Fast-BEV: A Fast and Strong Bird's-Eye View Perception Baseline.

Recently, perception task based on Bird's-Eye View (BEV) representation has drawn more and more attention, and BEV representation is promising as the foundation for next-generation Autonomous Vehicle (AV) perception. However, most existing BEV solutions either require considerable resources to execute on-vehicle inference or suffer from modest performance. This paper proposes a simple yet effective framework, termed Fast-BEV, which is capable of performing faster BEV perception on the on-vehicle chips. Towards this goal, we first empirically find that the BEV representation can be sufficiently powerful without expensive transformer based transformation nor depth representation. Our Fast-BEV consists of five parts, We innovatively propose (1) a lightweight deploymentfriendly view transformation which fast transfers 2D image feature to 3D voxel space, (2) an multi-scale image encoder which leverages multi-scale information for better performance, (3) an efficient BEV encoder which is particularly designed to speed up on-vehicle inference. We further introduce (4) a strong data augmentation strategy for both image and BEV space to avoid over-fitting, (5) a multiframe feature fusion mechanism to leverage the temporal information. Among them, (1) and (3) enable Fast-BEV to be fast inference and deployment friendly on the on-vehicle chips, (2), (4) and (5) ensure that Fast-BEV has competitive performance. All these make Fast-BEV a solution with high performance, fast inference speed, and deployment-friendly on the on-vehicle chips of autonomous driving. Through experiments, on 2080Ti platform, our R50 model can run 52.6 FPS with 47.3% NDS on the nuScenes validation set, exceeding the 41.3 FPS and 47.5% NDS of the BEVDepth-R50 model [1] and 30.2 FPS and 45.7% NDS of the BEVDet4D-R50 model [2]. Our largest model (R101@900x1600) establishes a competitive 53.5% NDS on the nuScenes validation set. We further develop a benchmark with considerable accuracy and efficiency on current popular on-vehicle chips. The code is released at: https://github.com/Sense-GVT/FastBEV.

Risk-Benefit Assessment of Consumption of Rice for Adult Men in China.

Objective: To evaluate the health impact of current and alternative patterns of rice consumption in Chinese adult men (40-79 years of age). Methods: We applied a risk-benefit assessment (RBA) model that took into account the health effects of selenium (Se), cadmium (Cd), and inorganic arsenic (i-As). The health effects included the prevention of prostate cancer associated with exposure to Se, and an increased risk of lung, bladder, and skin cancer for i-As and chronic kidney disease (CKD) for Cd. We defined the baseline scenario (BS) as the current individual mean daily consumption of rice in the population of interest and two alternative scenarios (AS): AS1 = 50 g/day and AS2 = 200 g/day. We estimated the health impact for different age groups in terms of change in Disability-Adjusted Life Years (ΔDALY). Results: The BS of rice consumption was 71.5-105.4 g/day in different age groups of adult men in China. We estimated that for AS1, the mean ΔDALY was -2.76 to 46.2/100,000 adult men of 40-79 years old. For AS2, the mean ΔDALY was 41.3 to 130.8/100,000 individuals in this population group. Conclusion: Our results showed that, based on associated exposure to selenium, cadmium, and i-As in rice, the current consumption of rice does not pose a risk to adult men in China. Also, a lower (50 g/day) or higher (200 g/day) rice consumption will not bring larger beneficial effects.

[Application of active immunization in the prevention of de novo hepatitis B virus infection after pediatric liver transplantation with HBcAb positive donor liver].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of active immunization on prevention of post-transplantation de novo hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in patients receiving liver grafts from hepatitis B core antibody (HBcAb) positive donors. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was conducted. Eighty-seven children undergoing liver transplantation from HBcAb positive donors admitted to Tianjin First Center Hospital from October 2012 to December 2016 were enrolled, and the data of donors and recipients were collected. The hepatitis B vaccine was given before operation for hepatitis B surface antibody (HBsAb) > 1 000 U/L; hepatitis B immunoglobulin (HBIG) 100 U/kg was given during the operation, in order to prevent children from HBV infected by obtaining passive immunity quickly, children with HBsAb < 200 U/L after operation were injected with hepatitis B vaccine for booster immunization. HBV markers and liver function of recipients were determined before liver transplantation and during the follow-up, which up to April 2017. According to the children got de novo HBV infection after operation or not, the preventive effect of active immunization before and after transplantation operation on HBV infection was analyzed and compared. RESULTS: In 87 children who received HBcAb positive donor livers, 9 (10.3%) developed de novo HBV infection, which occurred in 16 (10, 25) months after liver transplantation. Among the 9 children with HBV infection, 7 children had HBsAb < 1 000 U/L before the operation, the ratio was statistically increased as compared with the children without HBV infection [77.8% (7/9) vs. 37.2% (29/78), P < 0.05]. After the transplantation, 62 children of 78 without HBV infection showed a good response to hepatitis B vaccination, 1 child after inoculation of hepatitis B vaccine, the titer of HBsAb was still less than 200 U/L, 15 children without administration of hepatitis B vaccine, only with HBIG injection for prevention. The HBsAb of children with de nove HBV infection were less than 200 U/L after operation, the ratio was significantly increased as compared with children without HBV infection [100.0% (9/9) vs. 20.5% (16/78), P < 0.01]. CONCLUSIONS: The establishment of active immunization method can effectively prevent children with de novo HBV infection occurred in pediatric recipients from HBcAb positive donors with preventive treatment.

Enhanced electricity generation by using algae biomass and activated sludge in microbial fuel cell.

Recently, interest is growing to explore low-cost and sustainable means of energy production. In this study, we have exploited the potential of sustainable energy production from wastes. Activated sludge and algae biomass are used as substrates in microbial fuel cell (MFC) to produce electricity. Activated sludge is used at anode as inoculum and nutrient source. Various concentrations (1-5 g/L) of dry algae biomass are tested. Among tested concentrations, 5 g/L (5000 mg COD/L) produced the highest voltage of 0.89 V and power density of 1.78 W/m(2) under 1000 Ω electric resistance. Pre-treated algae biomass and activated sludge are also used at anode. They give low power output than without pre-treatment. Spent algae biomass is tested to replace whole (before oil extraction) algae biomass as a substrate, but it gives low power output. This work has proved the concept of using algae biomass in MFC for high energy output.

[Effects of resveratrol on morphology and oxidative stress of brain tissues in aging mice].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the protective effects of resveratrol on brain tissues in aging mice induced by D-galactose. METHODS: 54 Kunming male mice aged 16 weeks were randomly divided into control group, aging group, intervention group. The control group was prepared by subcutaneous injection of normal saline and the other two groups were prepared by subcutaneous injection of D-galactose(200 mg/kg BW). The intervention group was fed with resveratrol (22.5 mg/kg BW)by oral gavage and the other two groups were fed with solution of 0.5% sodium carboxymethyl cellulose. All animals were sacrificed 16 weeks later, morphology of brain was observed, calculate the organ coefficients, and GSH-Px, SOD, CAT, MAO activity and MDA content were detected in the mice brain. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the aging group lost normal morphological structure of nerve cells and the number of nerve cells was significantly decreased (P < 0.05), the organ coefficients were significantly decreased (P < 0.05), and GSH-Px, SOD, CAT activities were significantly decreased (P < 0.05), MAO activity and MDA content were significantly increased in brain of the aging group (P < 0.05). Compared with the aging group, the intervention group brain maintain normal morphological structure of nerve cells and the number of nerve cells was significantly increased (P < 0.05), the organ coefficients were significantly increased (P < 0.05), and GSH-Px, SOD, CAT activities were significantly increased (P < 0.05), MAO activity and MDA content were significantly decreased in brain of the intervention group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Resveratrol can maintain normal morphological structure of nerve cells of aging mice, decrease oxidative stress responses, and has protective effects on brain tissues in aging mice induced by D-galactose.

Recovery of silver from wastewater coupled with power generation using a microbial fuel cell.

A cost-effective microbial fuel cell (MFC) system was developed in order to recover silver metal from silver ion containing wastewaters. After 8h reaction, silver metal recovery efficiencies as high as 99.91 ± 0.00%-98.26 ± 0.01% were achieved. The initial concentrations were from 50 ppm to 200 ppm with a load resistor of 1000 Ω. In the batch-fed cathode and continuous-fed anode system with an initial silver concentration of 200 ppm, discharge curves display the production of both silver metal and electric energy at a rate of 69.9 kg silver per KWh energy output. The maximum power of about 4.25 W/m(2), maximum voltage of 0.749 V, maximum current density of 5.67 A/m(2), and a fill factor of 0.626 were achieved at 1000 ppm initial silver ion concentration.