FuSSI-Net: Fusion of Spatio-temporal Skeletons for Intention Prediction Network

Pedestrian intention recognition is very important to develop robust and safe autonomous driving (AD) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) functionalities for urban driving. In this work, we develop an end-to-end pedestrian intention framework that performs well on day- and night- time scenarios. Our framework relies on objection detection bounding boxes combined with skeletal features of human pose. We study early, late, and combined (early and late) fusion mechanisms to exploit the skeletal features and reduce false positives as well to improve the intention prediction performance. The early fusion mechanism results in AP of 0.89 and precision/recall of 0.79/0.89 for pedestrian intention classification. Furthermore, we propose three new metrics to properly evaluate the pedestrian intention systems. Under these new evaluation metrics for the intention prediction, the proposed end-to-end network offers accurate pedestrian intention up to half a second ahead of the actual risky maneuver.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, IEEE Asilomar SS

Cholangiocarcinoma presenting as hemobilia and recurrent iron-deficiency anemia: a case report.

INTRODUCTION: Iron-deficiency anemia is a relatively common presenting feature of several gastrointestinal malignancies. However, cholangiocarcinoma has rarely been reported as an underlying cause. The association of cholangiocarcinoma with the rare clinical finding of hemobilia is also highly unusual. To our knowledge, this is the first case report of cholangiocarcinoma presenting with acute hemobilia and chronic iron-deficiency anemia. CASE PRESENTATION: We report the case of a Caucasian, 84-year-old woman presenting with recurrent, severe iron-deficiency anemia who was eventually diagnosed with intra-hepatic cholangiocarcinoma, following an acute episode of hemobilia. A right hepatectomy was subsequently performed with curative intent, and our patient has now fully recovered. CONCLUSION: This is a rare example of hemobilia and chronic iron-deficiency anemia in association with cholangiocarcinoma. We suggest that a diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma should be considered in patients who present with iron-deficiency anemia of unknown cause, particularly in the presence of abnormal liver function.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

The Zinc/Bromine Flow Battery: Fundamentals and Novel Materials for Technology Advancement

Flow batteries are a promising solution for solving intermittency challenges and increasing uptake of renewable power sources such as wind and solar. In particular, zinc/bromine batteries are an attractive option for large-scale electrical energy storage due to their relatively low cost of primary electrolyte and high theoretical specific energy of 440 Wh kg-1. However, inefficient materials of construction hinder practical utilization of this capability and reduce power delivery. The work presented in this thesis aims to overcome these limitations by providing an understanding of the fundamental physical and electrochemical processes governing interactions within the bulk electrolyte and at the electrode–electrolyte interface. Suitable alternative materials to improve system performance are developed via electrochemical investigations, physical characterization and molecular modelling. It is shown that conventional chloride-based supporting electrolytes significantly influence the morphology of zinc electrodeposits generated. High chloride concentration causes removal of zinc from the bulk, causing coulombic losses in the system. It is shown that sulfates, phosphates or even a higher proportion of bromides, are potentially suitable alternatives. Single-halide type tetrahedral zinc complexes exist in conventional electrolytes, and a previously unreported Raman vibrational band at 220 cm-1 is assigned to the [ZnBr2Cl(H2O)]– complex. Ionic liquid additives are proven not to be merely spectators in the zinc half-cell, due to the effects of their chemical structures. Studies using hybrid ionic liquid mixtures indicate that each half-cell benefits from the use of different compounds. It is expected that the approaches and findings presented in this thesis contribute towards aiding and guiding the future search for novel materials to further improve Zn/Br battery technology

A RANDOMISED, COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GRID LASER AND SUBTHRESHOLD MICROPULSE DIODE LASER IN THE TREATMENT OF DIFFUSE DIABETIC MACULOPATHY

Objective: Diabetic retinopathy is a major cause of visual impairment in both developing and developed countries. The two important complicationsare macular edema and proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Laser treatment can reduce vision loss in both proliferative diabetic retinopathy anddiabetic macular edema. Early treatment of diabetic retinopathy study shows that immediate laser treatment reduces the risk of moderate visualloss by at least 50%. Thermal tissue damage is the main cause of many potential complications of conventional photocoagulation that may lead toimmediate and late visual loss. A subthreshold diode micropulse (SDM) laser targets retinal pigment epithelium (RPE); it is maximally absorbed bythe melanosomes of the RPE and underlying choroid while sparing the neurosensory retina. SDM laser minimizes chorioretinal damage as there isno thermal effect or injury despite achieving photocoagulation effects. To compare, the effectiveness of SDM laser versus grid laser photocoagulationfor the treatment of clinically significant macular edema in diabetic patients. To study, the outcome and adverse effects of laser treatments in bothmodalities.Methods: All Type 2 diabetic patients presenting to the ophthalmology department outpatient department were screened for diffuse diabetic macularedema and 60 eyes were enrolled in the study. They were divided into two groups of 30 eyes each and randomly assigned to receive either conventionalgrid laser or SDM laser. A detailed clinical examination which included visual acuity, color vision, visual fields (central 10°), fundus photos, and fundusflourescein angiography were done prior to the laser treatment and at 6 weeks and 3 months follow-up.Results: Conventional grid laser caused a significant resolution of macular edema, angiographically, whereas SDM laser showed worsening at3 months follow-up. Our study did not show an alteration of central 10° of visual field or color vision defects in both the groups, which suggestsignificant functional damage is not caused by both treatment modalities. We found in our study that conventional Grid laser was better at 3 monthsfollow-up in improving/stabilizing visual acuity and macular edema (angiographically). A single sitting of grid laser is better than SDM laser in diffusediabetic maculopathy.Keywords: Diabetic retinopathy, Diabetic macular edema, Grid laser, Subthreshold micropulse diode laser

Automated Physical Design Watermarking Leveraging Graph Neural Networks

This paper presents AutoMarks, an automated and transferable watermarking framework that leverages graph neural networks to reduce the watermark search overheads during the placement stage. AutoMarks's novel automated watermark search is accomplished by (i) constructing novel graph and node features with physical, semantic, and design constraint-aware representation; (ii) designing a data-efficient sampling strategy for watermarking fidelity label collection; and (iii) leveraging a graph neural network to learn the connectivity between cells and predict the watermarking fidelity on unseen layouts. Extensive evaluations on ISPD'15 and ISPD'19 benchmarks demonstrate that our proposed automated methodology: (i) is capable of finding quality-preserving watermarks in a short time; and (ii) is transferable across various designs, i.e., AutoMarks trained on one layout is generalizable to other benchmark circuits. AutoMarks is also resilient against potential watermark removal and forging attacksComment: accept to MLCAD24, code: https://github.com/ruisizhang123/PD_WM_GN

Enabling scalable & secure open-source physical design for modern VLSI

Advancements in modern very large-scale integrated circuits (VLSI) have enabled billions of transistors to be manufactured on a single chip for varied high-performance applications. Nevertheless, the shrinking transistor sizes in advanced technology nodes substantially increase the overall integrated circuit (IC) physical design costs to ensure proper functionality and manufacturability. However, outsourcing manufacturing to third-party foundries could be susceptible to intellectual property (IP) piracy and remains an unverified security concern. This thesis addresses both issues to ensure scalable and secure IC physical design. The first part of this dissertation reduces the costs of verifying the IC physical design layout for functional correctness and manufacturability through scalable and open-source frameworks. Emulation and prototyping processes verify the IC layout by implementing the design on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Among the different steps to implement the design on an FPGA, identifying physical locations for design instances through placement is a critical and time-consuming step that impacts overall performance. Through algorithmic enhancements and acceleration techniques leveraging machine learning hardware and software advancements, this the- sis lays the foundation for two open-source analytical FPGA placement tools — DREAMPlaceFPGA and aug-elfPlace, to enable scalable physical design. DREAMPlaceFPGA accelerates FPGA placement stages through novel algorithmic revisions and achieves 2.38× faster runtime than multi-thread state-of-the-art CPU baseline placers. Built on DREAMPlaceFPGA, aug-elfPlace is part of a hybrid framework that combines the strengths of analytical and annealing-based FPGA placement techniques to outperform the individual placers with 5% better timing performance and 16% lower routing resources. The second portion of this dissertation examines the potential risks of manufacturing an IC design at a third-party foundry. ASICs and modern FPGAs have several IPs, and IP piracy at the fab could result in significant losses for the design companies. An inside-foundry attack is considered to investigate the extent to which the design information is recoverable from a design layout. By employing a novel connectivity representation for the IC components to identify logic gate patterns at various hierarchies, this thesis demonstrates a complete recovery of digital design information, and the proposed algorithms constitute the open-source layout reverse engineering framework ReGDS.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Application of isothermal titration calorimetry in evaluation of protein–nanoparticle interactions

Nanoparticles (NPs) offer a number of advantages over small organic molecules for controlling protein behaviour inside the cell. Protein binding to the surface of NPs depends on their surface characteristics, composition and method of preparation (Mandal et al. in J Hazard Mater 248–249:238–245, 2013). It is important to understand the binding affinities, stoichiometries and thermodynamical parameters of NP–protein interactions in order to see which interaction will have toxic and hazardous consequences and thus to prevent it. On the other side, because proteins are on the brink of stability, they may experience interactions with some types of NPs that are strong enough to cause denaturation or significantly change their conformations with concomitant loss of their biological function. Structural changes in the protein may cause exposure of new antigenic sites, “cryptic” peptide epitopes, potentially triggering an immune response which can promote autoimmune disease (Treuel et al. in ACS Nano 8(1):503–513, 2014). Mechanistic details of protein structural changes at NP surface have still remained elusive. Understanding the formation and persistence of the protein corona is critical issue; however, there are no many analytical methods which could provide detailed information about the NP–protein interaction characteristics and about protein structural changes caused by interactions with nanoparticles. The article reviews recent studies in NP–protein interactions research and application of isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) in this research. The study of protein structural changes upon adsorption on nanoparticle surface and application of ITC in these studies is emphasized. The data illustrate that ITC is a versatile tool for evaluation of interactions between NPs and proteins. When coupled with other analytical methods, it is important analytical tool for monitoring conformational changes in proteins

DREAMPlaceFPGA-MP: An Open-Source GPU-Accelerated Macro Placer for Modern FPGAs with Cascade Shapes and Region Constraints

FPGA macro placement plays a pivotal role in routability and timing closer to the modern FPGA physical design flow. In modern FPGAs, macros could be subject to complex cascade shape constraints requiring instances to be placed in consecutive sites. In addition, in real-world FPGA macro placement scenarios, designs could have various region constraints that specify boundaries within which certain design instances and macros should be placed. In this work, we present DREAMPlaceFPGA-MP, an open-source GPU-accelerated FPGA macro-placer that efficiently generates legal placements for macros while honoring cascade shape requirements and region constraints. Treating multiple macros in a cascade shape as a large single instance and restricting instances to their respective regions, DREAMPlaceFPGA-MP obtains roughly legal placements. The macros are legalized in multiple steps to efficiently handle cascade shapes and region constraints. Our experimental results demonstrate that DREAMPlaceFPGA-MP is among the top contestants of the MLCAD 2023 FPGA Macro-Placement Contest

Synthesis of insect sex pheromones

The traditional use of insecticides continues to be practised in the control of insect populations, the newer methods such as the application of pheromones in the crop protection have gained prominence in the recent years. Since the pheromones have to be made available synthetically for the application in fields, their synthesis has attracted considerable attention and played a vital role in their overall development in the integrated pest management. Various approaches have successfully been made for the preparation of different pheromones and in this process a number of new methodologies have also been worked out