SQuantizer: Simultaneous Learning for Both Sparse and Low-precision Neural Networks

Deep neural networks have achieved state-of-the-art accuracies in a wide range of computer vision, speech recognition, and machine translation tasks. However the limits of memory bandwidth and computational power constrain the range of devices capable of deploying these modern networks. To address this problem, we propose SQuantizer, a new training method that jointly optimizes for both sparse and low-precision neural networks while maintaining high accuracy and providing a high compression rate. This approach brings sparsification and low-bit quantization into a single training pass, employing these techniques in an order demonstrated to be optimal. Our method achieves state-of-the-art accuracies using 4-bit and 2-bit precision for ResNet18, MobileNet-v2 and ResNet50, even with high degree of sparsity. The compression rates of 18x for ResNet18 and 17x for ResNet50, and 9x for MobileNet-v2 are obtained when SQuantizing both weights and activations within 1% and 2% loss in accuracy for ResNets and MobileNet-v2 respectively. An extension of these techniques to object detection also demonstrates high accuracy on YOLO-v3. Additionally, our method allows for fast single pass training, which is important for rapid prototyping and neural architecture search techniques. Finally extensive results from this simultaneous training approach allows us to draw some useful insights into the relative merits of sparsity and quantization

Energy harvesting, desalination and coastal protection by sscillating surge wave energy converter

As recognized by the United Nations, Food, Energy and Water (FEW) nexus is central to sustainable development, and the demand for all these three is increasing due to a rising global population, rapid urbanization, changing diets and economic growth. For the US, over 53% of the population lives within 50 miles of the coast (NOAA), the coastal zone is an interaction region between land and ocean and an interface of geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, as well as greatly affected by human activities, the stability of coastal ecosystem is very weak. Oscillating surge wave energy converter can harvest energy from ocean waves to power saline water desalination and reduce the coastal erosion as physical barrier, and the desalinated fresh water can be used for saline-sodic-alkaline soil reclamation and make it suitable for plant growth and then act as a biological barrier. Power takeoff (PTO) is possibly the single most important element in wave energy technology, and underlines many (possibly most) of the failures to date (Falcão). The reason is that the wave energy is concentrated at low frequencies and oscillating velocities, which makes efficient conversion extremely difficult and limits the options for efficient power takeoff. A novel PTO, called mechanical motion rectifier (MMR), is proposed to convert bidirectional motion into unidirectional motion. Tank tests for small-scale prototypes have been down. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Lack of an association of miR-938 SNP in IDDM10 with human type 1 diabetes

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a newly discovered type of small non-protein coding RNA that function in the inhibition of effective mRNA translation, and may serve as susceptibility genes for various disease developments. The SNP rs12416605, located in human type 1 diabetes IDDM10 locus, changes the seeding sequence (UGU[G/A]CCC) of miRNA miR-938 and potentially alters miR-938 targets, including IL-16 and IL-17A. In an attempt to test whether miR-938 may be a susceptibility gene for IDDM10, we assessed the possible association of the miR-938 SNP with T1D in an American Caucasian cohort of 622 patients and 723 healthy controls by TaqMan assay. Our current data do not support the association between the SNP in miR-938 and type 1 diabetes

Effect of Cr on the Mineral Structure and Composition of Cement Clinker and Its Solidification Behavior

In order to reveal the solidification behavior of Cr in the cement clinker mineral phase, 29Si magic-angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy techniques were used to analyze the morphology and composition of the cement clinker mineral phase doped with Cr. The results showed that the addition of Cr did not change the chemical environment of 29Si in the clinker mineral phase, and it was still an isolated silicon–oxygen tetrahedron. Cr affected the orientation of the silicon–oxygen tetrahedron and the coordination number of calcium, leading to the formation of defects in the crystal structure of the clinker mineral phase, by replacing Ca2+ into the mineral phase lattice to form a new mineral phase Ca3Cr2(SiO4)3. Cr acted as a stabilizer for the formation of β-C2S in the clinker calcination. As the amount of Cr increased, the relative content of C3S decreased and the relative content of C2S increased. Further, Cr easily dissolved in C2S, while it was not found in C3S. This study is conducive to further research on the mechanism of heavy metal solidification in cement clinker. Furthermore, it is important to evaluate the environmental risk of heavy metals in the process of sludge disposal through cement kiln and promote the utilization of sludge resources and the sustainable development of the cement industry

Ezh2 Regulates Activation-Induced CD8+ T Cell Cycle Progression via Repressing Cdkn2a and Cdkn1c Expression

Transition from resting to cell cycle in response to antigenic stimulation is an essential step for naïve CD8+ T cells to differentiate to effector and memory cells. Leaving the resting state requires dramatic changes of chromatin status in the key cell cycle inhibitors but the details of these concerted events are not fully elucidated. Here, we showed that Ezh2, an enzymatic component of polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) catalyzing the trimethylation of lysine 27 on histone 3 (H3K27me3), regulates activation induced naïve CD8+ T cells proliferation and apoptosis. Upon deletion of Ezh2 during thymocyte development (Ezh2fl/flCd4Cre+ mice), naive CD8+ T cells displayed impaired proliferation and increased apoptosis in response to antigen stimulation. However, naive CD8+ T cells only had impaired proliferation but no increase in apoptosis when Ezh2 was deleted after activation (Ezh2fl/flGzmBCre+ mice), suggesting cell cycle and apoptosis are temporally separable events controlled by Ezh2. We then showed that deletion of Ezh2 resulted in the increase in expression of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors Cdkn2a (p16 and Arf) and Cdkn1c (p57) in activated naïve CD8+ T cells as the consequence of reduced levels of H3K27me3 at these two gene loci. Finally, with real time imaging, we observed prolonged cell division times of naïve CD8+ T cells in the absence of Ezh2 post in vitro stimulation. Together, these findings reveal that repression of Cdkn1c and Cdkn2a by Ezh2 plays a critical role in execution of activation-induced CD8+ T cell proliferation

Genome-Wide Transcriptional Analysis of Differentially Expressed Genes in Diabetic, Healing Corneal Epithelial Cells: Hyperglycemia-Suppressed TGF beta 3 Expression Contributes to the Delay of Epithelial Wound Healing in Diabetic Corneas

National Institutes of Health/National Eye Institute [R01-EY-10869, R01-EY-17960, P30-EY-04078]; Research to Prevent BlindnessPatients with diabetes mellitus (DM) may develop corneal complications and delayed wound healing. The aims of this study are to characterize the molecular signatures and biological pathways leading to delayed epithelial wound healing and to delineate the involvement of TGF3 therein. Genome-wide cDNA microarray analysis revealed 1,888 differentially expressed genes in the healing epithelia of normal (NL) versus type 1 DM rat corneas. Gene ontology and enrichment analyses indicated TGF signaling as a major altered pathway. Among three TGF isoforms, TGF-1 and 3 were upregulated in response to wounding in NL corneal epithelial cells (CECs), whereas the latter was greatly suppressed by hyperglycemia in rat type 1 and 2 and mouse type 1 DM models. Functional analysis indicated that TGF-3 contributed to wound healing in NL corneas. Moreover, exogenously added TGF-3 accelerated epithelial wound closure in type 2 rat and type 1 mouse DM corneas via Smad and PI3K-AKT signaling pathways, autoregulation, and/or upregulation of Serpine1, a well-known TGF target gene. Taken together, our study for the first time provides a comprehensive list of genes differentially expressed in the healing CECs of NL versus diabetic corneas and suggests the therapeutic potential of TGF-3 for treating corneal and skin wounds in diabetic patients