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License plate detection and recognition using hierarchical feature layers from CNN

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Abstract

In recent years, a variety of systems using deep convolutional neural network (CNN) approaches have achieved good performance on license plate detection and character recognition. However, most of these systems are not stable when the scenes changed, specification of each hierarchical layer to get the final detection result, which can detect multi-scale license plates from an input image. Meanwhile, at the stage of character recognition, data annotation is heavy and time-consuming, giving rise to a large burden on training a better model. We devise an algorithm to generate annotated training data automatically and approximate the data from the real scenes. Our system used for detecting license plate achieves 99.99% mean average precision (mAP) on OpenITS datasets. Character recognition also sees high accuracy, thus verifying the superiority of our method.


Laparoscopic radical cystectomy with pelvic re-peritonealization: the technique and initial clinical outcomes

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Abstract

Background

Delayed bowel function recovery and postoperative ileus are relatively serious complications of laparoscopic radical cystectomy (LRC). Our study aimed to determine whether performing pelvic re-peritonealization reduces the incidence of these complications.

Methods

Clinical data of 78 patients who had undergone LRC with pelvic re-peritonealization from August 2015 to December 2017 were retrospectively collected and compared with those of 92 patients who had undergone LRC alone between January 2013 and July 2015 in our institution. Differences in duration of surgery, estimated blood loss, time to recovery of bowel function, the complications of intestinal and blood vessel injury, and incidence of postoperative ileus between the two groups were analyzed.

Results

Baseline characteristics such as age, sex and BMI were balanced between the two groups. There were no significant differences in duration of surgery (P = 0.072), estimated blood loss (P = 0.717), or incidence of intestinal obstruction (P = 0.225) between the two groups. Interestingly, patients who had undergone pelvic re-peritonealization recovered bowel function more rapidly than those had not (2.79 d vs. 3.72 d, P = 0.001). Additionally, hospitalization stay was significantly shorter for patients with re-peritonealization than for those without (5.46 d vs. 6.68 d, P = 0.029).

Conclusions

Compared with LRC alone, LRC with pelvic re-peritonealization as described in the present study had comparable perioperative complications, but was associated with more rapid gastrointestinal recovery and shorter hospitalization stay.

Regeneration of commercial SCR catalyst deactivated by arsenic poisoning in coal-fired power plants

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Abstract

Arsenic species, which are inevitable components in flue gas from the coal combustion process, will result in severe deactivation of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to regenerate the arsenic-poisoned commercial V2O5-MoO3/TiO2 catalyst collected from coal-fired power plants, including ammonia washing, H2 reduction, and air calcination. Activity tests indicated that the proposed method could recover the catalyst activity more than 96% of the fresh catalyst. Furthermore, detailed characterizations results indicated that this regeneration method could not only effectively remove the arsenic species, but also recover the active constituents of the catalysts to a considerable level. The proposed method offers a feasible strategy for the regeneration of poisoned commercial SCR catalysts and can effectively reduce the total denitrification cost for coal-fired power plants.

The “hyper-triglyceridemic waist phenotype” is a reliable marker for prediction of accumulation of abdominal visceral fat in Chinese adults

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Abstract

Purpose

The “hyper-triglyceridemic waist (HTW) phenotype” is relatively convenient to identify, acquired readily, and is inexpensive. We explored the relationship between the HTW phenotype and abdominal-fat accumulation in Chinese adults.

Methods

The study cohort comprised 195 adults divided into four groups according to triglyceride (TG) concentration and waist circumference (WC): normal (A), “hyper-TG” (B), “hyper-WC” (C) and the HTW phenotype (D). The abdominal-fat compartment was measured by magnetic resonance imaging. A 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was administered after an overnight fast. Clinical, anthropometric and laboratory data were analyzed.

Results

Individuals with the HTW phenotype had the highest WC, Conicity Index, waist:hip ratio and abdominal visceral fat (AVF) area, and the highest TG and uric-acid concentrations among the four groups. People with the HTW phenotype were older, had higher blood pressure than those with normal WC (groups A and B). In the OGTT, participants with the HTW phenotype had the highest insulin resistance and lowest insulin sensitivity. In binary logistic regression analysis, age, sex, Body Mass Index, high concentrations of density lipoprotein-cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, and the HTW phenotype were independent risk factors for predicting AVF accumulation with a sensitivity of 81.08% and specificity of 90.91%.

Conclusions

Chinese adults with the HTW phenotype had the highest AVF area and insulin resistance, and were associated with higher blood pressure than individuals with normal WC. The HTW phenotype is a reliable marker for prediction of AVF accumulation associated with insulin resistance.

Level of evidence

IV.

Predicting the pathological response to chemoradiotherapy of non-mucinous rectal cancer using pretreatment texture features based on intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted imaging

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Abstract

Objectives

To investigate the performance of the mean parametric values and texture features based on intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted imaging (IVIM-DWI) on identifying pathological complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC).

Methods

Pretreatment IVIM-DWI was performed on 41 LARC patients receiving nCRT in this prospective study. The values of IVIM-DWI parameters (apparent diffusion coefficient, ADC; pure diffusion coefficient, D; pseudo-diffusion coefficient, D* and perfusion fraction, f), the first-order, and gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) texture features were compared between the pCR (n = 9) and non-pathological responder (non-pCR, n = 32) groups. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves in univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were generated to determine the efficiency for identifying pCR.

Results

The values of IVIM-DWI parameters and first-order texture features did not show significant differences between the pCR and non-pCR groups. The pCR group had lower Contrast and DifVarnc values extracted from the ADC, D, and D* maps, respectively, as well as lower CorrelatD value. Higher CorrelatD*, Correlatf, SumAvergADC, and SumAvergD values were observed in the pCR group. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) values for the individual predictors in univariate analysis ranged from 0.698 to 0.837, with sensitivities from 43.75% to 87.50% and specificities from 66.67 to 100.00%. In multivariate analysis, CorrelatD* (P < 0.001), DifVarncADC (P = 0.024), and DifVarncD (P < 0.001) were the independent predictors to pCR, with an AUC of 0.986, a sensitivity of 93.75%, and a specificity of 100.00%.

Conclusion

Pretreatment GLCM analysis based on IVIM-DWI may be a potential approach to identify the pathological response of LARC.

Insight into the mechanism of secondary reactions in cellulose pyrolysis: interactions between levoglucosan and acetic acid

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Abstract

Biomass pyrolysis process involves complex primary and secondary decomposition reactions which together determine the final pyrolytic product distribution. Carboxylic acids produced by primary pyrolysis have significant influences on the secondary reactions, whereas the specific manifestation of these influences has not been determined. In this work, acetic acid (AA) and levoglucosan (LG) are selected as the research objects to explore the influence of carboxylic acids on secondary pyrolysis process, considering AA is usually the most abundant carboxylic acid product, while LG is the major depolymerization product of cellulose as well as the representative of polyhydroxy compounds. The interaction mechanisms between them are investigated by density functional theory calculation. The results indicate that there are four types of important interactions between AA and LG, namely esterification reactions, organic redox reactions, AA-catalyzed LG dehydration reactions, LG-catalyzed AA decomposition reactions. These interaction reactions are more competitive than the unimolecular decomposition reactions of AA and LG. Moreover, AA-catalyzed dehydration reactions dominate interaction reactions.

Graphical abstract

Hypertriglyceridemic waist phenotype and abnormal glucose metabolism: a system review and meta-analysis

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Abstract

Objective

This study was to perform a meta-analysis to assess the relationship between hypertriglyceridemic-waist (HTW) phenotype and abnormal glucose metabolism.

Methods

The data sources were PubMed and EMBASE up to June 2018. Studies providing the relationship between HTW phenotype and abnormal glucose metabolism were included.

Results

In total, 48 eligible studies that evaluated 2,42,879 subjects were included in the meta-analysis. In the general population, the pooled odds ratios (ORs) for elevated blood glucose and diabetes related to HTW phenotype was 2.32 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.98–2.71) and 2.69 (95% CI: 2.40–3.01), respectively. In cohort studies, the pooled OR for diabetes related to HTW phenotype was 2.89 (95% CI: 1.97–4.25) in subjects without diabetes. The levels of homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in the HTW population were increased with values of mean differences (MD) 1.12 (95% CI: 0.81–1.43. P < 0.00001, I2 = 99%) in the general population and 0.89 (95% CI: 0.75–1.04, P < 0.00001, I2 = 67%) in subjects without diabetes.

Conclusion

HTW phenotype was closely associated with increased risk of abnormal glucose metabolism. There was also a significant correlation between HTW phenotype and insulin resistance.

The Analysis of the New Energy Buses Operating Condition in the North China

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Abstract

In recent year, new energy buses have been highly developed in supported by the new energy policy in our government. Only accurately know the Operating condition of the new energy buses, it would be better helping for the new energy buses production, application and so on. Besides the vehicles own characteristics, their operating condition are influenced by the operating environment, such as atmospheric pressure, climate, load and so on. Therefore, the research about the new energy buses in the north China whose altitude is high and whose temperature is low is carried on. By means of GPS speed sensor and vehicle terminal, the data of new energy buses is timely collected. Depending on the SPSS software, based on the principal component analysis and K means clustering method, three typical working conditions are achieved. There are suburbs road condition, urban bus lanes condition and urban congested road condition.


Correction to: Regeneration of commercial SCR catalyst deactivated by arsenic poisoning in coal-fired power plants

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The article Regeneration of commercial SCR catalyst deactivated by arsenic poisoning in coal-fired power plants, written by Qiang Lu*,†, Zulfiqar Ali*, Hao Tang*, Tahir Iqbal*, Zulqarnain Arain**, Min-shu Cui*, Ding-jia Liu*, Wen-yan Li*, and Yong-ping Yang*, was originally published on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SPringerLink) on 08 February 2019 with misprinted DOI number, 10.1007/s11814-018-0227-9, due to the technical error from converting manuscript file from Microsoft Word to PDF. The correct DOI number for the article is 10.1007/s11814-019-0314-y.

ElectricVIS: visual analysis system for power supply data of smart city

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Abstract

Smart grids provide a key driver for smart city development. The smart city power supply data visualization can realize the power characteristic information of various attributes and operating states in the online monitoring data of massive power equipments in a graphical and visual presentation, which provides a powerful guarantee for timely and effective monitoring and analysis of equipment operating status. However, with the rapid development of smart cities, the complexity of urban power data and the ever-increasing amount of data hinder the power managers’ understanding and analysis of the power supply situation. Based on the smart city power supply data, a novel visual analysis system ElectricVis for urban power supply situation is proposed, which can interactively analyze large-scale urban power supply data. ElectricVis reduces the difficulty of understanding urban power supply situations by adopting novel visual graphic designs and time patterns that display power data in multiple scales. ElectricVis also provides different visual views and interaction methods for interrelated hierarchical data in urban power data, which is critical for detecting the cause of anomalous data. Finally, we evaluated our system through case studies and analysis by power experts.

METTL3 promote tumor proliferation of bladder cancer by accelerating pri-miR221/222 maturation in m6A-dependent manner

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Abstract

Background

METTL3 is known to be involved in all stages in the life cycle of RNA. It affects the tumor formation by the regulation the m6A modification in the mRNAs of critical oncogenes or tumor suppressors. In bladder cancer, METTL3 could promote the bladder cancer progression via AFF4/NF-κB/MYC signaling network by an m6A dependent manner. Recently, METTL3 was also found to affect the m6A modification in non-coding RNAs including miRNAs, lincRNAs and circRNAs. However, whether this mechanism is related to the proliferation of tumors induced by METTL3 is not reported yet.

Methods

Quantitative real-time PCR, western blot and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the expression of METTL3 in bladder cancer. The survival analysis was adopted to explore the association between METTL3 expression and the prognosis of bladder cancer. Bladder cancer cells were stably transfected with lentivirus and cell proliferation and cell cycle, as well as tumorigenesis in nude mice were performed to assess the effect of METTL3 in bladder cancer. RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP), co-immunoprecipitations and RNA m6A dot blot assays were conducted to confirm that METTL3 interacted with the microprocessor protein DGCR8 and modulated the pri-miR221/222 process in an m6A-dependent manner. Luciferase reporter assay was employed to identify the direct binding sites of miR221/222 with PTEN. Colony formation assay and CCK8 assays were conducted to confirm the function of miR-221/222 in METTL3-induced cell growth in bladder cancer.

Results

We confirmed the oncogenic role of METTL3 in bladder cancer by accelerating the maturation of pri-miR221/222, resulting in the reduction of PTEN, which ultimately leads to the proliferation of bladder cancer. Moreover, we found that METTL3 was significantly increased in bladder cancer and correlated with poor prognosis of bladder cancer patients.

Conclusions

Our findings suggested that METTL3 may have an oncogenic role in bladder cancer through interacting with the microprocessor protein DGCR8 and positively modulating the pri-miR221/222 process in an m6A-dependent manner. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study that METTL3 affected the tumor formation by the regulation the m6A modification in non-coding RNAs, which might provide fresh insights into bladder cancer therapy.

Trajectory splicing

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Abstract

With continued development of location-based systems, large amounts of trajectories become available which record moving objects’ locations across time. If the trajectories collected by different location-based systems come from the same moving object, they are spliceable trajectories, which contribute to representing holistic behaviors of the moving object. In this paper, we consider how to efficiently identify spliceable trajectories. More specifically, we first formalize a spliced model to capture spliceable trajectories where their times are disjoint, and the distances between them are close. Next, to efficiently implement the model, we design three components: a disjoint time index, a directed acyclic graph of sub-trajectory location connections, and two splice algorithms. The disjoint time index saves a disjoint time set of each trajectory for querying disjoint time trajectories efficiently. The directed acyclic graph contributes to discovering groups of spliceable trajectories. Based on the identified groups, the splice algorithm findmaxCTR finds maximal groups containing all spliceable trajectories. Although the splice algorithm is efficient in some practical applications, its running time is exponential. Therefore, an approximate algorithm findApproxMaxCTR is proposed to find trajectories which can be spliced with each other with a certain probability within polynomial run time. Finally, experiments on two datasets demonstrate that the model and its components are effective and efficient.

Expectation-based 3D edge bundling

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Abstract

In the visualization of the node-link graph, it is common to use edge-bundling algorithms to reduce the visual clutter caused by the increase in nodes and connections while reflecting the high-level structure of the graph. However, the traditional force-directed edge-bundling method has unstable gravitation when applied in three dimensions. To address this issue, we propose an edge-bundling algorithm based on the expectation model, and the edge-bundling rules can be modularized to support the addition of calculation rules. The stability of the proposed method is improved. Our experimental results with 2D and 3D scenarios demonstrate that our algorithm produces superior results that unclutter complex graphs.

An Email Visualization System Based on Event Analysis

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Abstract

E-mail has a wealth of information, including work topics, interactions between people, and the evolution of events over time. The emails will give users a better understanding that how things have changed and evolved in the past. Much of the effort to visualize email has focused on three areas of email archiving: exploring the relationship between email volumes, mining the evolution of topics and events in emails, or the relationship of email owners to their counterparts. But there are currently fewer systems for analyzing their background stories through mail dataset. In this paper, we present the Mail event, which is an email visualization system. Its main purpose is to help users analyze the main information in the mail data set, such as keywords, topics, and event contents of the mail. Firstly, it helps users understand the keywords and themes of the mail through a variety of different attempts. Secondly, the way the email is matched into an event allows the user to understand the story of the email corresponding to the email at a certain point in time so that users can deeply understand the story behind the email. In this system, through rich visual elements, users can understand the e-mail dataset and have a further understanding of the development of events and their anomalies, so as to better coordinate or improve future work. Finally, the effectiveness of the system is verified by case studies and user evaluation experiments.

Fast Pyrolysis of Corn Stalks at Different Growth Stages to Selectively Produce 4-Vinyl Phenol and 5-Hydroxymethyl Furfural

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Abstract

Fast pyrolysis of specific corn stalk (CS) materials offered a promising and convenient way to selectively produce two valuable compounds, i.e., 4-vinyl phenol (4-VP) and 5-hydroxymethyl furfural (5-HMF). In this study, CSs at five different growth stages were prepared, including trefoil stage (30 days), elongation stage (70 days), heading stage (80 days), ripening stage (100 days) and full ripening stage (120 days). Moreover, three fractions were separated from CSs except the CS of trefoil stage, including leaf, stem bark and stalk pulp. Fast pyrolysis of CSs were performed via pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) technique. The results indicated that the pyrolytic characteristics of these CSs differed greatly from each other. 4-VP and 5-HMF were the two major products at low pyrolysis temperatures. Stem bark at elongation stage was the best feedstock for selective production of 4-VP, with a yield of 4.98 wt% at 300 °C. Stalk pulp at ripening stage was optimal for selective production of 5-HMF, with a yield of 4.87 wt% at 300 °C. In addition, a brief mechanism exploitation for the formation of 4-VP and 5-HMF was also conducted with the aid of CS sample characterization.

Graphical Abstract


Evaluation on visualization methods of dynamic collaborative relationships for project management

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Abstract

Using visualization methods to describe collaborative relationships can form a more intuitive and conducive graphical representation of these relationships, helping us better understand and analyze complex dynamic collaborative relationships. To explore a suitable visualization form for collaborative relationship analysis, we propose a task classification method to evaluate the two visual methods (node-link and adjacency matrix) which represent the static features and the three methods (animation, small multiples, and timeline) which represent the time characteristics of dynamic graphs. We present an evaluation system and design a task-based user evaluation experiment with the Dutch railway project data. By collecting and analyzing task completion time and error rates, we summarize our findings from the evaluation experiment and list three key recommendations to provide preliminary clues to visual designers: (1) Node-link has a better performance on small-scale project management. (2) Timeline has more advantages in the expression of project time management. (3) Animation will be a good choice when you need to check the status of tasks in the project management for a period of time. These findings can help the designers discover faster and more accurate ways to visualize the characteristics and changes of collaborative relationships, thus promoting the smooth progress of collaborative work.

Electric field-driven building blocks for introducing multiple gradients to hydrogels

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Abstract

Gradient biomaterials are considered as preferable matrices for tissue engineering due to better simulation of native tissues. The introduction of gradient cues usually needs special equipment and complex process but is only effective to limited biomaterials. Incorporation of multiple gradients in the hydrogels remains challenges. Here, beta-sheet rich silk nanofibers (BSNF) were used as building blocks to introduce multiple gradients into different hydrogel systems through the joint action of crosslinking and electric field. The blocks migrated to the anode along the electric field and gradually stagnated due to the solution-hydrogel transition of the systems, finally achieving gradient distribution of the blocks in the formed hydrogels. The gradient distribution of the blocks could be tuned easily through changing different factors such as solution viscosity, which resulted in highly tunable gradient of mechanical cues. The blocks were also aligned under the electric field, endowing orientation gradient simultaneously. Different cargos could be loaded on the blocks and form gradient cues through the same crosslinking-electric field strategy. The building blocks could be introduced to various hydrogels such as Gelatin and NIPAM, indicating the universality. Complex niches with multiple gradient cues could be achieved through the strategy. Silk-based hydrogels with suitable mechanical gradients were fabricated to control the osteogenesis and chondrogenesis. Chondrogenic-osteogenic gradient transition was obtained, which stimulated the ectopic osteochondral tissue regeneration in vivo. The versatility and highly controllability of the strategy as well as multifunction of the building blocks reveal the applicability in complex tissue engineering and various interfacial tissues.

A Reading Assistant System for Blind People Based on Hand Gesture Recognition

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Abstract

A reading assistant system for blind people based on hand gesture recognition is proposed in this paper. This system consists of seven modules: camera input module, page adjustment module, page information retrieval module, hand pose estimation module, hand gesture recognition module, media controller and audio output device. In the page adjustment module, Hough line detection and local OCR (Optical Character Recognition) are used to rectify text orientation. In the hand gesture recognition module, we propose three practical methods: geometry model, heatmap model and keypoint model. Geometry model recognizes different gestures by geometrical characteristics of hand. Heatmap model which is based on image classification algorithm uses CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) to classify various hand gestures. To simplify the networks in heatmap model, we extract 21 keypoints from a hand heatmap and make them a dataset of points coordinates for training classifier. These three methods can get good results of gesture recognition. By recognizing gestures, our designed system can realize perfect reading assistant function.

Measurement of crystalline lens tilt in high myopic eyes before cataract surgery using swept-source optical coherence tomography

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Abstract

Background

To measure the crystalline lens tilt in eyes with various degrees of myopia before cataract surgery using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT).

Methods

We used SS-OCT (IOLMaster 700) to scan 131 emmetropic eyes (axial length < 24.5 mm), 25 mild/moderate myopic eyes (axial length 24.5–26 mm), and 123 high myopic eyes (52, 29, and 42 eyes with axial lengths of 26–28, 28–30, and > 30 mm, respectively) as part of the routine preoperative examination before cataract surgery. SS-OCT involved B-scans along six meridians. The data were analyzed to assess the magnitude and orientation of the lens tilt and their correlation with other optical biometric parameters.

Result

The mean tilt was 3.36 ± 0.98° in emmetropic eyes, 3.07 ± 1.04° in mild/medium myopic eyes, and 2.35 ± 1.01° in high myopic eyes. Tilt correlated significantly and inversely with axial length (Pearson’s r = − 0.427, P < 0.001). The crystalline lens tilt predominantly faced the upper outer quadrant relative to the visual axis, symmetrically in both eyes, with mean angles of 24.32° and 147.36° in the right and left eyes, respectively. The variability in the lens tilt direction increased with increasing axial length (χ2 test, P < 0.001).

Conclusion

The magnitude of crystalline lens tilt decreased with increasing axial length. The direction of tilt was predominantly towards the upper outer quadrant in both eyes. The variability in the tilt orientation increased with increasing axial length.

Trial registration

NIH (clinicaltrial.gov), NCT03062085. Registered 23 February 2017.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Image retargeting based on self-learning 3D saliency for content-aware data analysis

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