Multi-Level Optimization for Data-Driven Camera-LiDAR Calibration in Data Collection Vehicles.

Accurately calibrating camera-LiDAR systems is crucial for achieving effective data fusion, particularly in data collection vehicles. Data-driven calibration methods have gained prominence over target-based methods due to their superior adaptability to diverse environments. However, current data-driven calibration methods are susceptible to suboptimal initialization parameters, which can significantly impact the accuracy and efficiency of the calibration process. In response to these challenges, this paper proposes a novel general model for the camera-LiDAR calibration that abstracts away the technical details in existing methods, introduces an improved objective function that effectively mitigates the issue of suboptimal parameter initialization, and develops a multi-level parameter optimization algorithm that strikes a balance between accuracy and efficiency during iterative optimization. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively mitigates the effects of suboptimal initial calibration parameters, achieving highly accurate and efficient calibration results. The suggested technique exhibits versatility and adaptability to accommodate various sensor configurations, making it a notable advancement in the field of camera-LiDAR calibration, with potential applications in diverse fields including autonomous driving, robotics, and computer vision.

Ag-Catalyzed or Ag/PPh3-Catalyzed Chemoselective Switchable Cascade Reactions of N-Propargyl Thiocarbamoyl Fluorides and Malonate Esters.

The divergent chemoselective synthesis of 2-methylene-2,3-dihydrothiazoles and 4-benzylidene pyrrolidine-2-thiones (most with E stereoselectivity) from N-propargyl thiocarbamoyl fluorides and malonate esters in moderate to excellent yields with a broad substrate scope and functional group tolerance has been accomplished. AgNTf2 catalyst at 60 °C in dichloroethane provided 4-benzylidene pyrrolidine-2-thiones. AgOTf catalyst and PPh3 ligand in refluxing acetonitrile resulted in a complete switch in the reactivity of formed α,α-diester thioamide intermediates followed by isomerization to access 2-methylene-2,3-dihydrothiazoles.

Pd-Catalyzed Coupling of Thioamides with N-Tosylhydrazones/Trapping by Esters Cascade Reaction.

N,N-Disubstituted thioamides coupled with N-tosylhydrazones under Pd(TFA)2/tBuXPhos catalyst and NaOtBu, and the intermediates from palladium carbene migratory insertion containing ß-hydrogen were trapped by intramolecular esters activated by BF3·Et2O instead of undergoing ß-H elimination, providing polyfunctional thiophen-3(2H)-ones with sulfur-containing tetrasubstituted carbon centers in moderate to good yields. The reaction features the formation of three bonds in a single operation, odorless, safe, and easily available substrates, wide substrate scope, and excellent functional group tolerance.

Cobalt-Catalyzed Switchable Intramolecular Thioenolization/C-H Thiolation and C(sp2)-H/C(sp3)-H Dehydrogenative Coupling.

Mild cobalt-catalyzed switchable regioselective and chemoselective thioenolization/C-H thiolation and C(sp2)-H/C(sp3)-H dehydrogenative couplings of N-aryl-N-alkyl-thioamides are developed, providing 2-methylene-2,3-dihydrobenzo[d]thiazoles and thio-oxindoles in moderate to excellent yields from the same precursors, respectively. Details mechanistic studies suggest that the thioenolization/C-H thiolation process involves a radical mechanism, whereas the C(sp2)-H/C(sp3)-H dehydrogenative coupling might proceed through an electrophilic cobaltation(III) pathway. Thus, the selectivity for either product is achieved by accessing unique catalytic cycles involving different valence states for cobalt.

The Effects of Oral Rehmannia glutinosa Polysaccharide Administration on Immune Responses, Antioxidant Activity and Resistance Against Aeromonas hydrophila in the Common Carp, Cyprinus carpio L.

The effects of the oral administration of Rehmannia glutinosa polysaccharide (RGP-1) on the immunoregulatory properties, antioxidant activity, and resistance against Aeromonas hydrophila in Cyprinus carpio L. were investigated. The purified RGP-1 (250, 500, and 1,000 µg/mL) was co-cultured with the head kidney cells of the common carp. The proliferation and phagocytosis activities of the head kidney cells, and the concentration of nitric oxide (NO) and cytokines in the culture medium were determined. Next, 300 common carps (47.66 ± 0.43 g) were randomly divided into five groups; the two control groups (negative and positive) were administered sterile PBS and the three treatment groups were administered different concentrations of RGP-1 (250, 500, and 1,000 µg/mL) for seven days. Subsequently, the positive and treatment groups were infected with A. hydrophila, and the negative group was administered sterile PBS for 24 h. The concentration of NO, cytokines, lysozyme (LZM), and alkaline phosphatase (AKP) in serum, the total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC), the levels of malonaldehyde (MDA) and glutathione (GSH), and the total activities of superoxide dismutase (T-SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) in the hepatopancreas of the common carp were tested. We observed that RGP-1 could significantly enhance the proliferation and phagocytosis activities (P < 0.05), besides inducing the production of NO, pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6, IL-12) and anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-10, TGF-ß) (P < 0.05) in vitro. The in vivo experimental results revealed that RGP-1 significantly enhanced NO production, protein levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6, IL-12), LZM and AKP activities, and the antioxidant content (T-AOC, SOD, CAT, GSH, GSH-Px, and MDA) compared to that observed in the negative group prior to A. hydrophila infection (P < 0.05). NO, pro-inflammatory cytokines, LZM and AKP activities were significantly lower than that in the positive group after infection (P < 0.05). However, whether infected or not, the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-10, TGF-ß) increased significantly in the RGP-1-treated groups (P < 0.05). Therefore, the results suggested that RGP-1 could enhance the non-specific immunity, antioxidant activity and anti-A. hydrophila activity of the common carp, and could be used as a safe and effective feed additive in aquaculture.

Effects of an exopolysaccharide from Lactococcus lactis Z-2 on innate immune response, antioxidant activity, and disease resistance against Aeromonas hydrophila in Cyprinus carpio L.

Microbial exopolysaccharides (EPS) from Lactococcus have been found to have an important role in the probiotic activity of this bacterium; however, the immunomodulatory and antioxidant activities have not been fully explored in aquaculture. In the present study, we investigated EPS-2 from Lactococcus lactis Z-2, isolated from healthy common carp, for its immunomodulatory and antioxidant effects and disease resistance against Aeromonas hydrophila in Cyprinus carpio L. We found that the molecular weight of EPS-2 was 18.65 KDa. The monosaccharide composition of this polymer was rhamnose, xylose, mannose, glucose, and galactose at a molar percentage of 13.3%, 14.1%, 18.5%, 27.4%, and 26.7%, respectively. EPS-2 treatment could modulate the immune responses in vitro and in vivo. In vitro tests showed that EPS-2 could significantly enhance the proliferation and phagocytosis activities (P < 0.05) as well as induce the production of nitic oxide (NO), pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6), and anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-10, TGF-ß) (P < 0.05) in head kidney cells. When the fish were gavaged with three different concentrations of EPS-2 (250, 500, 1000 µg/mL) for 7 days and infected with A. hydrophila, different expression patterns of the NO, cytokines, lysozyme (LZM), and alkaline phosphatase (AKP) in the serum and of antioxidants (T-AOC, SOD, CAT, GSH, GSH-Px and MDA) in hepatopancreas were observed. Before infection with A. hydrophila, EPS-2 supplementation significantly up-regulated the NO production, protein levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6), LZM and AKP activities, and levels of antioxidant molecules compared to those in the negative (G1) group (P < 0.05), whereas levels of NO and pro-inflammatory cytokines and LZM and AKP activities were significantly lower than those in the positive (G2) group after infection (P < 0.05). However, whether infected or not, the expression levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-10, TGF-ß) were significantly increased in the EPS-2 treatment groups (P < 0.05). These results indicate that EPS-2 has immunomodulatory and antioxidant effects on common carp, both in vitro and/or in vivo, and can be applied as a common carp feed supplement to enhance fish immunity and disease resistance against A. hydrophila.

Building Change Detection from Bi-Temporal Dense-Matching Point Clouds and Aerial Images.

In this work, a novel building change detection method from bi-temporal dense-matching point clouds and aerial images is proposed to address two major problems, namely, the robust acquisition of the changed objects above ground and the automatic classification of changed objects into buildings or non-buildings. For the acquisition of changed objects above ground, the change detection problem is converted into a binary classification, in which the changed area above ground is regarded as the foreground and the other area as the background. For the gridded points of each period, the graph cuts algorithm is adopted to classify the points into foreground and background, followed by the region-growing algorithm to form candidate changed building objects. A novel structural feature that was extracted from aerial images is constructed to classify the candidate changed building objects into buildings and non-buildings. The changed building objects are further classified as "newly built", "taller", "demolished", and "lower" by combining the classification and the digital surface models of two periods. Finally, three typical areas from a large dataset are used to validate the proposed method. Numerous experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Associations between body composition and nutritional assessments and biochemical markers in patients with chronic radiation enteritis: a case-control study.

BACKGROUND: Chronic radiation enteritis (CRE) is defined as loss of absorptive capacity after irradiation due to chronic inflammation and damage of intestinal mucosa, which may lead to varying degrees of malnutrition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential correlation between the nutritional status and systemic inflammation in patients with CRE. METHODS: Medical records of 92 patients with CRE and 184 age- and sex-matched controls in a single center from January 2010 to October 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. All enrolled subjects underwent nutritional status analysis, including three different nutritional indices: Nutritional Risk Screening-2002 (NRS-2002), Patient-generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) and Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT), bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS), and biochemical markers, within 24 h of admission. RESULTS: The results showed that NRS-2002, PG-SGA and CONUT were all positively correlated with neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) (r = 0.304, 0.384 and 0.425, all p < 0.001) and C-reactive protein (CRP) (r = 0.357, 0.479 and 0.230, all p < 0.001), while negatively correlated with albumin (r = -0.612, -0.727 and -0.792, all p < 0.001) and total cholesterol (TC) (r = -0.485, -0.545 and -0.473, all p < 0.001) in patients with CRE, respectively. Body cell mass (BCM) has been deemed a key body composition parameter. It was positively correlated with albumin (r = 0.489, p < 0.001) and TC (r = 0.237, p < 0.001), while negatively correlated with NLR (r = -0.140, p = 0.02) and CRP (r = -0.215, p < 0.001). A multivariate linear regression analysis showed that values of intracellular water (ß coefficient = 0.760, p < 0.001), extracellular water (ß coefficient = 0.006, p = 0.011), protein (ß coefficient = 0.235, p < 0.001) and CRP (ß coefficient = 0.001, p = 0.009) were independent determinants of BCM. CONCLUSION: This study revealed that BIS combined with nutritional assessments and biochemical markers were appropriate methods to assess the nutritional and inflammatory status in patients with CRE. Furthermore, the nutritional status was verified to be significantly correlated with systemic inflammation.

A recombined fusion protein PTD-Grb2-SH2 inhibits the proliferation of breast cancer cells in vitro.

The growth factor receptor bound protein 2 (Grb2) is one of the affirmative targets for cancer therapy, especially for breast cancer. In this study, we hypothesized the Src-homology 2 (SH2) domain in Grb2 may serve as a competitive protein-binding agent to interfere with the proliferation of breast cancer cells in vitro. We designed, constructed, expressed and purified a novel fusion protein containing the protein transduction domain (PTD) and Grb2-SH2 domain (we named it after PTD-Grb2-SH2). An immunofluorescence assay was used to investigate the location of PTD-Grb2-SH2 in cells. MTT assay and EdU experiments were applied to detect the proliferation of breast cancer cells. The ultra-structure was observed using transmission electron microscopy. Flow cytometry was used to determine the cytotoxicity of PTD-Grb2-SH2 on cell proliferation. We successfully obtained the PTD-Grb2-SH2 fusion protein in soluble form using a prokaryotic expression system. The new fusion protein successfully passed through both the cellular and nuclear membranes of breast cancer cells. The MTT assay showed that PTD-Grb2-SH2 exhibited significant toxicity to breast cancer cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner in vitro. EdU identified the decreased proliferation rates in treated MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR-3 cells. Observation by transmission electron microscopy and flow cytometry further confirmed the cytotoxicity as apoptosis. Our results show that the HIV1-TAT domain is a useful tool for transporting a low molecular weight protein across the cell membrane in vitro. The PTD-Grb2-SH2 may be a novel agent for breast cancer therapy.

Socioeconomic disparities in prostate cancer mortality and the impact of geographic scale.

OBJECTIVE: To examine socioeconomic disparities in prostate cancer mortality and to assess the scale effect on the results of the disparity analysis. METHODS: Using prostate cancer mortality data (N = 14,036) of Texas from 1996 to 2004, this study examines the variations of socioeconomic disparities in prostate cancer mortality across different geographic scales. Age-adjusted odds ratios are employed to reveal the disparities by single and composite socioeconomic indicators at county, census tract, and block group levels. RESULTS: The analysis shows that (1) disparities in prostate cancer mortality are significant for most socioeconomic indicators, (2) area-level socioeconomic indicators tend to reveal a less extent of disparity than individual-level indicators do, and (3) socioeconomic disparities in prostate cancer mortality at the census tract and block group levels are similar to each other but are completely different from those at the county level. CONCLUSION: The selection of geographic scale and socioeconomic indicators affects the results of socioeconomic disparity analysis in prostate cancer mortality. Most census tract and block group level socioeconomic indicators are appropriate for analyzing disparities in prostate cancer mortality. County level socioeconomic indicators should be avoided if possible.