Recipro-CAM: Fast gradient-free visual explanations for convolutional neural networks

The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is a widely used deep learning architecture for computer vision. However, its black box nature makes it difficult to interpret the behavior of the model. To mitigate this issue, AI practitioners have explored explainable AI methods like Class Activation Map (CAM) and Grad-CAM. Although these methods have shown promise, they are limited by architectural constraints or the burden of gradient computing. To overcome this issue, Score-CAM and Ablation-CAM have been proposed as gradient-free methods, but they have longer execution times compared to CAM or Grad-CAM based methods, making them unsuitable for real-world solution though they resolved gradient related issues and enabled inference mode XAI. To address this challenge, we propose a fast gradient-free Reciprocal CAM (Recipro-CAM) method. Our approach involves spatially masking the extracted feature maps to exploit the correlation between activation maps and network predictions for target classes. Our proposed method has yielded promising results, outperforming current state-of-the-art method in the Average Drop-Coherence-Complexity (ADCC) metric by $1.78 \%$ to $3.72 \%$, excluding VGG-16 backbone. Moreover, Recipro-CAM generates saliency maps at a similar rate to Grad-CAM and is approximately $148$ times faster than Score-CAM. The source code for Recipro-CAM is available in our data analysis framework

Improved Rate Capability and Thermal Stability of LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 Cathode Materials via Nanoscale SiP2O7 Coating

Battery Science and TechnologyIn order to overcome the inherent problems of LiNiO2, many method, such as coating and doping have been investigated. However, none of previous studies have not been reported to solve both rate capability at higher rates and thermal stability of the Ni-based cathode materials simultaneously. Here, we report the LiδPyOz–coated LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 cathode materials doped with P and Si ions which possesses both higher rates and thermal stability. It was prepared by direction reaction of LiOH and SiP2O7-coated Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3(OH)2 precursors. The coated cathodes exhibited quite impressive results; rate capability was improved by almost 100% at a 7C rate compared to pristine LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2. Furthermore, the amount of heat generation at 4.5V charge cut-off as a result of the evolution of oxygen was reduced by 79%, compared to pristine LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 sample. Overall, this coating method is also applicable to other bulk cathodes, such as LiMn2O4 and LiCoO2 which need to improve electrochemical properties both at room and elevated temperatures.ope

Double resonance of Raman transitions in a degenerate Fermi gas

We measure momentum-resolved Raman spectra of a spin-polarized degenerate Fermi gas of $^{173}$Yb atoms for a wide range of magnetic fields, where the atoms are irradiated by a pair of counterpropagating Raman laser beams as in the conventional spin-orbit coupling scheme. Double resonance of first- and second-order Raman transitions occurs at a certain magnetic field and the spectrum exhibits a doublet splitting for high laser intensities. The measured spectral splitting is quantitatively accounted for by the Autler-Townes effect. We show that our measurement results are consistent with the spinful band structure of a Fermi gas in the spatially oscillating effective magnetic field generated by the Raman laser fields.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

The full repertoire of Drosophila gustatory receptors for detecting an aversive compound.

The ability to detect toxic compounds in foods is essential for animal survival. However, the minimal subunit composition of gustatory receptors required for sensing aversive chemicals in Drosophila is unknown. Here we report that three gustatory receptors, GR8a, GR66a and GR98b function together in the detection of L-canavanine, a plant-derived insecticide. Ectopic co-expression of Gr8a and Gr98b in Gr66a-expressing, bitter-sensing gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs) confers responsiveness to L-canavanine. Furthermore, misexpression of all three Grs enables salt- or sweet-sensing GRNs to respond to L-canavanine. Introduction of these Grs in sweet-sensing GRNs switches L-canavanine from an aversive to an attractive compound. Co-expression of GR8a, GR66a and GR98b in Drosophila S2 cells induces an L-canavanine-activated nonselective cation conductance. We conclude that three GRs collaborate to produce a functional L-canavanine receptor. Thus, our results clarify the full set of GRs underlying the detection of a toxic tastant that drives avoidance behaviour in an insect

Do Financial Analysts Facilitate Investors’ Assessment Of Earnings?: Evidence From The Korean Stock Market

This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of financial analysts in assisting market investors’ use of accounting earnings in the Korean stock market. We examine whether stock returns differentially reflect earnings information for firms with analyst coverage. We propose that the role of analysts as external monitors as well as information intermediaries enhances the market investors’ valuation of earnings. We find that market valuation of earnings is higher for firms with analyst following. Furthermore, market investors’ valuation of earnings increases (or decreases) with the number of analysts (or with the dispersion of analysts’ forecasts). This suggests that the beneficial effect of analysts arises through the quantity and quality of analysts’ information. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the important role of analysts in emerging market

Continuous Facial Motion Deblurring

We introduce a novel framework for continuous facial motion deblurring that restores the continuous sharp moment latent in a single motion-blurred face image via a moment control factor. Although a motion-blurred image is the accumulated signal of continuous sharp moments during the exposure time, most existing single image deblurring approaches aim to restore a fixed number of frames using multiple networks and training stages. To address this problem, we propose a continuous facial motion deblurring network based on GAN (CFMD-GAN), which is a novel framework for restoring the continuous moment latent in a single motion-blurred face image with a single network and a single training stage. To stabilize the network training, we train the generator to restore continuous moments in the order determined by our facial motion-based reordering process (FMR) utilizing domain-specific knowledge of the face. Moreover, we propose an auxiliary regressor that helps our generator produce more accurate images by estimating continuous sharp moments. Furthermore, we introduce a control-adaptive (ContAda) block that performs spatially deformable convolution and channel-wise attention as a function of the control factor. Extensive experiments on the 300VW datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework generates a various number of continuous output frames by varying the moment control factor. Compared with the recent single-to-single image deblurring networks trained with the same 300VW training set, the proposed method show the superior performance in restoring the central sharp frame in terms of perceptual metrics, including LPIPS, FID and Arcface identity distance. The proposed method outperforms the existing single-to-video deblurring method for both qualitative and quantitative comparisons

Salmonella typhimurium harboring plasmid expressing interleukin-12 induced attenuation of infection and protective immune responses

IL-12 is known to be an essential cytokine which appears to provide protective immunity against intracellular bacteria, such as Salmonella. In this study, we investigated the possibility of developing a vaccine using IL-12 against virulent Salmonella. We used the host defense system activated by cytokine IL-12. The highly virulent Salmonella strain (Salmonella typhimurium UK-1) was transformed with cytokine-expressing plasmids. These live, wild-type pathogens were used as vaccine strains without undergoing any other biological or genetic attenuating processes. The newly developed strains induced partial protection from infections (30-40%). Of note, the interleukin-12 transformed pathogen was safe upon immunization with low doses (103 CFU), induced IgG responses, and stimulated protective immune responses against Salmonella Typhimurium in mice (80-100%). These results suggest that IL-12 induced attenuation of wild-type Salmonella in the host infection stage and vaccine development using the wild-type strain harboring IL-12 secreting plasmids may be considered as an alternative process for intracellular bacterial vaccine development without the inconvenience of time-consuming attenuation processes