Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discriminative-CCA Promoted By EEG signals For Physiological-based Emotion Recognition

Recently, multi-modal signals such as physiological and EEG signals are increasingly utilized because of their consistency and complementarity in emotional representation. Compared with physiological signal, however, EEG signal is more difficult to obtain and more expensive so that it still cannot be utilized effectively and sufficiently. In this paper, we propose a method to enhance the performance of physiological-based emotion recognition system, where EEG signal is considered as privileged information and only available during training. Discriminative canonical correlation analysis (DCCA) is used to capture the consistency and complementarity from between physiological and EEG features, and then, a new emotional-relevant discriminative space can be constructed. During training period, physiological and EEG features are projected into an emotional discriminative space by using DCCA with the help of EEG signals. And then, machine learning techniques are utilized to build emotion recognizer for projected affective samples. During testing period, only peripheral signals are used for emotion recognition. The experimental results on two databases demonstrate that our proposed method achieves better recognition performance than existing methods.
A 2.56-mm2 718GOPS Configurable Spiking Convolutional Sparse Coding Accelerator in 40-nm CMOS

A configurable neuroinspired inference accelerator is designed as an array of neurons, each operating in an independent clock domain. The accelerator implements a recurrent network using a novel sparse convolution for feedforward operations and sparse spike-driven reconstruction for feedback operations. The proposed sparse convolution efficiently skips zero-patches, and can be made to support practically any image and kernel size. A globally asynchronous locally synchronous architecture enables scalable design and load balancing to achieve 22% reduction in power. Fabricated in 40-nm CMOS, the 2.56-mm2 inference accelerator integrates 48 neurons, a hub, and an OpenRISC processor. The chip achieves 718GOPS at 380 MHz, and demonstrates applications in feature extraction from images and depth extraction from stereo images.
Boundary-Guided Feature Aggregation Network for Salient Object Detection

Fully convolutional networks (FCN) has significantly improved the performance of many pixel-labeling tasks, such as semantic segmentation and depth estimation. However, it still remains nontrivial to thoroughly utilize the multilevel convolutional feature maps and boundary information for salient object detection. In this letter, we propose a novel FCN framework to integrate multilevel convolutional features recurrently with the guidance of object boundary information. First, a deep convolutional network is used to extract multilevel feature maps and separately aggregate them into multiple resolutions, which can be used to generate coarse saliency maps. Meanwhile, another boundary information extraction branch is proposed to generate boundary features. Finally, an attention-based feature fusion module is designed to fuse boundary information into salient regions to achieve accurate boundary inference and semantic enhancement. The final saliency maps are the combination of the predicted boundary maps and integrated saliency maps, which are more closer to the ground truths. Experiments and analysis on four large-scale benchmarks verify that our framework achieves new state-of-the-art results.
Comparison of postoperative lymphocytes and interleukins between laparoscopy-assisted and open radical gastrectomy for early gastric cancer

Objective This study aimed to study the effects of laparoscopic-assisted radical gastrectomy (LAG) and open radical gastrectomy (OG) on immune function and inflammatory factors in patients with early gastric cancer. Methods Seventy-five patients with pT1N0M0 gastric cancer in Ren Ji Hospital from August 2017 to January 2018 were studied. Lymphocytes subsets and interleukins were compared preoperatively and on the third postoperative day (POD3) and seventh postoperative day (POD7). Results There were no significant differences in age, sex, body mass index, duration of the operation, estimated blood loss, total gastrectomy rate, postoperative first fluid diet, and the levels of preoperative lymphocytes subsets and interleukins between the two groups. The number of CD4+ T cells and the CD4+/CD8+ ratio in the LAG group were significantly higher than those in the OG group on POD3. However, the number of CD8+ T cells, and interleukin-6 and interleukin-8 levels in the LAG group were significantly lower than those in the OG group on POD3. Conclusions Laparoscopy can effectively reduce the levels of inflammatory factors and has less effect on the immune system than OG.
Paradox of self-care gender differences among Italian patients with chronic heart failure: findings from a real-world cross-sectional study

Aim The aim of this study was to critically analyse and describe gender differences related to self-care among patients with chronic heart failure (HF). Methods and results A monocentric real-world cohort of 346 patients with chronic HF in follow-up was used for this cross-sectional study. We report data related to the cohort’s demographic and clinical characteristics. Self-care was assessed using the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index before patients’ discharge. After bivariate analysis, logistical regression models were used to describe the relationship between gender, self-care behaviours and self-care confidence. While men were found to have more than quadruple the risk of poor self-care than women (OR 4.596; 95% CI 1.075 to 19.650), men were also found to be approximately 60% more likely to have adequate self-care confidence than women (OR 0.412; 95% CI 0.104 to 0.962). Considering that self-care confidence is described as a positive predictor of behaviours, our results suggest a paradox. It is possible that the patient–caregiver relationship mediates the effect of confidence on behaviours. Overall, adequate levels of self-care behaviours are a current issue, ranging 7.6%–18.0%. Conclusion This study sets the stage for future research where elements of the patient–caregiver relationship ought to be considered to inform the planning of appropriate educational interventions. We recommend routinely measuring patients’ self-care behaviours to guide their follow-up and as a basis for any changes in their daily life behaviours.
An Adaptive Tabu Search Algorithm for Market Clearing Problem in Turkish Day-Ahead Market

In this study, we focus on the market clearing problem of Turkish day-ahead electricity market. We propose a mathematical model by extending the variety of bid types for different price regions. The commercial solvers may not find any feasible solution for the proposed problem in some instances within the given time limits. Hence, we design an adaptive tabu search (ATS) algorithm to solve the problem. ATS discretizes continuous search space arising from the flow variables. Our method has adaptive radius and it achieves backtracking by a commercial solver. Then, we compare the performance of ATS with a heuristic decomposition method from the literature by using synthetic data sets. We evaluate the performances of the algorithms with respect to their solution times and surplus differences. ATS performs better in most of the sets.
An 88% Efficiency 0.1–300- $\mu$ W Energy Harvesting System With 3-D MPPT Using Switch Width Modulation for IoT Smart Nodes

This paper presents a novel 3-D maximum power point tracking (3-D MPPT) system for energy harvesting systems (EHS) within Internet of Things (IoT) smart nodes. The proposed 3-D MPPT utilizes a switch width modulation (SWM) technique for improving power efficiency (PE) at idle (<1 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) and heavy (>300 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) load modes. The SWM eliminates the gate driver/conduction loss tradeoff in a reconfigurable switched capacitor charge pump (SCCP). The proposed SWM technique modulates the SCCP switch resistance in proportion to the load condition, input voltage, and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$V_{\mathrm {gs}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> applied. A cold startup technique is incorporated in the proposed EHS with an energy-aware algorithm for input harvester select purpose. The fabricated test chip in 65-nm CMOS technology can harvest solar and thermal energy from 0.35 V and provides a regulated output voltage at 1 V with the peak efficiency of 88% at 200 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and PE >60% at 100 nW.
Does the severity of pain correlate with severity of functional disability? Factors influencing ‘patient reported outcome measures’ in spinal patients

Aims: To assess correlation between the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain score and the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and which patient factors can influence patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). This study also aims to assess the response to the sexual function question of the ODI. Methods: Retrospective analysis of 200 consecutive patients undergoing a range of different lumbar spinal procedures between July 2012 and September 2015 was performed. Subgroup analysis was also performed on the 122 patients who underwent microdiscectomy and/or decompression procedures only. Data from notes and clinical letters from the patient's first clinic appointment were collected. In addition to these outcome measures, data were also extracted regarding patients' gender, age, smoking status, alcohol use, employment and mental health status. Results: Significant correlation was found between VAS pain score and ODI (p = 0.002) and between VAS pain score and question 1 of ODI (p = 0.0001). A lower ODI score was reported at time of surgery by those in employment compared to those who are unemployed (p = 0.008). In addition to this, a lower ODI score was reported in those who are self-employed compared to those in employment (p = 0.048) in both cohorts. A significantly higher mean ODI score was shown within the subgroup analysis for current smokers (p = 0.02). None of the other patient factors that were analysed were found to affect PROMs. 65% of patients answered the sexual function question of the ODI. Conclusions: Significant correlation was demonstrated between VAS pain score and ODI. Those who are in employment are far more likely to report a lower ODI score than those who are unemployed at the time of surgery. Self-employed patients were found to have reported a significantly lower ODI score than those who are in employment. Smoking cessation should be encouraged as those who are current smokers may be more likely to report a higher ODI. As 65% of patients decided to answer the sexual function question of the ODI, this supports its further use.
Local Forecasting for Predictive Smart Home/Object Control

Local forecasts will become a system component of intelligent houses and objects. This work examines the local forecast of three expected loads or generation of electrical energy, which are to be integrated into an intelligent energy management. These are the household load, photovoltaic feed and the charging load of electric vehicles. Forecasts were performed using linear stochastic signal models, neural networks and deep learning networks.
ADGRE1 (EMR1, F4/80) Is a Rapidly-Evolving Gene Expressed in Mammalian Monocyte-Macrophages

The F4/80 antigen, encoded by the Adgre1 locus, has been widely-used as a monocyte-macrophage marker in mice, but its value as a macrophage marker in other species is unclear, and has even been questioned. ADGRE1 is a seven transmembrane G protein-coupled receptor with an extracellular domain containing repeated Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF)-like calcium binding domains. Using a new monoclonal antibody, we demonstrated that ADGRE1 is a myeloid differentiation marker in pigs, absent from progenitors in bone marrow, highly-expressed in mature granulocytes, monocytes, and tissue macrophages and induced by macrophage colony-stimulating factor (CSF1) treatment in vivo. Based upon these observations, we utilized RNA-Seq to assess the expression of ADGRE1 mRNA in bone marrow or monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM) and alveolar macrophages from 8 mammalian species including pig, human, rat, sheep, goat, cow, water buffalo, and horse. ADGRE1 mRNA was expressed by macrophages in each species, with inter-species variation both in expression level and response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. Analysis of the RNA-Seq data also revealed additional exons in several species compared to current Ensembl annotations. The ruminant species and horses appear to encode a complete duplication of the 7 EGF-like domains. In every species, Sashimi plots revealed evidence of exon skipping of the EGF-like domains, which are highly-variable between species and polymorphic in humans. Consistent with these expression patterns, key elements of the promoter and a putative enhancer are also conserved across all species. The rapid evolution of this molecule and related ADGRE family members suggests immune selection and a role in pathogen recognition.
Intermittent fasting increases SOD2 and catalase immunoreactivities in the hippocampus but does not protect from neuronal death following transient ischemia in gerbils

Intermittent fasting has been shown to have neuroprotective effects against transient focal cerebral ischemic insults. However, the effects of intermittent fasting on transient global ischemic insult has not been studied much yet. The present study examined effects of intermittent fasting on endogenous antioxidant enzyme expression levels in the hippocampus and investigated whether the fasting protects neurons 5 days after 5 min of transient global cerebral ischemia. Gerbils were randomly subjected to either ad libitum or alternate-day intermittent fasting for two months and assigned to sham surgery or transient ischemia. Changes of antioxidant enzymes were examined using immunohistochemistry for cytoplasmic superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), mitochondrial (SOD2), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GPX). The effects of intermittent fasting on ischemia-induced antioxidant changes, neuronal damage/degeneration and glial activation were examined. The weight of fasting gerbils was not different from that of control gerbils. In controls, SOD1 and GPX immunoreactivities were strong in pyramidal neurons of filed cornu ammonis 1 (CA1). Transient ischemia in controls significantly decreased expressions of SOD1 and GPX in CA1 pyramidal neurons. Intermittent fasting resulted in increased expressions of SOD2 and CAT, not of SOD1 and GPX, in CA1 pyramidal neurons. Nevertheless, CA1 pyramidal neurons were not protected in gerbils subjected to fasting after transient ischemia, and inhibition of glial-cell activation was not observed in the gerbils. In summary, intermittent fasting for two months increased SOD2 and CAT immunoreactivities in hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. However, fasting did not protect the CA1 pyramidal neurons from transient cerebral ischemia. The results of the present study indicate that intermittent fasting may increase certain antioxidants, but not protect neurons from transient global ischemic insult.
A 77-GHz Mixed-Mode FMCW Signal Generator Based on Bang-Bang Phase Detector

A 77-GHz frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) signal generator is presented for automobile millimeter-wave (mm-wave) radar applications. The reconfigurable chirp is generated by a mixed-mode synthesizer operating at 38.5 GHz, in which the frequency doubling scheme is used to improve the chirp bandwidth and simplify the design. The bang-bang phase detector (BBPD) is employed for phase detection in the synthesizer, avoiding complicated linear time-to-digital converter (TDC) as well as reducing design complexity and power consumption. A 1-bit third-order single-loop $\Delta \Sigma$ modulator (SLDSM3), combining with the hybrid finite-impulse-response (FIR) filtering technique, significantly suppresses the BBPD induced quantization noise. A type-III slope estimator with a switchable polarity is embedded in the digital loop filter (DLF) to improve the linearity around the chirp turning-around points (TAPs). Two infinite-impulse-response (IIR) filtering stages smoothen the generated chirp waveform by reducing the instant variation of the DLF’s output. Implemented in 65-nm CMOS, the proposed FMCW signal generator consumes 43.1-mW power and occupies 2-mm2 die area, including testing pads. The measured phase noise from the 38.5-GHz carrier is −87.7 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset. The measured root-mean-square (rms) frequency errors of the generated triangle chirps over the 1-ms period are 189 and 336 kHz, with 0.914- and 1.827-GHz chirp bandwidth, respectively.
Complex Correntropy Induced Metric Applied to Compressive Sensing with Complex-Valued Data

The correntropy induced metric (CIM) is a well- defined metric induced by the correntropy function and has been applied to different problems in signal processing and machine learning, but CIM was limited to the case of real-valued data. This paper extends the CIM to the case of complex- valued data, denoted by Complex Correntropy Induced Metric (CCIM). The new metric preserves the well known benefits of extracting high order statistical information from correntropy, but now dealing with complex-valued data. As an example, the paper shows the CCIM applied in the approximation of ℓ0-minimization in the reconstruction of complex-valued sparse signals in a compressive sensing problem formulation. A mathematical proof is presented as well as simulation results that indicate the viability of the proposed new metric.
Micro-Expression Recognition Based on Local Two-Order Gradient Pattern

Recently, micro-expression recognition has obtained more and more attention due to its spontaneity. Moreover, how to extract feature from these subtle image sequences is still a hard issue. Currently, a lot of local patterns have been applied to describe these micro-changes, but in essence they are seldom specialized to capture fine structure changes in video clips and often need tens of frames to generate a descriptor through interpolation between frames. To make up for these deficiencies, this paper proposes a novel local pattern i.e. Local Two-Order Gradient Pattern (LTOGP) to describe the subtle changes in micro-expression sequences. Using this pattern, we can not only capture subtle changes in videos, but also only make use of 5 frames to generate a descriptor of a micro-expression clip rather than tens or hundreds of frames in related literatures. Experiments are conducted on two databases of CASME and CASME2 and the results show that our proposed method gains promising performance for micro-expression recognition with proposed method.
Weighted Spectral Embedding of Graphs

We present a novel spectral embedding of graphs that incorporates weights assigned to the nodes, quantifying their relative importance. This spectral embedding is based on the first eigenvectors of some properly normalized version of the Laplacian. We prove that these eigenvectors correspond to the configurations of lowest energy of an equivalent physical system, either mechanical or electrical, in which the weight of each node can be interpreted as its mass or its capacitance, respectively. Experiments on a real dataset illustrate the impact of weighting on the embedding.
Electroacupuncture inhibits sodium nitroprusside-mediated chondrocyte apoptosis through the mitochondrial pathway

In China, electroacupuncture (EA) is a therapeutic method that is extensively applied in the clinical treatment of osteoarthritis (OA); however, the underlying molecular mechanism remains unclear. Chondrocyte apoptosis may be observed in cartilage tissue in OA, and is often considered a key target for the treatment of this condition. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the effects of EA on sodium nitroprusside (SNP)-induced chondrocyte apoptosis. Chondrocytes were obtained from the knee joints of Sprague Dawley rats by type II collagenase digestion. Following microscopic observation and authentication with type II collagen immunohistochemistry, articular cartilage cells were used in subsequent experiments. Using inverted phase contrast microscopy, DAPI staining and flow cytometry, it was revealed that chondrocytes treated with SNP became apoptotic, whereas EA inhibited SNP-induced chondrocyte apoptosis. Subsequently, JC-1 single staining, reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis, western blotting, colorimetric assays and immunofluorescence staining were performed for further investigation. The results demonstrated that, when compared with normal chondrocytes, the mitochondrial membrane potential of SNP-treated chondrocytes was markedly lowered, B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) expression was reduced, and the expression levels of Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax), cytochrome c, caspase-9 and caspase-3 were increased. Compared with in SNP-treated chondrocytes, the decrease in the mitochondrial membrane potential of chondrocytes treated with SNP and EA was smaller, Bcl-2 expression was increased, and the expression levels of Bax, cytochrome c, caspase-9 and caspase-3 were decreased following EA intervention. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that EA modulated the mitochondrial pathway to suppress SNP-mediated chondrocyte apoptosis. Therefore, EA may be of value in the treatment of OA.
Direct Relay Pathways from Lemniscal Auditory Thalamus to Secondary Auditory Field in Mice

Abstract Tonotopy is an essential functional organization in the mammalian auditory cortex, and its source in the primary auditory cortex (A1) is the incoming frequency-related topographical projections from the ventral division of the medial geniculate body (MGv). However, circuits that relay this functional organization to higher-order regions such as the secondary auditory field (A2) have yet to be identified. Here, we discovered a new pathway that projects directly from MGv to A2 in mice. Tonotopy was established in A2 even when primary fields including A1 were removed, which indicates that tonotopy in A2 can be established solely by thalamic input. Moreover, the structural nature of differing thalamocortical connections was consistent with the functional organization of the target regions in the auditory cortex. Retrograde tracing revealed that the region of MGv input to a local area in A2 was broader than the region of MGv input to A1. Consistent with this anatomy, two-photon calcium imaging revealed that neuronal responses in the thalamocortical recipient layer of A2 showed wider bandwidth and greater heterogeneity of the best frequency distribution than those of A1. The current study demonstrates a new thalamocortical pathway that relays frequency information to A2 on the basis of the MGv compartmentalization.