Aetiology of allergic rhinitis in Hong Kong

ABSTRACTIn a 1993 survey, allergic rhinitis was identified as the most common allergic disease in Hong Kong, affecting 29.1% of schoolchildren. Recently (1995), the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) also reported 44.5% current rhinitis among Hong Kong teenagers. Our objective was to study the aetiology of allergic rhinitis in Hong Kong using serological tests of allergen sensitization. In 57 allergic rhinitis patients and in the same number of age- and sex-matched controls the following were measured: serum total IgE, mixed aeroallergen IgE (Phadiatop™) and specific IgE versus house dust mite (HDM), cockroach, cat and dog dander, mould mixture (Penicillium, Cladosporium, Aspergillus and Alternaria species) and four local pollens (Bermuda grass, Timothy, ragweed and mugwort). Compared with controls, allergic rhinitis patients (26 males, 31 females; mean (± SD) age 25 ±11 years) had a significantly elevated serum total IgE concentration (mean ± SEM: 496 ± 88 vs 179 ± 38 kU/L) and an increased proportion of positive Phadiatop (95 vs 33%) and specific IgE tests versus HDM (90 vs 44%) and cockroach (42 vs 9%; Mann-Whitney U-test and χ2 tests all P < 0.005). There was no significant difference in sensitization to other allergens tested. House dust mite and cockroach are ubiquitous in Hong Kong with a warm, humid climate and crowded living conditions. Their identification as aetiological agents of allergic rhinitis should help in the development of environmental strategies for reducing the inhalant allergen load to prevent and control this prevalent and costly health problem in our community

A mixed-signal architecture of channel select filtering with oversampled ADC for multi-standard RFID reader receiver

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is popular nowadays. One key challenge for RFID reader design is to receive the tag's weak signal in the presence of large interference signal from other readers on adjacent channels. In this paper, a highly reconfigurable mixed-signal architecture for channel select filtering with the help of oversampled delta-sigma modulator is proposed. It allows the reader to support multi-standard operating environment with less power consumption and silicon area for single-chip implementation compared with pure analog or digital channel select filtering approach. The challenge of the interference to the system is discussed. Detail descriptions of the architecture and some performance analysis are presented

Freshwater Microscopic Algae Detection Based on Deep Neural Network with GAN-Based Augmentation for Imbalanced Algal Data

Identifying and quantifying algal genera in images are crucial for understanding their ecological impact. Algal data are often imbalanced, limiting detection model accuracy. This paper presents a novel data augmentation method using StyleGAN2-ADA to enhance algal image instance segmentation. StyleGAN2-ADA generates artificial single-algal images to address data scarcity and imbalance. We train a Cascaded Mask R-CNN with Swin Transformer on a combined data set of real and artificial multigenera algal images and evaluate performance using the COCO mAP metric. The approach improves bounding box detection performance by 17.9% on all genera and 32.1% on rare genera compared with the baseline model. Additionally, 50% more artificial data yield significant enhancements without excessive artificial data use. The GAN-based augmentation technique shows a performance improvement in both Swin-Tiny and ResNet-50 backbone models, suggesting adaptability for various machine learning models. The increased mAP leads to the accurate identification of harmful algae genera, allowing for better prevention and mitigation. This method offers a superior data augmentation solution for accurate algal instance segmentation and can benefit applications challenged by imbalanced and scarce data

Doubling time of the COVID-19 epidemic by Province, China

In China, the doubling time of the coronavirus disease epidemic by province increased during January 20–February 9, 2020. Doubling time estimates ranged from 1.4 (95% CI 1.2–2.0) days for Hunan Province to 3.1 (95% CI 2.1–4.8) days for Xinjiang Province. The estimate for Hubei Province was 2.5 (95% CI 2.4–2.6) days

A single-chip UHF RFID reader in 0.18 mu m CMOS process

A single-chip UHF RFID reader that integrates all building blocks-including an RF transceiver, IQ data converters, and a digital baseband-is implemented in a 0.18 mu m CMOS process. A high-linearity RX front-end and a low-phase-noise synthesizer are proposed to handle the large self-interferer, which is a key challenge in the reader RX design. Highly reconfigurable mixed-signal baseband architecture for channel-selection filtering is proposed to achieve power optimization for multi-protocol operation with different system dynamic ranges and data rates. The reader dissipates a maximum power of 276.4 mW when transmitting maximum output power of 10.4 dBm and receiving the tag's response of -70 dBm in the presence of -5 dBm self-interferer while occupying 18.3 mm(2)

Clinical Outcomes and Quantitative HBV Surface Antigen Levels in Diverse Chronic Hepatitis B Patients in Canada: A Retrospective Real-World Study of CHB in Canada (REVEAL-CANADA)

Background: Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) loss is associated with improved clinical outcomes for individuals with chronic hepatitis B (CHB); however, the effects of varying HBsAg levels on clinical outcomes in diverse cohorts are understudied. Methods: In this cross-sectional, multicentre, retrospective study, the data on adult subjects enrolled in the Canadian HBV Network with CHB seen from 1 January 2012 to 30 January 2021 with the treatment and virologic data within 1 year of HBsAg testing were analyzed. Patients were tested for HBsAg using qualitative (for HBsAg-negative samples) and/or commercial quantitative assays. Fibrosis or hepatic necroinflammation was determined by the liver stiffness measurement (LSM). The baseline data were summarized using descriptive statistics and compared by using univariable/multivariable analyses. Results: This study included 844 CHB patients, with a median age of 49.6 years (IQR 40.1&ndash;60.5), and 37% were female. In total, 751 patients (78.6%) had known ethnicity data, and 76.7% self-reported as Asian, 11.4% as Black, 6.8% as White, and 4.8% as other. Among the 844 patients, 237 (28.0%) were HBsAg (&minus;) (&lt;LLOQ), 190 (22.5%) had qHBsAg 1&ndash;100, 91 (10.8%) had qHBsAg 100&ndash;500, 54 (6.4%) had qHBsAg 500&ndash;1000, and 272 (32.2%) had qHBsAg &gt;1000 IU/mL. Overall, 80% (682) had known HBeAg status at the last follow-up, and the majority (87.0%) were HBeAg-negative. In addition, 54% (461/844) had prior antiviral therapy, 19.7% of which (16.3, 23.7, n = 91) were HBsAg (&minus;). The treated patients had a lower risk of cirrhosis (16.46, 95% CI 1.89&ndash;143.39, p = 0.01) or HCC (8.23, 95% CI 1.01&ndash;67.39, p = 0.05) than the untreated patients. A lower proportion of the HBsAg-loss group had cirrhosis (5.7% vs. 10.9%, p = 0.021) and HCC (0.9% vs. 6.2%, p = 0.001). Conclusion: In this retrospective, ethnically diverse cohort study, CHB patients who received antiviral therapy and/or had HBsAg loss were less likely to develop cirrhosis and HCC, confirming the results of the studies in less diverse cohorts. No association was found between the qHBsAg level and fibrosis determined with LSM. Individuals who achieved HBsAg loss had low-level qHBsAg within 1 year of seroclearance