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Cost aggregation is one of the key steps in the stereo matching problem. In order to improve aggregation accuracy, we propose a cost-aggregation method that can embed minimum spanning tree (MST)-based support region filtering into PatchMatch 3D label search rather than aggregating on fixed size patches. However, directly combining PatchMatch label search and MST filtering is not straightforward, due to the extremely high complexity. Thus, we develop multiple MST structures for cost aggregation on plenty of 3D labels, and design the tree-level random search strategy to find possible 3D labels of each pixel. Extensive experiments show that our method reaches higher accuracy than the other existing cost-aggregation and global-optimization methods such as the 1D MST, the PatchMatch and the PatchMatch Filter, and currently ranks first on the Middlebury 3.0 benchmark.

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Extracellular vesicles (EVs) from adipose tissue-derived stem cells have been reported to attenuate lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced inflammation and sepsis while the specific mechanism is unclear. This study explored the underlying molecular mechanisms of EVs from adipose tissue-derived stem cells in reducing inflammation. LPS- induced macrophage models and mice model were established to mimic inflammation in vitro and in vivo . EVs were extracted from adipose tissue-derived stem cells and identified. It was found that proinflammatory cytokines, including IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α, substantially decreased after EVs were applied to LPS-stimulated macrophages and mice, and thus, LPS induced M1 polarization was inhibited and sepsis was strongly alleviated. In the LPS induced macrophages, the expression of Notch signaling molecules and the activation of the NF-κB pathway were substantially decreased after the administration of EVs. Then, RBP-J −/− mice and macrophages were used. It was found that the miR-148a-3p level was significantly lower in the RBP-J −/− macrophages than in the wildtype macrophages. In the LPS induced macrophages, the increasing of miR-148a-3p was milder in the RBP-J −/− macrophages than in the wild type macrophages. Then, miR-148a-3p was overexpressed in macrophages and mice, and we found that the expression of proinflammatory cytokines was increased both in vivo and in vitro . The protective effect of EVs in LPS induced sepsis was diminished by the overexpression of miR-148a-3p. In conclusion, we proved that EVs could attenuate inflammation and further protect organ function by regulating the Notch-miR148a-3p signaling axis and then decreasing macrophage polarization to M1.

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We propose an audio-driven talking-head method to generate photo-realistic talking-head videos from a single reference image. In this work, we tackle two key challenges: (i) producing natural head motions that match speech prosody, and (ii) maintaining the appearance of a speaker in a large head motion while stabilizing the non-face regions. We first design a head pose predictor by modeling rigid 6D head movements with a motion-aware recurrent neural network (RNN). In this way, the predicted head poses act as the low-frequency holistic movements of a talking head, thus allowing our latter network to focus on detailed facial movement generation. To depict the entire image motions arising from audio, we exploit a keypoint based dense motion field representation. Then, we develop a motion field generator to produce the dense motion fields from input audio, head poses, and a reference image. As this keypoint based representation models the motions of facial regions, head, and backgrounds integrally, our method can better constrain the spatial and temporal consistency of the generated videos. Finally, an image generation network is employed to render photo-realistic talking-head videos from the estimated keypoint based motion fields and the input reference image. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method produces videos with plausible head motions, synchronized facial expressions, and stable backgrounds and outperforms the state-of-the-art.

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Herein, we reported a simple solvothermal and chemical oxidation method to synthesize a magnetic core−shell composite (Fe 3 O 4 @UiO-66@PANI) for Cr(VI) removal from wastewater. Due to the porosity and stability of UiO-66 and stability, high acid resistance, and multiple active (reducing and chelating) groups of polyaniline (PANI), Fe 3 O 4 @UiO-66@PANI exhibited excellent efficiency, regeneration, and reusability performance for Cr(VI) removal. Its maximum adsorption capacity and removal rate were 474.42 mg• g −1 and 99.90%, respectively. The effects of initial pH values, contact time, and initial Cr(VI) concentration on Cr(VI) removal were investigated. The fitted data showed that the adsorption process was consistent with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir isothermal model. The study of the mechanism shows that the excellent efficiency of Fe 3 O 4 @ UiO-66@PANI is due to the electrostatic adsorption and reduction of Cr(VI) and the chelation of Cr 3+ . The results demonstrate that Fe 3 O 4 @UiO-66@PANI is a promising adsorbent for the Cr(VI) removal.