This paper proposes a new network structure,namely the ProNet network.Retinal medical image segmentation can help clinical diagnosis of related eye diseases and is essential for subsequent rational treatment.The basel...This paper proposes a new network structure,namely the ProNet network.Retinal medical image segmentation can help clinical diagnosis of related eye diseases and is essential for subsequent rational treatment.The baseline model of the ProNet network is UperNet(Unified perceptual parsing Network),and the backbone network is ConvNext(Convolutional Network).A network structure based on depth-separable convolution and 1×1 convolution is used,which has good performance and robustness.We further optimise ProNet mainly in two aspects.One is data enhancement using increased noise and slight angle rotation,which can significantly increase the diversity of data and help the model better learn the patterns and features of the data and improve the model’s performance.Meanwhile,it can effectively expand the training data set,reduce the influence of noise and abnormal data in the data set on the model,and improve the accuracy and reliability of the model.Another is the loss function aspect,and we finally use the focal loss function.The focal loss function is well suited for complex tasks such as object detection.The function will penalise the loss carried by samples that the model misclassifies,thus enabling better training of the model to avoid these errors while solving the category imbalance problem as a way to improve image segmentation density and segmentation accuracy.From the experimental results,the evaluation metrics mIoU(mean Intersection over Union)enhanced by 4.47%,and mDice enhanced by 2.92% compared to the baseline network.Better generalization effects and more accurate image segmentation are achieved.展开更多
A survey involving 6103 participants from five Chinese provinces was conducted to evaluate the threshold value of urinary cadmium （UCd） for renal dysfunction as benchmark dose low （BMDL）. The urinary N-acetyl-13-D...A survey involving 6103 participants from five Chinese provinces was conducted to evaluate the threshold value of urinary cadmium （UCd） for renal dysfunction as benchmark dose low （BMDL）. The urinary N-acetyl-13-D-glucosaminidase （UNAG） was chosen as an effect biomarker. The UCd BMDLs for UNAG ranged from 2.18μg/g creatinine （cr） to 4.26μg/g cr in the populations of different provinces. The selection of the sample population and area affect the evaluation of the BMDL. The reference level of UCd for renal effects was further evaluated based on the data of all 6103 subjects. With benchmark responses （BMR） of 10%/5%, the overall UCd BMDLs for males in the total population were 3.73/2.08 μg/g cr. The BMD was slightly lower in females, thereby indicating that females may be relatively more sensitive to Cd exposure than are males.展开更多
Achieving machine common sense has been a longstanding problem within Artificial Intelligence.Thus far,benchmark data sets that are grounded in a theory of common sense and can be used to conduct rigorous,semantic eva...Achieving machine common sense has been a longstanding problem within Artificial Intelligence.Thus far,benchmark data sets that are grounded in a theory of common sense and can be used to conduct rigorous,semantic evaluations of common sense reasoning(CSR)systems have been lacking.One expectation of the AI community is that neuro-symbolic reasoners can help bridge this gap towards more dependable systems with common sense.We propose a novel benchmark,called Theoretically Grounded common sense Reasoning(TG-CSR),modeled as a set of question answering instances,with each instance grounded in a semantic category of common sense,such as space,time,and emotions.The benchmark is few-shot i.e.,only a few training and validation examples are provided in the public release to avoid the possibility of overfitting.Results from recent evaluations suggest that TG-CSR is challenging even for state-of-the-art statistical models.Due to its semantic rigor,this benchmark can be used to evaluate the common sense reasoning capabilities of neuro-symbolic systems.展开更多
In mild or moderate retinopathy of prematurity(ROP), retinal vessels undergo obliteration, proliferation, and regression. Despite complete regression of vessel abnormalities, a variety of visual impairments have been ...In mild or moderate retinopathy of prematurity(ROP), retinal vessels undergo obliteration, proliferation, and regression. Despite complete regression of vessel abnormalities, a variety of visual impairments have been reported. Rodent oxygen-induced retinopathy(OIR) is widely used as a model to study ROP. However, the long-term changes of OIR model remain unclear. The aim of this study is to examine long term changes of retinal vessel and visual function in a rodent OIR model resembling human mild or moderate ROP. In this study, after subjecting the animals to 80% oxygen(O_2) for 5–7 d, the retinal vessel density at postnatal day 12(P12) was approximately 30% lower than that in the age-matched control, but this difference was not significant between the groups. Vessel abnormalities, such as vessel tortuosity, neovascular tufts, and the number of vessels protruding into the vitreous, peaked between P17 and P20. Despite the regression of many abnormalities, vessel density in the OIR group was 36% and 32% lower than that in the control animals at 6 weeks and 4 months, respectively. The visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were impaired in the OIR group when measured at 2, 3 and 4 months. Therefore, the rodent OIR model exhibited long-lasting reduction in retinal vessel density and visual impairments, similar to those observed in mild or moderate human ROP. This study suggests that the rodent OIR model can be used to explore possible interventions for mild and moderate human ROP.展开更多
We attempted to explore a noninvasive,easily applicable and economically affordable therapy for retinopathy of prematurity(ROP).Rat pups were raised in 80%oxygen from postnatal day 7 to P12,and returned to room air.Tr...We attempted to explore a noninvasive,easily applicable and economically affordable therapy for retinopathy of prematurity(ROP).Rat pups were raised in 80%oxygen from postnatal day 7 to P12,and returned to room air.Travoprost eye drops were administered twice a day for 7 days,to reduce intraocular pressure(IOP)by about 20%.Immunohistochemical staining was performed to visualize vessel endothelial cells,to analyze retinal neurons and cytoarchitecture.Behavioral experiments were carried out to test visual acuity and contrast sensitivity.At the end of the 7-day treatment,the number of vessels extending to the vitreous body was significantly reduced and retinal vessel density increased.This improvement was maintained to the end of the12 th week.In the central retina of the model group,the horizontal cells were completely wiped out,the outer plexiform layer was undetectable,and the rod bipolar cell dendrites sprouted into the outer nuclear layer.The treatment partially reverted these architectural changes.Most importantly,behavioral experiments revealed significantly improved visual acuity and contrast sensitivity in the treated group.Therefore,reducing IOP could potentially serve as a safe and economical measure to treat ROP.展开更多
The disposal of waste brines has become a major challenge that hinders the wide application of ion- exchange resins in the water industry in recent decades. In this study, high sulfate removal efficiency （80%-90%） w...The disposal of waste brines has become a major challenge that hinders the wide application of ion- exchange resins in the water industry in recent decades. In this study, high sulfate removal efficiency （80%-90%） was achieved at the influent sulfate concentration of 3600 mg/L and 3% NaC1 after 145 days in an expanded granular sludge bed （EGSB） reactor. Furthermore, the feasibility of treating synthetic waste brine containing high levels of sulfate and nitrate was investigated in a single EGSB reactor during an operation period of 261 days. The highest nitrate and sulfate loading rate reached 6.38 and 5.78 kg/（m3-day） at SO42--S/NO3-N mass ratio of 4/3, and the corresponding removal efficiency was 99.97% and 82.26% at 3% NaC1, respectively. Meanwhile, 454-pyrosequencing technology was used to analyze the bacterial diversity of the sludge on the 240th day for stable operation of phase X. Results showed that a total of 9194 sequences were obtained, which could be affiliated to 14 phyla, including Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Chlorobi, Bacteroidetes, Synergistetes and so on. Proteobacteria （77.66%） was the dominant microbial population, followed by Firmicutes （12.23%） and Chlorobi （2.71%）.展开更多
A novel three-tier composite membrane based on highly porous nanofibrous substrate was demonstrated for efficient iso-propanol dehydration by pervaporation.Here,polyethyleneimine(PEI)modified graphene oxide(GO)sheets ...A novel three-tier composite membrane based on highly porous nanofibrous substrate was demonstrated for efficient iso-propanol dehydration by pervaporation.Here,polyethyleneimine(PEI)modified graphene oxide(GO)sheets were vacuum-assistant assembled onto porous electrospun polyacrylonitrile(PAN)nanofibrous substrate to achieve a smooth,hydrophilic and compact PEI-GO intermediate layer.The introduction of PEI chains endowed GO interlayer with sufficient interaction for bonding adjacent GO nanosheets to enhance stability in water/isopropanol mixture and also with the ascended inter-lamellar space to improve the water-sorption ability due to the abundant active amino groups.Benefiting from PEI-GO layer,a defect-free sodium alginate(SA)skin layer could be facilely manufactured with elaborately controlled thickness as thin as possible in order to reduce mass transfer resistant and enhance permeability maximally.Meanwhile,the interlayer would also contribute to enhance interfacial adhesion to promote the structure integrity of three-tier thin-film nanofibrous composite(TFNC)membrane in pervaporation dehydration process.After fine-tuning of membrane preparation process,the SA/PEI(75)-GO-60/PAN TFNC membrane exhibited competitive pervaporation performance with the permeate flux of 2009 g/m2 h and the separation factor of 1276 operated at 70°C for dehydration of 90 wt%isopropanol solution.The unique three-tier composite membrane structure suggested an effective and facile approach to design novel membrane structure for further improvement of pervaporation performance.展开更多
The recent realization of valley physics in photonic systems has enriched the topological phases of light with protected edge modes and shown applications in designing high-performance photonic devices. However, the w...The recent realization of valley physics in photonic systems has enriched the topological phases of light with protected edge modes and shown applications in designing high-performance photonic devices. However, the widely reported valley Hall effect of light in two-dimensional systems is limited to one single polarization. Here, we present dual-polarization two-dimensional valley photonic crystals by simultaneously opening two frequency accidental degenerate Dirac cones. Two band gaps with different polarizations are characterized by opposite-valley Chern numbers, which are confirmed by the opposite-phase vortex distributions of bulk modes and opposite Berry curvatures. This situation results in the polarization-dependent refraction of bulk and edge modes, which locate in opposite valleys. The polarization-independent topological valley transport is also demonstrated. Our work shows the flexible control of light in topological photonic systems with a polarization degree of freedom and has applications in polarization multiplexing photonic devices.展开更多
文摘This paper proposes a new network structure,namely the ProNet network.Retinal medical image segmentation can help clinical diagnosis of related eye diseases and is essential for subsequent rational treatment.The baseline model of the ProNet network is UperNet(Unified perceptual parsing Network),and the backbone network is ConvNext(Convolutional Network).A network structure based on depth-separable convolution and 1×1 convolution is used,which has good performance and robustness.We further optimise ProNet mainly in two aspects.One is data enhancement using increased noise and slight angle rotation,which can significantly increase the diversity of data and help the model better learn the patterns and features of the data and improve the model’s performance.Meanwhile,it can effectively expand the training data set,reduce the influence of noise and abnormal data in the data set on the model,and improve the accuracy and reliability of the model.Another is the loss function aspect,and we finally use the focal loss function.The focal loss function is well suited for complex tasks such as object detection.The function will penalise the loss carried by samples that the model misclassifies,thus enabling better training of the model to avoid these errors while solving the category imbalance problem as a way to improve image segmentation density and segmentation accuracy.From the experimental results,the evaluation metrics mIoU(mean Intersection over Union)enhanced by 4.47%,and mDice enhanced by 2.92% compared to the baseline network.Better generalization effects and more accurate image segmentation are achieved.
基金financially supported by Special Funds of the State Environmental Protection Public Welfare Industry(201009049201309049)+1 种基金National Key Technology Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China(2013BAI12B03)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(2015JBM108)
文摘A survey involving 6103 participants from five Chinese provinces was conducted to evaluate the threshold value of urinary cadmium （UCd） for renal dysfunction as benchmark dose low （BMDL）. The urinary N-acetyl-13-D-glucosaminidase （UNAG） was chosen as an effect biomarker. The UCd BMDLs for UNAG ranged from 2.18μg/g creatinine （cr） to 4.26μg/g cr in the populations of different provinces. The selection of the sample population and area affect the evaluation of the BMDL. The reference level of UCd for renal effects was further evaluated based on the data of all 6103 subjects. With benchmark responses （BMR） of 10%/5%, the overall UCd BMDLs for males in the total population were 3.73/2.08 μg/g cr. The BMD was slightly lower in females, thereby indicating that females may be relatively more sensitive to Cd exposure than are males.
基金This work was funded under the DARPA Machine Common Sense(MCS)program under award number N660011924033.Further thanks to Yasaman Razeghi for supporting the evaluation of the benchmark.
文摘Achieving machine common sense has been a longstanding problem within Artificial Intelligence.Thus far,benchmark data sets that are grounded in a theory of common sense and can be used to conduct rigorous,semantic evaluations of common sense reasoning(CSR)systems have been lacking.One expectation of the AI community is that neuro-symbolic reasoners can help bridge this gap towards more dependable systems with common sense.We propose a novel benchmark,called Theoretically Grounded common sense Reasoning(TG-CSR),modeled as a set of question answering instances,with each instance grounded in a semantic category of common sense,such as space,time,and emotions.The benchmark is few-shot i.e.,only a few training and validation examples are provided in the public release to avoid the possibility of overfitting.Results from recent evaluations suggest that TG-CSR is challenging even for state-of-the-art statistical models.Due to its semantic rigor,this benchmark can be used to evaluate the common sense reasoning capabilities of neuro-symbolic systems.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Key Project(31030036)to SHa National Natural Science Foundation of China Project(81570863)Science and Technology Supporting Program by Department of Science and Technology,Sichuan Province(2016SZ0024)to FL
文摘In mild or moderate retinopathy of prematurity(ROP), retinal vessels undergo obliteration, proliferation, and regression. Despite complete regression of vessel abnormalities, a variety of visual impairments have been reported. Rodent oxygen-induced retinopathy(OIR) is widely used as a model to study ROP. However, the long-term changes of OIR model remain unclear. The aim of this study is to examine long term changes of retinal vessel and visual function in a rodent OIR model resembling human mild or moderate ROP. In this study, after subjecting the animals to 80% oxygen(O_2) for 5–7 d, the retinal vessel density at postnatal day 12(P12) was approximately 30% lower than that in the age-matched control, but this difference was not significant between the groups. Vessel abnormalities, such as vessel tortuosity, neovascular tufts, and the number of vessels protruding into the vitreous, peaked between P17 and P20. Despite the regression of many abnormalities, vessel density in the OIR group was 36% and 32% lower than that in the control animals at 6 weeks and 4 months, respectively. The visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were impaired in the OIR group when measured at 2, 3 and 4 months. Therefore, the rodent OIR model exhibited long-lasting reduction in retinal vessel density and visual impairments, similar to those observed in mild or moderate human ROP. This study suggests that the rodent OIR model can be used to explore possible interventions for mild and moderate human ROP.
基金funded by a key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31030036) to SH。
文摘We attempted to explore a noninvasive,easily applicable and economically affordable therapy for retinopathy of prematurity(ROP).Rat pups were raised in 80%oxygen from postnatal day 7 to P12,and returned to room air.Travoprost eye drops were administered twice a day for 7 days,to reduce intraocular pressure(IOP)by about 20%.Immunohistochemical staining was performed to visualize vessel endothelial cells,to analyze retinal neurons and cytoarchitecture.Behavioral experiments were carried out to test visual acuity and contrast sensitivity.At the end of the 7-day treatment,the number of vessels extending to the vitreous body was significantly reduced and retinal vessel density increased.This improvement was maintained to the end of the12 th week.In the central retina of the model group,the horizontal cells were completely wiped out,the outer plexiform layer was undetectable,and the rod bipolar cell dendrites sprouted into the outer nuclear layer.The treatment partially reverted these architectural changes.Most importantly,behavioral experiments revealed significantly improved visual acuity and contrast sensitivity in the treated group.Therefore,reducing IOP could potentially serve as a safe and economical measure to treat ROP.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.51178215,51378251)the Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Foundation(No.BK2011032,BK20130575)+1 种基金the Jiangxi Provincial Natural Science Foundation(No.2010GQC0106)the State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse Foundation(No.PCRRF12006)
文摘The disposal of waste brines has become a major challenge that hinders the wide application of ion- exchange resins in the water industry in recent decades. In this study, high sulfate removal efficiency （80%-90%） was achieved at the influent sulfate concentration of 3600 mg/L and 3% NaC1 after 145 days in an expanded granular sludge bed （EGSB） reactor. Furthermore, the feasibility of treating synthetic waste brine containing high levels of sulfate and nitrate was investigated in a single EGSB reactor during an operation period of 261 days. The highest nitrate and sulfate loading rate reached 6.38 and 5.78 kg/（m3-day） at SO42--S/NO3-N mass ratio of 4/3, and the corresponding removal efficiency was 99.97% and 82.26% at 3% NaC1, respectively. Meanwhile, 454-pyrosequencing technology was used to analyze the bacterial diversity of the sludge on the 240th day for stable operation of phase X. Results showed that a total of 9194 sequences were obtained, which could be affiliated to 14 phyla, including Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Chlorobi, Bacteroidetes, Synergistetes and so on. Proteobacteria （77.66%） was the dominant microbial population, followed by Firmicutes （12.23%） and Chlorobi （2.71%）.
基金from Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai with Grand No.19ZR1401300Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Ministry of Education of China with Grand No.IRT_16R13.
文摘A novel three-tier composite membrane based on highly porous nanofibrous substrate was demonstrated for efficient iso-propanol dehydration by pervaporation.Here,polyethyleneimine(PEI)modified graphene oxide(GO)sheets were vacuum-assistant assembled onto porous electrospun polyacrylonitrile(PAN)nanofibrous substrate to achieve a smooth,hydrophilic and compact PEI-GO intermediate layer.The introduction of PEI chains endowed GO interlayer with sufficient interaction for bonding adjacent GO nanosheets to enhance stability in water/isopropanol mixture and also with the ascended inter-lamellar space to improve the water-sorption ability due to the abundant active amino groups.Benefiting from PEI-GO layer,a defect-free sodium alginate(SA)skin layer could be facilely manufactured with elaborately controlled thickness as thin as possible in order to reduce mass transfer resistant and enhance permeability maximally.Meanwhile,the interlayer would also contribute to enhance interfacial adhesion to promote the structure integrity of three-tier thin-film nanofibrous composite(TFNC)membrane in pervaporation dehydration process.After fine-tuning of membrane preparation process,the SA/PEI(75)-GO-60/PAN TFNC membrane exhibited competitive pervaporation performance with the permeate flux of 2009 g/m2 h and the separation factor of 1276 operated at 70°C for dehydration of 90 wt%isopropanol solution.The unique three-tier composite membrane structure suggested an effective and facile approach to design novel membrane structure for further improvement of pervaporation performance.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.12074443,62035016,and 11904421)Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation(Grant No.2019B151502036)+1 种基金Guangzhou Science,Technology and Innovation Commission(Grant Nos.201904010223,202002030322,and 202102020693)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(Grant Nos.20lgzd29,20lgjc05,and 2021qntd27)。
文摘The recent realization of valley physics in photonic systems has enriched the topological phases of light with protected edge modes and shown applications in designing high-performance photonic devices. However, the widely reported valley Hall effect of light in two-dimensional systems is limited to one single polarization. Here, we present dual-polarization two-dimensional valley photonic crystals by simultaneously opening two frequency accidental degenerate Dirac cones. Two band gaps with different polarizations are characterized by opposite-valley Chern numbers, which are confirmed by the opposite-phase vortex distributions of bulk modes and opposite Berry curvatures. This situation results in the polarization-dependent refraction of bulk and edge modes, which locate in opposite valleys. The polarization-independent topological valley transport is also demonstrated. Our work shows the flexible control of light in topological photonic systems with a polarization degree of freedom and has applications in polarization multiplexing photonic devices.
