The latest High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard only requires 50% bit-rate of the H.264/AVC at the same perceptual quality, but with a significant encoder complexity increase. Hence, it is ...necessary and inevitable to develop fast HEVC encoding algorithms for its potential market adoption. In this paper, we propose a fast intra mode decision for the HEVC encoder. The overall fast intra mode decision algorithm consists of both micro- and macro-level schemes. At the micro-level, we propose the Hadamard cost-based progressive rough mode search (pRMS) to selectively check the potential modes instead of traversing all candidates (i.e., up to 35 in HEVC). Fewer effective candidates will be chosen by the pRMS for the subsequent rate-distortion optimized quantization (RDOQ) to derive the rate-distortion (R-D) optimal mode. An early RDOQ skip method is also introduced to further the complexity reduction. At the macrolevel, we introduce the early coding unit (CU) split termination if the estimated R-D cost through aggregated R-D costs of (partial) sub-CUs is already larger than the R-D cost of the current CU. On average, the proposed fast intra mode decision provides about 2.5 × speedup (without any platform or source code level optimization) with just a 1.0% Bjontegaard delta rate (BD-rate) increase using the HEVC common test condition. Moreover, our proposed solution also demonstrates the state-of-the-art performance in comparison with other works.
Baicalin, which is isolated from Radix Scutellariae, possesses strong biological activities including an anti-inflammation property. Recent studies have shown that the anti-inflammatory effect of ...baicalin is linked to toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), which participates in pathological changes of central nervous system diseases such as depression. In this study, we explored whether baicalin could produce antidepressant effects via regulation of TLR4 signaling in mice and attempted to elucidate the underlying mechanisms.
A chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) mice model was performed to explore whether baicalin could produce antidepressant effects via the inhibition of neuroinflammation. To clarify the role of TLR4 in the anti-neuroinflammatory efficacy of baicalin, a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was employed in mice to specially activate TLR4 and the behavioral changes were determined. Furthermore, we used LY294002 to examine the molecular mechanisms of baicalin in regulating the expression of TLR4 in vivo and in vitro using western blot, ELISA kits, and immunostaining. In the in vitro tests, the BV2 microglia cell lines and primary microglia cultures were pretreated with baicalin and LY292002 for 1 h and then stimulated 24 h with LPS. The primary microglial cells were transfected with the forkhead transcription factor forkhead box protein O 1 (FoxO1)-specific siRNA for 5 h and then co-stimulated with baicalin and LPS to investigate whether FoxO1 participated in the effect of baicalin on TLR4 expression.
The administration of baicalin (especially 60 mg/kg) dramatically ameliorated CUMS-induced depressive-like symptoms; substantially decreased the levels of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) in the hippocampus; and significantly decreased the expression of TLR4. The activation of TLR4 by the LPS triggered neuroinflammation and evoked depressive-like behaviors in mice, which were also alleviated by the treatment with baicalin (60 mg/kg). Furthermore, the application of baicalin significantly increased the phosphorylation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), protein kinase B (AKT), and FoxO1. The application of baicalin also promoted FoxO1 nuclear exclusion and contributed to the inhibition of the FoxO1 transactivation potential, which led to the downregulation of the expression of TLR4 in CUMS mice or LPS-treated BV2 cells and primary microglia cells. However, prophylactic treatment of LY294002 abolished the above effects of baicalin. In addition, we found that FoxO1 played a vital role in baicalin by regulating the TLR4 and TLR4-mediating neuroinflammation triggered by the LPS via knocking down the expression of FoxO1 in the primary microglia.
Collectively, these results demonstrate that baicalin ameliorated neuroinflammation-induced depressive-like behaviors through the inhibition of TLR4 expression via the PI3K/AKT/FoxO1 pathway.
This article proposes an end-to-end learnt lossy image compression approach, which is built on top of the deep nerual network (DNN)-based variational auto-encoder (VAE) structure with Non-Local ...Attention optimization and Improved Context modeling (NLAIC). Our NLAIC 1) embeds non-local network operations as non-linear transforms in both main and hyper coders for deriving respective latent features and hyperpriors by exploiting both local and global correlations, 2) applies attention mechanism to generate implicit masks that are used to weigh the features for adaptive bit allocation, and 3) implements the improved conditional entropy modeling of latent features using joint 3D convolutional neural network (CNN)-based autoregressive contexts and hyperpriors. Towards the practical application, additional enhancements are also introduced to speed up the computational processing (e.g., parallel 3D CNN-based context prediction), decrease the memory consumption (e.g., sparse non-local processing) and reduce the implementation complexity (e.g., a unified model for variable rates without re-training). The proposed model outperforms existing learnt and conventional (e.g., BPG, JPEG2000, JPEG) image compression methods, on both Kodak and Tecnick datasets with the state-of-the-art compression efficiency, for both PSNR and MS-SSIM quality measurements. We have made all materials publicly accessible at https://njuvision.github.io/NIC for reproducible research.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) often leads to serious motor and sensory dysfunction of the limbs below the injured segment. SCI not only results in physical and psychological harm to patients but can also ...cause a huge economic burden on their families and society. As there is no effective treatment method, the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of patients with SCI have become urgent problems to be solved. In recent years, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have attracted more attention in the treatment of SCI. Although MSC therapy can reduce injured volume and promote axonal regeneration, its application is limited by tumorigenicity, a low survival rate, and immune rejection. Accumulating literature shows that exosomes have great potential in the treatment of SCI. In this review, we summarize the existing MSC-derived exosome studies on SCI and discuss the advantages and challenges of treating SCI based on exosomes derived from MSCs.
Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is a common clinical degenerative disease of the spine. A series of factors, such as inflammation, oxidative stress and mechanical stress, promote degradation ...of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of the intervertebral discs (IVD), leading to dysfunction and structural destruction of the IVD. Nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB) transcription factor has long been regarded as a pathogenic factor of IDD. Therefore, NF‐κB may be an ideal therapeutic target for IDD. As NF‐κB is a multifunctional functional transcription factor with roles in a variety of biological processes, a comprehensive understanding of the function and regulatory mechanism of NF‐κB in IDD pathology will be useful for the development of targeted therapeutic strategies for IDD, which can prevent the progression of IDD and reduce potential risks. This review discusses the role of the NF‐κB signalling pathway in the nucleus pulposus (NP) in the process of IDD to understand pathological NP degeneration further and provide potential therapeutic targets that may interfere with NF‐κB signalling for IDD therapy.
Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is a common clinical degenerative disease of the spine. A series of factors, such as inflammation, oxidative stress, and mechanical stress, promote degradation of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of the intervertebral discs (IVD), leading to dysfunction and structural destruction of the IVD. Nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB) transcription factor has long been regarded as the pathogenic factor of IDD. Therefore, NF‐κB may be an ideal therapeutic target for IDD. As NF‐κB is a multifunctional functional transcription factor with roles in a variety of biological processes, a comprehensive understanding of the function and regulatory mechanism of NF‐κB in IDD pathology will be useful for the development of targeted therapeutic strategies for IDD, which can prevent the progression of IDD and reduce potential risks. This review discusses the role of the NF‐κB signalling pathway in the nucleus pulposus (NP) in the process of IDD to understand pathological NP degeneration further and provide potential therapeutic targets that may interfere with NF‐κB signalling for IDD therapy.
This paper is concerned with the spatiotemporal dynamics of a diffusive Leslie–Gower prey–predator model with strong Allee effect in the prey population. The necessary and sufficient conditions of ...Turing instability are explicitly obtained. We demonstrate that at the critical value of the bifurcation parameter d2 a Turing bifurcation occurs (i.e, a pattern arises). The conditions for the stability of the pattern are also derived in detail. Moreover, treating μ as a bifurcation parameter, the Hopf bifurcation and global steady state bifurcation from the positive constant equilibrium solution are investigated. In particular, the local structure of the steady state bifurcation from double eigenvalues is also obtained by the techniques of space decomposition and the implicit function theorem. Our results show that strong Allee effect in our model plays a crucial role in the formation of spatiotemporal dynamics, which is a strong contrast to the case without strong Allee effect.
The modelling and forecasting (M&F) of strain measurement (as a kind of local structural responses) during typhoon events provides valuable insight into the structural condition assessment of large ...suspension bridges. However, the presence of time-dependent noise in reality can pose difficulties for forecasting the field data obtained by structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. Gaussian process regression (GPR), as a nonparametric model, can obtain probabilistic estimation outputs, but its constant noise assumption hampers the reliability of the forecasting model. In this study, Variational Heteroscedastic Gaussian Process (VHGP), a combination of variational approximation and heteroscedastic Gaussian process (HGP), is applied to perform modelling and forecasting for SHM strain field data during typhoon events because of its heteroskedasticity characteristics, higher forecasting accuracy and strong ability to quantify uncertainty. The proposed M&F method is exemplified by using SHM monitoring strain data acquired from the instrumented Tsing Ma Suspension Bridge during typhoon events. The results reveal that VHGP has a better regression accuracy and can obtain varying confidence intervals which reflect noise variations. Meanwhile, VHGP yields more robust forecasting results. The uncertainty analysis shows that VHGP is competent to evaluate the noise level change of strain responses brought by typhoons, providing a basis for conducting structural health condition assessment for large-scale bridges.
The hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs) were successfully exfoliated by combining hydrothermal treatment in mixed NaOH/KOH solution and subsequent sonication process. The morphology and ...structure of the as-exfoliated BNNS were determined by a series of characterizations, such as XRD, FTIR, Raman, TEM, SEM, HRTEM and AFM. The results demonstrated that the hydrothermal treatment in mixed NaOH/KOH solution served as an important role in exfoliation and the as-exfoliated BNNSs had the ultrathin thickness of ca. 2–3 layers. Additionally, the dispersion and stability of BNNS in base oil was studied. As a promising application, the tribological properties of BNNS as additive in base oil were tested on ball-on-ball configuration. The average friction coefficient and average wear scar diameter of the BNNS-base oil (0.06%) dropped by about 35.7% and 35.2%. Finally, the forming process and anti-wear mechanisms of BNNS were proposed.
•The ultrathin BNNSs with 1–3 layer thickness were prepared by hydrothermal method in mixed NaOH/KOH solution.•The dispersibility of as-exfoliated BNNSs in base oil was studied.•The COF and WSD of as-exfoliated BNNS-base oil optimally decreased by about 35.7% and 35.2%.
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