Facial-sketch Synthesis: A New Challenge

Machine Intelligence Research - This paper aims to conduct a comprehensive study on facial-sketch synthesis (FSS). However, due to the high cost of obtaining hand-drawn sketch datasets, there is a...     

Comparison of yield and metabolites according to the types of hilling materials utilized during Glehnia littoralis sprout vegetable cultivation

Food Science and Biotechnology - Various hilling materials (rice hulls, pine sawdust, and perlite) were compared to produce sprout vegetables using beach silvertop (Glehnia littoralis Fr. Schm. ex...     

Evaluating differentially private decision tree model over model inversion attack

International Journal of Information Security - Machine learning techniques have been widely used and shown remarkable performance in various fields. Along with the widespread utilization of...     

Facile preparation and strong adhesive strength of honeycomb polyurethane films with small pore diameter

With the continuous development of bionics, such as, geckos and virginia creeper with both superhydrophobic and super-adhesive, the surface wetting and super-adhesive properties of various porous materials have attracted extensive attention of the scientific and medical communities. Here, the honeycomb polyurethane (PU) porous films with strong adhesion were successfully prepared by microphase separation method and the effects of growth parameters on their microstructure and adhesive strength to ice were investigated. It was found that a high relative humidity (e.g., 100%) and a low solution concentration (e.g., 2%) facilitated the formation of ordered honeycomb PU porous films, and as-prepared PU pores with average pore diameter as small as 5 μm are better ordered and more uniform than these in related documents. Although the contact angle of water droplets on the surface of PU porous films increased from the premodification value of 85–130° to more than 160° after surface modification with polydopamine (PDA), the corresponding rolling angle remained approximately constant (180°), indicating that the surface of PU porous films has strong adhesion similar to geckos and virginia creeper. Furthermore, at lower temperature, the PU porous films exhibited the high adhesive strength of 142.13 kPa on ice, which was strongly dependent on the porous microstructures and surface compositions. The improved adhesive behavior to ice of honeycomb PU porous films modified with PDA provides new strategies for surface modification of materials and potential applications in medical domain.     

Trimetallic NiFeCr-LDH/MoS2composites as novel electrocatalyst for OER

The development of efficient and stable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts is an ongoing challenge. In order to solve the problem of low oxygen evolution efficiency of the current OER catalysts, a novel material was synthesized by the incorporation of NiFeCr-LDH and MoS₂, and its structural and electrochemical properties were also investigated. The introduction of MoS₂ improves the electrochemical performance of NiFeCr-LDH. The polarization curve shows that the potential of composite material is only 1.50 V at a current density of 10 mA cm^?2, which is far superior to commercial precious metal catalysts. In addition, the stability experiment shows that the composite material has excellent stability, and the current density has little change after 500 cycles. Furthermore, we found that some metal ions, such as Ni, Cr and Mo, exist in the form of high valence on the surface of NiFeCr-LDH@MoS₂, which is also conducive to the occurrence of oxygen evolution reaction.     

Targeting S1PRs as a Therapeutic Strategy for Inflammatory Bone Loss Diseases—Beyond Regulating S1P Signaling

As G protein coupled receptors, sphingosine-1-phosphate receptors (S1PRs) have recently gained attention for their role in modulating inflammatory bone loss diseases. Notably, in murine studies inhibiting S1PR2 by its specific inhibitor, JTE013, alleviated osteoporosis induced by RANKL and attenuated periodontal alveolar bone loss induced by oral bacterial inflammation. Treatment with a multiple S1PRs modulator, FTY720, also suppressed ovariectomy-induced osteoporosis, collagen or adjuvant-induced arthritis, and apical periodontitis in mice. However, most previous studies and reviews have focused mainly on how S1PRs manipulate S1P signaling pathways, subsequently affecting various diseases. In this review, we summarize the underlying mechanisms associated with JTE013 and FTY720 in modulating inflammatory cytokine release, cell chemotaxis, and osteoclastogenesis, subsequently influencing inflammatory bone loss diseases. Studies from our group and from other labs indicate that S1PRs not only control S1P signaling, they also regulate signaling pathways induced by other stimuli, including bacteria, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), bile acid, receptor activator of nuclear factor κB ligand (RANKL), IL-6, and vitamin D. JTE013 and FTY720 alleviate inflammatory bone loss by decreasing the production of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, reducing chemotaxis of inflammatory cells from blood circulation to bone and soft tissues, and suppressing RANKL-induced osteoclast formation.     

Ablative Radiotherapy Reprograms the Tumor Microenvironment of a Pancreatic Tumor in Favoring the Immune Checkpoint Blockade Therapy

The low overall survival rate of patients with pancreatic cancer has driven research to seek a new therapeutic protocol. Radiotherapy (RT) is frequently an option in the neoadjuvant or palliative settings for pancreatic cancer treatment. This study explored the effect of RT protocols on the tumor microenvironment (TME) and their consequent impact on anti-programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) therapy. Using a murine orthotopic pancreatic tumor model, UN-KC-6141, RT-disturbed TME was examined by immunohistochemical staining. The results showed that ablative RT is more effective than fractionated RT at recruiting T cells. On the other hand, fractionated RT induces more myeloid-derived suppressor cell infiltration than ablative RT. The RT-disturbed TME presents a higher perfusion rate per vessel. The increase in vessel perfusion is associated with a higher amount of anti-PD-L1 antibody being delivered to the tumor. Animal survival is increased by anti-PD-L1 therapy after ablative RT, with 67% of treated animals surviving more than 30 days after tumor inoculation compared to a median survival time of 16.5 days for the control group. Splenocytes isolated from surviving animals were specifically cytotoxic for UN-KC-6141 cells. We conclude that the ablative RT-induced TME is more suited than conventional RT-induced TME to combination therapy with immune checkpoint blockade.     

A Case Report of Germline Compound Heterozygous Mutations in the BRCA1 Gene of an Ovarian and Breast Cancer Patient

The germline carrier of the BRCA1 pathogenic mutation has been well proven to confer an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Despite BRCA1 biallelic pathogenic mutations being extremely rare, they have been reported to be embryonically lethal or to cause Fanconi anemia (FA). Here we describe a patient who was a 48-year-old female identified with biallelic pathogenic mutations of the BRCA1 gene, with no or very subtle FA-features. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and breast cancer at the ages of 43 and 44 and had a strong family history of breast and gynecological cancers.     

Multimodal sensing and active continuous closed‐loop feedback for achieving reliable manipulation in the outdoor physical world

The use of field robots can greatly decrease the amount of time, effort, and associated risk compared to if human workers were to carryout certain tasks such as disaster response. However, transportability and reliability remain two main issues for most current robot systems. To address the issue of transportability, we have developed a lightweight modularizable platform named AeroArm. To address the issue of reliability, we utilize a multimodal sensing approach, combining the use of multiple sensors and sensor types, and the use of different detection algorithms, as well as active continuous closed‐loop feedback to accurately estimate the state of the robot with respect to the environment. We used Challenge 2 of the 2017 Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition as an example outdoor manipulation task, demonstrating the capabilities of our robot system and approach in achieving reliable performance in the fields, and ranked fifth place internationally in the competition.     

Multi-objective particle swarm optimisation based integrated production inventory routing planning for efficient perishable food logistics operations

Sustainable and efficient food supply chain has become an essential component of one’s life. The model proposed in this paper is deeply linked to people's quality of life as a result of which there is a large incentive to fulfil customer demands through it. This proposed model can enhance food quality by making the best possible food quality accessible to customers, construct a sustainable logistics system considering its environmental impact and ensure the customer demand to be fulfilled as fast as possible. In this paper, an extended model is examined that builds a unified planning problem for efficient food logistics operations where four important objectives are viewed: minimising the total expense of the system, maximising the average food quality along with the minimisation of the amount of CO₂ emissions in transportation along with production and total weighted delivery lead time minimisation. A four objective mixed integer linear programming model for intelligent food logistics system is developed in the paper. The optimisation of the formulated mathematical model is proposed using a modified multi-objective particle swarm optimisation algorithm with multiple social structures: MO-GLNPSO (Multi-Objective Global Local Near-Neighbour Particle Swarm Optimisation). Computational results of a case study on a given dataset as well as on multiple small, medium and large-scale datasets followed by sensitivity analysis show the potency and effectiveness of the introduced method. Lastly, there has been a scope for future study displayed which would lead to the further progress of these types of models.