Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leveraging Planar Regularities for Point Line Visual-Inertial Odometry

With monocular Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) system, 3D point cloud and camera motion can be estimated simultaneously. Because pure sparse 3D points provide a structureless representation of the environment, generating 3D mesh from sparse points can further model the environment topology and produce dense mapping. To improve the accuracy of 3D mesh generation and localization, we propose a tightly-coupled monocular VIO system, PLP-VIO, which exploits point features and line features as well as plane regularities. The co-planarity constraints are used to leverage additional structure information for the more accurate estimation of 3D points and spatial lines in state estimator. To detect plane and 3D mesh robustly, we combine both the line features with point features in the detection method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified on both synthetic data and public datasets and is compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms.
Ram pressure stripping candidates in the coma cluster: evidence for enhanced star formation

The Coma cluster is the nearest massive ($M \gtrsim 10^{15}\,\mathrm{M_\odot}$) galaxy cluster, making it an excellent laboratory to probe the influence of the cluster environment on galaxy star formation. Here, we present a sample of 41 galaxies with disturbed morphologies consistent with ram pressure stripping. These galaxies are identified visually using high-quality, multi-band imaging from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope covering ~9 $\mathrm{deg^2}$ of the Coma cluster. These "stripping candidates" are clear outliers in common quantitative morphological measures, such as concentration-asymmetry and Gini-$M_{20}$, confirming their disturbed nature. Based on the orientations of observed asymmetries, as well as the galaxy positions in projected phase-space, these candidates are consistent with galaxies being stripped shortly after infall onto the Coma cluster. Finally, the stripping candidates show enhanced star formation rates, both relative to "normal" star-forming Coma galaxies and isolated galaxies in the field. Ram pressure is likely driving an enhancement in star formation during the stripping phase, prior to quenching. On the whole, ram pressure stripping appears to be ubiquitous across all regions of the Coma cluster.
Revisiting Sequence-to-Sequence Video Object Segmentation with Multi-Task Loss and Skip-Memory

Video Object Segmentation (VOS) is an active research area of the visual domain. One of its fundamental subtasks is semi-supervised / one-shot learning: given only the segmentation mask for the first frame, the task is to provide pixel-accurate masks for the object over the rest of the sequence. Despite much progress in the last years, we noticed that many of the existing approaches lose objects in longer sequences, especially when the object is small or briefly occluded. In this work, we build upon a sequence-to-sequence approach that employs an encoder-decoder architecture together with a memory module for exploiting the sequential data. We further improve this approach by proposing a model that manipulates multiscale spatio-temporal information using memory-equipped skip connections. Furthermore, we incorporate an auxiliary task based on distance classification which greatly enhances the quality of edges in segmentation masks. We compare our approach to the state of the art and show considerable improvement in the contour accuracy metric and the overall segmentation accuracy. Our source code and the pre-trained weights are publicly available11https://github.com/fatemehazimi990/RS2S.
Using Behavioral Interactions from a Mobile Device to Classify the Reader's Prior Familiarity and Goal Conditions

A student reads a textbook to learn a new topic; an attorney leafs through familiar legal documents. Each reader may have a different goal for, and prior knowledge of, their reading. A mobile context, which captures interaction behavior, can provide insights about these reading conditions. In this paper, we focus on understanding the different reading conditions of mobile readers, as such an understanding can facilitate the design of effective personalized features for supporting mobile reading. With this motivation in mind, we analyzed the reading behaviors of 285 Mechanical Turk participants who read articles on mobile devices with different familiarity and reading goal conditions. The data was collected non-invasively, only including behavioral interactions recorded from a mobile phone in a non-laboratory setting. Our findings suggest that features based on touch locations can be used to distinguish among familiarity conditions, while scroll-based features and reading time features can be used to differentiate between reading goal conditions. Using the collected data, we built a model that can predict the reading goal condition (67.5%) significantly more accurately than a baseline model. Our model also predicted the familiarity level (56.2%) marginally more accurately than the baseline. These findings can contribute to developing an evidence-based design of reading support features for mobile reading applications. Furthermore, our study methodology can be easily expanded to different real-world reading environments, leaving much potential for future investigations.
Tag-based Multi-Span Extraction in Reading Comprehension

With models reaching human performance on many popular reading comprehension datasets in recent years, a new dataset, DROP, introduced questions that were expected to present a harder challenge for reading comprehension models. Among these new types of questions were "multi-span questions", questions whose answers consist of several spans from either the paragraph or the question itself. Until now, only one model attempted to tackle multi-span questions as a part of its design. In this work, we suggest a new approach for tackling multi-span questions, based on sequence tagging, which differs from previous approaches for answering span questions. We show that our approach leads to an absolute improvement of 29.7 EM and 15.1 F1 compared to existing state-of-the-art results, while not hurting performance on other question types. Furthermore, we show that our model slightly eclipses the current state-of-the-art results on the entire DROP dataset.
Ocean Reverberation Suppression via Matrix Completion with Sensor Failure

In the ocean environment, reverberation is a common and strong interference which significantly degrades the performance of target bearing estimation. Meanwhile, sensor failure is inevitable in actual sonar deployment as the underwater scene is complicated. Therefore, it is a challenge for target detection in the ocean reverberation with sensor failure. To address this issue, we propose an improved approach based on the principle of low rank characteristics of matrix in this paper. Firstly, we utilize Hankel structured matrix to counteract the problem of sensor failure. Then, the algorithm of matrix completion (MC) based on l1-norm and l2-norm are exploited to recover the true signal matrix from the corrupted received matrix. Numerical results demonstrate that compared with other related methods, the l1-norm provides better capability in the probability of recovery and shows the best robustness of bearing estimation with the narrow beam width and low sidelobe. Moreover, the proposed approach verifies the performances of reverberation suppression and achieves high resolution of target detection.
On a maximum of nearest-neighbor random walk with asymptotically zero drift on lattice of positive half line

Consider a nearest-neighbor random walk with certain asymptotically zero drift on the positive half line. Let $M$ be the maximum of an excursion starting from $1$ and ending at $0. $ We study the distribution of $M$ and characterize its asymptotics, which is quite different from those of simple random walks.
Quercetin Attenuates Atherosclerosis via Modulating Oxidized LDL-Induced Endothelial Cellular Senescence

Background and Aims Endothelial senescence is an important risk factor leading to atherosclerosis. The mechanism of quercetin against endothelial senescence is worth exploring. Methods Quercetin (20 mg/kg/d) was administered to ApoE-/- mice intragastrically to evaluate the effectiveness of quercetin on atherosclerotic lesion in vivo. In vitro, human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs) were used to assess the effect of quercetin on cellular senescence induced by oxidized low-density lipoprotein (ox-LDL). Transcriptome microarray and quantitative RT-PCR was conducted to study the pharmacological targets of quercetin. Results ApoE-/- mice demonstrated obvious lipid deposition in arterial lumina, high level of serum sIcam-1 and IL-6, and high density of Vcam-1 and lower density of Sirt1 in aorta. Quercetin administration decreased lipid deposition in arterial lumina, serum sIcam-1, and IL-6 and Vcam-1 in aorta, while increased the density of Sirt1 in aorta of ApoE-/- mice. In vitro, quercetin (0.3, 1, or 3 μmol/L) decreased the expression of senescence-associated β-galactosidase and improved cell morphology of HAECs. And quercetin decreased the cellular apoptosis and increased mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) in dose-dependent manner, and decreased ROS generation simultaneously. Transcriptome microarray suggested 254 differentially expressed (DE) mRNAs (110 mRNAs were upregulated and 144 mRNAs were downregulated) in HAECs after quercetin treatment (fold change > 1.5, P < 0 .05, Que vs Ox-LDL). GO and KEGG analysis indicated nitrogen metabolism, ECM-receptor interaction, complement, and coagulation cascades, p53 and mTOR signaling pathway were involved in the pharmacological mechanisms of quercetin against ox-LDL. Conclusions Quercetin alleviated atherosclerotic lesion both in vivo and in vitro.
Research Advances in How the cGAS-STING Pathway Controls the Cellular Inflammatory Response

Double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) sensor cyclic-GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) along with the downstream stimulator of interferon genes (STING) acting as essential immune-surveillance mediators have become hot topics of research. The intrinsic function of the cGAS-STING pathway facilitates type-I interferon (IFN) inflammatory signaling responses and other cellular processes such as autophagy, cell survival, senescence. cGAS-STING pathway interplays with other innate immune pathways, by which it participates in regulating infection, inflammatory disease, and cancer. The therapeutic approaches targeting this pathway show promise for future translation into clinical applications. Here, we present a review of the important previous works and recent advances regarding the cGAS-STING pathway, and provide a comprehensive understanding of the modulatory pattern of the cGAS-STING pathway under multifarious pathologic states.
Effects of Propofol on Electrical Synaptic Strength in Coupling Reticular Thalamic GABAergic Parvalbumin-Expressing Neurons

Electrical synapses between neurons exhibit a high degree of plasticity, which makes critical contributions to neuronal communication. The GABAergic parvalbumin-expressing (PV+) neurons in the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) interact with each other through electrical and chemical synapses. Plasticity of electrical synaptic transmission in TRN plays a key role in regulating thalamocortical and corticothalamic circuits and even the formation of consciousness. We here examined the effects of propofol, a commonly used general anesthetic agent, on the strength of electrical synapses between TRN PV+ neurons by fluorescence-guided patch-clamp recording and pharmacological methods. Results show that 100 μM propofol reduced the electrical synaptic strength between TRN PV+ neurons. Notably, the propofol-induced depression of electrical synaptic strength between TRN PV+ neurons was diminished by saclofen (10 μM, antagonist of GABAB receptors), but not blocked by gabazine (10 μM, antagonist of GABAA receptors). Application of baclofen (10 μM, agonist of GABAB receptors), similar to propofol, also reduced the electrical synaptic strength between TRN PV+ neurons. Moreover, the propofol-induced depression of electrical synaptic strength between TRN PV+ neurons was abolished by 9-CPA (100 μM, specific adenylyl cyclase inhibitor), and by KT5720 (1 μM, selective inhibitor of PKA). Our findings indicate that propofol acts on metabotropic GABAB receptors, resulting in a depression of electrical synaptic transmission of coupled TRN PV+ neurons, which is mediated by the adenylyl cyclase-cAMP-PKA signaling pathway. Our findings also imply that propofol may change the thalamocortical communication via inducing depression of electrical synaptic strength in the TRN.
MiD51 Is Important for Maintaining Mitochondrial Health in Pancreatic Islet and MIN6 Cells

Background: Mitochondrial dynamics are important for glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in pancreatic beta cells. The mitochondrial elongation factor MiD51 has been proposed to act as an anchor that recruits Drp1 from the cytosol to the outer mitochondrial membrane. Whether MiD51 promotes mitochondrial fusion by inactivation of Drp1 is a controversial issue. Since both the underlying mechanism and the effects on mitochondrial function remain unknown, this study was conducted to investigate the role of MiD51 in beta cells. Methods: Overexpression and downregulation of MiD51 in mouse insulinoma 6 (MIN6) and mouse islet cells was achieved using the pcDNA expression vector and specific siRNA, respectively. Expression of genes regulating mitochondrial dynamics and autophagy was analyzed by quantitative Real-Time PCR, glucose-stimulated insulin secretion by ELISA, and cellular oxygen consumption rate by optode sensor technology. Mitochondrial membrane potential and morphology were visualized after TMRE and MitoTracker Green staining, respectively. Immunofluorescence analyses were examined by confocal microscopy. Results: MiD51 is expressed in insulin-positive mouse and human pancreatic islet and MIN6 cells. Overexpression of MiD51 resulted in mitochondrial fragmentation and cluster formation in MIN6 cells. Mitochondrial membrane potential, glucose-induced oxygen consumption rate and glucose-stimulated insulin secretion were reduced in MIN6 cells with high MiD51 expression. LC3 expression remained unchanged. Downregulation of MiD51 resulted in inhomogeneity of the mitochondrial network in MIN6 cells with hyperelongated and fragmented mitochondria. Mitochondrial membrane potential, maximal and glucose-induced oxygen consumption rate and insulin secretion were diminished in MIN6 cells with low MiD51 expression. Furthermore, reduced Mfn2 and Parkin expression was observed. Based on MiD51 overexpression and downregulation, changes in the mitochondrial network structure similar to those in MIN6 cells were also observed in mouse islet cells. Conclusion: We have demonstrated that MiD51 plays a pivotal role in regulating mitochondrial function and hence insulin secretion in MIN6 cells. We propose that this anchor protein of Drp1 is important to maintain a homogeneous mitochondrial network and to avoid morphologies such as hyperelongation and clustering which are inaccessible for degradation by autophagy. Assuming that insulin granule degradation frequently suppresses autophagy in beta cells, MiD51 could be a key element maintaining mitochondrial health.
Regulation of Ant Foraging: A Review of the Role of Information Use and Personality

Animals live in heterogeneous environments where food resources are transient and have to be exploited rapidly. Ants show a wide range of foraging strategies and this activity is tightly regulated irrespective of the mode of recruitment used. Individual foragers base their decision to forage on information received from nestmates (social information). Transmission of information can be in the form of direct physical interactions such as antennation or indirect exchange of information such as laying of pheromone trails. Foragers also rely on information from their internal states or experience (personal information). The interaction between these two sources of information gives rise to plasticity in foraging behavior. Recent studies have examined the role of personality (consistent inter-individual variation in behavioral traits) during ant foraging. Since colonies differ from each other in the distribution of personalities of their members, colonies may consistently differ in behavioral traits, giving rise to colony level personality. However, the interaction between information use and personality, especially at the individual level, remains unexplored. Here, we briefly summarize the literature on the effect of social and personal information on the regulation of ant foraging and the effect of personality on this behavior. We point out that a more focused examination of the interplay between personality and information use will help us understand how behavioral plasticity in the context of foraging is shaped at the colony and individual levels.
Naturally-Occurring Canine Mammary Tumors as a Translational Model for Human Breast Cancer

Despite extensive research over many decades, human breast cancer remains a major worldwide health concern. Advances in pre-clinical and clinical research has led to significant improvements in recent years in how we manage breast cancer patients. Although survival rates of patients suffering from localized disease has improved significantly, the prognosis for patients diagnosed with metastatic disease remains poor with 5-year survival rates at only 25%. In vitro studies using immortalized cell lines and in vivo mouse models, typically using xenografted cell lines or patient derived material, are commonly used to study breast cancer. Although these techniques have undoubtedly increased our molecular understanding of breast cancer, these research models have significant limitations and have contributed to the high attrition rates seen in cancer drug discovery. It is estimated that only 3–6% of drugs that show promise in these pre-clinical models will reach clinical use. Models that can reproduce human breast cancer more accurately are needed if significant advances are to be achieved in improving cancer drug research, treatment outcomes, and prognosis. Canine mammary tumors are a naturally-occurring heterogenous group of cancers that have several features in common with human breast cancer. These similarities include etiology, signaling pathway activation and histological classification. In this review article we discuss the use of naturally-occurring canine mammary tumors as a translational animal model for human breast cancer research.
A Mini-Review on In situ Biogas Upgrading Technologies via Enhanced Hydrogenotrophic Methanogenesis to Improve the Quality of Biogas From Anaerobic Digesters

In the context of accelerating development of renewable and sustainable energy, biogas upgrading has attracted significant attention in order to yield high quality biomethane which can be utilized as an alternative to natural gas. Biogas upgrading techniques have been revolutionized in the past decade with the emergence of new strategies such as enhanced hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. This review comprehensively summarizes the latest in situ biogas upgrading technologies via enhanced hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis in order to facilitate their development and commercial application: (1) hydrogen injection into anaerobic digesters for in situ enhancement of hydrogenotrophic methanogenic pathways, (2) membrane electrolysis-assisted CO2 extraction and bioelectrochemical removal of CO2, and (3) additives (e.g., ash, zero-valent iron, and biochar). The key findings and technical limitations are summarized and critically analyzed for each in situ biogas upgrading technique. Additionally, potential industrial applications of these in situ biogas upgrading strategies in anaerobic digesters are also discussed, before concluding with their future development.
Discovery of Physics From Data: Universal Laws and Discrepancies

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are now being used to automate the discovery of physics principles and governing equations from measurement data alone. However, positing a universal physical law from data is challenging without simultaneously proposing an accompanying discrepancy model to account for the inevitable mismatch between theory and measurements. By revisiting the classic problem of modeling falling objects of different size and mass, we highlight a number of nuanced issues that must be addressed by modern data-driven methods for automated physics discovery. Specifically, we show that measurement noise and complex secondary physical mechanisms, like unsteady fluid drag forces, can obscure the underlying law of gravitation, leading to an erroneous model. We use the sparse identification of non-linear dynamics (SINDy) method to identify governing equations for real-world measurement data and simulated trajectories. Incorporating into SINDy the assumption that each falling object is governed by a similar physical law is shown to improve the robustness of the learned models, but discrepancies between the predictions and observations persist due to subtleties in drag dynamics. This work highlights the fact that the naive application of ML/AI will generally be insufficient to infer universal physical laws without further modification.
Evolutionary Changes in DnaA-Dependent Chromosomal Replication in Cyanobacteria

Replication of the circular bacterial chromosome is initiated at a unique origin (oriC) in a DnaA-dependent manner in which replication proceeds bidirectionally from oriC to ter. The nucleotide compositions of most bacteria differ between the leading and lagging DNA strands. Thus, the chromosomal DNA sequence typically exhibits an asymmetric GC skew profile. Further, free-living bacteria without genomes encoding dnaA were unknown. Thus, a DnaA-oriC-dependent replication initiation mechanism may be essential for most bacteria. However, most cyanobacterial genomes exhibit irregular GC skew profiles. We previously found that the Synechococcus elongatus chromosome, which exhibits a regular GC skew profile, is replicated in a DnaA-oriC-dependent manner, whereas chromosomes of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 and Nostoc sp. PCC 7120, which exhibit an irregular GC skew profile, are replicated from multiple origins in a DnaA-independent manner. Here we investigate the variation in the mechanisms of cyanobacterial chromosome replication. We found that the genomes of certain free-living species do not encode dnaA and such species, including Cyanobacterium aponinum PCC 10605 and Geminocystis sp. NIES-3708, replicate their chromosomes from multiple origins. Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002, which is phylogenetically closely related to dnaA-lacking free-living species as well as to dnaA-encoding but DnaA-oriC-independent Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, possesses dnaA. In Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002, dnaA was not essential and its chromosomes were replicated from a unique origin in a DnaA-oriC independent manner. Our results also suggest that loss of DnaA-oriC-dependency independently occurred multiple times during cyanobacterial evolution and raises a possibility that the loss of dnaA or loss of DnaA-oriC dependency correlated with an increase in ploidy level.