Multi-Language Online Handwriting Recognition Keysers, Daniel; Deselaers, Thomas; Rowley, Henry A. ...
IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence,
2017-June-1, 2017-06-00, 2017-6-1, 20170601, Letnik:
39, Številka:
6
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We describe Google's online handwriting recognition system that currently supports 22 scripts and 97 languages. The system's focus is on fast, high-accuracy text entry for mobile, touch-enabled ...devices. We use a combination of state-of-the-art components and combine them with novel additions in a flexible framework. This architecture allows us to easily transfer improvements between languages and scripts. This made it possible to build recognizers for languages that, to the best of our knowledge, are not handled by any other online handwriting recognition system. The approach also enabled us to use the same architecture both on very powerful machines for recognition in the cloud as well as on mobile devices with more limited computational power by changing some of the settings of the system. In this paper we give a general overview of the system architecture and the novel components, such as unified timeand position-based input interpretation, trainable segmentation, minimum-error rate training for feature combination, and a cascade of pruning strategies. We present experimental results for different setups. The system is currently publicly available in several Google products, for example in Google Translate and as an input method for Android devices.
Biomimetic nanoparticles have recently emerged as a novel drug delivery platform to improve drug biocompatibility and specificity at the desired disease site, especially the tumour microenvironment. ...Conventional nanoparticles often encounter rapid clearance by the immune system and have poor drug-targeting effects. The rapid development of nanotechnology provides an opportunity to integrate different types of biomaterials onto the surface of nanoparticles, which enables them to mimic the natural biological features and functions of the cells. This mimicry strategy favours the escape of biomimetic nanoparticles from clearance by the immune system and reduces potential toxic side effects. Despite the rapid development in this field, not much has progressed to the clinical stage. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop biomimetic-based nanomedicine to produce a highly specific and effective drug delivery system, especially for malignant tumours, which can be used for clinical purposes. Here, the recent developments for various types of biomimetic nanoparticles are discussed, along with their applications for cancer imaging and treatments.
•Astrocytes play key roles in the onset and progression of neurodegenerative diseases.•Reactive astrocytes exert both neuroprotection and neurotoxicity.•Astrocytes induce neuroinflammation via ...pattern recognition receptor signaling.•Impairment of normal astrocyte function is a disease determinant.•Astrocytes could be therapeutic targets in neurodegenerative disorders.
Classically, the loss of vulnerable neuronal populations in neurodegenerative diseases was considered to be the consequence of cell autonomous degeneration of neurons. However, progress in the understanding of glial function, the availability of improved animal models recapitulating the features of the human diseases, and the development of new approaches to derive glia and neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells obtained from patients, provided novel information that altered this view. Current evidence strongly supports the notion that non-cell autonomous mechanisms contribute to the demise of neurons in neurodegenerative disorders, and glia causally participate in the pathogenesis and progression of these diseases. In addition to microglia, astrocytes have emerged as key players in neurodegenerative diseases and will be the focus of the present review. Under the influence of pathological stimuli present in the microenvironment of the diseased CNS, astrocytes undergo morphological, transcriptional, and functional changes and become reactive. Reactive astrocytes are heterogeneous and exhibit neurotoxic (A1) or neuroprotective (A2) phenotypes. In recent years, single-cell or single-nucleus transcriptome analyses unraveled new, disease-specific phenotypes beyond A1/A2. These investigations highlighted the complexity of the astrocytic responses to CNS pathology.
The present review will discuss the contribution of astrocytes to neurodegenerative diseases with particular emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. Some of the commonalties and differences in astrocyte-mediated mechanisms that possibly drive the pathogenesis or progression of the diseases will be summarized. The emerging view is that astrocytes are potential new targets for therapeutic interventions. A comprehensive understanding of astrocyte heterogeneity and disease-specific phenotypic complexity could facilitate the design of novel strategies to treat neurodegenerative disorders.
Abstract Voyager 1 and 2 are only the two spacecraft that have arrived and passed through the heliospheric boundaries. Based on the plasma data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft, the electron ...quasi-thermal noise (QTN) is investigated by using of the electron population model consisting of a core with Maxwellian distribution and a halo with kappa distribution. The power spectra of the electron QTN is calculated at different heliocentric distances from 1 to 110 au. The parametric dependence of the QTN power spectra and the effective Debye length on the model parameters, such as the density ratio and temperature ratio of the halo to the core, kappa index and the antenna length, are discussed further. The results show that the electron QTN spectrum consists of a plateau in the low frequency band f < f pt , a prominent peak at the plasma frequency f pt , and a rapid decreasing part in the high frequency band f > f pt . The QTN plateau level basically falls down outwards until the termination shock crossing at about 84 au, after which the plateau rebounds a little near the heliopause. Although the model parameters can be very variable, the QTN plateau level does not present more than the double change in a fairly wide range of the model parameters. The presented results can be useful for future deep-space explorations in the heliosphere and can provide valuable references for the design of onboard detectors.
The vehicular announcement network is one of the most promising utilities in the communications of smart vehicles and in the smart transportation systems. In general, there are two major issues in ...building an effective vehicular announcement network. First, it is difficult to forward reliable announcements without revealing users' identities. Second, users usually lack the motivation to forward announcements. In this paper, we endeavor to resolve these two issues through proposing an effective announcement network called CreditCoin , a novel privacy-preserving incentive announcement network based on Blockchain via an efficient anonymous vehicular announcement aggregation protocol. On the one hand, CreditCoin allows nondeterministic different signers (i.e., users) to generate the signatures and to send announcements anonymously in the nonfully trusted environment. On the other hand, with Blockchain, CreditCoin motivates users with incentives to share traffic information. In addition, transactions and account information in CreditCoin are tamper-resistant. CreditCoin also achieves conditional privacy since Trace manager in CreditCoin traces malicious users' identities in anonymous announcements with related transactions. CreditCoin thus is able to motivate users to forward announcements anonymously and reliably. Extensive experimental results show that CreditCoin is efficient and practical in simulations of smart transportation.
We describe an online handwriting system that is able to support 102 languages using a deep neural network architecture. This new system has completely replaced our previous segment-and-decode-based ...system and reduced the error rate by 20–40% relative for most languages. Further, we report new state-of-the-art results on IAM-OnDB for both the open and closed dataset setting. The system combines methods from sequence recognition with a new input encoding using Bézier curves. This leads to up to
10
×
faster recognition times compared to our previous system. Through a series of experiments, we determine the optimal configuration of our models and report the results of our setup on a number of additional public datasets.
Trends of precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are characterized by a north‐south dipole pattern, and the role of local mesoscale systems, TP vortices (TPVs), remains ambiguous. This work ...reports that the north‐south dipole pattern trends in the TPVs‐associated precipitation have experienced an interdecadal shift in the last two decades, that is, increases in northern TP and decreases in southern TP first and then varies opposite trends, which greatly contributes to the similar interdecadal shift in TP precipitation trends. Furthermore, the causes of changes in TPV frequency are explored from the perspective of lower troposphere conditions. We find that the lower‐level winds, that is, zonal winds over the TP and meridional winds across the northwestern TP boundary, are responsible for the regionally different variations in TPV frequency. The variations in Indian Ocean Dipole are suggested to contribute to the changes in lower‐level winds over the TP.
Plain Language Summary
Precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) significantly affect local and downstream water resources, which generally presents dipole pattern trends, that is, opposite precipitation trends in the northern TP (NTP) and in southern TP (STP). However, the physical processes of the variations in TP precipitation, especially the roles of local mesoscale systems, TP vortices (TPVs), are not yet clear. In this work, dipole pattern variations are found in TPVs‐associated precipitation, which experienced an interdecadal shift in the last two decades, that is, increases in NTP and decreases in STP first and then varies opposite trends. The interdecadal shift in the TPVs‐associated precipitation trends greatly contributes to the interdecadal shift in the TP precipitation trends. Furthermore, the causes of variations in TPV frequency are explored, and find that the changes in zonal winds over the TP and meridional winds across the northwestern TP boundary are closely related to the regionally different variations in TPV frequency. Subsequently, the changes in the sea surface temperature of India Ocean are demonstrated to be responsible for the wind variations.
Key Points
North‐south dipole pattern precipitation trends over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) have experienced an interdecadal shift in the last two decades
Changes in TP vortices (TPVs) contribute to the interdecadal shift in the TP precipitation trend pattern
Sea surface temperature of India Ocean is responsible for variations in lower‐level winds, prompting changes in TPVs
•Astroglial TLRs mediate host-defense and pathogen dissemination in CNS infections.•Astroglial TLRs help clearance of protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases.•Astroglial TLR signaling ...contributes to inflammation in CNS injury and disease.•Signaling through TLRs promotes beneficial and detrimental functions of astrocytes.•TLRs in astrocytes could be therapeutic targets in CNS disease and injury.
Central nervous system (CNS) innate immunity plays essential roles in infections, neurodegenerative diseases, and brain or spinal cord injuries. Astrocytes and microglia are the principal cells that mediate innate immunity in the CNS. Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), expressed by astrocytes and microglia, sense pathogen-derived or endogenous ligands released by damaged cells and initiate the innate immune response. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a well-characterized family of PRRs. The contribution of microglial TLR signaling to CNS pathology has been extensively investigated. Even though astrocytes assume a wide variety of key functions, information about the role of astroglial TLRs in CNS disease and injuries is limited. Because astrocytes display heterogeneity and exhibit phenotypic plasticity depending on the effectors present in the local milieu, they can exert both detrimental and beneficial effects. TLRs are modulators of these paradoxical astroglial properties. The goal of the current review is to highlight the essential roles played by astroglial TLRs in CNS infections, injuries and diseases. We discuss the contribution of astroglial TLRs to host defense as well as the dissemination of viral and bacterial infections in the CNS. We examine the link between astroglial TLRs and the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases and present evidence showing the pivotal influence of astroglial TLR signaling on sterile inflammation in CNS injury. Finally, we define the research questions and areas that warrant further investigations in the context of astrocytes, TLRs, and CNS dysfunction.
Despite initial responses
, most melanoma patients develop resistance
to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). To understand the evolution of resistance, we studied 37 tumor samples over 9 years from a ...patient with metastatic melanoma with complete clinical response to ICB followed by delayed recurrence and death. Phylogenetic analysis revealed co-evolution of seven lineages with multiple convergent, but independent resistance-associated alterations. All recurrent tumors emerged from a lineage characterized by loss of chromosome 15q, with post-treatment clones acquiring additional genomic driver events. Deconvolution of bulk RNA sequencing and highly multiplexed immunofluorescence (t-CyCIF) revealed differences in immune composition among different lineages. Imaging revealed a vasculogenic mimicry phenotype in NGFR
tumor cells with high PD-L1 expression in close proximity to immune cells. Rapid autopsy demonstrated two distinct NGFR spatial patterns with high polarity and proximity to immune cells in subcutaneous tumors versus a diffuse spatial pattern in lung tumors, suggesting different roles of this neural-crest-like program in different tumor microenvironments. Broadly, this study establishes a high-resolution map of the evolutionary dynamics of resistance to ICB, characterizes a de-differentiated neural-crest tumor population in melanoma immunotherapy resistance and describes site-specific differences in tumor-immune interactions via longitudinal analysis of a patient with melanoma with an unusual clinical course.
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