Traceable and Authenticable Image Tagging for Fake News Detection

To prevent fake news images from misleading the public, it is desirable not only to verify the authenticity of news images but also to trace the source of fake news, so as to provide a complete forensic chain for reliable fake news detection. To simultaneously achieve the goals of authenticity verification and source tracing, we propose a traceable and authenticable image tagging approach that is based on a design of Decoupled Invertible Neural Network (DINN). The designed DINN can simultaneously embed the dual-tags, \textit{i.e.}, authenticable tag and traceable tag, into each news image before publishing, and then separately extract them for authenticity verification and source tracing. Moreover, to improve the accuracy of dual-tags extraction, we design a parallel Feature Aware Projection Model (FAPM) to help the DINN preserve essential tag information. In addition, we define a Distance Metric-Guided Module (DMGM) that learns asymmetric one-class representations to enable the dual-tags to achieve different robustness performances under malicious manipulations. Extensive experiments, on diverse datasets and unseen manipulations, demonstrate that the proposed tagging approach achieves excellent performance in the aspects of both authenticity verification and source tracing for reliable fake news detection and outperforms the prior works

Uptake, sequestration and tolerance of cadmium at cellular levels in the hyperaccumulator plant species Sedum alfredii.

Sedum alfredii is one of a few plant species known to hyperaccumulate cadmium (Cd). Uptake, localization, and tolerance of Cd at cellular levels in shoots were compared in hyperaccumulating (HE) and non-hyperaccumulating (NHE) ecotypes of Sedum alfredii. X-ray fluorescence images of Cd in stems and leaves showed only a slight Cd signal restricted within vascular bundles in the NHEs, while enhanced localization of Cd, with significant tissue- and age-dependent variations, was detected in HEs. In contrast to the vascular-enriched Cd in young stems, parenchyma cells in leaf mesophyll, stem pith and cortex tissues served as terminal storage sites for Cd sequestration in HEs. Kinetics of Cd transport into individual leaf protoplasts of the two ecotypes showed little difference in Cd accumulation. However, far more efficient storage of Cd in vacuoles was apparent in HEs. Subsequent analysis of cell viability and hydrogen peroxide levels suggested that HE protoplasts exhibited higher resistance to Cd than those of NHE protoplasts. These results suggest that efficient sequestration into vacuoles, as opposed to rapid transport into parenchyma cells, is a pivotal process in Cd accumulation and homeostasis in shoots of HE S. alfredii. This is in addition to its efficient root-to-shoot translocation of Cd

Sugarcane bagasse dietary fiber as an adjuvant therapy for stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a four-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

AbstractObjectiveTo evaluate the efficacy and safety of sugarcane bagasse dietary fiber as an adjuvant therapy for improving quality of life in patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).MethodsThis was a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. A total of 196 participants were randomized into a trial group (treated with 6 g/day sugarcane bagasse plus conventional treatment, n = 98) and a control group (treated with placebo plus conventional treatment, n = 98). All efficacy analyses were performed according to the intention-to-treat (ITT) principle. A per-protocol analysis set (PPS) was used to analyze the cases that completed the clinical trial with good compliance. The trial period was 30 days, with a 6-month follow-up. Pre- and post-treatment pulmonary symptom scores (cough, sputum, wheezing, and dyspnea) were recorded for both groups. The St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) and the modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) dyspnea scale were assessed before treatment and at the end of the 6-month follow-up.ResultsThe ITT population was 178 and the PPS population was 166. Post-treatment pulmonary clinical symptoms and severity of dyspnea (mMRC and SGRQ evaluation) were significantly improved in both the trial group and the control group (ITT and PPS: P < 0.05). However, there was no statistical difference between the two groups in post-treatment pulmonary symptoms and mMRC. There was a greater reduction in the SGRQ subscales of activity, effect and total score in the trial group compared with the control group (ITT and PPS: P < 0.01). There was no statistical difference in pre- and post-treatment safety variables in either group.ConclusionSugarcane bagasse combined with conventional treatment improved quality of life in patients with stable COPD. Sugarcane bagasse appears to be a safe herbal medicine with potential for treating patients with stable COPD when taken orally as an adjuvant therapy

Full Stack Optimization of Transformer Inference: a Survey

Recent advances in state-of-the-art DNN architecture design have been moving toward Transformer models. These models achieve superior accuracy across a wide range of applications. This trend has been consistent over the past several years since Transformer models were originally introduced. However, the amount of compute and bandwidth required for inference of recent Transformer models is growing at a significant rate, and this has made their deployment in latency-sensitive applications challenging. As such, there has been an increased focus on making Transformer models more efficient, with methods that range from changing the architecture design, all the way to developing dedicated domain-specific accelerators. In this work, we survey different approaches for efficient Transformer inference, including: (i) analysis and profiling of the bottlenecks in existing Transformer architectures and their similarities and differences with previous convolutional models; (ii) implications of Transformer architecture on hardware, including the impact of non-linear operations such as Layer Normalization, Softmax, and GELU, as well as linear operations, on hardware design; (iii) approaches for optimizing a fixed Transformer architecture; (iv) challenges in finding the right mapping and scheduling of operations for Transformer models; and (v) approaches for optimizing Transformer models by adapting the architecture using neural architecture search. Finally, we perform a case study by applying the surveyed optimizations on Gemmini, the open-source, full-stack DNN accelerator generator, and we show how each of these approaches can yield improvements, compared to previous benchmark results on Gemmini. Among other things, we find that a full-stack co-design approach with the aforementioned methods can result in up to 88.7x speedup with a minimal performance degradation for Transformer inference

Surface passivation for highly active, selective, stable, and scalable CO2 electroreduction

Electrochemical conversion of CO2 to formic acid using Bismuth catalysts is one the most promising pathways for industrialization. However, it is still difficult to achieve high formic acid production at wide voltage intervals and industrial current densities because the Bi catalysts are often poisoned by oxygenated species. Herein, we report a Bi3S2 nanowire-ascorbic acid hybrid catalyst that simultaneously improves formic acid selectivity, activity, and stability at high applied voltages. Specifically, a more than 95% faraday efficiency was achieved for the formate formation over a wide potential range above 1.0 V and at ampere-level current densities. The observed excellent catalytic performance was attributable to a unique reconstruction mechanism to form more defective sites while the ascorbic acid layer further stabilized the defective sites by trapping the poisoning hydroxyl groups. When used in an all-solid-state reactor system, the newly developed catalyst achieved efficient production of pure formic acid over 120 hours at 50 mA cm–2 (200 mA cell current)

In-situ estimation of ice crystal properties at the South Pole using LED calibration data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory instruments about 1 km3 of deep, glacial ice at the geographic South Pole using 5160 photomultipliers to detect Cherenkov light emitted by charged relativistic particles. A unexpected light propagation effect observed by the experiment is an anisotropic attenuation, which is aligned with the local flow direction of the ice. Birefringent light propagation has been examined as a possible explanation for this effect. The predictions of a first-principles birefringence model developed for this purpose, in particular curved light trajectories resulting from asymmetric diffusion, provide a qualitatively good match to the main features of the data. This in turn allows us to deduce ice crystal properties. Since the wavelength of the detected light is short compared to the crystal size, these crystal properties do not only include the crystal orientation fabric, but also the average crystal size and shape, as a function of depth. By adding small empirical corrections to this first-principles model, a quantitatively accurate description of the optical properties of the IceCube glacial ice is obtained. In this paper, we present the experimental signature of ice optical anisotropy observed in IceCube LED calibration data, the theory and parametrization of the birefringence effect, the fitting procedures of these parameterizations to experimental data as well as the inferred crystal properties.</p

Searches for Neutrinos from LHAASO ultra-high-energy {\gamma}-ray sources using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Galactic PeVatrons are Galactic sources theorized to accelerate cosmic rays up to PeV in energy. The accelerated cosmic rays are expected to interact hadronically with nearby ambient gas or the interstellar medium, resulting in {\gamma}-rays and neutrinos. Recently, the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) identified 12 {\gamma}-ray sources with emissions above 100 TeV, making them candidates for PeV cosmic-ray accelerators (PeVatrons). While at these high energies the Klein-Nishina effect suppresses exponentially leptonic emission from Galactic sources, evidence for neutrino emission would unequivocally confirm hadronic acceleration. Here, we present the results of a search for neutrinos from these {\gamma}-ray sources and stacking searches testing for excess neutrino emission from all 12 sources as well as their subcatalogs of supernova remnants and pulsar wind nebulae with 11 years of track events from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. No significant emissions were found. Based on the resulting limits, we place constraints on the fraction of {\gamma}-ray flux originating from the hadronic processes in the Crab Nebula and LHAASOJ2226+6057