ELUCID IV: Galaxy Quenching and its Relation to Halo Mass, Environment, and Assembly Bias

We examine the quenched fraction of central and satellite galaxies as a function of galaxy stellar mass, halo mass, and the matter density of their large scale environment. Matter densities are inferred from our ELUCID simulation, a constrained simulation of local Universe sampled by SDSS, while halo masses and central/satellite classification are taken from the galaxy group catalog of Yang et al. The quenched fraction for the total population increases systematically with the three quantities. We find that the `environmental quenching efficiency', which quantifies the quenched fraction as function of halo mass, is independent of stellar mass. And this independence is the origin of the stellar mass-independence of density-based quenching efficiency, found in previous studies. Considering centrals and satellites separately, we find that the two populations follow similar correlations of quenching efficiency with halo mass and stellar mass, suggesting that they have experienced similar quenching processes in their host halo. We demonstrate that satellite quenching alone cannot account for the environmental quenching efficiency of the total galaxy population and the difference between the two populations found previously mainly arises from the fact that centrals and satellites of the same stellar mass reside, on average, in halos of different mass. After removing these halo-mass and stellar-mass effects, there remains a weak, but significant, residual dependence on environmental density, which is eliminated when halo assembly bias is taken into account. Our results therefore indicate that halo mass is the prime environmental parameter that regulates the quenching of both centrals and satellites.Comment: 21 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Ap

Fuse & Calibrate: A bi-directional Vision-Language Guided Framework for Referring Image Segmentation

Referring Image Segmentation (RIS) aims to segment an object described in natural language from an image, with the main challenge being a text-to-pixel correlation. Previous methods typically rely on single-modality features, such as vision or language features, to guide the multi-modal fusion process. However, this approach limits the interaction between vision and language, leading to a lack of fine-grained correlation between the language description and pixel-level details during the decoding process. In this paper, we introduce FCNet, a framework that employs a bi-directional guided fusion approach where both vision and language play guiding roles. Specifically, we use a vision-guided approach to conduct initial multi-modal fusion, obtaining multi-modal features that focus on key vision information. We then propose a language-guided calibration module to further calibrate these multi-modal features, ensuring they understand the context of the input sentence. This bi-directional vision-language guided approach produces higher-quality multi-modal features sent to the decoder, facilitating adaptive propagation of fine-grained semantic information from textual features to visual features. Experiments on RefCOCO, RefCOCO+, and G-Ref datasets with various backbones consistently show our approach outperforming state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures ICIC202

Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Dynamic Reconfiguration Planning for Digital Twin-Driven Smart Manufacturing Systems With Reconfigurable Machine Tools

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives CC BY-NC-ND licence, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Smart manufacturing systems are a new paradigm in Industry 4.0 driven by the emerging information and communication technology and artificial intelligence that converge to digital twin, which are able to perceive, recognize, and handle the changes in demand and production. Reconfigurable machine tools (RMTs) can promote the flexibility of smart manufacturing systems. The fundamental problem lies in dynamically reconfiguring the RMTs in smart manufacturing systems efficiently and accurately by considering the flexibility of production precedence and operation sequences simultaneously. Therefore, in this article, a deep reinforcement learning-based reconfiguration planning method of digital twin-driven smart manufacturing systems with RMT is proposed to seek optimal reconfiguration policy online. The reconfiguration processes of smart manufacturing systems are modeled by considering reconfiguration cost, moving cost, and processing cost. Deep Q-network is adopted to explore the state space and action space to find the optimal reconfiguration scheme with the highest return. An industry case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method, where the reconfiguration processes of a smart manufacturing system consisting of five RMTs for producing four parts are discussed.Peer reviewe

Iodinated oil-loaded, fluorescent mesoporous silica-coated iron oxide nanoparticles for magnetic resonance imaging/computed tomography/fluorescence trimodal imaging

In this study, a novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/computed tomography (CT)/fluorescence trifunctional probe was prepared by loading iodinated oil into fluorescent mesoporous silica-coated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (i-fmSiO4@SPIONs). Fluorescent mesoporous silica-coated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (fmSiO4@SPIONs) were prepared by growing fluorescent dye-doped silica onto superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) directed by a cetyltrimethylammonium bromide template. As prepared, fmSiO4@SPIONs had a uniform size, a large surface area, and a large pore volume, which demonstrated high efficiency for iodinated oil loading. Iodinated oil loading did not change the sizes of fmSiO4@SPIONs, but they reduced the MRI T2 relaxivity (r2) markedly. I-fmSiO4@SPIONs were stable in their physical condition and did not demonstrate cytotoxic effects under the conditions investigated. In vitro studies indicated that the contrast enhancement of MRI and CT, and the fluorescence signal intensity of i-fmSiO4@SPION aqueous suspensions and macrophages, were intensified with increased i-fmSiO4@SPION concentrations in suspension and cell culture media. Moreover, for the in vivo study, the accumulation of i-fmSiO4@SPIONs in the liver could also be detected by MRI, CT, and fluorescence imaging. Our study demonstrated that i-fmSiO4@SPIONs had great potential for MRI/CT/fluorescence trimodal imaging

Targeting oncogenic miR-335 inhibits growth and invasion of malignant astrocytoma cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Astrocytomas are the most common and aggressive brain tumors characterized by their highly invasive growth. Gain of chromosome 7 with a hot spot at 7q32 appears to be the most prominent aberration in astrocytoma. Previously reports have shown that microRNA-335 (miR-335) resided on chromosome 7q32 is deregulated in many cancers; however, the biological function of miR-335 in astrocytoma has yet to be elucidated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report that miR-335 acts as a tumor promoter in conferring tumorigenic features such as growth and invasion on malignant astrocytoma. The miR-335 level is highly elevated in C6 astrocytoma cells and human malignant astrocytomas. Ectopic expression of miR-335 in C6 cells dramatically enhances cell viability, colony-forming ability and invasiveness. Conversely, delivery of antagonist specific for miR-335 (antagomir-335) to C6 cells results in growth arrest, cell apoptosis, invasion repression and marked regression of astrocytoma xenografts. Further investigation reveals that miR-335 targets disheveled-associated activator of morphogenesis 1(Daam1) at posttranscriptional level. Moreover, silencing of endogenous Daam1 (siDaam1) could mimic the oncogenic effects of miR-335 and reverse the growth arrest, proapoptotic and invasion repression effects induced by antagomir-335. Notably, the oncogenic effects of miR-335 and siDAAM1 together with anti-tumor effects of antagomir-335 are also confirmed in human astrocytoma U87-MG cells.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings suggest an oncogenic role of miR-335 and shed new lights on the therapy of malignant astrocytomas by targeting miR-335.</p

Efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese medicine external washing in the treatment of postoperative wound of diabetes complicated with anal fistula: Study protocol of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center clinical trial

Introduction: Anal fistula is one of the commonest ailments seen by anorectal surgeons as surgery is currently the preferred treatment for it. Diabetes mellitus is a risk factor that can lead to slow wound healing after anal fistula surgery. Because of the large postoperative wound surface of anal fistula, patients with diabetes can have an increased probability of wound infection, which makes it hard to heal. There is an extensive clinical experience for wound healing in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The Jiedu Shengji decoction (JSD) is a widely used external washing decoction in clinical practice. However, the current evidence on it is still insufficient. Therefore, we report this carefully designed clinical trial to assess the efficacy and safety of JSD in the treatment of postoperative wounds in diabetic patients with anal fistula.Methods and analysis: This study was designed to be a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center clinical trial. There were 60 eligible participants who were randomized at a 1:1 ratio to the intervention and placebo groups. Both groups received the same standard treatment. The intervention group was given external washing decoction of TCM (JSD), while the placebo group was given the placebo made of excipients and flavoring agents. The main outcome measures include wound healing, distribution of wound pathogens, levels of inflammatory mediators, and blood glucose. The secondary outcome measures included lipids, the quality of the life evaluation scale (Short-Form Health Survey 36). Assessments were performed before the start of the study, at 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th weeks after the intervention, and at 8th, 12th, and 16th follow-up weeks.Discussion: The clinical study we proposed will be the first randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center clinical trial study to assess the efficacy and safety of TCM external washing (JSD) in the treatment of postoperative wounds in diabetic patients with anal fistula.Ethics and dissemination: The Medical Ethics Committee of Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine has reviewed this study protocol and gave its approval and consent on 17 March, 2022 (Ethical Review Number: 2022KL-018)

INvestigations of massive Filaments ANd sTar formation (INFANT). I. Core Identification and Core Mass Function

Filamentary structures are ubiquitously found in high-mass star-forming clouds. To investigate the relationship between filaments and star formation, we carry out the INFANT (INvestigations of massive Filaments ANd sTar formation) survey, a multi-scale, multi-wavelength survey of massive filamentary clouds with ALMA band 3/band 6 and VLA K band. In this first paper, we present the ALMA band 6 continuum observations toward a sample of 8 high-mass star forming filaments. We covered each target with approximately rectangular mosaic field of view with two 12-m array configurations, achieving an angular resolution of $\sim$0.6" (2700 AU at 4.5 kpc) and a continuum rms of $\sim$0.1 mJy/beam ($\sim$0.06 Msun in gas mass assuming 15 K). We identify cores using the getsf and astrodendro and find the former is more robust in terms of both identification and measuring flux densities. We identify in total 183 dense cores (15--36 cores in each cloud) and classify their star formation states via outflow and warm gas tracers. The protostellar cores are statistically more massive than the prestellar cores, possibly indicating further accretion onto cores after formation of protostars. For the high-mass end ($M_\text{core}$ $>$ 1.5 Msun) of the core mass function (CMF) we derive a power-law index of $-$1.15 $\pm$ 0.12 for the whole sample, and $-$1.70 $\pm$ 0.25 for the prestellar population. We also find a steepening trend in CMF with cloud evolution ($-$0.89 $\pm$ 0.15 for the young group v.s. $-$1.44 $\pm$ 0.25 for the evolved group) and discuss its implication for cluster formation.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, accepted for Ap

The magnetic field in colliding filaments G202.3+2.5

We observe the magnetic field morphology towards a nearby star-forming filamentary cloud, G202.3+2.5, by the JCMT/POL-2 850 {\mu}m thermal dust polarization observation with an angular resolution of 14.4" (~0.053 pc). The average magnetic field orientation is found to be perpendicular to the filaments while showing different behaviors in the four subregions, suggesting various effects from filaments' collision in these subregions. With the kinematics obtained by N2H+ observation by IRAM, we estimate the plane-of-sky (POS) magnetic field strength by two methods, the classical Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (DCF) method and the angular dispersion function (ADF) method, B_{pos,dcf} and B_{pos,adf} are ~90 {\mu}G and ~53 {\mu}G. We study the relative importance between the gravity (G), magnetic field (B) and turbulence (T) in the four subregions, find G > T > B, G >= T > B, G ~ T > B and T > G > B in the north tail, west trunk, south root and east wing, respectively. In addition, we investigate the projection effect on the DCF and ADF methods based on a similar simulation case and find the 3D magnetic field strength may be underestimated by a factor of ~3 if applying the widely-used statistical B_{pos}-to-B_{3D} factor when using DCF or ADF method, which may further underestimate/overestimate related parameters.Comment: Accepted by ApJ. 20 pages, 9 figure