Search

This study identified the correlations between the temperament types of infants and their cries evoked by external pain stimuli. We examined infant cries evoked by vaccinations and analyse the volume and types of audio frequency fluctuation of the cries. The Infant Temperament Questionnaire is filled out by the parents. Statistical analyses of t-tests and ANOVA were performed using the software SPSS 16.0. The intensity of infants' reactions varied significantly with their home environments (p < 0.01). Infants from noisier home environments reacted more intensely. Whether infants were breastfed significantly correlated with the rhythmicity of their physiological cycle (p = 0.046). Breastfed infants indicated a higher level of rhythmicity. The number of seconds taken by the parent to comfort the infant significantly correlated with the infants' persistence (p = 0.029). The types of cries significantly correlated with infants' distractibility (p = 0.028). Infants whose cries became softer were more difficult to distract. Infants whose cries became louder or remained steady were easier to distract. This study found that infants' cries evoked by external pain stimuli can be used to predict the home environment, the quality of mood and the types of infants' temperament.

The existing single image super-resolution (SISR) methods that consider integer scale factors (X2, X3, X4, and X8), have been developed well, but SISR methods with arbitrary scale factors (X1.3, X2.5, and X3.7) have gradually gained attention recently. Therefore, we proposed an efficient, lightweight model. In this study, there are two contributions as follows. (1) An efficient and lightweight network for SISR is combined with the up-scaled module, which determines its weights based on the size of the high-resolution (HR) image. (2) All scale factors are applied simultaneously using one model, which saves more storage and computational resources. Finally, we design various experiments to evaluate the proposed method based on multiple general datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed model is lightweight while the performance is relatively competitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Whether oral lichen planus (OLP) was potentially malignant remains controversial. Here, we examined associations of ZNF582 methylation (ZNF582m) with OLP lesions, dysplastic features and squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Materials and Methods: This is a case–control study. ZNF582m was evaluated in both lesion and adjacent normal sites of 42 dysplasia, 90 OSCC and 43 OLP patients, whereas ZNF582m was evaluated only in one mucosal site of 45 normal controls. High‐risk habits affecting ZNF582m such as betel nut chewing and cigarette smoking were also compared in those groups. Results: OLP lesions showed significantly lower ZNF582m than those of dysplasia and OSCC. At adjacent normal mucosa, ZNF582m increased from patients of OLP, dysplasia, to OSCC. In addition, ZNF582m at adjacent normal sites in OLP patients was comparable to normal mucosa in control group. Dysplasia/OSCC patients with high‐risk habits exhibited significantly higher ZNF582m than those without high‐risk habits. However, ZNF582m in OLP patients was not affected by those high‐risk habits. Conclusions: OLP is unlikely to be potentially malignant based on ZNF582m levels. ZNF582m may also be a potential biomarker for distinguishing OLP from true dysplastic features and OSCC, and for monitoring the malignant transformation of OLP, potentially malignant disorders with dysplastic features and OSCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual sensor networks (VSNs) have numerous applications in fields such as wildlife observation, object recognition, and smart homes. However, visual sensors generate vastly more data than scalar sensors. Storing and transmitting these data is challenging. High-efficiency video coding (HEVC/H.265) is a widely used video compression standard. Compare to H.264/AVC, HEVC reduces approximately 50% of the bit rate at the same video quality, which can compress the visual data with a high compression ratio but results in high computational complexity. In this study, we propose a hardware-friendly and high-efficiency H.265/HEVC accelerating algorithm to overcome this complexity for visual sensor networks. The proposed method leverages texture direction and complexity to skip redundant processing in CU partition and accelerate intra prediction for intra-frame encoding. Experimental results revealed that the proposed method could reduce encoding time by 45.33% and increase the Bjontegaard delta bit rate (BDBR) by only 1.07% as compared to HM16.22 under all-intra configuration. Moreover, the proposed method reduced the encoding time for six visual sensor video sequences by 53.72%. These results confirm that the proposed method achieves high efficiency and a favorable balance between the BDBR and encoding time reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Visual oral examination (VOE) is a conventional oral cancer screening method. This study aimed to evaluate the value of methylation marker to assist VOE in identifying oral epithelial dysplasia and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OED/OSCC) from non-cancerous lesions in a real-world situation. Methods: 201 patients with high-risk personal habits who self-perceived oral anomaly were VOE examined, ZNF582 methylation (ZNF582m) tested, and histologically diagnosed. Results: Among them, 132 patients (65.7%) were histologically diagnosed OED/OSCC. Using VOE, 56.1% OED/OSCC patients had possible oral cancer, whereas 37.7% non-OED/OSCC patients had leukoplakia. ZNF582m-positive was detected in 90.2% OED/OSCC patients and 44.9% non-OED/OSCC patients. Various logistic regression models were postulated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of conventional VOE and new strategies using ZNF582m. ROC analysis and its corresponding C-index demonstrated that either triage or co-testing models of VOE and ZNF582m could improve diagnostic performance and discriminative abilities compared with the VOE only approach. Conclusions: In conclusion, methylation marker test shows equivalent performance to an experienced judgment by oral maxillofacial surgeons and plays a significantly supplementary role in increasing the efficacy in identifying oral malignant lesions. ZNF582m may be an especially important tool for family physicians or general dentists to properly diagnose suspicious oral lesions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wide-angle cameras are widely used in surveillance and medical imaging applications nowadays. Images captured by wide-angle lens suffer from barrel distortion which means that the outer regions of the image are compressed more than the inner one. A low-cost high-speed VLSI implementation for barrel distortion correction is presented in this brief. In our simulation, the proposed circuit can achieve 200 MHz with 45 K gate counts by using TSMC 0.18 [micro]m technology. Compared with the previous distortion correction design, our circuit requires less hardware cost and achieves faster working speed. Index Terms--Barrel distortion correction, VLSI architecture, wide-angle.

Oral cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, especially in South Central Asia. It has been suggested that cancer stem cells (CSC) play crucial roles in tumor relapse and metastasis, and approaches to target CSC may lead to promising results. Here, aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) and CD44 were utilized to isolate CSCs of oral cancer. Butylidenephthalide, a bioactive phthalide compound from Angelica sinensis, was tested for its anti-CSC effects. MTT assay showed that a lower concentration of butylidenephthalide was sufficient to inhibit the proliferation of patient-derived ALDH1+/CD44+ cells without affecting normal cells. Administration of butylidenephthalide not only reduced ALDH1 activity and CD44 expression, it also suppressed the migration, invasion, and colony formation abilities of ALDH1+/CD44+ cells using a transwell system and clonogenic assay. A patient-derived xenograft mouse model supported our in vitro findings that butylidenephthalide possessed the capacity to retard tumor development. We found that butylidenephthalide dose-dependently downregulated the gene and protein expression of Sox2 and Snail. Our results demonstrated that overexpression of Snail in ALDH1-/CD44- (non-CSCs) cells induced the CSC phenotypes, whereas butylidenephthalide treatment successfully diminished the enhanced self-renewal and propagating properties. In summary, this study showed that butylidenephthalide may serve as an adjunctive for oral cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief, a low-cost technique to implement variable-length coding (VLC) is presented. Instead of using a large codeword table as with most traditional methods, we employ two smaller tables, symbol-address table and section-based table, to encode input symbols. Compared with previous methods, our VLC implementation can reduce about 17% to 38% of memory space for storing larger VLC tables in MPEG-4 application. Synthesis results show that the proposed VLC encoder and decoder occupy 19761 and 20187 gate counts, respectively. Index Terms--Lossless compression, low cost, MPEG-4, variable-length coding (VLC).

In this paper, we propose a novel efficient fuzzy prediction algorithm for image vector quantization by using the fact that the pixel values of a block is highly related to those of its adjacent blocks in the same image frame because of its spatial correlation. The experimental results show that our method performs better than other VQ algorithms, such as SOC-VQ, LCIC-VQ, STC-VQ, and DST-VQ, in terms of computational complexity and coding efficiency. Index Terms--Fuzzy reasoning, image vector quantization, spatial correlation.

Taking advantage of the prediction ability provided by gray system theory, the gray prediction search (GrPS) algorithm can determine the motion vectors of image blocks correctly and quickly [6]. A dedicated GrPS chip, which is with low cost and has the properties of regular-data-flow computations, is proposed in this paper to support the MPEG video resolution in real time. With 0.6-[micro]m CMOS technology, the proposed chip needs a die size of 2.8 x 2.9 [mm.sup.2] with about 54-K transistors, and can work with a clock rate of 66 MHz. Since GrPS performs better than other fast search algorithms, such as TSS, CS, PHODS, FSS, and SES, this low-cost GrPS chip is a good candidate for real-time motion estimation. Index Terms--Block motion estimation, gray prediction search, motion vector.

Due to the temporal and spatial correlation of the image sequence, the motion vector of a block is highly related to the motion vectors of its adjacent blocks in the same image frame. If we can obtain useful and enough information from the adjacent motion vectors, the total number of search points used to find the motion vector of the block may be reduced significantly. Using that idea, an efficient gray prediction search (GPS) algorithm for block motion estimation is proposed in this paper. Based on the gray system theory, the GPS can determine the motion vectors of image blocks quickly and correctly. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other search algorithms, such as 3SS, CS, PHODS, 4SS, BBGDS, SES, and PSA, in terms of six different measures: 1) average mean square error per pixel; 2) average peak signal-to-noise ratio; 3) average prediction errors per pixel; 4) average entropy of prediction errors; 5) average percentage of unpredictable pels per frame; and 6) average search points per block. Index Terms - Block matching algorithm, gray prediction, motion estimation, motion vector, temporal redundancy.

This paper describes an online lossless data-compression method using adaptive arithmetic coding. To achieve good compression efficiency, we employ an adaptive fuzzy-tuning modeler that applies fuzzy inference to deal efficiently with the problem of conditional probability estimation. In comparison with other lossless coding schemes, the compression results of the proposed method are good and satisfactory for various types of source data. Since we adopt the table-lookup approach for the fuzzy-tuning modeler, the design is simple, fast, and suitable for VLSI implementation. Index Terms - Adaptive arithmetic coding, fuzzy inference, lossless data compression.

Luminance contrast is one of the key factors in the visibility of objects in the world around us. Previous work has shown that the perceived depth from binocular disparity depends profoundly on the luminance contrast of the image. This dependence cannot be explained by existing disparity models, such as the well-established disparity energy model, because they predict no effect of luminance contrast on depth perception. Here, we develop a model for disparity processing that incorporates contrast normalization of the neural response into the disparity energy model to account for the contrast dependence of perceived depth from disparity. Our model contains an array of disparity channels, each with a different disparity selectivity. The binocular images are first processed by the left- and right-eye receptive fields of each channel. The outputs of the two receptive fields are combined linearly as the excitatory disparity sensitivity and then fed into a nonlinear contrast gain control mechanism. The perceived depth is determined by the weighted average of all the disparity channels that respond to the binocular images. This model provides the first analytic account of how luminance contrast affects perceived depth from disparity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/purpose: Oral cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been considered as the key cells that are implicated in tumor recurrence and metastasis. In recent years, great attention has been paid to the significance of various non-coding RNAs due to their regulatory roles in oral CSCs. Although the function of long non-coding RNA MEG3 in various cancers has been investigated, its effects on the features of oral CSCs remained to be determined.Methods: The expression levels of MEG3 in tongue squamous cell carcinomas and prognostic effect have been evaluated. We assessed the expression of MEG3 in sphere cells (oral CSCs) using qRT-PCR. Secondary sphere formation and invasion assays were conducted to evaluate the self-renewal and metastatic abilities, respectively. Bioinformatics software and luciferase reporter assay were used to predict and verify the relationship between MEG3 and miR-421.Results: MEG3 was downregulated in the tissues of oral cancer and associated with a poor prognosis. In oral CSCs, the expression of MEG3 was repressed and overexpression of MEG3 resulted in suppression of self-renewal and invasion abilities. Luciferase reporter assay showed that miR-421 directly interacted with MEG3, and our subsequent experiment demonstrated that elevation of miR-421 reversed the MEG3-inhibited characteristics of oral CSCs.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that MEG3 can serve as a tumor suppressor in oral CSCs by impeding the action of miR-421. Moreover, targeting MEG3-miR-421 axis has the potential to mitigate the tumor recurrence and metastasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reduce the computational complexity of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), the local binary convolutional neural network (LBCNN) has been proposed. In the LBCNN, a convolutional layer is divided into two sublayers. Sublayer 1 is a sparse ternary-weighted convolutional layer, and Sublayer 2 is a 1 × 1 convolutional layer. With the use of two sublayers, the LBCNN has lower computational complexity and uses less memory than the CNN. In this brief, we propose a platform that includes a weight preprocessor and layer accelerator for the LBCNN. The proposed weight preprocessor takes advantage of the sparsity in the LBCNN and encodes the weight offline. The layer accelerator effectively uses the encoded data to reduce computational complexity and memory accesses for an inference. When compared to the state-of-the-art design, the experimental results show that the number of clock cycles are reduced by 76.32%, and memory usage is reduced by 39.41%. The synthesized results show that the clock period is reduced by 4.76%; the cell area is reduced by 46.48%, and the power consumption is reduced by 40.87%. The inference accuracy is the same as that of the state-of-the-art design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dysbiosis of oral microbiome may dictate the progression of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Yet, the composition of oral microbiome fluctuates by saliva and distinct sites of oral cavity and is affected by risky behaviors (smoking, drinking and betel quid chewing) and individuals' oral health condition. To characterize the disturbances in the oral microbial population mainly due to oral tumorigenicity, we profiled the bacteria within the surface of OSCC lesion and its contralateral normal tissue from discovery (n = 74) and validation (n = 42) cohorts of male patients with cancers of the buccal mucosa. Significant alterations in the bacterial diversity and relative abundance of specific oral microbiota (most profoundly, an enrichment for genus Fusobacterium and the loss of genus Streptococcus in the tumor sites) were identified. Functional prediction of oral microbiome shown that microbial genes related to the metabolism of terpenoids and polyketides were differentially enriched between the control and tumor groups, indicating a functional role of oral microbiome in formulating a tumor microenvironment via attenuated biosynthesis of secondary metabolites with anti-cancer effects. Furthermore, the vast majority of microbial signatures detected in the discovery cohort was generalized well to the independent validation cohort, and the clinical validity of these OSCC-associated microbes was observed and successfully replicated. Overall, our analyses reveal signatures (a profusion of Fusobacterium nucleatum CTI-2 and a decrease in Streptococcus pneumoniae) and functions (decreased production of tumor-suppressive metabolites) of oral microbiota related to oral cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a stimulus with multiple moving elements, an observer may perceive that the whole stimulus moves in unison if (a) one can associate an element in one frame with one in the next (correspondence) and (b) a sufficient proportion of correspondences signal a similar motion direction (coherence). We tested the necessity of these two conditions by asking the participants to rate the perceived intensity of linear, concentric, and radial motions for three types of stimuli: (a) random walk motion, in which the direction of each dot was randomly determined for each frame, (b) random image sequence, which was a set of uncorrelated random dot images presented in sequence, and (c) global motion, in which 35% of dots moved coherently. The participants perceived global motion not only in the global motion conditions but also in the random image sequences, though not in random walk motion. The type of perceived motion in the random image sequences depends on the spatial context of the stimuli. Thus, although there is neither a fixed correspondence across different frames nor a coherent motion direction, observers can still perceive global motion in the random image sequence. This result cannot be explained by motion energy or local aperture border effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identified the correlations between the temperament types of infants and their cries evoked by external pain stimuli. We examined infant cries evoked by vaccinations and analyse the volume and types of audio frequency fluctuation of the cries. The Infant Temperament Questionnaire is filled out by the parents. Statistical analyses of t-tests and ANOVA were performed using the software SPSS 16.0. The intensity of infants' reactions varied significantly with their home environments (p <.01). Infants from noisier home environments reacted more intensely. Whether infants were breastfed significantly correlated with the rhythmicity of their physiological cycle (p =.046). Breastfed infants indicated a higher level of rhythmicity. The number of seconds taken by the parent to comfort the infant significantly correlated with the infants' persistence (p =.029). The types of cries significantly correlated with infants' distractibility (p =.028). Infants whose cries became softer were more difficult to distract. Infants whose cries became louder or remained steady were easier to distract. This study found that infants' cries evoked by external pain stimuli can be used to predict the home environment, the quality of mood and the types of infants' temperament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief presents a novel high-speed low-cost comparison-free, 1D bit-level median filter. The filter can be customized by cascading different median units. The most prominent point is that a pre-set value is used during the process, and the partial median can be easily identified by observing the MSB. Therefore, the median can be obtained without any comparators. With this feature, the area cost drops significantly while the operating speed remains the same. The results show that when synthesized using TSMC 90nm CMOS process technology, our design can achieve 2000MHz, and the area cost is reduced by 15.72% as compared to a state-of-the-art design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard provides superior efficiency for encoding and improves the compression ratio by almost 50% compared with previous video coding standards, such as advanced video coding (AVC). However, more intensive computation complexity is introduced by implementing the flexible quad tree-structured coding model. In a typical HEVC encoder, coding units (CUs) in a coding tree unit (CTU) that is built as a quad-tree structure are recursively traversed each depth level (CU size) to select the optimal coding configuration. Therefore, most of the encoding time is spent searching for the optimal coding configuration. In this paper, an efficient and fast CU size decision algorithm is proposed to reduce HEVC encoder complexity by the spatiotemporal features. First, an adaptive depth-range prediction method minimizes the possible range depth level by observing previous frames and proximal CTUs. Second, an early termination method based on the boundary examination from the de-blocking filter (DBF) prevents unnecessary calculation on small CU sizes. Furthermore, according to the sum of absolution difference (SAD), a smooth area detection mechanism is triggered when the predictive depth range excludes the largest CU size. This mechanism increase the bitrate of the CU, which contains static objects with complex textures. Compared with the HM 16, the experimental results revealed that the proposed algorithm can achieve an average 59.73% and 64.98% reduction in encoding time along with a 0.68% and 1.27% Bjontegaard Delta bitrate (BDBR) penalty for various test videos under low-delay P and random-access conditions, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defogging is an essential preprocessing technique for object detection in computer vision-based systems and has been widely used in outdoor surveillance system applications. This paper proposes an efficient defogging algorithm for both static images and videos. Considering real-time applications, the proposed defogging algorithm involves a low-cost hardware oriented design that is based on an atmospheric scattering model and dark channel prior. Compared with previous low-complexity techniques, simulation results indicated that the proposed design demonstrated superior performance in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluations. A weighting technique and a contour preserving estimation approach are adopted alternately to refine the factors in the defogging process. Furthermore, in the atmospheric light estimation, an adjuster is applied to the video for preventing “flicker” which means that the brightness changes dramatically between two neighbor frames in the video. Hence, the proposed algorithm is suitable for video defogging applications, which have not been dealt with in previous approaches. To achieve the requirement of real-time applications for both static and dynamic images, an implementation of seven-stage very-large-scale integration architecture for the proposed algorithm is presented. By using TSMC 0.13- $\mu {\mathrm{ m}}$ technology, the design yielded a processing rate of approximately 200 Mpixels/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief presents a hardware design for an energy-efficient, high-speed, and 1-D median filter. Existing architectures focus on operating speeds, thus resulting in redundant power dissipation. This brief presents an algorithm and mathematical model for controlling the clock signals attached to the circuit by analyzing the behavior of the filter, which immobilizes the data in registers and reduces not only signal transitions but also switching activities, thereby reducing the total dynamic power consumption. Furthermore, the proposed architecture provides high-speed computation. A median result can be produced in each clock cycle, and the maximum operating frequency performance is nearly independent of the filter size. The proposed architecture uses 90-nm process technology and experimental results show that the proposed method is more energy efficient than existing designs. The power consumption is reduced by 25% on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the temporal and spatial correlation of image sequence, the motion vector of a reference block is highly related to the motion vectors of its adjacent blocks in the same image frame. By using that idea, we propose a novel efficient fuzzy search (EFS) algorithm for block motion estimation. The experimental results show that the EFS performs better than other fast search algorithms, such as TSS, CS, NTSS, FSS, BBGDS, SES, and PSA in terms of picture quality, accuracy, computational complexity, and coding efficiency. Index Terms--Block motion estimation, fuzzy reasoning, motion vector.

The block motion estimation/compensation techniques are efficient methods to reduce the required bitrate by eliminating temporal redundancy of the image sequence. In this paper, an efficient search algorithm for block motion estimation is presented. By using the inter-block and inter-frame fuzzy prediction, the algorithm can determine the motion vectors of image blocks quickly and correctly. According to the experimental results, our algorithm performs better than other search algorithms, such as TSS, NTSS, FSS, BBGDS, SES, PSA, GPS, and FPS in terms of seven different measures. Index Terms--Block motion estimation, fuzzy reasoning, interblock/inter-frame prediction.

An efficient search algorithm for block motion estimation is proposed in this paper. By using fuzzy reasoning, the algorithm can determine the motion vectors of image blocks quickly and correctly. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other search algorithms, such as 3SS, CS, PHODS, 4SS, BBGDS, SES, PSA, and GPS. The VLSI architecture of the algorithm has been developed, and in simulation it yields a search rate of 683 000 blocks/s with a clock rate of 66 MHz. Index Terms--Block motion estimation, fuzzy reasoning, motion vector.

Background/purpose: MicroRNA-200c (miR-200c) recently emerged as an important regulator of tumorigenesis and cancer metastasis, however, its role in regulating oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the functional role of miR-200c in myofibroblastic differentiation activity and identified its potential target.Methods: qRT-PCR was applied to assess the expression of miR-200c in OSF tissues and fibrotic buccal mucosal fibroblasts (fBMFs). Arecoline, a major areca nut alkaloid, was utilized to explore whether the expression of miR-200c would alter following stimulation. Collagen gel contraction, migration and invasion capabilities were examined in arecoline-stimulated BMFs as wells as in fBMFs. Luciferase reporter assay was conducted to show the relationship between miR-200c and ZEB1.Results: Our results showed that the expression of miR-200c was downregulated in OSF specimen and fBMFs. Arecoline treatment dose-dependently reduced the relative expression of miR-200c in normal BMFs. Overexpression of miR-200c impeded the arecoline-induced collagen gel contraction, migration, invasion and wound healing capacities. Moreover, ectopic expression of miR-200c in fBMFs successfully reduced the increased collagen gel contractility and invasion abilities. Our results demonstrated that ZEB1 was a direct target of miR-200c, and overexpression of miR-200c inhibited the expression of ZEB1 and α-SMA.Conclusion: These findings suggest that downregulation of miR-200c in OSF may be involved in the pathogenesis of areca nut-associated OSF through regulation of ZEB1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

5-Aminolevulinic acid-mediated photodynamic therapy (ALA-PDT) has been used in the treatment of various precancerous and malignant lesions. Our previous work has demonstrated that ALA-PDT possesses the potential to serve as an adjuvant therapy against head and neck cancer via eliminating the cancer stem cells (CSCs) property. This study aimed to further investigate the possible molecular mechanism underlying the effect of ALA-PDT. Our results revealed that ALA-PDT upregulated the expression of microRNA-145 (miR-145) in two oral cancer cell lines. Overexpression of miR-145 in oral CSCs further enhanced the treatment effect of ALA-PDT with lower self-renewal, invasion capacities and reduced CD44 expression, while inhibition of miR-145 exhibited the opposite phenomena. These findings suggest that the anti-CSCs effect of ALA-PDT is due to an elevation of miR-145. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color filter array interpolation, also known as demosaicking and “debayering,” is a crucial process for image reconstruction in digital still cameras. This paper presents an edge-oriented demosaicking method and an efficient very-large-scale integration (VLSI) architecture for color interpolation. The design uses simple operations (addition, subtraction, shift, and comparator) and nearest neighboring pixels to catch the color difference and edges. The required line buffering of the proposed design is four lines; therefore, its hardware cost is low. Our extensive experiments revealed that the proposed technique preserved edge features and exhibited excellent quantitative evaluation and visual quality performances. Compared with the previous VLSI implementations, the proposed design achieved superior image qualities. The synthesis results revealed that by using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ technology, the proposed design yields a processing rate of approximately 200M samples per second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of computer vision, local binary pattern (LBP) is one of the most popular feature extraction method and has been used in many object detection frameworks. To efficiently extract LBP features in high-resolution images, hardware architecture is needed to disperse CPU burden and to improve the entire object detection performance. In this paper, a hardware implementation of an approximated LBP method with adjustable parameters is introduced. For simulation, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company $0.18~\mu \text{m}$ technology is used to implement the LBP hardware, and the hardware can achieve 500 MHz with lower gate count than previous study. The proposed LBP circuit is applied to the pedestrian classification application and the evaluation results show that the approximated LBP values generated by our circuit can achieve comparable classification accuracy with the primitive LBP method. Additionally, the proposed LBP hardware provides adjustable parameters to fit different applications while requires fewer hardware costs as compared with the existing work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorting is one of the most fundamental topics in computer science. Since partial sorting with lower costs would be much more feasible than the complete sorting method for some applications, this paper focuses on the architecture sorting N values from M inputs. To meet the real-time processing requirement, hardware acceleration is commonly employed to enhance the performance. However, high-speed computation usually raises power consumption drastically.To overcome that problem, a low-power, high-throughput, and modular hardware design of partial sorting network is presented. By applying a pointer-like design, the comparing modules move the indexes of samples instead of moving the input data directly. Power dissipation is reduced by minimizing switching activities and signal transitions. To prevent unnecessary comparing of the large data set, an iterative architecture is proposed which uses both the low-power sorting module and a novel clipping mechanism. The proposed design was simulated with a 90-nm cell library and the results are compared to those of other works on hardware sorting. Experiment results show that power consumption is reduced by 64.9 percent and high-throughput performance can also be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monilinia fructicola (G. Winter) Honey is a devastating pathogen on Rosaceae which causes blossom blight and fruit rot. Only a few studies related to the plant-pathogen interaction have been published and there is limited knowledge on the relationship between oxidative stress and successful infection in M. fructicola. In this study, we cloned and characterized a redox-responsive transcription factor MFAP1, a YAP1 homologue. MfAP1-silenced strains were generated by polyethylene glycol-mediated protoplast transformation or Agrobacterium T-DNA-mediated transformation. Pathogenicity assay demonstrated that MfAP1-silenced strains caused smaller lesions on rose and peach petals. Transformants carrying extra copies of MfAP1, driven by the native promoter, were generated for MfAP1 overexpression. Interestingly, MfAP1-overexpressing strains also caused smaller lesions on rose petals. Strains carrying two copies of MfAP1 accumulated reactive oxygen species (ROS) at higher levels and exhibited delayed accumulation of MfAP1 transcripts compared with the wild-type during pathogenesis. By the analysis of ROS production and the expression patterns of redox- and virulence-related genes in the wild-type strain and an MfAP1-overexpressing strain, we found that the M. fructicola wild-type strain responded to oxidative stress at the infection site, activated the expression of MfAP1 and up-regulated the genes required for ROS detoxification and fungal virulence. In contrast, MfAP1 expression in the MfAP1-overexpressing strain was suppressed after the induction of a strong oxidative burst at the infection site, altering the expression of ROS detoxification and virulence-related genes. Our results highlight the importance of MfAP1 and ROS accumulation in the successful infection of M. fructicola. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]