Southwest University

About: Southwest University is a education organization based out in Chongqing, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Bombyx mori. The organization has 29772 authors who have published 27755 publications receiving 409441 citations. The organization is also known as: Southwest University in Chongqing & SWU.

Alteration in growth, leaf gas exchange, and photosynthetic pigments of maize plants under combined cadmium and arsenic stress

Abstract: Increasing soil contamination by heavy metals is a major threat to environmental safety and global food security. The present study examined the influence of Cd and As stresses on morpho-physiological growth and yield of two contrasting maize cultivars (Run Nong 35 and Dong Dan 80). The Cd (100 μM) and As (200 μM) were applied individually as well as in combination (Cd + As) at 30 DAS. A control without Cd or As stress was also maintained for comparison. Application of Cd and As alone or in combination substantially reduced the growth (plant height, number of leaves per plant, leaf area, stem diameter, and shoot fresh and dry weight) and yield (number of ears per plant, number of kernels per ear, and 100-kernel weight) contributing traits in both maize cultivars particularly in Run Nong 35. Furthermore, pronounced reductions in gas exchange attributes (photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, and intercellular CO2) and chlorophyll contents were observed in metal-stressed plants. The combined application of Cd and As was more detrimental for maize, and this treatment recorded the maximum reductions in morpho-physiological growth and yield of both cultivars. Cultivar variations were also apparent, and Dong Dan 80 performed better than Run Nong 35 for all the studied attributes. The higher tolerance of Dong Dan 80 was associated with better leaf gas exchange and maintenance of chlorophyll contents in this cultivar under Cd and As stress.

Photosensitizer–Gold Nanorod Composite for Targeted Multimodal Therapy

Abstract: In this work, a DNA inter-strand replacement strategy for therapeutic activity is successfully designed for multimodal therapy. In this multimodal therapy, chlorin e6 (Ce6) photosensitizer molecules are used for photodynamic therapy (PDT), while aptamer-AuNRs, are used for selective binding to target cancer cells and for photothermal therapy (PTT) with near infrared laser irradiation. Aptamer Sgc8, which specifically targets leukemia T cells, is conjugated to an AuNR by a thiol-Au covalent bond and then hybridized with a Ce6-labeled photosensitizer/reporter to form a DNA double helix. When target cancer cells are absent, Ce6 is quenched and shows no PDT effect. However, when target cancer cells are present, the aptamer changes structure to release Ce6 to produce singlet oxygen for PDT upon light irradiation. Importantly, by combining photosensitizer and photothermal agents, PTT/PDT dual therapy supplies a more effective therapeutic outcome than either therapeutic modality alone.

From Macro to Micro Expression Recognition: Deep Learning on Small Datasets Using Transfer Learning

Abstract: This paper presents the methods used in our submission to 2018 Facial Micro-Expression Grand Challenge (MEGC). The object of the challenge is to recognize micro-expression in two provided databases, including holdout-database recognition and composite database recognition. Considering the small size of the databases, we follow a rout of transfer learning to implement convolutional neural network to recognize the micro-expression. ResNet10 pre-trained on ImageNet dataset was fine-tuned on macro-expression datasets with large size and then on the provided micro-expression datasets. Experimental results show that the method can achieve weighted average recall (WAR) of 0.561 and unweighted average recall (UAR) of 0.389 in Holdout-database Evaluation Task, and F1 Score of 0.64 in Composite Database Evaluation Task, which are much higher than what baseline methods (LBP-TOP, HOOF, HOG3D) can achieve.