Association between ACE I/D genetic polymorphism and the severity of coronary artery disease in Vietnamese patients with acute myocardial infarction

BackgroundThe severity of coronary artery disease is a prognostic factor for major adverse cardiovascular events in patients diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction. ACE I/D polymorphism is one of the genetic factors that may affect the severity of coronary artery disease. This study aimed to investigate the association between ACE I/D genotypes and the severity of coronary artery disease in patients with acute myocardial infarction.Materials and methodsA single-center, prospective, observational study was conducted at the Department of Cardiology and Department of Interventional Cardiology, Cho Ray Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from January 2020 to June 2021. All participants diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction underwent contrast-enhanced coronary angiography. The severity of coronary artery disease was determined by Gensini score. ACE I/D genotypes were identified in all subjects by using the polymerase chain reaction method.ResultsA total of 522 patients diagnosed with first acute myocardial infarction were recruited. The patients' median Gensini score was 34.3. The II, ID, and DD genotype rates of ACE I/D polymorphism were 48.9%, 36.4%, and 14.7%, respectively. After adjusting for confounding factors, multivariable linear regression analysis showed that the ACE DD genotype was independently associated with a higher Gensini score compared with the II or ID genotypes.ConclusionThe DD genotype of the ACE I/D polymorphism was associated with the severity of coronary artery disease in Vietnamese patients diagnosed with first acute myocardial infarction

Performance of multi-hop cognitive MIMO relaying networks with joint constraint of intercept probability and limited interference

In this paper, we propose a multi-hop multiple input multiple output (MIMO) decode-and-forward relaying protocol in cognitive radio networks. In this protocol, a multi-antenna secondary source attempts to send its data to a multi-antenna secondary destination with assistance of multiple intermediate multi-antenna nodes, in presence of a multi-antenna secondary eavesdropper. A primary network includes a primary transmitter and a primary receiver which are equipped with multiple antennas, and use transmit antenna selection (TAS) and selection combining (SC) to communicate with each other. Operating on the underlay spectrum sharing method, the secondary source and relay nodes have to adjust their transmit power so that the outage performance of the primary network is not harmful and satisfy the quality of service (QoS). Moreover, these secondary nodes also reduce their transmit power so that the intercept probability (IP) at the eavesdropper at each hop is below a desired value. To improve the outage performance of the secondary network under the joint constraint of IP and limited interference, the TAS/SC method is employed to relay the source data hop-by-hop to the destination. We derived exact closed-form expressions of the end-to-end (e2e) outage probability (OP) and IP of the proposed protocol over Rayleigh fading channels. Monte Carlo simulations are then performed to verify the theoretical derivations

ARtVista: Gateway To Empower Anyone Into Artist

Drawing is an art that enables people to express their imagination and emotions. However, individuals usually face challenges in drawing, especially when translating conceptual ideas into visually coherent representations and bridging the gap between mental visualization and practical execution. In response, we propose ARtVista - a novel system integrating AR and generative AI technologies. ARtVista not only recommends reference images aligned with users' abstract ideas and generates sketches for users to draw but also goes beyond, crafting vibrant paintings in various painting styles. ARtVista also offers users an alternative approach to create striking paintings by simulating the paint-by-number concept on reference images, empowering users to create visually stunning artwork devoid of the necessity for advanced drawing skills. We perform a pilot study and reveal positive feedback on its usability, emphasizing its effectiveness in visualizing user ideas and aiding the painting process to achieve stunning pictures without requiring advanced drawing skills. The source code will be available at https://github.com/htrvu/ARtVista.Comment: CHI 202

An experiment in Interactive Retrieval for the lifelog moment retrieval task at imageCLEFlifelog2020.

The development of technology has led to an increase in mobile devices’ use to keep track of individual daily activities, as known as Lifelogging. Lifelogging has raised many research challenges, one of which is how to retrieve a specific moment in response to a user’s information need. This paper presents an efficient interactive search engine for large multimodal lifelog data which is evaluated in the ImageCLEFlifelog2020 Lifelog Moment Retrieval task (LMRT). The system is the modified version of the Myscéal demonstrator used in the Lifelog Search Challenge 2020, with the addition of visual similarity and a new method of visualising results. In interactive experimentation, our system achieved an F1@ 10 score of 0.48 in the official submission but can be significantly improved by implementing a number of post-processing steps

Myscéal: an experimental interactive lifelog retrieval system for LSC'20

The Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC), is an annual comparative benchmarking activity for comparing approaches to interactive retrieval from multi-modal lifelogs. Being an interactive search challenge, issues such as retrieval accuracy, search speed and usability of interfaces are key challenges that must be addressed by every participant. In this paper, we introduce Myscéal, an interactive lifelog retrieval engine designed to support novice users to retrieve items of interest from a large multimodal lifelog. Additionally, we also introduce a new similarity measure called “aTFIDF”, to match a user’s free-text information need with the multimodal lifelog index

Myscéal 2.0: a revised experimental interactive lifelog retrieval system for LSC'21

Building an interactive retrieval system for lifelogging contains many challenges due to massive multi-modal personal data besides the requirement of accuracy and rapid response for such a tool. The Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC) is the international lifelog retrieval competition that inspires researchers to develop their systems to cope with the challenges and evaluates the effectiveness of their solutions. In this paper, we upgrade our previous Myscéal 2.0 and present Myscéal 2.0 system for the LSC'21 with the improved features inspired by the novice users experiments. The experiments show that a novice user achieved more than half of the expert score on average. To mitigate the gap of them, some potential enhancements were identified and integrated to the enhanced version

E-Myscéal: embedding-based Interactive lifelog retrieval system for LSC'22

Developing interactive lifelog retrieval systems is a growing research area. There are many international competitions for lifelog retrieval that encourage researchers to build effective systems that can address the multimodal retrieval challenge of lifelogs. The Lifelog Search Challenge (LSC) was first organised in 2018 and is currently the only interactive benchmarking evaluation for lifelog retrieval systems. Participating systems should have an accurate search engine and a user-friendly interface that can help users to retrieve relevant content. In this paper, we upgrade our previous MyScéal, which was the top performing system in LSC'20 and LSC'21, and present E-MyScéal for LSC'22, which includes a completely different search engine. Instead of using visual concepts for retrieval such as MyScéal, the new E-MyScéal employs an embedding technique that facilitates novice users who are not familiar with the concepts. Our experiments show that the new search engine can find relevant images in the first place in the ranked list, four a quarter of the LSC'21 queries (26%) by using just the first hint from the textual information need. Regarding the user interface, we still keep the simple non-faceted design as in the previous version but improve the event view browsing in order to better support novice users

Employment, Earnings and Social Protection for Female Workers in Vietnam’s Informal Sector

The informal sector plays an important role in employment creation and poverty reduction among female laborers in Vietnam. Currently, around 70 percent to 80 percent of women in Vietnam work in the informal sector, of which about 60 percent are in the agriculture and 20 percent are in the non-agricultural sectors that are mostly affiliated with small-size production and service units. By investigating the employment, earnings, and social protection policy on female labor in Vietnam’s informal sector, this research is able to answer the following research questions: 1) How important is the role of female labor in the informal sector? 2) What are the important factors that influence job opportunities for women in the informal sector? 3) What are the policy implications on female labor in Vietnam's informal sector? 4) What are the causes of work insecurities among females in Vietnam's informal sector? 5) What areas of social protection are most needed by women workers? 6) How does one address these principal needs for social protection among female workers

Employment, Earnings and Social Protection for Female Workers in Vietnam’s Informal Sector

The informal sector plays an important role in employment creation and poverty reduction among female laborers in Vietnam. Currently, around 70 percent to 80 percent of women in Vietnam work in the informal sector, of which about 60 percent are in the agriculture and 20 percent are in the non-agricultural sectors that are mostly affiliated with small-size production and service units. By investigating the employment, earnings, and social protection policy on female labor in Vietnam’s informal sector, this research is able to answer the following research questions: 1) How important is the role of female labor in the informal sector? 2) What are the important factors that influence job opportunities for women in the informal sector? 3) What are the policy implications on female labor in Vietnam's informal sector? 4) What are the causes of work insecurities among females in Vietnam's informal sector? 5) What areas of social protection are most needed by women workers? 6) How does one address these principal needs for social protection among female workers

Genetic interaction between two VNTRs in the MAOA gene is associated with the nicotine dependence

Nicotine dependence is an addiction to tobacco products and a global public health concern that in part would be influenced by our genetics. Smokers are reported to have reduced MAOA activity, but the results from genetic associations with this gene have been inconclusive. Two functionally relevant variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) domains, termed uVNTR and dVNTR, in the MAOA gene are well characterized transcriptional regulatory elements. In the present study, we analyzed uVNTR and dVNTR polymorphisms in the MAOA gene in the Vietnamese male population of smokers and non-smokers in order to assess the association of MAOA with the nicotine dependence measured by the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND). Individual analysis of VNTRs separately identified uVNTR to be associated with the F6 question of the FTND indicating the stronger addiction to nicotine. No associations were found between the dVNTR and smoking behavior. The combination of dVNTR and uVNTR, that predicts low expression of MAOA (10–3 haplotypes), was significantly associated with the higher nicotine dependence (FTND score), longer smoking duration, and more persistent smoking behavior (fewer quit attempts). In conclusion, our study confirms that low MAOA expression is genetically predictive to the higher nicotine dependence