A parallelogram four-frame model in 3-D motion and structure recovery using unified optical flow field approach

In this paper a new concept of the unified optical flow field (UOFF) for 3 D motion analysis from a stereo image sequence is implemented which is an extension of the temporal optical flow formulations developed by Horn and Schunck. A four frame model is established and a spatial optical flow is also introduced. In order to alleviate the problem of the strict requirement of two identical sensors in common stereo imagery a new imaging system is presented in this paper that needs only one camera, two plane mirrors and two switches to generate a phase shifted binocular sequence of images. It is shown that the structure and motion of the object surface can be reconstructed from the parallelogram four frame sequence set if the information of the experiment, including the focal length, the distance between two mirrors and the intersecting angle between two observing directions are known. Detailed computer simulations are presented and analyzed to illustrate the algorithm discussed

The Importance of Low IQ to Early Diagnosis of Autism

AbstractSome individuals can flexibly adapt to life’s changing demands while others, in particular those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), find it challenging. The origin of early individual differences in cognitive abilities, the putative tools with which to navigate novel information in life, including in infants later diagnosed with ASD remains unexplored. Moreover, the role of intelligence quotient (IQ) vis-à-vis core features of autism remains debated. We systematically investigate the contribution of early IQ in future autism outcomes in an extremely large, population-based study of 8000 newborns, infants, and toddlers from the US between 2 and 68 months with over 15,000 cross-sectional and longitudinal assessments, and for whom autism outcomes are ascertained or ruled out by about 2–4 years. This population is representative of subjects involved in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research, mainly on atypical development, in the US. Analyses using predetermined age bins showed that IQ scores are consistently lower in ASD relative to typically developing (TD) children at all ages (p \u3c 0.001), and IQ significantly correlates with social, non-social, and total Calibrated Severity Scores (CSS) on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) (p\u3c0.01). Lower IQ is associated with greater autistic impairments. Note, verbal IQ (VIQ) is no better than the full-scale IQ to predict ASD cases. These findings raise new, compelling questions about potential atypical brain circuitry affecting performance in both verbal and nonverbal abilities and preceding an ASD diagnosis. This study is the first to establish prospectively that low early IQ is a major feature of ASD in early childhood. Lay SummaryThe role of IQ scores in autism remains debated. We systematically investigate the contribution of early IQ in an extremely large study of 8,000 children between 2 and 68 months with autism outcomes by about 2–4 years. We show that IQ scores are consistently lower in ASD relative to TD children. This study is the first to establish prospectively that low early IQ is a predictor for ASD diagnosis in early childhood

Vitamin A Metabolism by Dendritic Cells Triggers an Antimicrobial Response against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Epidemiological evidence correlates low serum vitamin A (retinol) levels with increased susceptibility to active tuberculosis (TB); however, retinol is biologically inactive and must be converted into its bioactive form, all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA). Given that ATRA triggers a Niemann-Pick type C2 (NPC2)-dependent antimicrobial response against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, we investigated the mechanism by which the immune system converts retinol into ATRA at the site of infection. We demonstrate that granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-derived dendritic cells (DCs), but not macrophages, express enzymes in the vitamin A metabolic pathway, including aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 family, member a2 (ALDH1A2) and short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase family, member 9 (DHRS9), enzymes capable of the two-step conversion of retinol into ATRA, which is subsequently released from the cell. Additionally, mRNA and protein expression levels of ALDH1A2 and DC marker CD1B were lower in tuberculosis lung tissues than in normal lung. The conditioned medium from DCs cultured with retinol stimulated antimicrobial activity from M. tuberculosis-infected macrophages, as well as the expression of NPC2 in monocytes, which was blocked by specific inhibitors, including retinoic acid receptor inhibitor (RARi) or N,N-diethylaminobenzaldehyde (DEAB), an ALDH1A2 inhibitor. These results indicate that metabolism of vitamin A by DCs transactivates macrophage antimicrobial responses.IMPORTANCE Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death by a single infectious agent worldwide. One factor that contributes to the success of the microbe is the deficiency in immunomodulatory nutrients, such as vitamin A (retinol), which are prevalent in areas where TB is endemic. Clinical trials show that restoration of systemic retinol levels in active TB patients is ineffective in mitigating the disease; however, laboratory studies demonstrate that activation of the vitamin A pathway in Mycobacterium tuberculosis-infected macrophages triggers an antimicrobial response. Therefore, the goal of this study was to determine the link between host retinol levels and retinoic acid-mediated antimicrobial responses against M. tuberculosis By combining established in vitro models with in situ studies of lung tissue from TB patients, this study demonstrates that the innate immune system utilizes transcellular metabolism leading to activation between dendritic cells and macrophages as a means to combat the pathogen

Rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease risk prediction in anti-MDA5 positive dermatomyositis: the CROSS model

BackgroundThe prognosis of anti-melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 positive dermatomyositis (anti-MDA5+DM) is poor and heterogeneous. Rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease (RP-ILD) is these patients’ leading cause of death. We sought to develop prediction models for RP-ILD risk in anti-MDA5+DM patients.MethodsPatients with anti-MDA5+DM were enrolled in two cohorts: 170 patients from the southern region of Jiangsu province (discovery cohort) and 85 patients from the northern region of Jiangsu province (validation cohort). Cox proportional hazards models were used to identify risk factors of RP-ILD. RP-ILD risk prediction models were developed and validated by testing every independent prognostic risk factor derived from the Cox model.ResultsThere are no significant differences in baseline clinical parameters and prognosis between discovery and validation cohorts. Among all 255 anti-MDA5+DM patients, with a median follow-up of 12 months, the incidence of RP-ILD was 36.86%. Using the discovery cohort, four variables were included in the final risk prediction model for RP-ILD: C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, anti-Ro52 antibody positivity, short disease duration, and male sex. A point scoring system was used to classify anti-MDA5+DM patients into moderate, high, and very high risk of RP-ILD. After one-year follow-up, the incidence of RP-ILD in the very high risk group was 71.3% and 85.71%, significantly higher than those in the high-risk group (35.19%, 41.69%) and moderate-risk group (9.54%, 6.67%) in both cohorts.ConclusionsThe CROSS model is an easy-to-use prediction classification system for RP-ILD risk in anti-MDA5+DM patients. It has great application prospect in disease management

Memory access scheduling schemes for systems with multi-core processors

On systems with multi-core processors, the memory access scheduling scheme plays an important role not only in utilizing the limited memory bandwidth but also in balancing the program execution on all cores. In this study, we propose a scheme, called ME-LREQ, which considers the utilization of both processor cores and memory subsystem. It takes into consideration both the long-term and shortterm gains of serving a memory request by prioritizing requests hitting on the row buffers and from the cores that can utilize memory more efficiently and have fewer pending requests. We have also thoroughly evaluated a set of memory scheduling schemes that differentiate and prioritize requests from different cores. Our simulation results show that for memory-intensive, multiprogramming workloads, the new policy improves the overall performance by 10.7 % on average and up to 17.7 % on a four-core processor, when compared with scheme that serves row buffers hit memory requests first and allows memory reads bypassing writes; and by up to 9.2 % (6.4 % on average) when compared with the scheme that serves requests from the core with the fewest pending requests first.

Decreased Case Fatality Rate of COVID‐19 in the Second Wave: A study in 53 countries or regions

The raw case fatality rate (CFR, the reported number of COVID‐19 deaths divided by the total number of cases) is an important indicator to quantify the severity or treatment efficacy. In many countries, the pandemic had experienced two waves to date. To our knowledge, no studies have compared the CFR between the two waves. In this work, we reported the CFR of 53 countries or regions with the highest COVID‐19 death tolls. Of them, 43 had lower CFR estimates in the ongoing second wave than in the first wave. We discussed the possible reasons. Also, we compared the two‐wave pattern of COVID‐19 with those of influenza. Influenza activities in the pre‐pandemic era provided an indicator for seasonality of climate in a country. The sharp drop in influenza activities in 2020 could an indicator of the effects of social distancing.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167438/1/tbed13819.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167438/2/tbed13819_am.pd

Association of serum tumor markers with serous effusion in systemic lupus erythematosus

The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between serum tumor markers and serous effusion in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients, thereby contributing preliminary data on the utility of these tumor markers in diagnosing serous effusion. In this retrospective analysis, clinical data of SLE patients were extracted from electronic medical records. This included the levels of serum tumor markers, including pro-gastrin-releasing peptide, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), cytokeratin-19 fragments (CYFRA 21-1), various carbohydrate antigens (CA 153, CA 125, CA 19-9), along with carcinoembryonic antigen, and alpha-fetoprotein. Positivity of tumor markers was established based on serum levels surpassing the upper threshold of the respective reference ranges. This study included 149 eligible patients with SLE, of whom 38 (25.50%) had serous effusion, and the prevalence of pleural, pericardial, and peritoneal effusions was 11.41%, 14.77%, and 6.71%, respectively. The analysis revealed that patients with serous effusion had higher scores on the SLE Disease Activity Index 2000 (SLEDAI 2000) than those without serous effusion. Notably, this disparity remained significant when the serositis score was excluded from the SLEDAI 2000 calculation. The positivity rate and serum levels of CA 125 were higher in patients with serous effusion and pleural effusion. Patients with pericardial effusion demonstrated an elevated CYFRA 21-1 positivity rate and serum CA 125 and CYFRA 21-1 levels compared to patients without pericardial effusion. CA 125 and NSE were higher both in terms of positivity rate and serum levels for patients with peritoneal effusion. Through receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, a moderate relationship was discerned between the conjoined levels of CYFRA 21-1 and CA 125 and the occurrence of pericardial effusion. Additionally, CA 125, NSE, and their combination revealed the moderate diagnostic ability of peritoneal effusion. In summary, this study observed elevated serum levels of various tumor markers in SLE patients exhibiting serous effusion, which is likely attributable to lupus-induced inflammation. These findings suggest that serum tumor markers can be valuable in diagnosing pericardial and peritoneal effusions