Locating Target Regions for Image Retrieval in an Unsupervised Manner.

Image retrieval performance can be improved by training a convolutional neural network (CNN) model with annotated data to facilitate accurate localization of target regions. However, obtaining sufficiently annotated data is expensive and impractical in real settings. It is challenging to achieve accurate localization of target regions in an unsupervised manner. To address this problem, we propose a new unsupervised image retrieval method named unsupervised target region localization (UTRL) descriptors. It can precisely locate target regions without supervisory information or learning. Our method contains three highlights: 1) we propose a novel zero-label transfer learning method to address the problem of co-localization in target regions. This enhances the potential localization ability of pretrained CNN models through a zero-label data-driven approach; 2) we propose a multiscale attention accumulation method to accurately extract distinguishable target features. It distinguishes the importance of features by using local Gaussian weights; and 3) we propose a simple yet effective method to reduce vector dimensionality, named twice-PCA-whitening (TPW), which reduces the performance degradation caused by feature compression. Notably, TPW is a robust and general method that can be widely applied to image retrieval tasks to improve retrieval performance. This work also facilitates the development of image retrieval based on short vector features. Extensive experiments on six popular benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method achieves about 7% greater mean average precision (mAP) compared to existing state-of-the-art unsupervised methods.

Self-Supervised Multi-Scale Cropping and Simple Masked Attentive Predicting for Lung CT-Scan Anomaly Detection.

Anomaly detection has been widely explored by training an out-of-distribution detector with only normal data for medical images. However, detecting local and subtle irregularities without prior knowledge of anomaly types brings challenges for lung CT-scan image anomaly detection. In this paper, we propose a self-supervised framework for learning representations of lung CT-scan images via both multi-scale cropping and simple masked attentive predicting, which is capable of constructing a powerful out-of-distribution detector. Firstly, we propose CropMixPaste, a self-supervised augmentation task for generating density shadow-like anomalies that encourage the model to detect local irregularities of lung CT-scan images. Then, we propose a self-supervised reconstruction block, named simple masked attentive predicting block (SMAPB), to better refine local features by predicting masked context information. Finally, the learned representations by self-supervised tasks are used to build an out-of-distribution detector. The results on real lung CT-scan datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method compared with state-of-the-art methods.

Disfunction of communication among immune cells in minimal-deviation adenocarcinoma of the cervix as an immunotherapeutic opportunity.

Minimal deviation adenocarcinoma (MDA) of the uterine cervix, also referred to as malignant adenoma, is a rare subtype of cervical adenocarcinoma that exhibits histological characteristics resembling those of benign tumors, resulting in a low diagnostic rate and a lack of effective treatment options. The transcriptomic features of MDA at the single-cell resolution and within the tumor microenvironment (TME) remain unclear. In this study, we conducted single-cell transcriptomic analyses of MDA samples (Ca) and adjacent normal tissues (PCa). The present study reveals the prevalence of dendritic cells (DCs) and T cells in the carcinoma (Ca) of mammary ductal adenocarcinoma (MDA), with DCs undergoing significant metabolic reprogramming and immune stress. Additionally, our findings demonstrate the crucial involvement of DCs and T cells in the pathogenesis and metastatic progression of MDA, as evidenced by single-cell transcriptomic profiling of MDA and HPV samples. This resource provides a more profound understanding of the indolent nature of MDA and may prove useful in the development of MDA immunotherapy.

Effect of lncRNA SNHG15 on LPS-induced vascular endothelial cell apoptosis, inflammatory factor expression and oxidative stress by targeting miR-362-3p.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of lncRNA SNHG15 targeting miR-362-3p on LPS-induced vascular endothelial cell apoptosis, inflammatory factor expression and oxidative stress. For this purpose, human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were treated with 100 ng/mL LPS for 24 hours to establish a cell injury model. HUVECs were divided into control, LPS, LPS+si-NC, LPS+si-SNHG15, LPS+miR-NC, LPS+miR-362-3p, LPS+si-SNHG15+anti-miR-NC and LPS+si-SNHG15+anti-miR-362-3p groups. RT-qPCR was used to determine SNHG15 and miR-362-3pexpression. The cell inhibition rate was measured by the CCK-8 method; Cell apoptosis rate was detected by flow cytometry; the kits were employed to detect the intracellular SOD activity and the release of LDH; the ELISA method was applied to detcet the levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-10 in the culture medium. Results showed that compared with the control group, the inhibition rate, apoptosis rate and SNHG15 expression level of HUVECs in the LPS group were increased (P<0.05), and the levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and LDH in the culture medium were increased (P<0.05), SOD activity, miR-362-3p expression level, and IL-10 level in the culture medium were reduced (P<0.05). The inhibition rate and apoptosis rate of HUVECs in the LPS+si-SNHG15 group were reduced (P<0.05), and the levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and LDH in the culture medium were reduced (P<0.05), SOD activity and IL-10 levels in the culture medium increased (P<0.05). The inhibition rate and apoptosis rate of HUVECs in the LPS+miR-362-3p group were reduced (P<0.05), and the levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and LDH in the culture medium were reduced (P<0.05), SOD activity and IL-10 level in the culture medium increased (P<0.05). miR-362-3p directly and bound to SNHG15. Compared with the LPS+si-SNHG15+anti-miR-NC group, the inhibition rate and apoptosis rate of HUVECs in the LPS+si-SNHG15+anti-miR-362-3p group were increased (P<0.05), and the levels of TNF-α, IL-6 and LDH in the culture medium were increased (P<0.05), and SOD activity and IL-10 levels in the culture medium were reduced (P<0.05). In general, silencing lncRNA SNHG15 inhibited LPS-induced vascular endothelial cell apoptosis, inflammatory factor expression and oxidative stress response by up-regulating miR-362-3p expression.

Dendrobium nobile Lindl polysaccharides improve testicular spermatogenic function in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.

Dendrobium nobile Lindl polysaccharides (DNLP) exhibited various biological functions. This study aimed to investigate the protective effects of DNLP on testicular spermatogenic function in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats in comparison with metformin. The blood glucose level was significantly increased and the homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) aggravated markedly in diabetic rats. The weight of testis and epididymis, and the sperm number and motility were decreased in the diabetic rats. The pathologic changes occurred in the spermatogenic tubules along with the decreased number of spermatogenic cells, downregulated proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) expression and increased cell apoptosis in the testes. Compared with the model group, DNLP and metformin treatment significantly decreased the level of blood glucose, improved the HOMA-IR, and increased the weight of testis and epididymis, as well as the sperm number and sperm motility. Furthermore, the pathologic changes in the spermatogenic tubules improved significantly with increased number of spermatogenic cells, the upregulation of PCNA and SIRT1 and suppression of cell apoptosis in the testes. Collectively, our study for the first time examined the effects of DNLP on the male reproductive system of STZ-induced diabetic rats, and indicated that DNLP was protective against diabetes mellitus-induced testis injury via increasing the proliferation, inhibiting cell apoptosis and upregulating SIRT1 expression in testicular spermatogenic cells.

The Impact of Internet Development on Urban Eco-Efficiency-A Quasi-Natural Experiment of "Broadband China" Pilot Policy.

Based on the panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities and above in China from 2005 to 2019, this paper takes the "Broadband China" pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment and evaluates the impact of Internet development on urban eco-efficiency (symbolized by the "Broadband China" policy) by constructing multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) and spatial DID models. Results show that: the "Broadband China" pilot policy significantly improves the urban eco-efficiency: the eco-efficiency in pilot cities is about 16.8% higher than that in other cities. The results remain consistent after testing for robustness, including using estimation methods, excluding the sample of key cities, changing core explanatory variables, and introducing instrumental variables. Next, the influence of the "Broadband China" pilot policy on eco-efficiency is characterized by significant regional heterogeneity: Internet development significantly improves the eco-efficiency in the central, eastern and northeastern regions that are economically more developed and not resource-dependent. In contrast, this effect is not obvious in the western region that is economically less developed and resource-dependent. Moreover, the influencing mechanism of Internet development on eco-efficiency suggests that the "Broadband China" strategy boosts urban eco-efficiency by increasing the Internet penetration rate, improving technological innovation capacity, and upgrading the industrial structure. In addition, results from the spatial DID models indicate that the "Broadband China" pilot policy improves the eco-efficiency in local cities and significantly enhances that in neighboring cities. Based on this, this paper puts forward some suggestions regarding promoting new network infrastructure construction and differentiating development policies to fit local conditions.

Shugoshin Regulates Cohesin, Kinetochore-Microtubule Attachments, and Chromosomal Instability.

Correct regulation of cohesin at chromosome arms and centromeres and accurate kinetochore-microtubule connections are significant for proper chromosome segregation. At anaphase of meiosis I, cohesin at chromosome arms is cleaved by separase, leading to the separation of homologous chromosomes. However, at anaphase of meiosis II, cohesin at centromeres is cleaved by separase, leading to the separation of sister chromatids. Shugoshin-2 (SGO2) is a member of the shugoshin/MEI-S332 protein family in mammalian cells, a crucial protein that protects centromeric cohesin from cleavage by separase and corrects wrong kinetochore-microtubule connections before anaphase of meiosis I. Shugoshin-1 (SGO1) plays a similar role in mitosis. Moreover, shugoshin can inhibit the occurrence of chromosomal instability (CIN), and its abnormal expression in several tumors, such as triple-negative breast cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, lung cancer, colon cancer, glioma, and acute myeloid leukemia, can be used as biomarker for disease progression and potential therapeutic targets for cancers. Thus, this review discusses the specific mechanisms of shugoshin which regulates cohesin, kinetochore-microtubule connections, and CIN.

Image Retrieval Using the Fused Perceptual Color Histogram.

Extracting visual features for image retrieval by mimicking human cognition remains a challenge. Opponent color and HSV color spaces can mimic human visual perception well. In this paper, we improve and extend the CDH method using a multi-stage model to extract and represent an image in a way that mimics human perception. Our main contributions are as follows: (1) a visual feature descriptor is proposed to represent an image. It has the advantages of a histogram-based method and is consistent with visual perception factors such as spatial layout, intensity, edge orientation, and the opponent colors. (2) We improve the distance formula of CDHs; it can effectively adjust the similarity between images according to two parameters. The proposed method provides efficient performance in similar image retrieval rather than instance retrieval. Experiments with four benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can describe color, texture, and spatial features and performs significantly better than the color volume histogram, color difference histogram, local binary pattern histogram, and multi-texton histogram, and some SURF-based approaches.

LeukocyteMask: An automated localization and segmentation method for leukocyte in blood smear images using deep neural networks.

Digital pathology and microscope image analysis is widely used in comprehensive studies of cell morphology. Identification and analysis of leukocytes in blood smear images, acquired from bright field microscope, are vital for diagnosing many diseases such as hepatitis, leukaemia and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The major challenge for robust and accurate identification and segmentation of leukocyte in blood smear images lays in the large variations of cell appearance such as size, colour and shape of cells, the adhesion between leukocytes (white blood cells, WBCs) and erythrocytes (red blood cells, RBCs), and the emergence of substantial dyeing impurities in blood smear images. In this paper, an end-to-end leukocyte localization and segmentation method is proposed, named LeukocyteMask, in which pixel-level prior information is utilized for supervisor training of a deep convolutional neural network, which is then employed to locate the region of interests (ROI) of leukocyte, and finally segmentation mask of leukocyte is obtained based on the extracted ROI by forward propagation of the network. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the propose method and both the quantitative and qualitative comparisons with existing methods indicate that LeukocyteMask achieves a state-of-the-art performance for the segmentation of leukocyte in terms of robustness and accuracy .

Exploiting Color Volume and Color Difference for Salient Region Detection.

Foreground and background cues can assist humans in quickly understanding visual scenes. In computer vision, however, it is difficult to detect salient objects when they touch the image boundary. Hence, detecting salient objects robustly under such circumstances without sacrificing precision and recall can be challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel model for salient region detection, namely, the foreground-center-background (FCB) saliency model. Its main highlights as follows. First, we use regional color volume as the foreground, together with perceptually uniform color differences within regions to detect salient regions. This can highlight salient objects robustly, even when they touched the image boundary, without greatly sacrificing precision and recall. Second, we employ center saliency to detect salient regions together with foreground and background cues, which improves saliency detection performance. Finally, we propose a novel and simple yet efficient method that combines foreground, center, and background saliency. Experimental validation with three well-known benchmark data sets indicates that the FCB model outperforms several state-of-the-art methods in terms of precision, recall, F-measure, and particularly, the mean absolute error. Salient regions are brighter than those of some existing state-of-the-art methods.

Family-Based Association Study of rs17300539 and rs12495941 Polymorphism in Adiponectin Gene and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in a Chinese Population.

BACKGROUND Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a complex disease that has both genetic and environmental components. Adiponectin plays an important role in the regulation of insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance (IR) in PCOS. The aim of this study was to determine 2 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) variants (rs12495941 and rs17300539) of the adiponectin gene (ADIPOQ) in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) families. MATERIAL AND METHODS We recruited 197 PCOS probands, their biological parents, and 192 controls. Anthropometric variables, including hip circumference (HC) and waist circumference (WC), were measured in all subjects during their first visit to the outpatient department. Serum T, FBG, FINS, TC, TG, LDL, and HDL levels were measured. PCOS patients were divided into 2 groups based on BMI: group A (BMI <25 kg/m²) and group B (BMI ≥25 kg/m²). Parents of PCOS were accordingly categorized into group C and group D (fathers), and group E and group F (mothers). The associations among ADIPOQ rs12495941, rs17300539, and PCOS were analyzed using the transmission disequilibrium test (TDT). RESULTS A significant association was found between SNP rs17300539 and PCOS in our Chinese population. The levels of TG and FINS and the genotype frequencies of rs17300539 are significantly different between overweight and lean PCOS. No significant association was detected for rs12495941. CONCLUSIONS TDT confirms that rs17300539 of ADIPOQ is strongly associated with the risk of PCOS in a Chinese Han population, but rs12495941 of ADIPOQ is not associated with the occurrence of PCOS.

Heightened stress response and cognitive impairment after repeated neonatal sevoflurane exposures might be linked to excessive GABAAR-mediated depolarization.

OBJECTIVE: Children with repeated exposures to anesthesia at an early age are at an increased risk of cognitive impairment. Data in the literature link increased developmental depolarizing γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) type A receptor (GABAAR) at younger age to neurodevelopmental disorders. Here we investigated the involvement of GABAergic signaling during development in mediating the adverse effects of repeated sevoflurane exposures. METHODS: Sprague-Dawley male rats received repeated exposures to 3 % sevoflurane for 2 h daily for 3 consecutive days on postnatal days (P) 4, 5, and 6; maternally separated and unseparated rats served as controls. A subgroup of rats received three injections of the Na(+)-K(+)-2Cl(-) cotransporter inhibitor, bumetanide (1.82 mg/kg, intraperitoneally) 15 min prior to initiation of each sevoflurane exposure. RESULTS: The results showed that repeated neonatal sevoflurane exposures contribute to learning and memory impairment in the Morris water maze (MWM) at P60. The corticosterone level was significantly increased immediately after repeated neonatal sevoflurane exposures. Repeated neonatal sevoflurane exposures heightened the secretion of corticosterone in response to stress in P7 and P60 rats. Pretreatment of male rats prior to each sevoflurane exposure with bumetanide attenuated the corticosterone level immediately after repeated neonatal sevoflurane exposures, normalized endocrine response to stress at P7 and P60, and attenuated the sevoflurane-induced learning and memory impairment in the MWM. CONCLUSION: These data suggested that the heightened stress response and cognitive impairment after repeated neonatal sevoflurane exposures might be linked to excessive GABAAR-mediated depolarization.

[Case-control based study between polymorphisms in the adiponectin gene and polycystic ovary syndrome].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the frequeney of four single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) sites (rs17300539, rs12495941, rs2241766 and rs1501299) of adiponectin gene (ADIPOQ) and to elucidate its role in the pathogenesis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). METHODS: A total of 207 women with PCOS and 192 controls were recruited. Four ml whole-blood samples were collected in tubes containing ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) by peripheral venous puncture. Genomic DNA was extracted using a QIAamp DNA mini kit. Four SNP sites (rs17300539, rs12495941, rs2241766 and rs1501299) of ADIPOQ were amplified by PCR and then directly sequenced to screen variants. RESULTS: (1) The genotype frequencies of AA of rs17300539 in PCOS was significantly higher than controls [57.5% (119/207) versus 48.4% (93/192), P<0.05]. The genotype frequencies of AA of rs1501299 in PCOS was significantly lower than controls [4.8% (10/207) versus 11.5% (22/192), P<0.05]. While no significant differences were found in rs2241766 and rs12495941 (P>0.05). (2) The allele A of rs17300539 [75.8% (314/414)] and allele C frequeneies of rs1501299 [76.3% (316/414)] in PCOS were significantly higher than controls [67.7% (260/384), 69.0% (265/384), respectively; all P<0.05]. While no significant differences were found in rs2241766 and rs12495941 (P>0.05). (3) Further analysis we found rs17300539 AA genotypes had an increased risk for PCOS compared with GG genotype (OR=2.670, P=0.009), rs1501299 CC genotype had an increased risk for PCOS compared with AA genotypes (OR=2.756, P=0.012); and the difference remained significantly after adjustment for age, testosterone and body mass index (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: No significant differences were observed in genotype and allele frequencies between PCOS and controls for rs2241766 and rs12495941. However, we observed an association between rs17300539, rs1501299 and PCOS. rs17300539 and rs1501299 of ADIPOQ perhaps are the susceptibility gene locus of PCOS.