Show Me What I Like: Detecting User-Specific Video Highlights Using Content-Based Multi-Head Attention

We propose a method to detect individualized highlights for users on given target videos based on their preferred highlight clips marked on previous videos they have watched. Our method explicitly leverages the contents of both the preferred clips and the target videos using pre-trained features for the objects and the human activities. We design a multi-head attention mechanism to adaptively weigh the preferred clips based on their object- and human-activity-based contents, and fuse them using these weights into a single feature representation for each user. We compute similarities between these per-user feature representations and the per-frame features computed from the desired target videos to estimate the user-specific highlight clips from the target videos. We test our method on a large-scale highlight detection dataset containing the annotated highlights of individual users. Compared to current baselines, we observe an absolute improvement of 2-4% in the mean average precision of the detected highlights. We also perform extensive ablation experiments on the number of preferred highlight clips associated with each user as well as on the object- and human-activity-based feature representations to validate that our method is indeed both content-based and user-specific.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 7 table

May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Modulation of transport properties via S/Br substitution: solvothermal synthesis, crystal structure, and transport properties of Bi13S17Br3

The solvothermal synthetic exploration of the Bi–S–halogen phase space resulted in the synthesis of two bismuth sulfohalides with common structural motifs. Bi13S18I2 was confirmed to have the previously reported composition and crystal structure. In contrast, the bromide analogue was shown to have a formula of neither Bi19S27Br3 nor Bi13S18Br2, in contrast to the previous reports. The composition, refined from single crystal X-ray diffraction and confirmed by elemental analysis, high-resolution powder X-ray diffraction, and total scattering, is close to Bi13S17Br3 due to the partial S/Br substitution in the framework. Bi13S18I2 and Bi13S17Br3 are n-type semiconductors with similar optical bandgaps of ∼0.9 eV but different charge and heat transport properties. Due to the framework S/Br disorder, Bi13S17Br3 exhibits lower thermal and electrical conductivities than the iodine-containing analogue. The high Seebeck coefficients and ultralow thermal conductivities indicate that the reported bismuth sulfohalides are promising platforms to develop novel thermoelectric materials.This article is published as Amarasinghe, Dinesh K., Philip Yox, Gayatri Viswanathan, Adedoyin N. Adeyemi, and Kirill Kovnir. "Modulation of transport properties via S/Br substitution: solvothermal synthesis, crystal structure, and transport properties of Bi 13 S 17 Br 3." Dalton Transactions 51, no. 43 (2022): 16748-16756. DOI: 10.1039/D2DT02295H. Copyright 2022 The Royal Society of Chemistry. This Open Access Article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 Unported Licence Posted with permission. DOE Contract Number(s): AC02-06CH11357; AC02-07CH11358; DMR-200378

Which Gait Parameters and Walking Patterns Show the Significant Differences Between Parkinson’s Disease and Healthy Participants?

This study investigated the difference in the gait of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), age-matched controls and young controls during three walking patterns. Experiments were conducted with 24 PD, 24 age-matched controls and 24 young controls, and four gait intervals were measured using inertial measurement units (IMU). Group differences between the mean and variance of the gait parameters (stride interval, stance interval, swing interval and double support interval) for the three groups were calculated and statistical significance was tested. The results showed that the variance in each of the four gait parameters of PD patients was significantly higher compared with the controls, irrespective of the three walking patterns. This study showed that the variance of any of the gait interval parameters obtained using IMU during any of the walking patterns could be used to differentiate between the gait of PD and control people

A comparative study of Bisulphite-seq analysis pipeline

Recent advances in next generation sequencing (NGS) technology provide the opportunity to rapidly understand whole genome methylation profile. However, there are challenges in handling and interpretation of the methylation sequence data because of its large volume and the consequences of bisulphite modification. Most of the current pipelines include a specific aligner to decode and quantify the fraction of methylated cytosine per base; further this quantitative data is studied for differential methylation and annotated for genomic features. We have examined the performance of three pipelines for alignment and differential methylation profiling using the published data from plant and animals. We compared the consistency across these tools and explored various visualization features. We also illustrate our in-house visualization based analytic tool for a higher quality comprehension of whole genome methylation profile. Our comparative study showcases the performance of the widely accepted tools and can guide the scientific community in choosing the appropriate method for their methylation data analysis

2-(2-(2,4-dioxopentan-3-ylidene)hydrazineyl)benzonitrile as novel inhibitor of receptor tyrosine kinase and PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway in glioblastoma.

Nerve growth factor receptor (NGFR), a member of kinase protein, is emerging as an important target for Glioblastoma (GBM) treatment. Overexpression of NGFR is observed in many metastatic cancers including GBM, promoting tumor migration and invasion. Hydrazones have been reported to effectively interact with receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs). We report herein the synthesis of 23 arylhydrazones of active methylene compounds (AHAMCs) compounds and their anti-proliferative activity against GBM cell lines, LN229 and U87. Compound R234, 2-(2-(2,4-dioxopentan-3-ylidene)hydrazineyl)benzonitrile, was identified as the most active anti-neoplastic compound, with the I

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Not AvailableAccumulation of nitrogenous metabolites is considered as one of the limiting factors in the intensification of shrimp aquaculture worldwide. The present study reports the development and evaluation of microbial consortium containing ammonia oxidising bacteria (AOB), nitrite oxidising bacteria (NOB) and denitrifying bacteria (DNB) to mitigate total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) in commercial Penaeus vannamei shrimp farms. Oxidation rates of NH3-N and NO2 due to with AOB and NOB enrichment in the spiked media was 1.57 ppm day−1 and 1.46 ppm day−1 respectively under experimental conditions. The nitrite reduction rate due to Marinobacter spp. in the DNB consortia was 3–4.5 ppm h−1. The AOB and NOB consortia carried out ammonia oxidation and nitrite oxidation at salinities between 2 and 35‰ while DNBs were active above 15‰ salinity. DGGE analysis of the consortium showed the presence of eight AOB and 11 NOB and two DNB groups and metagenome analysis revealed the presence of more than 3000 OTUs at 97% similarity index. Eubacteria dominated the enrichment (>95%) while Proteobacteria were the predominant phylum. Nitrosomonas and Nitrosococcus (AOB) and Nitrospira (NOB) and ammonia oxidising archaea like Nitrosopumilus and Nitrososphaera were detected in addition to several unclassified species. Significant reduction in the levels of TAN (p < 0.05) was observed following application (at 5 L ha−1 week-1) of the microbial consortia (formulation) in four commercial P. vannamei shrimp farming sites having the salinity between 15 and 62‰. Results of the study suggests that the AOB, NOB and DNB formulation developed microbial formulation developed in the study could efficiently mitigate the toxic ammonia species in commercial P. vannamei shrimp culture farms.Not AvailableICA

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Not AvailableThe incorporation of red rot resistance in sugarcane is the foremost priority in Indian sugarcane breeding programs. An ideal parent should possess a high sucrose content, good agronomic traits, and red rot resistance. To enrich the parental pool with resistant sources having diverse backgrounds, many interspecific hybrid (ISH) clones and intergeneric hybrid (IGH) clones were identified in the previous decades from the 1960s and were utilised in the National Hybridization Programme. To further augment red rot resistance in the parental clones, we selected 27 ISH clones developed at ICAR-SBI Coimbatore and evaluated them against the prevailing Colletotrichum falcatum pathotypes in 10 locations representing major sugarcane growing regions of India. Among the clones, seven clones expressing more than 60% resistant or moderately resistant (R/MR) reactions in most locations against C. falcatum pathotypes CF06, CF07, CF08, CF09, and CF12 were identified as sources of red rot resistance. However, six clones showed more than 60% susceptible or highly susceptible (S/HS) reactions against the pathotypes across the locations. Besides Saccharum spontaneum, which is routinely used to transfer red rot resistance into sugarcane varieties, S. robustum and Erianthus arundinaceus, can also be used to introgress novel resistance genes to strengthen breeding for resistance. The multi-location testing of the clones identified resistance against major C. falcatum pathotypes in ISH/IGH clones, and such clones can be used as potential parents to obtain horizontal resistance against C. falcatum in sugarcane.Not Availabl