University of Maryland, Baltimore County

About: University of Maryland, Baltimore County is a education organization based out in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Galaxy. The organization has 8749 authors who have published 20843 publications receiving 795706 citations. The organization is also known as: UMBC.

Representation Learning by Learning to Count

Abstract: We introduce a novel method for representation learning that uses an artificial supervision signal based on counting visual primitives. This supervision signal is obtained from an equivariance relation, which does not require any manual annotation. We relate transformations of images to transformations of the representations. More specifically, we look for the representation that satisfies such relation rather than the transformations that match a given representation. In this paper, we use two image transformations in the context of counting: scaling and tiling. The first transformation exploits the fact that the number of visual primitives should be invariant to scale. The second transformation allows us to equate the total number of visual primitives in each tile to that in the whole image. These two transformations are combined in one constraint and used to train a neural network with a contrastive loss. The proposed task produces representations that perform on par or exceed the state of the art in transfer learning benchmarks.

Metal-enhanced fluorescence

Abstract: Preface. Contributors. Mental-Enhanced Fluorescence: Progress Towards a Unified Plasmon-Fluorophore Description (Kadir Aslan and Chris D. Geddes). Spectral Profile Modifications In Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (E. C. Le Ru, J. Grand, N. Felidj, J. Aubard, G. Levi, A. Hohenau, J. R. Krenn, E. Blackie and P. G. Etchegoin). The Role Of Plasmonic Engineering In Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (Daniel J. Ross, Nicholas P.W. Pieczonka and R. F. Aroca). Importance of Spectral Overlap: Fluorescence Enhancement by Single Metal Nanoparticles (Keiko Munechika, Yeechi Chen, Jessica M. Smith and.David S. Ginger). Near-IR Metal Enhanced Fluorescence And Controlled Colloidal Aggregation (Jon P. Anderson, Mark Griffiths, John G. Williams, Daniel L. Grone, Dave L. Steffens, and Lyle M. Middendorf). Optimisation Of Plasmonic Enhancement Of Fluorescence For Optical Biosensor Applications (Colette McDonagh, Ondrej Stranik, Robert Nooney and Brian D. MacCraith). Microwave-Accelerated Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence (Kadir Aslan and Chris D. Geddes). Localized Surface Plasmon Coupled Fluorescence Fiber Optic Based Biosensing (Chien Chou, Ja-An Annie Ho, Chii-Chang Chen, Ming-Yaw, Wei-Chih Liu, Ying-Feng Chang, Chen Fu, Si-Han Chen and Ting-Yang Kuo). Surface Plasmon Enhanced Photochemistry (Stephen K. Gray). Metal-Enhanced Generation of Oxygen Rich Species (Yongxia Zhang, Kadir Aslan and Chris D. Geddes). Synthesis Of Anisotropic Noble Metal Nanoparticles (Damian Aherne, Deirdre M. Ledwith and John M. Kelly). Enhanced Fluorescence Detection Enabled By Zinc Oxide Nanomaterials (Jong-in Hahm). ZnO Platforms For Enhanced Directional Fluorescence Applications (H.C. Ong, D.Y. Lei, J. Li and J.B. Xu). E-Beam Lithography And Spontaneous Galvanic Displacement Reactions For Spatially Controlled MEF Applications (Luigi Martiradonna, S. Shiv Shankar and Pier Paolo Pompa). Metal-Enhanced Chemiluminescence (Yongxia Zhang, Kadir Aslan and Chris D. Geddes). Enhanced Fluorescence From Gratings (Chii-Wann Lin, Nan-Fu Chiu, Jiun-Haw Lee and Chih-Kung Lee). Enhancing Fluorescence with Sub-Wavelength Metallic Apertures (Steve Blair and Jerome Wenger). Enhanced Multi-Photon Excitation of Tryptophan-Silver Colloid (Renato E. de Araujo, Diego Rativa and Anderson S. L. Gomes). Plasmon-enhanced radiative rates and applications to organic electronics (Lewis Rothberg and Shanlin Pan). Fluorescent Quenching Gold Nanoparticles: Potential Biomedical Applications (Xiaohua Huang, Ivan H. El-Sayed, and Mostafa A. El-Sayed). Index.

Fermi observations of GRB 090510 : A short-hard gamma-ray burst with an additional, hard power-law component from 10 keV to GeV energies

Abstract: We present detailed observations of the bright short-hard gamma-ray burst GRB 090510 made with the Gammaray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi observatory. GRB 090510 is the first burst detected by the LAT that shows strong evidence for a deviation from a Band spectral fitting function during the prompt emission phase. The time-integrated spectrum is fit by the sum of a Band function with E-peak = 3.9 +/- 0.3 MeV, which is the highest yet measured, and a hard power-law component with photon index -1.62 +/- 0.03 that dominates the emission below approximate to 20 keV and above approximate to 100 MeV. The onset of the high-energy spectral component appears to be delayed by similar to 0.1 s with respect to the onset of a component well fit with a single Band function. A faint GBM pulse and a LAT photon are detected 0.5 s before the main pulse. During the prompt phase, the LAT detected a photon with energy 30.5(-2.6)(+5.8) GeV, the highest ever measured from a short GRB. Observation of this photon sets a minimum bulk outflow Lorentz factor, Gamma greater than or similar to 1200, using simple.. opacity arguments for this GRB at redshift z = 0.903 and a variability timescale on the order of tens of ms for the approximate to 100 keV-few MeV flux. Stricter high confidence estimates imply Gamma greater than or similar to 1000 and still require that the outflows powering short GRBs are at least as highly relativistic as those of long-duration GRBs. Implications of the temporal behavior and power-law shape of the additional component on synchrotron/synchrotron self-Compton, external-shock synchrotron, and hadronic models are considered.

Reduction of Established Spontaneous Mammary Carcinoma Metastases following Immunotherapy with Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II and B7.1 Cell-based Tumor Vaccines

Abstract: For many cancer patients, removal of primary tumor is curative; however, if metastatic lesions exist and are not responsive to treatment, survival is limited. Although immunotherapy is actively being tested in animal models against primary tumors and experimental metastases (i.v. induced), very few studies have examined immunotherapy of spontaneous, established metastatic disease. The shortage of such studies can be attributed to the paucity of adequate animal models and to the concern that multiple metastatic lesions may be more resistant to immunotherapy than a localized primary tumor. Here, we use the BALB/c-derived mouse mammary carcinoma, 4T1, and show that this tumor very closely models human breast cancer in its immunogenicity, metastatic properties, and growth characteristics. Therapy studies demonstrate that treatment of mice with established primary and metastatic disease with MHC class II and B7.1-transfected tumor cells reduces or eliminates established spontaneous metastases but has no impact on primary tumor growth. These studies indicate that cell-based vaccines targeting the activation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells may be effective agents for the treatment of malignancies, such as breast cancer, where the primary tumor is curable by conventional methods, but metastatic lesions remain refractile to current treatment modalities.

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

Abstract: Humans, unlike any other multicellular species in Earth's history, have emerged as a global force that is transforming the ecology of an entire planet. It is no longer possible to understand, predict, or successfully manage ecological pattern, process, or change without understanding why and how humans reshape these over the long term. Here, a general causal theory is presented to explain why human societies gained the capacity to globally alter the patterns, processes, and dynamics of ecology and how these anthropogenic alterations unfold over time and space as societies themselves change over human generational time. Building on existing theories of ecosystem engineering, niche construction, inclusive inheritance, cultural evolution, ultrasociality, and social change, this theory of anthroecological change holds that sociocultural evolution of subsistence regimes based on ecosystem engineering, social specialization, and non-kin exchange, or “sociocultural niche construction,” is the main cause of both the long-term upscaling of human societies and their unprecedented transformation of the biosphere. Human sociocultural niche construction can explain, where classic ecological theory cannot, the sustained transformative effects of human societies on biogeography, ecological succession, ecosystem processes, and the ecological patterns and processes of landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere. Anthroecology theory generates empirically testable hypotheses on the forms and trajectories of long-term anthropogenic ecological change that have significant theoretical and practical implications across the subdisciplines of ecology and conservation. Though still at an early stage of development, anthroecology theory aligns with and integrates established theoretical frameworks including social–ecological systems, social metabolism, countryside biogeography, novel ecosystems, and anthromes. The “fluxes of nature” are fast becoming “cultures of nature.” To investigate, understand, and address the ultimate causes of anthropogenic ecological change, not just the consequences, human sociocultural processes must become as much a part of ecological theory and practice as biological and geophysical processes are now. Strategies for achieving this goal and for advancing ecological science and conservation in an increasingly anthropogenic biosphere are presented.