whu-nercms at trecvid2021:instance search task

We will make a brief introduction of the experimental methods and results of the WHU-NERCMS in the TRECVID2021 in the paper. This year we participate in the automatic and interactive tasks of Instance Search (INS). For the automatic task, the retrieval target is divided into two parts, person retrieval, and action retrieval. We adopt a two-stage method including face detection and face recognition for person retrieval and two kinds of action detection methods consisting of three frame-based human-object interaction detection methods and two video-based general action detection methods for action retrieval. After that, the person retrieval results and action retrieval results are fused to initialize the result ranking lists. In addition, we make attempts to use complementary methods to further improve search performance. For interactive tasks, we test two different interaction strategies on the fusion results. We submit 4 runs for automatic and interactive tasks respectively. The introduction of each run is shown in Table 1. The official evaluations show that the proposed strategies rank 1st in both automatic and interactive tracks.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Application of CRISPR/Cas9 System for Plasmid Elimination and Bacterial Killing of Bacillus cereus Group Strains

The CRISPR-Cas system has been widely applied in prokaryotic genome editing with its high efficiency and easy operation. We constructed some “scissors plasmids” via using the temperature-sensitive pJOE8999 shuttle plasmid, which carry the different 20nt (N20) guiding the Cas9 nuclease as a scissors to break the target DNA. We successfully used scissors plasmids to eliminate native plasmids from Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus cereus, and specifically killed B. anthracis. When curing pXO1 and pXO2 virulence plasmids from B. anthracis A16PI2 and A16Q1, respectively, we found that the plasmid elimination percentage was slightly higher when the sgRNA targeted the replication initiation region (96–100%), rather than the non-replication initiation region (88–92%). We also tried using a mixture of two scissors plasmids to simultaneously eliminate pXO1 and pXO2 plasmids from B. anthracis, and the single and double plasmid-cured rates were 29 and 14%, respectively. To our surprise, when we used the scissor plasmid containing two tandem sgRNAs to cure the target plasmids pXO1 and pXO2 from wild strain B. anthracis A16 simultaneously, only the second sgRNA could guide Cas9 to cleave the target plasmid with high efficiency, while the first sgRNA didn't work in all the experiments we designed. When we used the CRISPR/cas9 system to eliminate the pCE1 mega-virulence plasmid from B. cereus BC307 by simply changing the sgRNA, we also obtained a plasmid-cured isogenic strain at a very high elimination rate (69%). The sterilization efficiency of B. anthracis was about 93%, which is similar to the efficiency of plasmid curing, and there was no significant difference in the efficiency of among the scissors plasmids containing single sgRNA, targeting multi-sites, or single-site targeting and the two tandem sgRNA. This simple and effective curing method, which is applicable to B. cereus group strains, provides a new way to study these bacteria and their virulence profiles

Curing of Plasmid pXO1 from Bacillus anthracis Using Plasmid Incompatibility

The large plasmid pXO1 encoding the anthrax toxin is important for the virulence of Bacillus anthracis. It is essential to cure pXO1 from B. anthracis to evaluate its role in the pathogenesis of anthrax infection. Because conventional methods for curing plasmids (e.g., curing agents or growth at elevated temperatures) can induce mutations in the host chromosomal DNA, we developed a specific and reliable method to eliminate pXO1 from B. anthracis using plasmid incompatibility. Three putative replication origins of pXO1 were inserted into a temperature-sensitive plasmid to generate three incompatible plasmids. One of the three plasmids successfully eliminated the large plasmid pXO1 from B. anthracis vaccine strain A16R and wild type strain A16. These findings provided additional information about the replication/partitioning of pXO1 and demonstrated that introducing a small incompatible plasmid can generate plasmid-cured strains of B. anthracis without inducing spontaneous mutations in the host chromosome

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Clinical effect of laparoscopic left lateral hepatectomy in treatment of intrahepatic bile duct stones

ObjectiveTo investigate the surgical method, safety, and clinical effect of laparoscopic left lateral hepatectomy in the treatment of intrahepatic bile duct stones. MethodsA total of 30 patients with intrahepatic bile duct stones who were admitted to our hospital from January 2015 to December 2016 were enrolled, and according to the surgical procedure, these patients were divided into conventional group (15 patients) and laparoscopic group (15 patients). The patients in the conventional group were treated with open left lateral hepatectomy, and those in the laparoscopic group were treated with minimally invasive laparoscopic left lateral hepatectomy. Surgical indices were observed, and postoperative complications and liver function parameters were compared between the two groups. The t-test was used for comparison of normally distributed continuous data, and the Wilcoxon rank sum test was used for comparison of non-normally distributed continuous data. The chi-square test was used for comparison of categorical data. ResultsThe laparoscopic group had significant reductions in the time to passage of gas by anus (1.02±0.51 d vs 1.98±0.36 d, t=5.956, P＜0.001) and length of postoperative hospital stay (883±0.81 d vs 11.83±0.42 d, t=5.830, P＜0.001) compared with the conventional group. Compared with the conventional group, the laparoscopic group had a significantly lower alanine aminotransferase level (125.8±91.9 U/L vs 214.1±99.6 U/L, t=2.52, P=002) and a significantly higher serum albumin level (33.2±3.7 g/L vs 28.9±4.3 g/L, t=2.94, P=0.01) at 5 days after surgery. Conclusion Compared with conventional open surgery, laparoscopic left lateral hepatectomy has the features of little trauma, rapid postoperative recovery, and little influence on liver function in the treatment of intrahepatic bile duct stones and has a marked clinical effect. Therefore, it holds promise for clinical application

On Finite/Fixed-Time Stability Theorems of Discontinuous Differential Equations

We investigated the finite/fixed-time stability (FNTS/FXTS) of discontinuous differential equations (DDEs) in this paper. To cope with differential equations that were discontinuous on the right-hand side, we utilized the Filippov solution, which is widely used in engineering. Under the framework of the Filippov solution, we transformed this issue into an FNTS/FXTS problem in the corresponding functional differential inclusion. We proposed some new FNTS/FXTS criteria, which will have important applications in the field of control engineering. It is worth mentioning that the coefficient function in the inequality satisfied by the Lyapunov function (LF) could be indefinite. Moreover, our paper gave a new estimation for the settling time (ST). Finally, two illustrative examples were given to demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed criteria

On Finite/Fixed-Time Stability Theorems of Discontinuous Differential Equations

We investigated the finite/fixed-time stability (FNTS/FXTS) of discontinuous differential equations (DDEs) in this paper. To cope with differential equations that were discontinuous on the right-hand side, we utilized the Filippov solution, which is widely used in engineering. Under the framework of the Filippov solution, we transformed this issue into an FNTS/FXTS problem in the corresponding functional differential inclusion. We proposed some new FNTS/FXTS criteria, which will have important applications in the field of control engineering. It is worth mentioning that the coefficient function in the inequality satisfied by the Lyapunov function (LF) could be indefinite. Moreover, our paper gave a new estimation for the settling time (ST). Finally, two illustrative examples were given to demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed criteria