This paper provides a pair similarity optimization viewpoint on deep feature learning, aiming to maximize the within-class similarity s_p and minimize the between-class similarity s_n. We find a ...majority of loss functions, including the triplet loss and the softmax cross-entropy loss, embed s_n and s_p into similarity pairs and seek to reduce (s_n-s_p). Such an optimization manner is inflexible, because the penalty strength on every single similarity score is restricted to be equal. Our intuition is that if a similarity score deviates far from the optimum, it should be emphasized. To this end, we simply re-weight each similarity to highlight the less-optimized similarity scores. It results in a Circle loss, which is named due to its circular decision boundary. The Circle loss has a unified formula for two elemental deep feature learning paradigms, \emph {i.e.}, learning with class-level labels and pair-wise labels. Analytically, we show that the Circle loss offers a more flexible optimization approach towards a more definite convergence target, compared with the loss functions optimizing (s_n-s_p). Experimentally, we demonstrate the superiority of the Circle loss on a variety of deep feature learning tasks. On face recognition, person re-identification, as well as several fine-grained image retrieval datasets, the achieved performance is on par with the state of the art.
Pancreatic cancer is a malignancy with poor prognosis and high mortality. The recent increase in pancreatic cancer incidence and mortality has resulted in an increased number of studies on its ...epidemiology. This comprehensive and systematic literature review summarizes the advances in the epidemiology of pancreatic cancer, including its epidemiological trends, risk factors, risk prediction models, screening modalities, and prognosis. The risk factors for pancreatic cancers can be categorized as those related to individual characteristics, lifestyle and environment, and disease status. Several prediction models for pancreatic cancer have been developed in populations with new-onset diabetes or a family history of pancreatic cancer; however, these models require further validation. Despite recent progress in pancreatic cancer screening, the quantity and quality of related studies are also unsatisfactory, especially with respect to the identification of high-risk populations and development of effective screening modality. Apart from the populations with familial genetic risk and those at a high risk of sporadic pancreatic cancer, risk factors such as new-onset diabetes may be a new direction for timely intervention. We hope this work will provide new ideas for further prevention and treatment of pancreatic cancer.
•Both incidence and mortality rate of pancreatic cancer has increased in recent years.•Risk factors for PDAC include individual characteristics, lifestyle and environment, and disease status.•The current established modality for effective early detection of PDAC is lacking.•Development of effective biomarkers predicting the prognosis are in high demand.
Utilization of urban green vegetation (UGV) has been recognized as a promising option to mitigate urban heat island (UHI) effect. While we still lack understanding of the contributions of local ...background climate to the cooling effect of UGV. Here we proposed and employed a cooling effect framework and selected eight typical cities located in Temperate Monsoon Climate (TMC) and Mediterranean Climate (MC) demonstrate that local climate condition largely affects the cooling effect of UGV. Specifically, we found increasing (artificial) rainfall and irrigation contribute to improving the cooling intensity of grassland in both climates, particularly in the hot-dry environment. The cities with high relative humidity would restrict the cooling effect of UGV. Increasing wind speed would significantly enhance the tree-covered while weakening the grass-covered UGVs' cooling effect in MC cities. We also identified that, in order to achieve the most effective cooling with the smallest sized tree-covered UGV, the area of trees in both climate zones' cities should generally be planned around 0.5 ha. The method and results enhance understanding of the cooling effect of UGVs on larger (climate) scales and provide important insights for UGV planning and management.
Along with the advent and popularity of cloud computing, Internet of Things, and bring your own device, the trust requirement for terminal devices has increased significantly. An untrusted terminal, ...a terminal that runs in an untrustworthy execution environment, may cause serious security issues for enterprise networks. With the release of Software Guard Extension, Intel has provided a promising way to construct trusted terminals and services. Utilizing this technology, we propose a security-enhanced attestation for remote terminals, which can achieve shielded execution for measurements and attestation programs. Furthermore, we present a policy-based measurement mechanism where sensitive data, including secret keys and policy details are concealed using the enclave-specific keys. We implement our attestation prototype on real platform with Intel Skylake processor. Evaluation results show that our attestation system can provide much stronger security guarantees, yet incurs small performance overhead.
In this paper, we introduce the extended affinely adjustable robust counterpart to modeling and solving multistage uncertain linear programs with fixed recourse. Our approach first reparameterizes ...the primitive uncertainties and then applies the affinely adjustable robust counterpart proposed in the literature, in which recourse decisions are restricted to be linear in terms of the primitive uncertainties. We propose a special case of the extended affinely adjustable robust counterpart—the splitting-based extended affinely adjustable robust counterpart—and illustrate both theoretically and computationally that the potential of the affinely adjustable robust counterpart method is well beyond the one presented in the literature. Similar to the affinely adjustable robust counterpart, our approach ends up with deterministic optimization formulations that are tractable and scalable to multistage problems.
In addition to the filter coefficients, the location of the microphone array is a crucial factor in improving the overall performance of a beamformer. The optimal microphone array placement can ...considerably enhance speech quality. However, the optimization problem with microphone configuration variables is non-convex and highly non-linear. Heuristic algorithms that are frequently employed take a long time and have a chance of missing the optimal microphone array placement design. We extend the Bayesian optimization method to solve the microphone array configuration design problem. The proposed Bayesian optimization method does not depend on gradient and Hessian approximations and makes use of all the information available from prior evaluations. Furthermore, Gaussian process regression and acquisition functions make up the Bayesian optimization method. The objective function is given a prior probabilistic model through Gaussian process regression, which exploits this model while integrating out uncertainty. The acquisition function is adopted to decide the next placement point based upon the incumbent optimum with the posterior distribution. Numerical experiments have demonstrated that the Bayesian optimization method could find a similar or better microphone array placement compared with the hybrid descent method and computational time is significantly reduced. Our proposed method is at least four times faster than the hybrid descent method to find the optimal microphone array configuration from the numerical results.
Nitrogen and phosphorus resorption (NRE and PRE) is a critical nutrient conservation mechanism maintaining plant growth in already disturbed barren ecosystems. The complexity of plant nutrient ...resorption variations in long-term grazing regions is regulated by plant traits, nutritional utilization strategies, and soil conditions following changes in grazing patterns. Therefore, a detailed investigation into their underlying mechanism is still required. Here we investigated leaf nutrient concentration and resorption in dominant species Cleistogenes songorica (C. squarrosa) and Stipa breviflora (S. breviflora) response to 15-years continuous grazing (moderate and heavy grazing) in desert steppe. Moderate grazing enhanced green leaf N and P content in C. songorica and partially increased N content in S. breviflora. Heavy grazing consistently increased N content in C. songorica, but its P content as well as N and P content in S. breviflora were largely stable. Moderate grazing enhanced NRE but unaffected PRE in both S. breviflora and C. songorica. Heavy grazing reduced NRE and PRE in C. songorica. Although soil variables (nutrients and moisture) did not affect foliar nutrients, it's a key driver of nutrient resorption efficiency. Of all measured influence factors, soil moisture is the one most important and negatively correlated with NRE and PRE in S. breviflora. While it was not observed in C. songorica. In S. breviflora, its NRE was adversely linked with soil N, in addition, both NRE and PRE were positively associated with green leaf nutrients. Senesced leaf nutrients are the predominant factor influencing nutrient resorption efficiency in C. songorica, which were adversely associated. Overall, our results indicate significant variations in nutrient resorption efficiency patterns between the two dominant species due to divergent plant adaptation strategies to grazing and the local environment. The foliar nutritional status and soil conditions may play significant roles in regulating nutrient resorption in arid long-term grazing desert steppe.
Clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common histological type of RCC. To investigate the intratumoral heterogeneity of ccRCC, we analyzed single-cell RNA-sequencing data and identified ...15 major cell types, along with 39 subgroups of cells derived from tumor or non-malignant tissues, and confirmed their presence by immunofluorescence staining in tissue chips. In this study, we verified that T cell exhaustion was the key factor responsible for the immunosuppressive property of ccRCC tissues, which was significantly related to poor prognosis. We also found that abnormal metabolic patterns occurred not only in cancer cells, but also in tumor-infiltrating stromal cells. Based on the fraction of each cell cluster detected by CIBERSORTx, 533 patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) KIRC dataset were divided into three groups. One group, which showed a lesser proportion of activated CD8+ cells and greater proportion of exhausted CD8+ cells, was associated with a poor prognosis. Hence, the blockade of immunosuppressive checkpoints, not only PD-1, but also LAG3, TIM-3, and other inhibitory checkpoints, could serve as a potential target for ccRCC immunotherapy. Our work will further the understanding of the heterogeneity among ccRCC tissues and provide novel strategies for treating ccRCC.
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Via single-cell transcriptome analysis, we investigated the intra-tumoral heterogeneity of clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) and identified the composition inside tumor tissues. With a computational pipeline, we revealed the clinical significance of tumor-infiltrating cells and provided novel strategies for treating ccRCC.
Air pollution may increase risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) in the U.S., but the extent of this relationship is unclear. Here, we constructed two national U.S. ...population-based cohorts of those aged ≥65 from the Medicare Chronic Conditions Warehouse (2000-2018), combined with high-resolution air pollution datasets, to investigate the association of long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM
), nitrogen dioxide (NO
), and ozone (O
) with dementia and AD incidence, respectively. We identified ~2.0 million incident dementia cases (N = 12,233,371; dementia cohort) and ~0.8 million incident AD cases (N = 12,456,447; AD cohort). Per interquartile range (IQR) increase in the 5-year average PM
(3.2 µg/m
), NO
(11.6 ppb), and warm-season O
(5.3 ppb) over the past 5 years prior to diagnosis, the hazard ratios (HRs) were 1.060 (95% confidence interval CI: 1.054, 1.066), 1.019 (95% CI: 1.012, 1.026), and 0.990 (95% CI: 0.987, 0.993) for incident dementias, and 1.078 (95% CI: 1.070, 1.086), 1.031 (95% CI: 1.023, 1.039), and 0.982 (95%CI: 0.977, 0.986) for incident AD, respectively, for the three pollutants. For both outcomes, concentration-response relationships for PM
and NO
were approximately linear. Our study suggests that exposures to PM
and NO
are associated with incidence of dementia and AD.
Environmental pollution of heavy metals in the typical coal industrial city should be paid more attentions nowadays. The spatial distribution and source apportionment of 8 heavy metals (i.e., Cd, Cr, ...Co, Zn, Ni, Cu, Pb and Mn) from topsoil samples (158) of Shizuishan city in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China were investigated using principal component analysis/absolute principal component scores (PCA/APCS) receptor model and geographic information system (GIS). These results showed that the mean concentrations of Cd, Cr, Co, Zn, Ni, Cu and Pb were higher than their soil background values in Ningxia. 99.36% of soil samples were heavily polluted according to analysis of integrated Nemerow pollution index (
P
N
), whereas 81.65% of soil samples exhibited the highly strong potential ecological risk by
E
RI
(the comprehensive of potential ecological risk index) values. The source apportionment results showed that eight heavy metals in soil were mainly from natural (32.39%), industrial (26.56%), traffic emission/coal consumption (20.18%) and atmospheric deposition source (12.73%). Typically, Zn, Mn and Ni were derived from natural source, whereas Cr and Co were mainly derived from industrial sources. Cu was from the multiple sources, whereas Pb and Cd were weighted primarily from traffic emission/coal consumption source and atmospheric deposition source, respectively. These findings were crucial for the prevention and control of heavy metals pollution in Shizuishan city.
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