Facial Expression Recognition (FER) on unconstrained datasets poses a significant challenge, primarily due to data uncertainty stemming from human subjectivity and ambiguous facial expressions. ...Previous methods attempt to address this issue through relabeling strategies. However, this work reveals a relabel inconsistency problem. Specifically, the model weights are not updated simultaneously with the relabeling process. Consequently, the feature representations of the noisy samples remain associated with the previous label despite being relabeled. As a result, the relabeling mechanism reverts the new label back to the previous one, initiating a cycle between the two classes during the subsequent training. The failure to "shift" the feature representations closer to the new label centers hinders the model from learning discriminative features capable of handling data uncertainty, leading to degraded performance. In this work, a new framework based on embedding proximity is proposed to ensure consistent updating of feature representations with rectifications made during relabeling to overcome this limitation. This is achieved by pushing relabeled images closer to their newly assigned class centers and farther away from their previous class (wrong) centers in the feature embedding space. Through comprehensive experiments, this work utilizes existing models-SCN, RUL, and DMUE-to map the original feature space and then applies the proposed embedding proximity technique to update the feature representations. The updated models, denoted as SCN-C, RUL-C, and DMUE-C, demonstrate significant improvements in addressing inconsistency issues and enhancing overall performance. The proposed models outperform state-of-the-art methods, achieving accuracies of 65.73% on AffectNet, 89.51% on RAF-DB, and 71.83% on FER2013.
Various food formulations widely utilized solid fats to provide specific textural properties and sensory attributes. Partially hydrogenated oil was commonly used as solid fat before being banned by ...FDA recently because of the existence of trans fats. Oleogels, semi‐solid gel typically prepared from liquid vegetable oil and food‐grade oleogelators, is developed as an alternative for solid fats that is free of trans fat and low in saturated fats. Oleogels are prepared via indirect or direct oleogelation technology by which the liquid oil is entrapped in a three‐dimensional network with the aid of low molecular weight oleogelators (LMOGs) and high molecular weight oleogelators (HMOGs). Oleogels received tremendous attention from food scientists to be used in various food applications, particularly high‐fat products such as comminuted meat, chocolates, ice cream, shortening and margarine and even as a deep‐frying medium. They satisfy not only the current trends of consumers for healthy food products (free of trans fat and low in saturated fat) but also provide viscoelastic solid‐ and gel‐ like properties to structure high fat food products. More importantly, recent studies showed that oleogels tend to be metabolized differently from conventional fats and oils giving them an additional advantage in improving the nutritional value of high‐fat foods. Therefore, this review aims to provide an overview that captures the latest studies on oleogels from their production via direct dispersion and indirect dispersion methods, processing conditions that influence the physical properties, metabolism and health attributes as well as recent application in food products.
The automated sequence‐controlled copolymerization of styrene and N‐substituted maleimides allowed the production of unprecedented polymer microstructures (up to 65536 possible microstructural ...arrangements). Highly complex monomer sequence patterns were prepared using four N‐substituted maleimides (see picture).
The photo‐induced generation of unstable molecules generally requires stringent conditions to prevent oxidation and the concomitant decomposition of the products. The visible‐light‐induced conversion ...of two heptacene precursors to heptacene was studied. Single crystals of bis‐ and mono‐α‐diketone‐type heptacene precursors (7‐DK2 and 7‐DK1, respectively), were prepared to investigate the effect of precursor structure on reactivity. The photoirradiation of a 7‐DK2 single crystal cleaved only one α‐diketone group, forming an intermediate bearing a pentacene subunit, while that of a 7‐DK1 single crystal gave rise to characteristic absorption peaks of heptacene and their increase in intensity with photoirradiation time, indicating the generation of heptacene without decomposition. Heptacene production was not observed when the precursors were photoirradiated in solution, implying that the single crystal interior provided isolation from the external environment, thus preventing heptacene oxidation.
Smooth heptacene generation: The single‐crystal interior provided a reaction site isolated from the external environment thus preventing oxidation of unstable products. Visible‐light‐irradiation of the inner region of a mono‐α‐diketone‐type heptacene precursor crystal resulted in characteristic heptacene absorption peaks, suggesting successful heptacene generation under ambient conditions.
The recovery of waste as feedstock away from organizational limitations corresponds to a prospective supplementary revenue stream for the organization. A novel waste eggshell of Gallus domesticus ...derived superbasic nanocatalyst was synthesized through betaine amphoteric surfactant-assisted decomposition, adsorption and precipitation processes. By varied the duration synthesis of gel mixture, the morphology transformation from liquid-solid interconnected macro-size particles to regular spheroidal nanoassemblies particles is detected. The surfactant at the liquid-solid interface facilitates the mono dispersion of nanoparticles by hindering growth of crystals. The average particle diameter of the produced superbasic nanocatalyst was in the range of 27–16 nm. The synthesized nanoparticle formation mechanism in the presence surfactant has also been addressed in this study. The catalytic activity of superbasic nanocatalyst was investigated for biodiesel production from crude Jatropha curcas oil (JCO) via glycerolysis and transesterification with methanol at atmospheric pressure. Artificial neural network (ANN) based on the genetic algorithm (GA) was applied for optimization of varied reaction parameters. It was observed that the reduction of acidity varied with varying reaction conditions. The highest fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) yield (97%) was obtained when the reaction was allowed to run at 60 °C for 300 min, while at 90 °C the maximal FAME yield of 98% was achieved after 120 min. The kinetic parameters of nanocatalyst were determined, and the reaction system followed pseudo first order kinetics. The results suggest that this two steps process using superbasic nanocatalyst affords a promising method to convert oils with high FFA level to biodiesel.
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•Superbase nanocatalyst was successfully synthesized from waste eggshell of Gallus domesticus.•The superbase catalyst was used to produce biodiesel from high FFAs feedstock.•Nano-sized catalysts render superior basicity than commercial catalyst.•The as-synthesized catalyst exhibited high activity towards biodiesel production.
•The recent technologies for promoting biodiesel synthesis were elucidated.•The design of catalyst consideration of biodiesel production was proposed.•The recent advances and remaining difficulties ...in biodiesel synthesis were outlined.•The future research trend in biodiesel synthesis was highlighted.
The insecure supply of fossil fuel coerces the scientific society to keep a vision to boost investments in the renewable energy sector. Among the many renewable fuels currently available around the world, biodiesel offers an immediate impact in our energy. In fact, a huge interest in related research indicates a promising future for the biodiesel technology. Heterogeneous catalyzed production of biodiesel has emerged as a preferred route as it is environmentally benign needs no water washing and product separation is much easier. The number of well-defined catalyst complexes that are able to catalyze transesterification reactions efficiently has been significantly expanded in recent years. The activity of catalysts, specifically in application to solid acid/base catalyst in transesterification reaction depends on their structure, strength of basicity/acidity, surface area as well as the stability of catalyst. There are various process intensification technologies based on the use of alternate energy sources such as ultrasound and microwave. The latest advances in research and development related to biodiesel production is represented by non-catalytic supercritical method and focussed exclusively on these processes as forthcoming transesterification processes. The latest developments in this field featuring highly active catalyst complexes are outlined in this review. The knowledge of more extensive research on advances in biofuels will allow a deeper insight into the mechanism of these technologies toward meeting the critical energy challenges in future.
Alendronate and raloxifene are among the most popular anti-osteoporosis medications. However, there is a lack of head-to-head comparative effectiveness studies comparing the two treatments. We ...conducted a retrospective large-scale multicenter study encompassing over 300 million patients across nine databases encoded in the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM). The primary outcome was the incidence of osteoporotic hip fracture, while secondary outcomes were vertebral fracture, atypical femoral fracture (AFF), osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ), and esophageal cancer. We used propensity score trimming and stratification based on an expansive propensity score model with all pre-treatment patient characteritistcs. We accounted for unmeasured confounding using negative control outcomes to estimate and adjust for residual systematic bias in each data source. We identified 283,586 alendronate patients and 40,463 raloxifene patients. There were 7.48 hip fracture, 8.18 vertebral fracture, 1.14 AFF, 0.21 esophageal cancer and 0.09 ONJ events per 1,000 person-years in the alendronate cohort and 6.62, 7.36, 0.69, 0.22 and 0.06 events per 1,000 person-years, respectively, in the raloxifene cohort. Alendronate and raloxifene have a similar hip fracture risk (hazard ratio HR 1.03, 95% confidence interval CI 0.94-1.13), but alendronate users are more likely to have vertebral fractures (HR 1.07, 95% CI 1.01-1.14). Alendronate has higher risk for AFF (HR 1.51, 95% CI 1.23-1.84) but similar risk for esophageal cancer (HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.53-1.70), and ONJ (HR 1.62, 95% CI 0.78-3.34). We demonstrated substantial control of measured confounding by propensity score adjustment, and minimal residual systematic bias through negative control experiments, lending credibility to our effect estimates. Raloxifene is as effective as alendronate and may remain an option in the prevention of osteoporotic fracture.
Natural biopolymers have attracted considerable interest for the development of delivery systems for protein drugs owing to their biocompatibility, non-toxicity, renewability and mild processing ...conditions. This paper offers an overview of the current status and future perspectives of particle designs using biopolymers for the stabilization and controlled-delivery of a model protein drug — insulin. We first describe the design criteria for polymeric encapsulation and subsequently classify the basic principles of particle fabrication as well as the existing particle designs for oral insulin encapsulation. The performances of these existing particle designs in terms of insulin stability and in vitro release behavior in acidic and alkaline media, as well as their in vivo performance are compared and reviewed. This review forms the basis for future works on the optimization of particle design and material formulation for the development of an improved oral delivery system for protein drugs.
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