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Semantic segmentation is a fundamental task in remote sensing image processing. The large appearance variations of ground objects make this task quite challenging. Recently, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have shown outstanding performance in this task. A common strategy of these methods (e.g., SegNet) for performance improvement is to combine the feature maps learned at different DCNN layers. However, such a combination is usually implemented via feature map summation or concatenation, indicating that the features are considered indiscriminately. In fact, features at different positions contribute differently to the final performance. It is advantageous to automatically select adaptive features when merging different-layer feature maps. To achieve this goal, we propose a gated convolutional neural network to fulfill this task. Specifically, we explore the relationship between the information entropy of the feature maps and the label-error map, and then a gate mechanism is embedded to integrate the feature maps more effectively. The gate is implemented by the entropy maps, which are generated to assign adaptive weights to different feature maps as their relative importance. Generally, the entropy maps, i.e., the gates, guide the network to focus on the highly-uncertain pixels, where detailed information from lower layers is required to improve the separability of these pixels. The selected features are finally combined to feed into the classifier layer, which predicts the semantic label of each pixel. The proposed method achieves competitive segmentation accuracy on the public ISPRS 2D Semantic Labeling benchmark, which is challenging for segmentation by only using the RGB images.

Vascularization is fundamental for bone formation and bone tissue homeostasis. However, in human subjects, a direct molecular relationship has not been identified between angiogenesis and agents that promote bone disease or factors related to age. Osteopenia is a condition in which bone mineral density is lower than normal, and it represents a sign of normal aging. Here we tested whether the type H vessel, which was recently identified as strongly positive for CD31 and Endomucin (CD31hiEmcnhi) in mice, is an important indicator of aging and osteopenia in human subjects. We found that age-dependent losses of type H vessels in human bone sections conform to the observations in aged mice. The abundance of human type H vessels and osteoprogenitors may be relevant to changes in the skeletal microarchitecture and advanced osteopenia. Furthermore, ovariectomized mice, a widely used model for postmenopausal osteoporosis, exhibited significantly reduced type H vessels accompanied by reduced osteoprogenitors, which is consistent with impaired bone microarchitecture and osteoporosis, suggesting that this feature is an indicator of bone mass independent of aging. More importantly, administration of desferrioxamine led to significantly increased bone mass via enhanced angiogenesis and increased type H vessels in ovariectomized mice. Altogether, these data represent a novel finding that type H vessels are regulated in aged and osteopenia subjects. The abundance of human type H vessels is an early marker of bone loss and represents a potential target for improving bone quality via the induction of type H vessels.

Anoectochilus roxburghii was grown under different shade treatments–50%, 30%, 20%, and 5% of natural irradiance–to evaluate its photosynthetic characteristics, chloroplast ultrastructure, and physiology. The highest net photosynthetic rates and stomatal conductance were observed under 30% irradiance, followed in descending order by 20%, 5%, and 50% treatments. As irradiance decreased from 50% to 30%, electron transport rate and photochemical quenching increased, while non-photochemical quenching indexes declined. Reductions in irradiance significantly increased Chl a and Chl b contents and decreased Chl a/b ratios. Chloroplast ultrastructure generally displayed the best development in leaves subjected to 30% irradiance. Under 50% irradiance, leaf protein content remained relatively stable during the first 20 days of treatment, and then increased rapidly. The highest peroxidase and superoxide dismutase levels, and the lowest catalase activities, were observed in plants subjected to the 50% irradiance treatment. Soluble sugar and malondialdehyde contents were positively correlated with irradiance levels. Modulation of chloroplast development, accomplished by increasing the number of thylakoids and grana containing photosynthetic pigments, is an important shade tolerance mechanism in A. roxburghii.

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BackgroundPu-erh tea is a traditional Chinese tea and produced by natural solid-state fermentation. Several studies show that the natural microbiota influence caffeine level in pu-erh tea. Our previous research also found that the caffeine declined significantly (p < 0.05) in the fermentation, which suggested that the caffeine level could be influenced by specific strains. The purpose of this study was to isolate and identify microorganisms for caffeine degradation, and this research explored the degradation products from caffeine and optimal condition for caffeine degradation.Results11 Fungi were isolated from pu-erh tea fermentation and 7 strains could survive in caffeine solid medium. Two superior strains were identified as Aspergillus niger NCBT110A and Aspergillus sydowii NRRL250 by molecular identification. In the substrate tests with caffeine, A. niger NCBT110A could use caffeine as a potential carbon source while glucose is absent, A. sydowii NRRL250 could degrade 600 mg/L caffeine completely in a liquid medium. During the degradation product analysis of A. sydowii NRRL250, theophylline and 3-methlxanthine were detected, and the level of theophylline and 3-methlxanthine increased significantly (p < 0.05) with the degradation of caffeine. The single factor analysis showed that the optimum conditions of caffeine degradation were 1) substrate concentration of 1200 mg/L, 2) reaction temperature at 30 °C, and 3) pH of 6. In the submerged fermentation of tea infusion by A. sydowii NRRL250, 985.1 mg/L of caffeine was degraded, and 501.2 mg/L of theophylline was produced.ConclusionsResults from this research indicate that Aspergillus sydowii NRRL250 was an effective strain to degrade caffeine. And theophylline and 3-methlxanthine were the main caffeine degradation products.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12866-018-1194-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.