The Aerial Guide Dog: A Low-Cognitive-Load Indoor Electronic Travel Aid for Visually Impaired Individuals.

Most navigation aids for visually impaired individuals require users to pay close attention and actively understand the instructions or feedback of guidance, which impose considerable cognitive loads in long-term usage. To tackle the issue, this study proposes a cognitive burden-free electronic travel aid for individuals with visual impairments. Utilizing human instinctive compliance in response to external force, we introduce the "Aerial Guide Dog", a helium balloon aerostat drone designed for indoor guidance, which leverages gentle tugs in real time for directional guidance, ensuring a seamless and intuitive guiding experience. The introduced Aerial Guide Dog has been evaluated in terms of directional guidance and path following in the pilot study, focusing on assessing its accuracy in orientation and the overall performance in navigation. Preliminary results show that the Aerial Guide Dog, utilizing Ultra-Wideband (UWB) spatial positioning and Measurement Unit (IMU) angle sensors, consistently maintained minimal deviation from the targeting direction and designated path, while imposing negligible cognitive burdens on users while completing the guidance tasks.

Multi-Objective Unsupervised Band Selection Method for Hyperspectral Images Classification.

With the increasing spectral dimension of hyperspectral images (HSI), how correctly choose bands based on band correlation and information has become more significant, but also complicated. Band selection is a combinatorial optimization problem, and intelligent optimization algorithms have been shown to be crucial in solving combinatorial optimization problems. However, major of them only use a single objective as the selection index, while neglecting the overall features of hyperspectral images, which may lead to inaccuracy in object detection. To tackle this, we propose a band selection method based on a multi-objective cuckoo search algorithm (MOCS) when constructing a multi-objective unsupervised band selection model based on the amount of information and correlation of the bands (MOCS-BS). Specifically, an adaptive strategy based on population crowding degree is first proposed to assist Lévy flight in overcoming the influence of the parameter constancy. Then, an information-sharing strategy based on grouping and crossover is designed to balance the search ability between global exploration and local exploitation, which can overcome the shortcomings caused by the lack of information interaction between individuals. Finally, the HSI classification experiments are performed by Random Forest and KNN classifiers based on the subset of bands selected by the proposed MOCS-BS method. The proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms including neighborhood grouping normalized matched filter (NGNMF) and multi-objective artificial bee colony with band selection (MABC-BS) on four HSI datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that MOCS-BS is more effective and robust than other methods.

LncRNA GAS5 inhibits Invasion and Migration of Lung Cancer through influencing EMT process.

Background: Lung cancer is a malignant tumor in mammary gland epithelium with high morbidity and mortality among women worldwide. Long noncoding RNA GAS5 (GAS5) has been proved to be closely related with tumor progression. However, the influence of GAS5 on lung cancer and the specific mechanism remain unclear. Methods: Cell invasion, cell migration, cell apoptosis and cell cycle were investigated after transfection with pcDNA-GAS5 and sh-GAS5. Sizes of tumors were measured by establishing transplanted tumor model in vivo. E-cadherin and N-cadherin expressions were investigated. Results: Cell invasion and migration were inhibited markedly in GAS5 overexpressed cell line. Cell cycle results indicated that the percentage of S-phase cells was increased, and G2-phase was reduced in the GAS5 overexpression cell line. Tumor size was suppressed obviously after GAS5 overexpression treatment. GAS5 markedly inhibited the expression of E-cadherin and induced the expression of N-cadherin. GAS5 overexpression significantly inhibited lung cancer cell proliferation by increasing the E-cadherin and decreasing N-cadherin. Conclusions: These findings provide novel evidence that GAS5 can be viewed as an anti-lung cancer agent through affecting EMT pathway.

Local edge-preserving multiscale decomposition for high dynamic range image tone mapping.

A novel filter is proposed for edge-preserving decomposition of an image. It is different from previous filters in its locally adaptive property. The filtered image contains local means everywhere and preserves local salient edges. Comparisons are made between our filtered result and the results of three other methods. A detailed analysis is also made on the behavior of the filter. A multiscale decomposition with this filter is proposed for manipulating a high dynamic range image, which has three detail layers and one base layer. The multiscale decomposition with the filter addresses three assumptions: 1) the base layer preserves local means everywhere; 2) every scale's salient edges are relatively large gradients in a local window; and 3) all of the nonzero gradient information belongs to the detail layer. An effective function is also proposed for compressing the detail layers. The reproduced image gives a good visualization. Experimental results on real images demonstrate that our algorithm is especially effective at preserving or enhancing local details.