Performance optimization of water cycle algorithm for multilevel lupus nephritis image segmentation

Lupus nephritis (LN) is one of the most common and serious clinical manifestations of systemic lupus erythe-matosus (SLE), which causes serious damage to the kidneys of patients. To effectively assist the pathological diagnosis of LN, many researchers utilize a scheme combining multi-threshold image segmentation (MIS) with metaheuristic algorithms (MAs) to classify LN. However, traditional MAs-based MIS methods tend to fall into local optima in the segmentation process and find it difficult to obtain the optimal threshold set. Aiming at this problem, this paper proposes an improved water cycle algorithm (SCWCA) and applies it to the MIS method to generate an SCWCA-based MIS method. Besides, this MIS method uses a non-local means 2D histogram to represent the image information and utilizes Renyi's entropy as the fitness function. First, SCWCA adds a sine initialization mechanism (SS) in the initial stage of the original WCA to generate the initial solution to improve the population quality. Second, the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) is applied in the population location update stage of WCA to mine high-quality population information. To validate the excellent performance of the SCWCA-based MIS method, the comparative experiment between some peers and SCWCA was carried out first. The experimental results show that the solution of SCWCA was closer to the global optimal solution and can effectively deal with the local optimal problems. In addition, the segmentation experiments of the SCWCA-based MIS method and other equivalent methods on LN images showed that the former can obtain higher-quality segmented LN images.

Humanoid Adult Size Champion 2021 Sweaty

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the RoboCup WorldCup 2021 was held completely remotely. For this competition the Webots simulator (https://cyberbotics.com/ ) was used, so all teams needed to transfer their robot to the simulation. This paper describes our experiences during this process as well as a genetic learning approach to improve our walk engine to allow a more stable and faster movement in the simulation. Therefore we used a docker setup to scale easily. The resulting movement was one of the outstanding features that finally led to the championship title. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Combined metabolic activators therapy ameliorates liver fat in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease patients.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) refers to excess fat accumulation in the liver. In animal experiments and human kinetic study, we found that administration of combined metabolic activators (CMAs) promotes the oxidation of fat, attenuates the resulting oxidative stress, activates mitochondria, and eventually removes excess fat from the liver. Here, we tested the safety and efficacy of CMA in NAFLD patients in a placebo-controlled 10-week study. We found that CMA significantly decreased hepatic steatosis and levels of aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, uric acid, and creatinine, whereas found no differences on these variables in the placebo group after adjustment for weight loss. By integrating clinical data with plasma metabolomics and inflammatory proteomics as well as oral and gut metagenomic data, we revealed the underlying molecular mechanisms associated with the reduced hepatic fat and inflammation in NAFLD patients and identified the key players involved in the host-microbiome interactions. In conclusion, we showed that CMA can be used to develop a pharmacological treatment strategy in NAFLD patients.

Recent Developments at the CMA: 2019-2020.

We discuss three important cases that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has completed over the past year: First, the coronavirus pandemic has had implications for a wide range of the CMA's work; we describe the work on price gouging conducted by the CMA's Covid-19 taskforce and respond to the argument that competition authorities should not be concerned about such behaviour. Second, a number of high-profile studies have considered the appropriate application of competition policy in digital industries. The second two cases-the Online Platforms and Digital Advertising market study, and the Google/Looker merger-show the work the CMA has continued to do in this area.