An Image Histogram Equalization Acceleration Method for Field-Programmable Gate Arrays Based on a Two-Dimensional Configurable Pipeline.

New artificial intelligence scenarios, such as high-precision online industrial detection, unmanned driving, etc., are constantly emerging and have resulted in an increasing demand for real-time image processing with high frame rates and low power consumption. Histogram equalization (HE) is a very effective and commonly used image preprocessing algorithm designed to improve the quality of image processing results. However, most existing HE acceleration methods, whether run on general-purpose CPUs or dedicated embedded systems, require further improvement in their frame rate to meet the needs of more complex scenarios. In this paper, we propose an HE acceleration method for FPGAs based on a two-dimensional configurable pipeline architecture. We first optimize the parallelizability of HE with a fully configurable two-dimensional pipeline architecture according to the principle of adapting the algorithm to the hardware, where one dimension can compute the cumulative histogram in parallel and the other dimension can process multiple inputs simultaneously. This optimization also helps in the construction of a simple architecture that achieves a higher frequency when implementing HE on FPGAs, which consist of configurable input units, calculation units, and output units. Finally, we optimize the pipeline and critical path of the calculation units. In the experiments, we deploy the optimized HE on a VCU118 test board and achieve a maximum frequency of 891 MHz (which is up to 22.6 times more acceleration than CPU implementations), as well as a frame rate of 1899 frames per second for 1080p images.

Lithium-ion diffusion in the grain boundary of polycrystalline solid electrolyte Li6.75La3Zr1.5Ta0.5O12 (LLZTO): a computer simulation and theoretical study.

Lithium-ion diffusion ability in solid electrolytes is crucial for the performance and safety of lithium-ion batteries. However, the lithium-ion diffusion coefficient of Li6.75La3Zr1.5Ta0.5O12 (LLZTO) measured experimentally is much lower than that simulated theoretically because LLZTO exists widely in the polycrystalline form rather than in the single-crystal form. Herein, we focus on the construction of grain boundaries in polycrystalline materials to address this key issue. An amorphous structure is created by randomly throwing atoms into a virtual box, where the chemical bonds are broken and rearranged through continuous heating and annealing operations, resulting in a stable framework structure. The lithium-ion diffusion coefficients of polycrystalline LLZTO and single-crystal LLZTO calculated via Ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) are consistent with the experimental data in trend. Furthermore, the analysis of the grain boundary composed of the secondary phase in polycrystalline LLZTO reveals that the continuous -O-M-O- metal oxide grid with low formation energy per atom restricts the lithium-ion migration. The lithium-ion migration barriers calculated utilizing density functional theory (DFT) also demonstrate the obstacle of the grain boundary from another perspective.

Deep Multilabel Multilingual Document Learning for Cross-Lingual Document Retrieval.

Cross-lingual document retrieval, which aims to take a query in one language to retrieve relevant documents in another, has attracted strong research interest in the last decades. Most studies on this task start with cross-lingual comparisons at the word level and then represent documents via word embeddings, which leads to insufficient structure information. In this work, the cross-lingual comparison at the document level is achieved through the cross-lingual semantic space. Our method, MDL (deep multilabel multilingual document learning), leverages a six-layer fully connected network to project cross-lingual documents into a shared semantic space. The semantic distances can be calculated when the cross-lingual documents are transformed into embeddings in semantic space. The supervision signals are automatically extracted from the data and then used to construct the semantic space via a linear classifier. The ambiguity of manual labels could be avoided and the multilabel supervision signals can be acquired instead of a single label. The representation of the semantic space is enriched by multilabel supervision signals, which improves the discriminative ability of the embeddings. The MDL is easy to extend to other fields since it does not depend on specific data. Furthermore, MDL is more efficient than the models training all languages jointly, since each language is trained individually. Experiments on Wikipedia data showed that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art cross-lingual document retrieval methods.

Coarse-Grained Pruning of Neural Network Models Based on Blocky Sparse Structure.

Deep neural networks may achieve excellent performance in many research fields. However, many deep neural network models are over-parameterized. The computation of weight matrices often consumes a lot of time, which requires plenty of computing resources. In order to solve these problems, a novel block-based division method and a special coarse-grained block pruning strategy are proposed in this paper to simplify and compress the fully connected structure, and the pruned weight matrices with a blocky structure are then stored in the format of Block Sparse Row (BSR) to accelerate the calculation of the weight matrices. First, the weight matrices are divided into square sub-blocks based on spatial aggregation. Second, a coarse-grained block pruning procedure is utilized to scale down the model parameters. Finally, the BSR storage format, which is much more friendly to block sparse matrix storage and computation, is employed to store these pruned dense weight blocks to speed up the calculation. In the following experiments on MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, the trend of accuracies with different pruning granularities and different sparsity is explored in order to analyze our method. The experimental results show that our coarse-grained block pruning method can compress the network and can reduce the computational cost without greatly degrading the classification accuracy. The experiment on the CIFAR-10 dataset shows that our block pruning strategy can combine well with the convolutional networks.

Formation of different shell structures in lithium-rich layered oxides and their influence on electrochemical properties.

A lithium-rich layered oxide with different shell structures was synthesized by a simple wet-chemical surface deposition method. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and other techniques were applied to characterize the crystal structure, morphology, and micro-structure of the samples. The surface of the lithium-rich layered oxide can successively produce island-like spinel, ultra-thin spinel, and thick two-phase (spinel and amorphous manganese oxides) separation shell layers with an increase in the coating amount. The formation process of the different shell structures and the effect of the shell structure on the lattice parameters were discussed. The different shell structures play an important role in the electrochemical performance of the lithium-rich oxide. In particular, when the coating amount is 1 wt%, the lithium-rich material with a uniform Li4Mn5O12 spinel shell layer exhibits superior electrochemical performance, and can maintain a discharge capacity of 209.9 mA h g-1 and 166.8 mA h g-1 at rates of 2C and 5C.

Decreased IgA+ B cells population and IgA, IgG, IgM contents of the cecal tonsil induced by dietary high fluorine in broilers.

Fluoride is an environmental and industrial pollutant that affects various organs in humans and animals. The cecal tonsil is an important component of the mucosal immune system and performs important and unique immune functions. In the present study, we investigated the effects of dietary high fluorine on the quantities of IgA+ B cells in the cecal tonsil by immunohistochemistry, and the immunoglobulin A (IgA), immunoglobulin G (IgG) and immunoglobulin M (IgM) contents in the cecal tonsil by ELISA. A total of 280 one-day-old avian broilers were divided into four groups and fed on a corn-soybean basal diet as control diet (fluorine 22.6 mg/kg) or the same diet supplemented with 400, 800 and 1,200 mg/kg fluorine (high fluorine groups I, II and III) in the form of sodium fluoride, respectively, throughout a 42-day experimental period. The results showed that the quantities of IgA+ B cells were lower (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) and the IgA, IgG, and IgM contents were decreased (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in high fluorine groups II and III in comparison with those of control group. It was concluded that dietary fluorine, in the 800-1,200 mg/kg range, could reduce the numbers of the IgA+ B cells and immunoglobulin contents in the cecal tonsil, implying the local mucosal immune function was ultimately impacted in broilers.

Dietary high fluorine induces apoptosis and alters Bcl-2, Bax, and caspase-3 protein expression in the cecal tonsil lymphocytes of broilers.

Long-term excessive fluoride intake is known to be toxic and can lead to fluorosis and bone pathologies. However, the cellular mechanisms underlying sodium fluoride-induced cytotoxicity in the cecal tonsil lymphocytes are not well understood. The aims of this study were to investigate the effects of high dietary fluorine on apoptosis and the expression of the Bcl-2, Bax, and caspase-3 in the cecal tonsil lymphocytes of broilers. The broilers were fed on high-fluorine diets containing 0, 400, 800, and 1,200 mg/kg fluorine. As measured by flow cytometry, the percentage of apoptotic lymphocytes was significantly increased in the high-fluorine groups II and III when compared with those in the control group. Meanwhile, immunohistochemical tests showed that the Bcl-2 protein expression decreased, and the Bax and caspase-3 protein expression increased in the high-fluorine groups II and III. In conclusion, dietary fluorine in the range of 800-1,200 mg/kg increased lymphocyte apoptosis in the cecal tonsil of broilers, suggesting that the lymphocyte apoptosis in the cecal tonsil was mediated by direct effects of fluoride on the expression of Bcl-2, Bax, and caspase-3.

Dietary vanadium induces oxidative stress in the intestine of broilers.

The purpose of this study was to examine oxidative stress induced by dietary vanadium in the mucosa of different parts of intestine including duodenum, jejunum, ileum, and cecal tonsil. A total of 420 1-day-old avian broilers were divided into six groups and fed on a corn-soybean basal diet as control diet or the same basal diet supplemented with 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg vanadium as ammonium metavanadate. During the experimental period of 42 days, oxidative stress parameters were determined for both control and experimental groups. The results showed that malondialdehyde content was significantly higher (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg groups than in control group. In contrast, the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase, and ability to inhibit hydroxyl radical, and glutathione hormone content were significantly decreased (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) mainly in 45 and 60 mg/kg groups in comparison with those of control group. However, the abovementioned oxidative stress parameters were not significantly changed (p > 0.05) in 5 and 15 mg/kg groups. It was concluded that dietary vanadium in excess of 30 mg/kg could cause obvious oxidative stress in the intestinal mucosa, which could impact the antioxidant function of intestinal tract in broilers.

Effect of dietary vanadium on the ileac T cells and contents of cytokines in broilers.

The purpose of this 42-day study was to examine the effect of dietary vanadium on the ileac T cells and contents of cytokines including interleukin-2 (IL-2), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) in broilers by flow cytometry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. A total of 420 one-day-old avian broilers were divided into six groups (seven replicates in each group and ten broilers in each replicate) and fed on control diet or the same diet supplemented with 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg vanadium in the form of ammonium metavanadate. The results showed that the percentages of CD3(+), CD3(+)CD4(+), and CD3(+)CD8(+) T cells in both ileac lamina propria lymphocytes (LPLs) and intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) were significantly lower (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01) in the 45- and 60-mg/kg groups than in the control group from 14 to 42 days of age. The CD4(+)/CD8(+) ratio was increased in ileac LPLs in the 60-mg/kg group at 28 days of age, and in ileac IELs in the 60-mg/kg group at 28 days of age and in the 45-mg/kg group at 42 days of age. Meanwhile, the ileac IL-2, IL-6 contents were decreased (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01) in the 60-mg/kg group from 14 to 42 days of age and in the 45-mg/kg group from 28 to 42 days of age in comparison with those of the control group. It was concluded that dietary vanadium in excess of 30 mg/kg reduced the ileac T cell population and percentages of T cell subsets, and IL-2, IL-6, and IFN-γ contents, implying that the immune function of local intestinal mucosa in broilers could be affected by the dietary vanadium.

Changes of IgA+ cells and cytokines in the cecal tonsil of broilers fed on diets supplemented with vanadium.

The cecal tonsil of broiler is known as a secondary lymphoid tissue, which is involved in antigen-specific humoral immune responses. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary vanadium on the tissue distribution and quantity of immunoglobulin A-positive (IgA(+)) cell in the cecal tonsil by immunohistochemistry. Simultaneously, the changes in interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-10 (IL-10), interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) contents in the cecal tonsil were also quantified by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). A total of 420 one-day-old avian broilers were divided into six groups and fed on a corn-soybean basal diet (control diet) or the same diet supplemented respectively with 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg of vanadium in the form of ammonium metavanadate for 42 days. The results showed that the population of the IgA(+) cells in the cecal tonsil were significantly lower (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in the 45 and 60 mg/kg groups than that in the control group. Meanwhile, IL-10, IFN-γ and TNF-α contents in the cecal tonsil were significantly decreased (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in the 30, 45 and 60 mg/kg groups in comparison with those of the control group. However, IL-6 content in the cecal tonsil was only decreased (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in 60 mg/kg at 14 and 28 days of age. In conclusion, dietary vanadium in excess of 30 mg/kg reduced the numbers of the IgA(+) cells and changed the contents of the abovementioned cytokines in the cecal tonsil, which may finally impact the function of local mucosal humoral immunity in broilers.

Dietary high vanadium causes oxidative damage-induced renal and hepatic toxicity in broilers.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the renal and hepatic oxidative damage and toxicity caused by dietary high vanadium in broilers. A total of 420 one-day-old avian broilers were divided into six groups and fed on a corn-soybean basal diet as control diet (vanadium 0.073 mg/kg), and five high vanadium diets (vanadium 5 mg/kg, high vanadium group I; 15 mg/kg, high vanadium group II; 30 mg/kg, high vanadium group III; 45 mg/kg, high vanadium group IV; and 60 mg/kg, high vanadium group V) throughout the experimental period of 42 days. The results showed that the renal and hepatic superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities, ability to inhibit hydroxy radical, and malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione, and vanadium contents were not significantly changed in high vanadium group I and II when compared with those of the control groups. However, the SOD and GSH-Px activities, ability to inhibit hydroxy radical, and GSH content were significantly decreased, and the MDA and vanadium contents were markedly increased in high vanadium groups III, IV, and V. At the same time, the lesions were also observed in the kidney and liver of high vanadium groups III, IV, and V. The renal tubular epithelial cells showed granular degeneration and vacuolar degeneration, and hepatocytes showed granular degeneration, vacuolar degeneration, and fatty degeneration. It was concluded that dietary vanadium in the range of 30-60 mg/kg could cause oxidative damage and vanadium accumulation, which induced renal and hepatic toxicity and lesions. The renal and hepatic function was finally impaired in boilers.

Effect of dietary vanadium on intestinal microbiota in broiler.

The purpose of this 42-day study was to examine the effect of dietary vanadium on intestinal microorganism diversity in the duodenum, ileum, cecum, and rectum segments of broilers by the plate count and polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). A total of 420 1-day-old avian broilers were divided into six groups and fed on a control diet or the same diet supplemented with vanadium at the doses of 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg in the form of ammonium metavanadate. In comparison with control group, the dietary vanadium at the doses of 45 and 60 mg/kg could decrease the counts of Bifidobacterium spp. in the intestinal tract at 21 and 42 days of age. With increasing level in dietary vanadium, the counts of Escherichia coli were significantly increased in the ileum, cecum, and rectum and were decreased in the duodenum at 21 and 42 days of age. However, the counts of Lactobacilli were decreased in the cecum and rectum and increased in the ileum of 45 and 60 mg/kg groups. The colonization of these three bacteria could be affected by dietary vanadium. DGGE analysis showed that the number of bands in duodenum, ileum, cecum, and rectum were obviously decreased in the 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg groups at 21 and 42 days of age. In conclusion, the dietary vanadium in excess of 30 mg/kg could alter the amount and diversity of intestinal bacteria in broilers, implying that the structure and initial balance in the intestinal microbiota were disrupted.

Effect of dietary vanadium on cecal tonsil T cell subsets and IL-2 contents in broilers.

The purpose of this 42-day study was to investigate the effects of dietary excess vanadium on intestinal immune function by histopathological observation of cecal tonsil and changes of the cecal tonsil T cell subsets by method of flow cytometry. Four hundred twenty 1-day-old avian broilers were divided into six groups and fed on a corn-soybean basal diet as control diet or the same diet amended to contain 5, 15, 30, 45, and 60 mg/kg vanadium supplied as ammonium metavanadate. In comparison with those of control group, lymphocytes in the lymphatic nodule of cecal tonsil were apparently decreased in 45 and 60 mg/kg groups. The percentage of CD(3)(+) T cells was decreased (p < 0.05) in 45 mg/kg group at 28 and 42 days of age and significantly decreased (p < 0.01) in 60 mg/kg group at 28 and 42 days of age. The percentages of CD(3)(+)CD(4)(+) and CD(3)(+)CD(8)(+) T cells were markedly decreased (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in 60 mg/kg group from 14 to 28 days of age and were decreased (p < 0.05) in 45 mg/kg group at 28 and 42 days of age. However, changes of the CD(4)(+)/CD(8)(+) ratio were not significant. Meanwhile, the cecal tonsil interleukin-2 (IL-2) contents were decreased (p < 0.05 or p < 0.01) in 45 and 60 mg/kg groups from 14 to 42 days of age. It was concluded that dietary vanadium in excess of 30 mg/kg reduced the percentages of cecal tonsil T cells subsets and IL-2 contents, and caused cecal tonsil lesions, which impaired cecal tonsil function and impacted the local mucosal immune function of the intestines in broilers.