We present in this paper a novel denoising training method to speed up DETR (DEtection TRansformer) training and offer a deepened understanding of the slow convergence issue of DETR-like methods. We show that the slow convergence results from the instability of bipartite graph matching which causes inconsistent optimization goals in early training stages. To address this issue, except for the Hungarian loss, our method additionally feeds GT bounding boxes with noises into the Transformer decoder and trains the model to reconstruct the original boxes, which effectively reduces the bipartite graph matching difficulty and leads to faster convergence. Our method is universal and can be easily plugged into any DETR-like method by adding dozens of lines of code to achieve a remarkable improvement. As a result, our DN-DETR results in a remarkable improvement ( +1.9AP) under the same setting and achieves 46.0 AP and 49.5 AP trained for 12 and 50 epochs with the ResNet-50 backbone. Compared with the baseline under the same setting, DN-DETR achieves comparable performance with 50% training epochs. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of denoising training in CNN-based detectors (Faster R-CNN), segmentation models (Mask2Former, Mask DINO), and more DETR-based models (DETR, Anchor DETR, Deformable DETR).

This paper aims to address the problem of pretraining for person re-identification (Re-ID) with noisy labels. To setup the pretraining task, we apply a simple online multi-object tracking system on raw videos of an existing un-labeled Re-ID dataset “LUPerson” and build the Noisy Labeled variant called “LUPerson-NL”. Since theses ID labels automatically derived from tracklets inevitably con-tain noises, we develop a large-scale Pre-training frame-work utilizing Noisy Labels (PNL), which consists of three learning modules: supervised Re-ID learning, prototype-based contrastive learning, and label-guided contrastive learning. In principle, joint learning of these three mod-ules not only clusters similar examples to one prototype, but also rectifies noisy labels based on the prototype as-signment. We demonstrate that learning directly from raw videos is a promising alternative for pre-training, which utilizes spatial and temporal correlations as weak super-vision. This simple pre-training task provides a scalable way to learn SOTA Re-ID representations from scratch on “LUPerson-NL” without bells and whistles. For example, by applying on the same supervised Re-ID method MGN, our pre-trained model improves the mAP over the unsu-pervised pre-training counterpart by 5.7%, 2.2%, 2.3% on CUHK03, DukeMTMC, and MSMT17 respectively. Under the small-scale or few-shot setting, the performance gain is even more significant, suggesting a better transferability of the learned representation. Code is available at https://github.com/DengpanFu/LUPerson-NL.

In her collection of short stories, Intruders (2018), the South African writer Mohale Mashigo uses a speculative lens to consider the future of Africa in a time of impending crisis. While her stories illustrate the postcolonial other as a potential future victim in a perspective suggested by Agamben’s state of exception, they also demonstrate a balancing of the global with the local and a sense of agency that are specific to the author and to the situation of post-transitional South Africa.

Background: There are many kinds of tropical fruit available in Venezuela. Two of these fruits are the focus of our study: blackberry (“mora”) and soursop (“guanábana”). These fruits have extraordinary bioactive components. For example, blackberry has antioxidant compounds such as anthocyanins, which are characteristic of the Rosaceae family. Acetogenins present in the Annonaceae family have been shown to possess cytotoxic properties that act against different types of tumor cells. In previous research, we have discovered how lyophilized soursop pulp has an elevated cytotoxic effect with a IC50 of 7.1940±1.06 in human cervix carcinoma cells (HeLa) and 0.8460±1.29 in human prostate carcinoma cells (PC3).Objective: This study focused on the health benefits and properties of the soursop and the blackberry. Our main focus was to determine the antioxidant and cytotoxic properties in a formulated beverage based on blackberry, soursop, and yogurt containing probiotics and prebiotics.Methods: The research includes the study of soursop pulp (SP), blackberry pulp (BP), and two formulations of the functional beverage selected through a sensorial analysis, F2 (BP + SP + Yogurt + Truvía® + Sacarose) and F3 (BP + SP + Yogurt + Truvía® + Sacarose + Sodium tripolyphosphate). Cell viability of prostate carcinoma cells (PC3), breast carcinoma without over-expression of the HER2/c-erb-2 gene (MCF-7), breast carcinoma in which the HER2/c-erb-2 gene is over-expressed (SKBr3) and healthy cells of human connective tissue used as control (Fibroblasts). The previous indicated samples were assessed using MTT (3- (4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide). The antioxidant activity of the functional beverage was also done using a freshly preparation of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). Results: The BP demonstrated the highest cytotoxicity for both lines of breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and SKBR3. The values of the minimum concentration required to inhibit 50 % of the cell population (IC50) was 0.12 ± 1.10 and 1.81 ± 1.68% v / v respectively, followed by SP in MCF-7 and PC3 with values of 1.40 ± 1.03 and 1.34 ± 1.06 respectively. At the same time, the effectiveness of the formulations used found that 3.60 ± 1.04% v / v of F2 beverage was necessary to achieve 50 % inhibition of cell viability of MCF-7 line. For the formulation F3, it was necessary to use a concentration of 5.21 ± 1.04% v / v for that tumor cell line. However, the F2 and F3 formulations demonstrated IC50 values of 3.69 ± 1.08% v / v and 2.50 ± 1.08% v / v respectively for the PC3 cell line. On the other hand, the antioxidant capacity of BP and SP reached elevated values at 30 minutes of exposure to DPPH, obtaining a rate of 85.28 ± 0.11 and 80.94 ± 0.07 % respectively by using a concentration of 12.5 %, F2 and F3 formulations also reached values of 83.97 ± 0.46 and 85.62 ± 0.11 % at 100 % concentration of both drinks respectively.Conclusion: We discovered that the cytotoxic activity of both formulations prepared as well as the pulps were fairly good, revealing highly effective consequences for the inactivation of breast tumor cells MCF-7 and prostate tumor cells PC3. Moreover, BP and SP demonstrated a high antioxidant activity, with a synergistic effect accomplished by the mixture on F2 and F3.Keywords: Functional beverage, cytotoxic, antioxidant, soursop, blackberry, yogurt.

To apply UV/Vis spectrometry for characterization of submicroscopic drug carriers, such as nanoparticles and lipid vesicles. We first investigated theoretically, within the framework of the Rayleigh-Gans-Debye approximation (RGDA), parameters affecting turbidity spectrum, τ(λ), of nanosized light scatterers. We then analyzed, within the framework of the RGDA, experimental turbidity spectra (λ = 400-600 nm) of extruded unilamellar vesicle (70 nm ≤ 2r ≤ 110 nm) suspensions to derive vesicle size, using dynamic light scattering results for comparison. We similarly studied the preparations polydispersity and lamellarity and monitored vesicle size changes. Turbidimetry suffices for accurate, fast, and viscosity-independent characterization of submicroscopic particles. Analysis of turbidity spectra, or more precisely wavelength exponent spectra (derivatives of logarithmic turbidity spectra), yielded similar average radii (r = 54.2 ± 0.2 nm; 46.0 ± 0.2 nm; 35.5 ± 0.1 nm) as dynamic light scattering (r = 55.9 ± 1.5 nm; 46.1 ± 0.4 nm; 36.1 ± 0.4 nm). Both methods also revealed similar suspension polydispersity and cholate-induced vesicle size changes in a few nanometer range. Despite its experimental simplicity, the widely accessible turbidimetric method provides accurate size values and is suitable for (continuous) monitoring size stability, or sameness, of submicroscopic drug carriers.

Potentiometric lipid membrane-water partition coefficient studies neglect electrostatic interactions to date; this leads to incorrect results. We herein show how to account properly for such interactions in potentiometric data analysis. We conducted potentiometric titration experiments to determine lipid membrane-water partition coefficients of four illustrative drugs, bupivacaine, diclofenac, ketoprofen and terbinafine. We then analyzed the results conventionally and with an improved analytical approach that considers Coulombic electrostatic interactions. The new analytical approach delivers robust partition coefficient values. In contrast, the conventional data analysis yields apparent partition coefficients of the ionized drug forms that depend on experimental conditions (mainly the lipid-drug ratio and the bulk ionic strength). This is due to changing electrostatic effects originating either from bound drug and/or lipid charges. A membrane comprising 10 mol-% mono-charged molecules in a 150 mM (monovalent) electrolyte solution yields results that differ by a factor of 4 from uncharged membranes results. Allowance for the Coulombic electrostatic interactions is a prerequisite for accurate and reliable determination of lipid membrane-water partition coefficients of ionizable drugs from potentiometric titration data. The same conclusion applies to all analytical methods involving drug binding to a surface.

Objective: To compare epicutaneous ketoprofen in Transfersome (ultra-deformable vesicles, IDEA-033) versus oral celecoxib and placebo for relief of signs and symptoms in knee osteoarthritis. Methods: This was a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, controlled trial; 397 patients with knee osteoarthritis participated and 324 completed the trial. They were randomly assigned 110 mg epicutaneous ketoprofen in 4.8 g Transfersome plus oral placebo (n = 138), 100 mg oral celecoxib plus placebo gel (n = 132), or both placebo formulations (n = 127) twice daily for 6 weeks. Primary efficacy outcome measures were the changes from baseline to end of the study on the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) Osteoarthritis Index pain subscale, physical function subscale and patient global assessment (PGA) of response. Results: The mean WOMAC pain subscale scores in the intent to treat population were reduced by 18.2 (95% confidence interval −22.1 to −14.3), 20.3 (−24.3 to −16.2) and 9.9 (−13.9 to −5.8) in the IDEA-033, celecoxib and placebo groups, respectively, and the physical function subscale score by 14.6 (−18.1 to −11.0), 16.6 (−20.2 to −13.0) and 10.2 (−13.8 to −6.6), respectively. The mean PGA of response scores were 1.8 (1.6 to 2.1), 1.7 (1.5 to 1.9) and 1.3 (1.1 to 1.5), respectively. The differences in change between IDEA-033 and placebo were statistically significant for pain subscale (p<0.01) and PGA of response (p<0.01). Gastrointestinal adverse events for IDEA-033 were similar to placebo. Conclusion: IDEA-033 is superior to placebo and comparable with celecoxib in relieving pain associated with an acute flare of knee osteoarthritis.

The centralised inspection and control regime that currently operates in the UK has led to improvements in the corporate governance of local authorities, service quality and transparency. But it is costly and militates against local priorities and community leadership. Over the last six years the Improvement and Development Agency for local government has developed a range of services and products that seek to promote improvement from within the local government sector. These have been well received by local authorities and could provide the basis for a greater emphasis on self-regulation.