b-MAR: bidirectional artifact representations learning framework for metal artifact reduction in dental CBCT.

Metal artifacts in computed tomography (CT) images hinder diagnosis and treatment significantly. Specifically, dental cone-beam computed tomography (Dental CBCT) images are seriously contaminated by metal artifacts due to the widespread use of low tube voltages and the presence of various high-attenuation materials in dental structures. Existing supervised metal artifact reduction (MAR) methods mainly learn the mapping of artifact-affected images to clean images, while ignoring the modeling of the metal artifact generation process.

Supervised convex clustering.

Clustering has long been a popular unsupervised learning approach to identify groups of similar objects and discover patterns from unlabeled data in many applications. Yet, coming up with meaningful interpretations of the estimated clusters has often been challenging precisely due to their unsupervised nature. Meanwhile, in many real-world scenarios, there are some noisy supervising auxiliary variables, for instance, subjective diagnostic opinions, that are related to the observed heterogeneity of the unlabeled data.

Topological defect-propelled swimming of nematic colloids.

Topological defects on colloids rotating in nematic liquid crystals form far-from-equilibrium structures that perform complex swim strokes in which the defects periodically extend, depin, and contract. These defect dynamics propel the colloid, generating translation from rotation. The swimmer's speed and direction are determined by the topological defect's polarity and extent of elongation.

Mitochondrial Genomes of Two Asexual (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) Strains and Comparison with Their Sexual Relatives.

Despite its substantial costs, sexual reproduction dominates in animals. One popular explanation for the paradox of sex is that asexual reproduction is more likely to accumulate deleterious mutations than sexual reproduction. To test this hypothesis, we compared the mitogenomes of two asexual wasp strains, and to their sexual relatives.

Alterations in degree centrality and cognitive function in breast cancer patients after chemotherapy.

The goal of this study was to determine the presence or absence of persistent functional impairments in specific brain regions in breast cancer patients during the recovery period after chemotherapy. We calculated degree centrality (DC) and explored the correlation between brain changes and cognitive scores in 29 female patients with breast cancer who had completed chemotherapy within 1-6 years (C + group) and in 28 age-matched patients with breast cancer who did not receive chemotherapy (C- group). All patients underwent rs-fMRI and cognitive testing.

Minipatch Learning as Implicit Ridge-Like Regularization.

Ridge-like regularization often leads to improved generalization performance of machine learning models by mitigating overfitting. While ridge-regularized machine learning methods are widely used in many important applications, direct training via optimization could become challenging in huge data scenarios with millions of examples and features. We tackle such challenges by proposing a general approach that achieves ridge-like regularization through implicit techniques named Minipatch Ridge (MPRidge).

TPGS and chondroitin sulfate dual-modified lipid-albumin nanosystem for targeted delivery of chemotherapeutic agent against multidrug-resistant cancer.

Multidrug resistance (MDR) remains the primary issue leading to the failure of chemotherapy. In this study, a d-α-tocopherol polyethylene 1000 glycol succinate (TPGS) and chondroitin sulfate (CS) dual-modified lipid-albumin nanosystem was constructed for targeted delivery of paclitaxel (PTX) in treating MDR cancer. The obtained nanosystem (TLA/PTX@CS) had an average size of around 176 nm and a negative zeta potential of around -18 mV.

Quantifying cognitive resilience in Alzheimer's Disease: The Alzheimer's Disease Cognitive Resilience Score.

Even though there is a clear link between Alzheimer's Disease (AD) related neuropathology and cognitive decline, numerous studies have observed that healthy cognition can exist in the presence of extensive AD pathology, a phenomenon sometimes called Cognitive Resilience (CR). To better understand and study CR, we develop the Alzheimer's Disease Cognitive Resilience Score (AD-CR Score), which we define as the difference between the observed and expected cognition given the observed level of AD pathology. Unlike other definitions of CR, our AD-CR Score is a fully non-parametric, stand-alone, individual-level quantification of CR that is derived independently of other factors or proxy variables.

Surface States Enhanced Dynamic Schottky Diode Generator with Extremely High Power Density Over 1000 W m.

The overloaded energy cost has become the main concern of the now fast developing society, which make novel energy devices with high power density of critical importance to the sustainable development of human society. Herein, a dynamic Schottky diode based generator with ultrahigh power density of 1262.0 W m for sliding Fe tip on rough p-type silicon is reported.

A synergetic enhancement of localized surface plasmon resonance and photo-induced effect for graphene/GaAs photodetector.

Photodetectors based on graphene/GaAs heterostructure were fabricated and demonstrated for application in self-powered photodetection. Then, Si quantum dots (QDs) were spin-coated onto the surface of the devices to enhance the built-in field by photo-induced doping, because of the tunable Fermi level (E ) of graphene and shallow junction of the heterojunction. Additionally, Au nanoparticles working as a light trapping structure were used to the enhance quantum efficiency of the Si QDs and the optical absorption of the heterojunction, benefitting from localized surface plasmon resonance.

Deck the Walls with Anisotropic Colloids in Nematic Liquid Crystals.

Nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) offer remarkable opportunities to direct colloids to form complex structures. The elastic energy field that dictates colloid interactions is determined by the NLC director field, which is sensitive to and can be controlled by boundaries including vessel walls and colloid surfaces. By molding the director field via liquid-crystal alignment on these surfaces, elastic energy landscapes can be defined to drive structure formation.

Immunomodulatory properties of graphene oxide for osteogenesis and angiogenesis.

Background: The osteo-immunomodulatory properties of biomaterials play an important role in the outcomes of bone regeneration. Graphene oxide (GO) has been widely applied in many research fields due to its unique properties. However, the immunomodulatory properties of GO as a biomaterial for bone tissue engineering are still unclear.

A molecular copper catalyst for electrochemical water reduction with a large hydrogen-generation rate constant in aqueous solution.

The copper complex [(bztpen)Cu](BF4)2 (bztpen=N-benzyl-N,N',N'-tris(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)ethylenediamine) displays high catalytic activity for electrochemical proton reduction in acidic aqueous solutions, with a calculated hydrogen-generation rate constant (k(obs)) of over 10000 s(-1). A turnover frequency (TOF) of 7000 h(-1) cm(-2) and a Faradaic efficiency of 96% were obtained from a controlled potential electrolysis (CPE) experiment with [(bztpen)Cu](2+) in pH 2.5 buffer solution at -0.