721 research outputs found

    Resolution of secondary pulmonary alveolar proteinosis following treatment of rhinocerebral aspergillosis

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    SummaryPulmonary alveolar proteinosis can be secondary to inhaled dust exposure, malignancy, and chronic pulmonary infections. However, pulmonary alveolar proteinosis secondary to extrapulmonary aspergillosis has never been reported. We report herein a case of pulmonary alveolar proteinosis secondary to invasive rhinocerebral aspergillosis. Neither immune modulators nor whole lung lavage was applied during the treatment course. The severe respiratory distress subsided, hypoxia resolved, and radiological infiltrates improved following the successful treatment of invasive rhinocerebral aspergillosis alone

    RIS-Aided Wireless Communications: Prototyping, Adaptive Beamforming, and Indoor/Outdoor Field Trials

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    The prospects of using a Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) to aid wireless communication systems have recently received much attention from academia and industry. Most papers make theoretical studies based on elementary models, while the prototyping of RIS-aided wireless communication and real-world field trials are scarce. In this paper, we describe a new RIS prototype consisting of 1100 controllable elements working at 5.8 GHz band. We propose an efficient algorithm for configuring the RIS over the air by exploiting the geometrical array properties and a practical receiver-RIS feedback link. In our indoor test, where the transmitter and receiver are separated by a 30 cm thick concrete wall, our RIS prototype provides a 26 dB power gain compared to the baseline case where the RIS is replaced by a copper plate. A 27 dB power gain was observed in the short-distance outdoor measurement. We also carried out long-distance measurements and successfully transmitted a 32 Mbps data stream over 500 m. A 1080p video was live-streamed and it only played smoothly when the RIS was utilized. The power consumption of the RIS is around 1 W. Our paper is vivid proof that the RIS is a very promising technology for future wireless communications.Comment: 13 pages, 18 figures, submitte

    Activation of Endothelial Cells by Antiphospholipid Antibodies—A Possible Mechanism Triggering Thrombosis in Patients with Antiphospholipid Syndrome

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    Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is an antibody-mediated hypercoagulable state characterized by recurrent venous and arterial thromboembolic events. The presence of serum antibodies are collectively termed as antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) and is the hallmark of the disease. Interest in the pathogenesis has mostly been focused on the blood coagulation factor. However, endothelial cells might play an important role. When stimulated, cell membrane would flip to expose negatively charged phospholipids and activation markers such as adhesive molecules may appear. We consider that these changes may play an important role in the initiation of the thrombotic process when endothelial cells encounter aPL. In this study, we incubated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) with IgG isolated from patients with APS and found that the HUVECs were activated by the expression of negatively charged phospholipids, as shown by high annexin V binding and negative propidium iodide staining and by an increase in the level of intracellular cell adhesion molecule-1 on the cell surface. The above findings indicate that endothelial cells can be activated on exposure to aPL and trigger the thrombotic event

    NeRF-Texture: Synthesizing Neural Radiance Field textures

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    Texture synthesis is a fundamental problem in computer graphics that would benefit various applications. Existing methods are effective in handling 2D image textures. In contrast, many real-world textures contain meso-structure in the 3D geometry space, such as grass, leaves, and fabrics, which cannot be effectively modeled using only 2D image textures. We propose a novel texture synthesis method with Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) to capture and synthesize textures from given multi-view images. In the proposed NeRF texture representation, a scene with fine geometric details is disentangled into the meso-structure textures and the underlying base shape. This allows textures with meso-structure to be effectively learned as latent features situated on the base shape, which are fed into a NeRF decoder trained simultaneously to represent the rich view-dependent appearance. Using this implicit representation, we can synthesize NeRF-based textures through patch matching of latent features. However, inconsistencies between the metrics of the reconstructed content space and the latent feature space may compromise the synthesis quality. To enhance matching performance, we further regularize the distribution of latent features by incorporating a clustering constraint. In addition to generating NeRF textures over a planar domain, our method can also synthesize NeRF textures over curved surfaces, which are practically useful. Experimental results and evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach

    Structural and cognitive deficits in chronic carbon monoxide intoxication: a voxel-based morphometry study

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    BACKGROUND: Patients with carbon monoxide (CO) intoxication may develop ongoing neurological and psychiatric symptoms that ebb and flow, a condition often called delayed encephalopathy (DE). The association between morphologic changes in the brain and neuropsychological deficits in DE is poorly understood. METHODS: Magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological tests were conducted on 11 CO patients with DE, 11 patients without DE, and 15 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy subjects. Differences in gray matter volume (GMV) between the subgroups were assessed and further correlated with diminished cognitive functioning. RESULTS: As a group, the patients had lower regional GMV compared to controls in the following regions: basal ganglia, left claustrum, right amygdala, left hippocampus, parietal lobes, and left frontal lobe. The reduced GMV in the bilateral basal ganglia, left post-central gyrus, and left hippocampus correlated with decreased perceptual organization and processing speed function. Those CO patients characterized by DE patients had a lower GMV in the left anterior cingulate and right amygdala, as well as lower levels of cognitive function, than the non-DE patients. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with CO intoxication in the chronic stage showed a worse cognitive and morphologic outcome, especially those with DE. This study provides additional evidence of gray matter structural abnormalities in the pathophysiology of DE in chronic CO intoxicated patients

    Association Between Platelet Count and Components of Metabolic Syndrome in Geriatric Taiwanese Women

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    SummaryBackgroundThe growing elderly population in Taiwan, as in many other countries, has resulted in increased importance of the metabolic syndrome (MetS). Although it has been reported in different age groups, the relationship between platelets and MetS remains unknown in geriatric patients.Patients and MethodsWe enrolled 1460 women >65 years old. Women with a known history of diabetes, hyperlipidemia or hypertension or those taking medication for these conditions were all excluded. The women were further divided into quartiles arbitrarily according to platelet count (PC) (PC1–PC4, lowest to highest accordingly).ResultsAmong the MetS components, body mass index (BMI), total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and log transformation triglyceride (Log TG) were all significantly higher in the PC4 group (p < 0.05), and they were also positively correlated with PC. However, in multiple regression, BMI became nonsignificant. Both LDL-C and Log TG were the only two factors that remained positively and independently correlated with PC. Compared to PC1, all the other three groups had significantly higher odds ratios for having MetS (2.013, 1.473–2.751; 1.486, 1.081–2.042; 1.537, 1.117–2.114; odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for PC4, PC3 and PC2, respectively).ConclusionElderly women with MetS had higher PC. Among the five components, TG was positively correlated with PC. There was a positive correlation between PC and LDL-C but not high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. The importance of both lipids might be re-evaluated in the future in older women

    Active exploration of large 3D model repositories

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    With broader availability of large-scale 3D model repositories, the need for efficient and effective exploration becomes more and more urgent. Existing model retrieval techniques do not scale well with the size of the database since often a large number of very similar objects are returned for a query, and the possibilities to refine the search are quite limited. We propose an interactive approach where the user feeds an active learning procedure by labeling either entire models or parts of them as “like” or “dislike” such that the system can automatically update an active set of recommended models. To provide an intuitive user interface, candidate models are presented based on their estimated relevance for the current query. From the methodological point of view, our main contribution is to exploit not only the similarity between a query and the database models but also the similarities among the database models themselves. We achieve this by an offline pre-processing stage, where global and local shape descriptors are computed for each model and a sparse distance metric is derived that can be evaluated efficiently even for very large databases. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by interactively exploring a repository containing over 100K models

    Lessons Learned of NSPO’s Picosatellite Mission: Yamsat - 1A, 1B & 1C

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    The YamSat is the first developed picosatellite in National Space Program Office’s (NSPO), Taiwan, R.O.C. It is scheduled to flight in the CubeSat launch in 2003. The rapid-prototyping system engineering different from the past formal discipline opens a new satellite development model in NSPO. The YamSat Test Readiness Review Meeting was successfully held in January 2002 and the environmental tests were completed by end March 2002. Besides the breadboard model and engineering test bed to prove of operation concept are built, three YamSats (1A, 1B, & 1C) instead of one are manufactured with slightly different configurations and purposes. The YamSat- 1A is for flight with ambitious and novel R.O.C. made components, including 15 domestic organizations and companies’ participation. The YamSat-1B is basically for backup purpose and demonstration, whereas the YamSat-1C is for amateur communication experiment end-to-end field test, and for public education purpose. This new experience gives fruitful lessons learned and provides low cost space experimentation and education to the next built picosatellites in Taiwan’s universities. Detailed mission and lessons learned are addressed in this paper
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