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We give constraints on the existence of $(\chi,b)$-factors in the global $A$-parameter of a genuine cuspidal automorphic representation $\sigma$ of a metaplectic group in terms of the invariant, lowest occurrence index, of theta lifts to odd orthogonal groups. We also give a refined result that relates the invariant, first occurrence index, to non-vanishing of period integrals of residues of Eisenstein series associated to the cuspidal datum $\chi\otimes\sigma$. This complements our previous results for symplectic groups., Comment: 35 pages. Clarifies the $L$-function for metaplectic group used. See Remark 2.2

Mast cell accumulation is a hallmark of a number of diseases, including allergic asthma and systemic mastocytosis. Immunoglobulin E–mediated crosslinking of the FcεRI receptors causes mast cell activation and contributes to disease pathogenesis. The mast cell lineage is one of the least studied among the hematopoietic cell lineages, and controversies remain about whether FcεRI expression appears during the mast cell progenitor stage or during terminal mast cell maturation. Here, we used single-cell transcriptomics analysis to reveal a temporal association between the appearance of FcεRI and the mast cell gene signature in CD34+ hematopoietic progenitors in adult peripheral blood. In agreement with these data, the FcεRI+ hematopoietic progenitors formed morphologically, phenotypically, and functionally mature mast cells in long-term culture assays. Single-cell transcriptomics analysis further revealed the expression patterns of prospective cytokine receptors regulating development of mast cell progenitors. Culture assays showed that interleukin-3 (IL-3) and IL-5 promoted disparate effects on progenitor cell proliferation and survival, respectively, whereas IL-33 caused robust FcεRI downregulation. Taken together, we showed that FcεRI expression appears at the progenitor stage of mast cell differentiation in peripheral blood. We also showed that external stimuli regulate FcεRI expression of mast cell progenitors, providing a possible explanation for the variable FcεRI expression levels during mast cell development.

S-scheme charge transfer mechanism of NCQD(0.75%)/Ag3PO4 composite before contact and under visible-light radiation.

The magnetic photocatalysts play an important role in practical application. Herein, a novel magnetic hierarchical Z-scheme NiFe2O4@Bi2Sn2O7 heterojunction photocatalyst was fabricated by hydrothermal strategy. The structure, micromorphology and physical properties of the as-prepared products were analysed, and the photocatalytic performance was carried out via photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride under visible-light irradiation. The longest average carrier lifetime of the NiFe2O4@Bi2Sn2O7 composite is about 2.9 times longer than that of pure Bi2Sn2O7 (2.45 ns), thereby achieving the enhanced photocatalytic activity. After a four-cycle photocatalytic degradation reaction, the NiFe2O4@Bi2Sn2O7 composite still exhibits excellent photocatalytic activity and structural stability due to its magnetic property, and this feature is conducive to its practical application. The results demonstrate that NiFe2O4 nanoparticles are uniformly loaded on flower-like hierarchical Bi2Sn2O7, and thus not only forming nanosized Z-scheme NiFe2O4@Bi2Sn2O7 heterostructure, but also making the composite material magnetic. This work provided new perspectives about construction of heterojunction photocatalysts.

Highlights • Established a cross-domain dataset consisting of placenta photos and medical records. • Designed attention and saliency-guided constraints to realize multi-object translation. • Devised an integrated pipeline for cross-domain placenta image segmentation. • Showed potential of our MSL model in detecting significant pathological/abnormal indicators., We propose a multi-region saliency-aware learning (MSL) method for cross-domain placenta image segmentation. Unlike most existing image-level transfer learning methods that fail to preserve the semantics of paired regions, our MSL incorporates the attention mechanism and a saliency constraint into the adversarial translation process, which can realize multi-region mappings in the semantic level. Specifically, the built-in attention module serves to detect the most discriminative semantic regions that the generator should focus on. Then we use the attention consistency as another guidance for retaining semantics after translation. Furthermore, we exploit the specially designed saliency-consistent constraint to enforce the semantic consistency by requiring the saliency regions unchanged. We conduct experiments using two real-world placenta datasets we have collected. We examine the efficacy of this approach in (1) segmentation and (2) prediction of the placental diagnoses of fetal and maternal inflammatory response (FIR, MIR). Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed approach over the state of the art.

The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2021 is the ninth annual tracker benchmarking activity organized by the VOT initiative. Results of 71 trackers are presented; many are state-of-the-art trackers published at major computer vision conferences or in journals in recent years. The VOT2021 challenge was composed of four sub-challenges focusing on different tracking domains: (i) VOT-ST2021 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB, (ii) VOT-RT2021 challenge focused on "real-time" short-term tracking in RGB, (iii) VOT-LT2021 focused on long-term tracking, namely coping with target disappearance and reappearance and (iv) VOT-RGBD2021 challenge focused on long-term tracking in RGB and depth imagery. The VOT-ST2021 dataset was refreshed, while VOT-RGBD2021 introduces a training dataset and sequestered dataset for winner identification. The source code for most of the trackers, the datasets, the evaluation kit and the results along with the source code for most trackers are publicly available at the challenge website 1 .

In this study, 17 novel pyrimidine derivatives containing an amide moiety were synthesized. Then their in vitro antifungal activities against Botryosphaeria dothidea (B. dothidea), Phomopsis sp., and Botrytis cinereal (B. cinereal) were determined. A preliminary biological test showed that compounds 5-bromo-2-fluoro-N-(2-((2-methyl-6-(trifluoromethyl)pyrimidin-4-yl)oxy)phenyl)benzamide (5f) and 5-bromo-2-fluoro-N-(3-((2-methyl-6-(trifluoromethyl)pyrimidin-4-yl)oxy)phenyl)benzamide (5o) exhibited higher antifungal activity against Phomopsis sp., with an inhibition rate of 100% compared to that of Pyrimethanil at 85.1%. In particular, compound 5o exhibited excellent antifungal activity against Phompsis sp., with the EC50 value of 10.5 μg/ml, which was even better than that of Pyrimethanil (32.1 μg/ml). As far as we know, this is the first report on the antifungal activities against B. dothidea, Phomopsis sp., and B. cinereal of this series of pyrimidine derivatives containing an amide moiety.

Body orientation estimation provides crucial visual cues in many applications, including robotics and autonomous driving. It is particularly desirable when 3-D pose estimation is difficult to infer due to poor image resolution, occlusion or indistinguishable body parts. We present COCO-MEBOW (Monocular Estimation of Body Orientation in the Wild), a new large-scale dataset for orientation estimation from a single in-the-wild image. The body-orientation labels for around 130K human bodies within 55K images from the COCO dataset have been collected using an efficient and high-precision annotation pipeline. We also validated the benefits of the dataset. First, we show that our dataset can substantially improve the performance and the robustness of a human body orientation estimation model, the development of which was previously limited by the scale and diversity of the available training data. Additionally, we present a novel triple-source solution for 3-D human pose estimation, where 3-D pose labels, 2-D pose labels, and our body-orientation labels are all used in joint training. Our model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art dual-source solutions for monocular 3-D human pose estimation, where training only uses 3-D pose labels and 2-D pose labels. This substantiates an important advantage of MEBOW for 3-D human pose estimation, which is particularly appealing because the per-instance labeling cost for body orientations is far less than that for 3-D poses. The work demonstrates high potential of MEBOW in addressing real-world challenges involving understanding human behaviors. Further information of this work is available at https://chenyanwu.github.io/MEBOW/., Comment: Accepted by CVPR2020

CD203c distinguishes the erythroid and mast cell-basophil differentiation trajectories among human Fc epsilon RI+ bone marrow progenitors

An efficient and facile method to fabricate a surficial dispersive heterojunction based on the assembly of g-C3N4 nanoparticles was proposed. A p-n nano heterojunction composed of BiOI and g-C3N4 was constructed by simply loading g-C3N4 nanoparticles on flower-like BiOI nanosheets. The structure-dependent optical, electronic and photoelectric properties were investigated, and the structure-property relationship was discussed. The results show that the g-C3N4 nanoparticles are uniformly loaded on the surface of BiOI nanosheets and thus form a p-n heterojunction with an intimate interface. The as-prepared samples exhibit enhanced photocatalytic degradation ability towards MO under visible-light irradiation. With the unique structure and morphology, enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activities are achieved owing to the synergistic effect of light harvesting, high transfer efficiency and enhanced separation efficiency of photo-generated carriers.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were grown on TiB2 powder by chemical vapor deposition using a Co catalyst. Then, the bulk CNTs(Co)-TiB2 composite was consolidated from these in-situ synthesized powder by spark plasma sintering. Homogeneously-dispersed CNTs with herringbone-like structure composed of well-crystallized graphite were observed. The flexural strength and fracture toughness of the in-situ synthesized CNTs(Co)-TiB2 composite were determined to be 987 ± 42 MPa and 12.4 ± 0.5 MPa m1/2 respectively, which were much higher than those of monolithic TiB2 and TiB2-CNTs composites synthesized by traditional ball-milling and sintering. The improvement of the composite performance was ascribed to the hybrid effect of the fully dense structure of the composite, the appropriate interfacial strength between the CNTs and the matrix, and the higher strengthening ability of well-dispersed CNTs.

BACKGROUND: The live attenuated BPZE1 vaccine candidate induces protection against B. pertussis and prevents nasal colonization in animal models. Here we report on the responses in humans receiving a single intranasal administration of BPZE1. METHODS: We performed multiple assays to dissect the immune responses induced in humans (n = 12) receiving BPZE1, with particular emphasis on the magnitude and characteristics of the antibody responses. Such responses were benchmarked to adolescents (n = 12) receiving the complete vaccination program of the currently used acellular pertussis vaccine (aPV). Using immunoproteomics analysis, potentially novel immunogenic B. pertussis antigens were identified. RESULTS: All BPZE1 vaccinees showed robust B. pertussis–specific antibody responses with regard to significant increase in 1 or more of the following parameters: IgG, IgA, and memory B cells to B. pertussis antigens. BPZE1–specific T cells showed a Th1 phenotype, and the IgG exclusively consisted of IgG1 and IgG3. In contrast, all aPV vaccines showed a Th2-biased response. Immunoproteomics profiling revealed that BPZE1 elicited broader and different antibody specificities to B. pertussis antigens as compared with the aPV that primarily induced antibodies to the vaccine antigens. Moreover, BPZE1 was superior at inducing opsonizing antibodies that stimulated ROS production in neutrophils and enhanced bactericidal function, which was in line with the finding that antibodies against adenylate cyclase toxin were only elicited by BPZE1. CONCLUSION: The breadth of the antibodies, the Th1-type cellular response, and killing mechanisms elicited by BPZE1 may hold prospects of improving vaccine efficacy and protection against B. pertussis transmission. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02453048, NCT00870350. FUNDING: ILiAD Biotechnologies, Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation.

In today’s society, image resources are everywhere, and the number of available images can be overwhelming. Determining how to rapidly and effectively query, retrieve, and organize image information has become a popular research topic, and automatic image annotation is the key to text-based image retrieval. If the semantic images with annotations are not balanced among the training samples, the low-frequency labeling accuracy can be poor. In this study, a dual-channel convolution neural network (DCCNN) was designed to improve the accuracy of automatic labeling. The model integrates two convolutional neural network (CNN) channels with different structures. One channel is used for training based on the low-frequency samples and increases the proportion of low-frequency samples in the model, and the other is used for training based on all training sets. In the labeling process, the outputs of the two channels are fused to obtain a labeling decision. We verified the proposed model on the Caltech-256, Pascal VOC 2007, and Pascal VOC 2012 standard datasets. On the Pascal VOC 2012 dataset, the proposed DCCNN model achieves an overall labeling accuracy of up to 93.4% after 100 training iterations: 8.9% higher than the CNN and 15% higher than the traditional method. A similar accuracy can be achieved by the CNN only after 2,500 training iterations. On the 50,000-image dataset from Caltech-256 and Pascal VOC 2012, the performance of the DCCNN is relatively stable; it achieves an average labeling accuracy above 93%. In contrast, the CNN reaches an accuracy of only 91% even after extended training. Furthermore, the proposed DCCNN achieves a labeling accuracy for low-frequency words approximately 10% higher than that of the CNN, which further verifies the reliability of the proposed model in this study.

Analysis of the placenta is extremely useful for evaluating health risks of the mother and baby after delivery. In this paper, we tackle the problem of automatic morphological characterization of placentas, including the tasks of placenta image segmentation, umbilical cord insertion point localization, and maternal/fetal side classification. We curated an existing dataset consisting of around 1,000 placenta images taken at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, together with their pixel-level segmentation map. We propose a novel pipeline, PlacentaNet, which consists of three encoder-decoder convolutional neural networks with a shared encoder, to address these morphological characterization tasks by employing a transfer learning training strategy. We evaluated its effectiveness using the curated dataset as well as the pathology reports in the medical record. The system produced accurate morphological characterization, which enabled subsequent feature analysis of placentas. In particular, we show promising results for detection of retained placenta (i.e., incomplete placenta) and umbilical cord insertion type categorization, both of which may possess clinical impact.

Let $\pi$ be a genuine cuspidal representation of the metaplectic group of rank $n$. We consider the theta lifts to the orthogonal group associated to a quadratic space of dimension $2n+1$. We show a case of regularised Rallis inner product formula that relates the pairing of theta lifts to the central value of the Langlands $L$-function of $\pi$ twisted by a character. The bulk of this paper focuses on proving a case of regularised Siegel-Weil formula, on which the Rallis inner product formula is based and whose proof is missing in the literature.

Following the idea of [GJS09] for orthogonal groups, we introduce a new family of period integrals for cuspidal automorphic representations σ of unitary groups and investigate their relation with the occurrence of a simple global Arthur parameter ( χ , b ) in the global Arthur parameter ψ σ associated to σ, by the endoscopic classification of Arthur [Art13] , [Mok13] , [KMSW14] . The argument uses the theory of theta correspondence. This can be viewed as a part of the ( χ , b ) -theory outlined in [Jia14] and can be regarded as a refinement of the theory of theta correspondences and poles of certain L-functions, which was outlined in [Ral91] .

Introduction: Cancer immunotherapies have rapidly advanced in recent years and are revolutionizing cancer care. Among them, cancer vaccines are an attractive treatment approach because they may represent a specific, safe, and well tolerated therapy as well as the potential to overcome drug resistance and achieve durable response. Currently, personalized mRNA cancer vaccines are being actively pursued in clinical trials. However, only a few universal mRNA cancer vaccines have been investigated. This study assessed the antitumor efficacy of universal mRNA cancer vaccines targeting three tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) in CT26.WT-CEA syngeneic tumors, as well as KPC (KrasG12D; Trp53KO; Pdx1-cre) MuPrime™ tumors. Methods: We have designed 27 epitopes against 3 TAAs, cloned into 4 DNA constructs in different combinations for mRNA synthesis by in vitro transcription (IVT). Prophylactic and therapeutic efficacy studies were carried out using CT26.WT-CEA tumor bearing mice with vaccine monotherapy or its combination with an anti-PD-1 antibody. At the end of the efficacy phase, mouse splenocytes were collected from half of the treated animals to measure peptide-specific IFN-γ production by ELISpot assay. In the remaining tumor-free mice, we re-grafted CT26.WT-CEA and parental CT26.WT (1st re-challenge) or a different syngeneic line H22 (2nd re-challenge), which shares two common antigens with CT26.WT. Finally, we selected the most efficacious mRNA vaccine to assess its efficacy in treating pancreatic KPC tumors. Results: While anti-PD-1 monotherapy led to ~80% TGI, its combination with mRNA vaccines resulted in complete eradication of CT26.WT-CEA tumors in both prevention and intervention settings. In the ELISpot assay, splenocytes from vaccine treated mice showed significantly increased IFN-γ secreting cells after co-culture with specific peptides, in comparison to splenocytes from treatment naïve mice indicating existence of antigen specific CD8+ T cells. In the serial re-challenge studies, the vaccine treated, tumor-free mice showed no tumor growth in 2 rounds of re-challenge, either with the same tumor line (CT26.WT-CEA), its parental line (CT26.WT), or a different syngeneic line (H22), suggesting durable tumor growth inhibition by memory T cells after vaccine therapy. This universal mRNA cancer vaccine also demonstrated robust TGI against KPC tumors. Conclusions: We demonstrated the effectiveness of universal mRNA cancer vaccines targeting different epitopes of multiple common tumor antigens in various mouse tumor models, including hard-to-treat KPC tumors. We are now performing toxicology studies using rats and NHPs to move the universal mRNA cancer vaccines toward IND filing. Citation Format: Chenyan Wu, Tina Tingting Zhang, Xuefei Yan, Ying Jin, Henry Q. X. Li, Davy Xuesong Ouyang. Efficacy proof of concept studies with universal mRNA vaccines in various mouse tumor models [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 4575.

With the rapid development of the Internet and the increasing popularity of mobile devices, the availability of digital image resources is increasing exponentially. How to rapidly and effectively retrieve and organize image information has been a hot issue that urgently must be solved. In the field of image retrieval, image auto-annotation remains a basic and challenging task. Targeting the drawbacks of the low accuracy rate and high memory resource consumption of current multilabel annotation methods, this study proposed a CM-supplement network model. This model combines the merits of cavity convolutions, Inception modules and a supplement network. The replacement of common convolutions with cavity convolutions enlarged the receptive field without increasing the number of parameters. The incorporation of Inception modules enables the model to extract image features at different scales with less memory consumption than before. The adoption of the supplement network enables the model to obtain the negative features of images. After 100 training iterations on the PASCAL VOC 2012 dataset, the proposed model achieved an overall annotation accuracy rate of 94.5%, which increased by 10.0 and 1.1 percentage points compared with the traditional convolution neural network (CNN) and double-channel CNN (DCCNN). After stabilization, this model achieved an accuracy of up to 96.4%. Moreover, the number of parameters in the DCCNN was more than 1.5 times that of the CM-supplement network. Without increasing the amount of memory resources consumed, the proposed CM-supplement network can achieve comparable or even better annotation effects than a DCCNN.

Owing to its excellent properties, titanium boride (TiB2) has drawn considerable attention. This study focuses on in-situ synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the surfaces of TiB2 particles by using Co as a catalyst in catalytic chemical vapor deposition to improve the toughness of TiB2 through the toughening effect of CNTs. Analyses of crystal structure, phase and microstructure confirm the successful grafting of CNTs on TiB2 matrix. Carbon yield is also calculated to estimate the effects of carbon deposition. Raman spectroscopy indicates that the CNTs grafted on TiB2 at 850 °C for 150 min exhibit low ID/IG, suggesting satisfactory quantity and quality of CNTs. An appropriate increase in synthesis temperature can promote the rapid growth of CNTs at the beginning, extending the growth time of CNTs. Meanwhile, sufficient growth time would allow the process of carbon precursor conversion to CNTs, enhancing the purity and graphitization of CNTs.

Correction for ‘A facile template-free synthesis of Bi2Sn2O7 with flower-like hierarchical architecture for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity’ by Chenyan Wu et al., New J. Chem., 2020, 44, 11196–11202, DOI: 10.1039/D0NJ01690J.

In this paper, we introduce a new family of period integrals attached to irreducible cuspidal automorphic representations $\sigma$ of symplectic groups $\mathrm{Sp}_{2n}(\mathbb{A})$, which detects the right-most pole of the $L$-function $L(s,\sigma\times\chi)$ for some character $\chi$ of $F^\times\backslash\mathbb{A}^\times$ of order at most $2$, and hence the occurrence of a simple global Arthur parameter $(\chi,b)$ in the global Arthur parameter $\psi$ attached to $\sigma$. We also give a characterisation of first occurrences of theta correspondence by (regularised) period integrals of residues of certain Eisenstein series., Comment: Making the corrected/accepted version available

This paper studies a class of Abelian varieties that are of $\mathrm{GL}_2$-type and with isogenous classes defined over a number field $k$ (i.e., $k$-virtual). We treat both cases when their endomorphism algebras are (1) a totally real field $K$ or (2) a totally indefinite quaternion algebra over a totally real field $K$. Among the isogenous class of such an Abelian variety, we identify one whose Galois conjugates can be described in terms of Atkin-Lehner operators and certain action of the class group of $K$. We deduce that such Abelian varieties are parametrised by finite quotients of certain PEL Shimura varieties. These new families of moduli spaces are further analysed when they are of dimension $2$. We provide explicit numerical bounds for when they are surfaces of general type. In addition, for two particular examples, we calculate precisely the coordinates of inequivalent elliptic points, study intersections of certain Hirzebruch cycles with exceptional divisors. We are able to show that they are both rational surfaces.

This article shows that for unitary dual reductive pairs the first occurrence of theta lift of an irreducible cuspidal automorphic representation is irreducible. It also proves a refined tower property for theta lifts and the involutive property for twisted theta lifts., Comment: Journal of Number Theory 2013

Familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCHL, MIM-144250) is a common, multifactorial and heterogeneous dyslipidemia predisposing to premature coronary artery disease1,2 and characterized by elevated plasma triglycerides, cholesterol, or both3,4. We identified a mutant mouse strain, HcB-19/Dem (HcB-19), that shares features with FCHL, including hypertriglyceridemia, hypercholesterolemia, elevated plasma apolipoprotein B and increased secretion of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins5. The hyperlipidemia results from spontaneous mutation at a locus, Hyplip1, on distal mouse chromosome 3 in a region syntenic with a 1q21–q23 FCHL locus identified in Finnish, German, Chinese and US families6,7,8. We fine-mapped Hyplip1 to roughly 160 kb, constructed a BAC contig and sequenced overlapping BACs to identify 13 candidate genes. We found substantially decreased mRNA expression for thioredoxin interacting protein (Txnip). Sequencing of the critical region revealed a Txnip nonsense mutation in HcB-19 that is absent in its normolipidemic parental strains. Txnip encodes a cytoplasmic protein that binds and inhibits thioredoxin, a major regulator of cellular redox state. The mutant mice have decreased CO2 production but increased ketone body synthesis, suggesting that altered redox status down-regulates the citric-acid cycle, sparing fatty acids for triglyceride and ketone body production. These results reveal a new pathway of potential clinical significance that contributes to plasma lipid metabolism.

Miyoshi myopathy (MM) is an adult onset, recessive inherited distal muscular dystrophy that we have mapped to human chromosome 2p13. We recently constructed a 3-Mb P1-derived artificial chromosome (PAC) contig spanning the MM candidate region. This clarified the order of genetic markers across the MM locus, provided five new polymorphic markers within it and narrowed the locus to approximately 2 Mb. Five skeletal muscle expressed sequence tags (ESTs) map in this region. We report that one of these is located in a novel, full-length 6.9-kb muscle cDNA, and we designate the corresponding protein 'dysferlin'. We describe nine mutations in the dysferlin gene in nine families; five are predicted to prevent dysferlin expression. Identical mutations in the dysferlin gene can produce more than one myopathy phenotype (MM, limb girdle dystrophy, distal myopathy with anterior tibial onset).

Miyoshi myopathy (MM) and limb-girdle muscular dystrophy subtype 2B (LGMD2B) map to the same region on chromosome 2p13. To facilitate the cloning of the defective gene causing these two diseases, we used a combination of chromosome walking and expressed sequence tag (EST) screening and identified 864 P1-derived artificial chromosomes (PACs) whose inserts map to the MM/LGMD2B candidate region and surrounding areas. Among them, 139 are from a chromosome 2-specific PAC library and 725 are from a total genomic PAC library. A 3-Mb contig spanning the candidate region for MM/LGMD2B was assembled. This contig contains 200 PACs, 10 known genetic markers, 5 new polymorphic markers, 57 sequence tagged sites (STSs) generated from PAC end fragments, and 4 random STSs. In addition, we mapped 24 ESTs to this contig and excluded 37 ESTs from the contig, thus eliminating them as candidate MM/LGMD2B genes. The high-resolution, sequence-ready PAC contig for the MM/LGMD2B region provides a backbone for the identification of the disease gene(s) and for clarification of the relationship between the two diseases.