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Abstract Existing facial expression recognition (FER) methods are mainly devoted to learning discriminative features from normal-light images. However, their performance drops sharply when they are used for low-light images. In this paper, we propose a novel low-light FER framework (termed LL-FER) that can simultaneously enhance the images and recognition tasks of low-light facial expression images. Specifically, we first meticulously design a low-light enhancement network (LLENet) to recover expressions images’ rich detail information. Then, we design a joint loss to train the LLENet with FER network in a cascade manner, so that the FER network can guide the LLENet to gradually perceive and restore discriminative features which are useful for FER during the training process. Extensive experiments show that the LLENet not only achieves competitive results both quantitatively and qualitatively, but also in the LL-FER framework, which can produce results more suitable for FER tasks, further improving the performance of the FER methods.

Abstract Multimodal image fusion aims to integrate information from different imaging techniques to produce a comprehensive, detail-rich single image for downstream vision tasks. Existing methods based on local convolutional neural networks (CNNs) struggle to capture global features efficiently, while Transformer-based models are computationally expensive, although they excel at global modeling. Mamba addresses these limitations by leveraging selective structured state space models (S4) to effectively handle long-range dependencies while maintaining linear complexity. In this paper, we propose FusionMamba, a novel dynamic feature enhancement framework that aims to overcome the challenges faced by CNNs and Vision Transformers (ViTs) in computer vision tasks. The framework improves the visual state-space model Mamba by integrating dynamic convolution and channel attention mechanisms, which not only retains its powerful global feature modeling capability, but also greatly reduces redundancy and enhances the expressiveness of local features. In addition, we have developed a new module called the dynamic feature fusion module (DFFM). It combines the dynamic feature enhancement module (DFEM) for texture enhancement and disparity perception with the cross-modal fusion Mamba module (CMFM), which focuses on enhancing the inter-modal correlation while suppressing redundant information. Experiments show that FusionMamba achieves state-of-the-art performance in a variety of multimodal image fusion tasks as well as downstream experiments, demonstrating its broad applicability and superiority.

Abstract Inference using skeleton to steer RGB videos is applicable to fine‐grained activities in indoor human action recognition (IHAR). However, existing methods that explore only spatial alignment are prone to bias, resulting in limited performance. The authors propose a Three‐stage Guidance (3sG) framework, leveraging skeleton knowledge to promote RGB in three stages. First, a soft shading image is proposed for alleviating background noise in videos, allowing the network to directly focus more on the motion region. Second, the authors propose to extract RGB frames of interest to reduce the computational effort. Furthermore, to explore more fully the complementary information between skeletons and RGB, the skeleton is coupled to the frame representation in a different spatial–temporal sharing pattern. Third, the global skeleton and skeleton‐guided RGB features are fed into the shared classifiers, which approximate the logit distributions of the two to enhance the performance in RGB unimodal. Finally, a fusion strategy that utilizes two learnable parameters to adaptively integrate the skeleton with the RGB is proposed. 3sG outperforms the state‐of‐the‐art results on the Toyota Smarthome dataset while it is more efficient than similar methods on the NTU RGB+D dataset.

Abstract Background Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) provides a mechanism to perform absorbed-dose quantification tasks for $$\alpha$$ α -particle radiopharmaceutical therapies ( $$\alpha$$ α -RPTs). However, quantitative SPECT for $$\alpha$$ α -RPT is challenging due to the low number of detected counts, the complex emission spectrum, and other image-degrading artifacts. Towards addressing these challenges, we propose a low-count quantitative SPECT reconstruction method for isotopes with multiple emission peaks. Methods Given the low-count setting, it is important that the reconstruction method extracts the maximal possible information from each detected photon. Processing data over multiple energy windows and in list-mode (LM) format provide mechanisms to achieve that objective. Towards this goal, we propose a list-mode multi energy window (LM-MEW) ordered-subsets expectation–maximization-based SPECT reconstruction method that uses data from multiple energy windows in LM format and include the energy attribute of each detected photon. For computational efficiency, we developed a multi-GPU-based implementation of this method. The method was evaluated using 2-D SPECT simulation studies in a single-scatter setting conducted in the context of imaging [ $$^{223}$$ 223 Ra]RaCl $${_2}$$ 2 , an FDA-approved RPT for metastatic prostate cancer. Results The proposed method yielded improved performance on the task of estimating activity uptake within known regions of interest in comparison to approaches that use a single energy window or use binned data. The improved performance was observed in terms of both accuracy and precision and for different sizes of the region of interest. Conclusions Results of our studies show that the use of multiple energy windows and processing data in LM format with the proposed LM-MEW method led to improved quantification performance in low-count SPECT of isotopes with multiple emission peaks. These results motivate further development and validation of the LM-MEW method for such imaging applications, including for $$\alpha$$ α -RPT SPECT.

Over the past decade, the alternative fuel vehicle industry in the world has sprung up with huge speed. For example, the annual output has increased from less than 2000 vehicles to now 3,500,000 vehicles in China. It enjoys more than 50% of the market share worldwide in the global market. A spurt of progress in the alternative fuel vehicle industry has built a foundation for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. Financial leasing has unique advantages which not only can provide guarantees for this industry in many aspects concerning related equipment, systems and infrastructures but also offer financial support for green projects. Nevertheless, financial leasing firms are encountering a string of problems to solve, such as selecting optimal green projects and cooperative businesses, designing transaction structures, and controlling project risks. This study contains several main sections: connecting the incremental alternative fuel vehicle investment and purchase project of a leading regional enterprise; building the structure of the financial leasing project; and analyzing the project leasing property using a fuzzy logic model, the financial structure and the repayment capacity of the project main company so as to comprehensively evaluate the feasibility of the project. This paper aims to provide a reference for future financing of alternative fuel vehicle operation enterprises with a real case study. The case study results show that our introduced fuzzy logic method can obtain the satisfying performance and traffic allocation.

Summary: Organs-on-chips are microfluidic devices for cell culturing to simulate tissue- or organ-level physiology, providing new solutions other than traditional animal tests. Here, we describe a microfluidic platform consisting of human corneal cells and compartmentalizing channels to achieve fully integrated human cornea’s barrier effects on the chip. We detail steps to verify the barrier effects and physiological phenotypes of microengineered human cornea. Then, we use the platform to evaluate the corneal epithelial wound repair process.For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Yu et al. (2022).1 : Publisher’s note: Undertaking any experimental protocol requires adherence to local institutional guidelines for laboratory safety and ethics.

Aim: Myopia is a common chronic eye disease, this study is to investigate the effects of exogenous retinoic acid (RA) on intraocular parameters, especially choroidal thickness (CT) and retinal thickness (RT), in guinea pigs with form deprivation myopia (FDM).Methods: A total of 80 male guinea pigs were divided randomly into 4 groups: Control, FDM, FDM + RA, and FDM + Citral groups. The FDM + RA group was given 24 mg/kg RA dissolved in 0.4 mL peanut oil; the FDM + Citral group was given citral 445 mg/kg dissolved in 0.4 mL peanut oil; The other two groups were given 0.4 mL peanut oil. After 4 weeks, the refractive error (RE), axial length (AL), and intraocular pressure (IOP) of all guinea pigs were measured, and the parameters of RT and CT were obtained using enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT).Results: After 4 weeks, both the RE and AL in the FDM and FDM + RA groups were increased, and the RT and CT in both groups were smaller than those in the Control group (p < 0.05). Only the IOP of the right eye in the FDM + RA group increased significantly (p < 0.05). The RT of the right eye of the 4 groups was compared: Control group > FDM + Citral group > FDM group > FDM + RA group. Compared with the RT of the left eye and the right eye among the 4 groups, the RT of the right eye in the FDM and FDM + RA groups was significantly less than that in the left eye (p < 0.05). Moreover, the CT of the right eye in the Control group was greater than that in the other three groups (p < 0.0001). There was no significant difference in the CT among the FDM, FDM + RA, and FDM + Citral groups (p > 0.05). In contrast to the RT results, the CT results of the left and right eyes in the FDM + Citral group showed statistically significant differences (p < 0.05).Conclusion: RA participates in the progression of FDM as a regulatory factor. Exogenous RA can increase the RE, AL, and IOP of FDM guinea pigs, and might aggravate the retinal thinning of FDM guinea pigs. Citral can inhibit these changes, but RA might not affect the thickness of the choroid.

Reproductive stage frost poses a major constraint for wheat production in countries such as Australia. However, little progress has been made in identifying key genes to overcome the constraint. In the present study, a severe frost event hit two large-scale field trials consisting of six doubled haploid (DH) wheat populations at reproductive stage (young microspore stage) in Western Australia, leading to the identification of 30 robust frost QTL on 17 chromosomes. The major 18 QTL with the phenotype variation over 9.5% were located on 13 chromosomes including 2A, 2B, 2D, 3A, 4A, 4B, 4D, 5A, 5D, 6D, 7A, 7B and 7D. Most frost QTL were closely linked to the QTL of anthesis, maturity, Zadok stages as well as linked to anthesis related genes. Out of those, six QTL were repetitively detected on the homologous regions on 2B, 4B, 4D, 5A, 5D, 7A in more than two populations. Results showed that the frost damage is associated with alleles of Vrn-A1a, Vrn-D1a, Rht-B1b, Rht-D1b, and the high copy number of Ppd-B1. However, anthesis QTL and anthesis related genes of Vrn-B1a and TaFT3-1B on chromosomes 5B and 1B did not lead to frost damage, indicating that these early-flowering phenotype related genes are compatible with frost tolerance and thus can be utilised in breeding. Our results also indicate that wild-type alleles Rht-B1a and Rht-D1a can be used when breeding for frost-tolerant varieties without delaying flowering time.

Abstract For plants on Earth, the phytohormone auxin is essential for gravitropism-regulated seedling establishment and plant growth. However, little is known about auxin responses under microgravity conditions due to the lack of a tool that can provide an alteration of gravity. In this paper, a microfluidic negative magnetophoretic platform is developed to levitate Arabidopsis seeds in an equilibrium plane where the applied magnetic force compensates for gravitational acceleration. With the benefit of the microfluidic platform to simulate a microgravity environment on-chip, it is found that the auxin response is significantly repressed in levitated seeds. Simulated microgravity statistically interrupts auxin responses in embryos, even after chemical-mediated auxin alterations, illustrating that auxin is a critical factor that mediates the plant response to gravity alteration. Furthermore, pretreatment with an auxin transportation inhibitor (N-1-naphthylphthalamic acid) enables a decrease in the auxin response, which is no longer affected by simulated microgravity, demonstrating that polar auxin transportation plays a vital role in gravity-regulated auxin responses. The presented microfluidic platform provides simulated microgravity conditions in an easy-to-implement manner, helping to study and elucidate how plants correspond to diverse gravity conditions; in the future, this may be developed into a versatile tool for biological study on a variety of samples.

Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are recognized as promising detection biomarkers and attractive delivery vehicles, showing great potential in diagnosis and treatment of diseases. However, the applications of sEVs are usually restricted by their poor secretion amount from donor cells under routine cell culture conditions, which is especially true for mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) due to their limited expansion and early senescence. Here, a microfluidic device is proposed for boosting sEV secretion from MSCs derived from human fetal bone marrow (BM-MSCs). As the cells rapidly pass through a microfluidic channel with a series of narrow squeezing ridges, mechanical stimulation permeabilizes the cell membrane, thus promoting them to secrete more sEVs into extracellular space. In this study, the microfluidic device demonstrates that mechanical-squeezing effect could increase the secretion amount of sEVs from the BM-MSCs by approximately 4-fold, while maintaining cellular growth state of the stem cells. Further, the secreted sEVs are efficiently taken up by immortalized human corneal epithelial cells and accelerate corneal epithelial wound healing in vitro, indicating that this technique wound not affect the functionality of sEVs and demonstrating the application potentials of this technique.

Zitong Yu et al. utilize large-scale field and glasshouse experiments and transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses to explore the impacts of sulphur fertilization on sulphur-deficient wheat crop and its gluten composition. They show that sulphur fertilization increases nitrogen-use efficiency through regulating glutamine synthetase and reduces the amount of gliadin components through mediating the aspartate-family amino acid biosynthesis network.

Summary: Organs-on-chips are microfluidic devices for cell culturing to simulate tissue-level or organ-level physiology and recapitulate their microenvironment, providing new and significant solutions other than traditional animal tests. In vitro testing platforms for ocular biological studies have been increasingly used in preclinical efficacy and toxicity prediction. Here, we developed a microfluidic platform consisting of human corneal cells and porous membrane, replicating the multi-scale structural organization and biological phenotype. We verified the fully integrated human cornea’s barrier effects on the chip. Moreover, we found that extracellular vesicles derived from bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells can significantly accelerate the mild corneal epithelial wound healing, and the decreased expression of matrix metallopeptidase-2 protein indicated that this method effectively inhibits corneal inflammation and angiogenesis. This work improves our ability to simulate the interaction between the human cornea and the external world in vitro and contributes to the future development of new screening platforms for biopharmaceuticals.

Elucidation of the composition, functional characteristics, and formation mechanism of wheat quality is critical for the sustainable development of wheat industry. It is well documented that wheat processing quality is largely determined by its seed storage proteins including glutenins and gliadins, which confer wheat dough with unique rheological properties, making it possible to produce a series of foods for human consumption. The proportion of different gluten components has become an important target for wheat quality improvement. In many cases, the processing quality of wheat is closely associated with the nutritional value and healthy effect of the end-products. The components of wheat seed storage proteins can greatly influence wheat quality and some can even cause intestinal inflammatory diseases or allergy in humans. Genetic and environmental factors have great impacts on seed storage protein synthesis and accumulation, and fertilization and irrigation strategies also greatly affect the seed storage protein content and composition, which together determine the final end-use quality of wheat. This review summarizes the recent progress in research on the composition, function, biosynthesis, and regulatory mechanism of wheat storage proteins and their impacts on wheat end-product quality.

Abstract Background Wheat grain avenin-like proteins (ALPs) belong to a recently discovered class of wheat grain storage protein. ALPs in wheat grains not only have beneficial effects on dough quality but also display antifungal activities, which is a novel observation for wheat storage proteins. Previous studies have shown that ALPs are likely present in the albumin/globulin fractions of total protein extract from wheat flour. However, the accumulation characteristics of these ALPs in the mature wheat grain remains unknown. Results In the present study, a total of 13 ALPs homologs were isolated and characterized in the albumin/globulin fractions of the wheat protein extract. A combination of multiple techniques including RP-HPLC, SDS-PAGE, MALDI-TOF and peptide sequencing were used for accurate separation and identification of individual ALP homolog. The C-terminal TaALP-by-4AL/7DS, TaALP-by-4AL/7AS/7DS, TaALP-bx/4AL/7AS/7DS, TaALP-ay-7DS, TaALP-ay-4AL, TaALP-ax-4AL, TaALP-ax-7AS, and TaALP-ax-7DS, were separated as individual protein bands from wheat flour for the first time. These unique ALPs peptides were mapped to the latest wheat genome assembly in the IWGSC database. The characteristic defence related proteins present in albumin and globulin fractions, such as protein disulfide-isomerase (PDI), grain softness protein (GSP), alpha-amylase inhibitors (AAIs) and endogenous alpha-amylase/subtilisin inhibitor were also found to co-segregate with these identified ALPs, avenin-3 and α-gliadins. The molecular weight range and the electrophoresis segregation properties of ALPs were characterised in comparison with the proteins containing the tryp_alpha_amyl domain (PF00234) and the gliadin domain (PF13016), which play a role in plant immunity and grain quality. We examined the phylogenetic relationships of the AAIs, GSP, avenin-3, α-gliadins and ALPs, based on the alignment of their functional domains. MALDI-TOF profiling indicated the occurrence of certain post-translations modifications (PTMs) in some ALP subunits. Conclusions We reported for the first time the complete profiling of ALPs present in the albumin/globulin fractions of wheat grain protein extracts. We concluded that majority of the ALPs homologs are expressed in wheat grains. We found clear evidence of PTMs in several ALPs peptides. The identification of both gliadin domain (PF13016) and Tryp_alpha_amyl domain (PF00234) in the mature forms of ALPs highlighted the multiple functional properties of ALPs in grain quality and disease resistance.

The introgression from wild relatives have a great potential to broaden the availability of beneficial allelic diversity for crop improvement in breeding programs. Here, we assessed the impact of the introgression from 21 diverse accessions of Aegilops tauschii, the diploid ancestor of the wheat D genome, into 6 hard red winter wheat cultivars on yield and yield component traits. We used 5.2 million imputed D genome SNPs identified by the whole-genome sequencing of parental lines and the sequence-based genotyping of introgression population, including 351 BC1F3:5 lines. Phenotyping data collected from the irrigated and non-irrigated field trials revealed that up to 23% of the introgression lines (ILs) produce more grain than the parents and check cultivars. Based on 16 yield stability statistics, the yield of 12 ILs (3.4%) was stable across treatments, years, and locations; 5 of these lines were also high yielding lines, producing 9.8% more grain than the average yield of check cultivars. The most significant SNP- and haplotype-trait associations were identified on chromosome arms 2DS and 6DL for the spikelet number per spike (SNS), on chromosome arms 2DS, 3DS, 5DS, and 7DS for grain length (GL) and on chromosome arms 1DL, 2DS, 6DL, and 7DS for grain width (GW). The introgression of haplotypes from A. tauschii parents was associated with an increase in SNS, which was positively correlated with a heading date (HD), whereas the haplotypes from hexaploid wheat parents were associated with an increase in GW. We show that the haplotypes on 2DS associated with an increase in the spikelet number and HD are linked with multiple introgressed alleles of Ppd-D1 identified by the whole-genome sequencing of A. tauschii parents. Meanwhile, some introgressed haplotypes exhibited significant pleiotropic effects with the direction of effects on the yield component traits being largely consistent with the previously reported trade-offs, there were haplotype combinations associated with the positive trends in yield. The characterized repertoire of the introgressed haplotypes derived from A. tauschii accessions with the combined positive effects on yield and yield component traits in elite germplasm provides a valuable source of alleles for improving the productivity of winter wheat by optimizing the contribution of component traits to yield.

Based on the modified gravity model and social network analysis method, the paper constructed the economic linkage intensity matrix of 34 prefecture-level cities of Northeast China and analyzed the density and structure of urban linkage networks. The results show that at present, the urban linkage network in the Northeast region is getting closer, and the radiation role of core cities is gradually increasing. However, the degree of regional integration in Northeast China is not high, and some remote cities are still semi-isolated from the network.

A wheat cultivar "Chinese Spring" chromosome substitution line CS-1S(l)(1B), in which the 1B chromosome was substituted by 1S(l) from Aegilops longissima, was developed and found to possess superior dough and breadmaking quality. The molecular mechanism of its super quality conformation is studied in the aspects of high molecular glutenin genes, protein accumulation patterns, glutenin polymeric proteins, protein bodies, starch granules, and protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) and PDI-like protein expressions. Results showed that the introduced HMW-GS 1S(l)×2.3* and 1S(l)y16* in the substitution line possesses long repetitive domain, making both be larger than any known x- and y-type subunits from B genome. The introduced subunit genes were also found to have a higher level of mRNA expressions during grain development, resulting in more HMW-GS accumulation in the mature grains. A higher abundance of PDI and PDI-like proteins was observed which possess a known function of assisting disulfide bond formation. Larger HMW-GS deposited in protein bodies were also found in the substitution line. The CS substitution line is expected to be highly valuable in wheat quality improvement since the novel HMW-GS are located on chromosome 1S(l), making it possible to combine with the known superior D×5+Dy10 subunits encoded by Glu-D1 for developing high quality bread wheat.