell Vaccines via Polarization toward Th1 Cytokines and Increase of Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes
Carthamus tinctorius (CT), also named safflower, is a traditional Chinese medicine widely used to improve blood circulation. CT also has been studied for its antitumor activity in certain cancers. To investigate the effects of CT on the dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccine in cancer treatment, cytokine secretion of mouse splenic T lymphocytes and the maturation of DCs in response to CT were analyzed. To assess the antitumor activity of CT extract on mouse CD117+ (c-kit)-derived DCs pulsed with JC mammal tumor antigens, the JC tumor was challenged by the CT-treated DC vaccine in vivo. CT stimulated IFN-γ and IL-10 secretion of splenic T lymphocytes and enhanced the maturation of DCs by enhancing immunological molecule expression. When DC vaccine was pulsed with tumor antigens along with CT extract, the levels of TNF-α and IL-1β were dramatically increased with a dose-dependent response and more immunologic and co-stimulatory molecules were expressed on the DC surface. In addition, CT-treated tumor lysate-pulsed DC vaccine reduced the tumor weight in tumor-bearing mice by 15.3% more than tumor lysate-pulsed DC vaccine without CT treatment. CT polarized cytokine secretion toward the Th1 pathway and also increased the population of cytotoxic T lymphocytes ex vivo. In conclusion, CT activates DCs might promote the recognition of antigens and facilitate antigen presentation to Th1 immune responses
On-stack replacement, distilled
On-stack replacement (OSR) is essential technology for adaptive optimization, allowing changes to code actively executing in a managed runtime. The engineering aspects of OSR are well-known among VM architects, with several implementations available to date. However, OSR is yet to be explored as a general means to transfer execution between related program versions, which can pave the road to unprecedented applications that stretch beyond VMs. We aim at filling this gap with a constructive and provably correct OSR framework, allowing a class of general-purpose transformation functions to yield a special-purpose replacement. We describe and evaluate an implementation of our technique in LLVM. As a novel application of OSR, we present a feasibility study on debugging of optimized code, showing how our techniques can be used to fix variables holding incorrect values at breakpoints due to optimizations
Extending the Pre-Training of BLOOM for Improved Support of Traditional Chinese: Models, Methods and Results
In this paper we present the multilingual language model BLOOM-zh that
features enhanced support for Traditional Chinese. BLOOM-zh has its origins in
the open-source BLOOM models presented by BigScience in 2022. Starting from
released models, we extended the pre-training of BLOOM by additional 7.4
billion tokens in Traditional Chinese and English covering a variety of domains
such as news articles, books, encyclopedias, educational materials as well as
spoken language. In order to show the properties of BLOOM-zh, both existing and
newly created benchmark scenarios are used for evaluating the performance.
BLOOM-zh outperforms its predecessor on most Traditional Chinese benchmarks
while maintaining its English capability. We release all our models to the
research community
Efficient and accurate simulations of deformable particles immersed in a fluid using a combined immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann finite element method
The deformation of an initially spherical capsule, freely suspended in simple
shear flow, can be computed analytically in the limit of small deformations [D.
Barthes-Biesel, J. M. Rallison, The Time-Dependent Deformation of a Capsule
Freely Suspended in a Linear Shear Flow, J. Fluid Mech. 113 (1981) 251-267].
Those analytic approximations are used to study the influence of the mesh
tessellation method, the spatial resolution, and the discrete delta function of
the immersed boundary method on the numerical results obtained by a coupled
immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann finite element method. For the description
of the capsule membrane, a finite element method and the Skalak constitutive
model [R. Skalak et al., Strain Energy Function of Red Blood Cell Membranes,
Biophys. J. 13 (1973) 245-264] have been employed. Our primary goal is the
investigation of the presented model for small resolutions to provide a sound
basis for efficient but accurate simulations of multiple deformable particles
immersed in a fluid. We come to the conclusion that details of the membrane
mesh, as tessellation method and resolution, play only a minor role. The
hydrodynamic resolution, i.e., the width of the discrete delta function, can
significantly influence the accuracy of the simulations. The discretization of
the delta function introduces an artificial length scale, which effectively
changes the radius and the deformability of the capsule. We discuss
possibilities of reducing the computing time of simulations of deformable
objects immersed in a fluid while maintaining high accuracy.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figures, 3 table
Potential Use of Plectranthus amboinicus in the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis
Plectranthus amboinicus (P. amboinicus) is a folk herb that is used to treat inflammatory diseases or swelling symptoms in Taiwan. We investigated therapeutic efficacy of P. amboinicus in treating Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) using collagen-induced arthritis animal model. Arthritis was induced in Lewis rats by immunization with bovine type II collagen. Serum anti-collagen IgG, IgM and C-reactive protein (CRP) were analyzed. To understand the inflammation condition of treated animals, production of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β from peritoneal exudates cells (PEC) were also analyzed. P. amboinicus significantly inhibited the footpad swelling and arthritic symptoms in collagen-induced arthritic rats, while the serum anti-collagen IgM and CRP levels were consistently decreased. The production of pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β were also decreased in the high dosage of P. amboinicus group. Here, we demonstrate the potential anti-arthritic effect of P. amboinicus for treating RA, which might confer its anti-rheumatic activity. This differs the pharmacological action mode of indomethacin
Intensity modulated radiotherapy for elderly bladder cancer patients
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To review our experience and evaluate treatment planning using intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and helical tomotherapy (HT) for the treatment of elderly patients with bladder cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>From November 2006 through November 2009, we enrolled 19 elderly patients with histologically confirmed bladder cancer, 9 in the IMRT and 10 in the HT group. The patients received 64.8 Gy to the bladder with or without concurrent chemotherapy. Conventional 4-field "box" pelvic radiation therapy (2DRT) plans were generated for comparison.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The median patient age was 80 years old (range, 65-90 years old). The median survival was 21 months (5 to 26 months). The actuarial 2-year overall survival (OS) for the IMRT vs. the HT group was 26.3% <it>vs </it>.37.5%, respectively; the corresponding values for disease-free survival were 58.3% <it>vs</it>. 83.3%, respectively; for locoregional progression-free survival (LRPFS), the values were 87.5% <it>vs</it>. 83.3%, respectively; and for metastases-free survival, the values were 66.7% <it>vs</it>. 60.0%, respectively. The 2-year OS rates for T1, 2 <it>vs</it>. T3, 4 were 66.7% <it>vs</it>. 35.4%, respectively (<it>p </it>= 0.046). The 2-year OS rate was poor for those whose RT completion time greater than 8 weeks when compared with the RT completed within 8 wks (37.9% vs. 0%, <it>p </it>= 0.004).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>IMRT and HT provide good LRPFS with tolerable toxicity for elderly patients with invasive bladder cancer. IMRT and HT dosimetry and organ sparing capability were superior to that of 2DRT, and HT provides better sparing ability than IMRT. The T category and the RT completion time influence OS rate.</p
Effects of tumor metabolic microenvironment on regulatory T cells
Recent studies have shown that on one hand, tumors need to obtain a sufficient energy supply, and on the other hand they must evade the body’s immune surveillance. Because of their metabolic reprogramming characteristics, tumors can modify the physicochemical properties of the microenvironment, which in turn affects the biological characteristics of the cells infiltrating them. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are a subset of T cells that regulate immune responses in the body. They exist in large quantities in the tumor microenvironment and exert immunosuppressive effects. The main effect of tumor microenvironment on Tregs is to promote their differentiation, proliferation, secretion of immunosuppressive factors, and chemotactic recruitment to play a role in immunosuppression in tumor tissues. This review focuses on cell metabolism reprogramming and the most significant features of the tumor microenvironment relative to the functional effects on Tregs, highlighting our understanding of the mechanisms of tumor immune evasion and providing new directions for tumor immunotherapy
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