Which treatments are safe and effective for chronic sinusitis?

Q: Which treatments are safe and effective for chronic sinusitis? Evidence-based answer: for adults with chronic rhinosinusitis (crs), intranasal steroid (ins) therapy is more likely than placebo to improve symptoms (50% vs 32%; strength of recommendation [SOR]: A, systematic reviews). Nasal saline irrigation (SI) alleviates symptoms better than no therapy (SOR: A, systematic reviews), but it's probably not as effective as INS treatment (SOR: B, randomized controlled trial [RCT] with wide confidence interval). Long-term (12 weeks) macrolide therapy doesn't alter patient-oriented quality-of-life measures (SOR: A, systematic reviews). Endoscopic sinus surgery improves CRS symptoms -- nasal obstruction, discharge, and facial pain -- over baseline (SOR: A, systematic reviews). Surgery and medical therapy appear about equivalent in terms of symptom improvement and quality-of-life measures (SOR: B, systematic reviews of low-quality RCTs)

Temporal Localization of Fine-Grained Actions in Videos by Domain Transfer from Web Images

We address the problem of fine-grained action localization from temporally untrimmed web videos. We assume that only weak video-level annotations are available for training. The goal is to use these weak labels to identify temporal segments corresponding to the actions, and learn models that generalize to unconstrained web videos. We find that web images queried by action names serve as well-localized highlights for many actions, but are noisily labeled. To solve this problem, we propose a simple yet effective method that takes weak video labels and noisy image labels as input, and generates localized action frames as output. This is achieved by cross-domain transfer between video frames and web images, using pre-trained deep convolutional neural networks. We then use the localized action frames to train action recognition models with long short-term memory networks. We collect a fine-grained sports action data set FGA-240 of more than 130,000 YouTube videos. It has 240 fine-grained actions under 85 sports activities. Convincing results are shown on the FGA-240 data set, as well as the THUMOS 2014 localization data set with untrimmed training videos.Comment: Camera ready version for ACM Multimedia 201

Medications for weight loss in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus

Fluoxetine (Prozac) and orlistat (Xenical) produce modest short-term weight loss, but their long-term benefits are unclear and their safety is uncertain. (Strength of Recommendation [SOR]: B, based on a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.) Topiramate (Topamax; immediate- and controlled-release formulations) can produce weight loss, but potential psychiatric and neurologic adverse effects limit its usefulness (SOR: B, based on randomized controlled trials.) Sibutramine (Meridia) produces weight loss but has been withdrawn from the U.S. market because of potential cardiovascular adverse effects

Dimer bond geometry in D/Ge(100)-(2×1): A low-energy electron-diffraction structure analysis

The asymmetry of the Ge dimer in the (2×1) reconstruction of Ge(100) is removed upon adsorption of deuterium D. The R-factor analysis indicates a slight remaining asymmetry which is attributed to the coexistence of bare and D-covered dimers. The Ge-Ge bond length of 2.4(2) Å in the dimer does not change within the error limits when compared to the clean surface. The D atoms bond on top of the Ge atoms, exhibiting a Ge-D bond length of 1.6(2) Å

Video shot boundary detection: seven years of TRECVid activity

Shot boundary detection (SBD) is the process of automatically detecting the boundaries between shots in video. It is a problem which has attracted much attention since video became available in digital form as it is an essential pre-processing step to almost all video analysis, indexing, summarisation, search, and other content-based operations. Automatic SBD was one of the tracks of activity within the annual TRECVid benchmarking exercise, each year from 2001 to 2007 inclusive. Over those seven years we have seen 57 different research groups from across the world work to determine the best approaches to SBD while using a common dataset and common scoring metrics. In this paper we present an overview of the TRECVid shot boundary detection task, a high-level overview of the most significant of the approaches taken, and a comparison of performances, focussing on one year (2005) as an example

Memory for incidentally perceived social cues: Effects on person judgment

Dynamic face cues can be very salient, as when observing sudden shifts of gaze to a new location, or a change of expression from happy to angry. These highly salient social cues influence judgments of another person during the course of an interaction. However, other dynamic cues, such as pupil dilation, are much more subtle, affecting judgments of another person even without awareness. We asked whether such subtle, incidentally perceived, dynamic cues could be encoded in to memory and retrieved at a later time. The current study demonstrates that in some circumstances changes in pupil size in another person are indeed encoded into memory and influence judgments of that individual at a later time. Furthermore, these judgments interact with the perceived trustworthiness of the individual and the nature of the social context. The effect is somewhat variable, however, possibly reflecting individual differences and the inherent ambiguity of pupil dilation/constriction

Oxygen adsorption on the Ru (10 bar 1 0) surface: Anomalous coverage dependence

Oxygen adsorption onto Ru (10 bar 1 0) results in the formation of two ordered overlayers, i.e. a c(2 times 4)-2O and a (2 times 1)pg-2O phase, which were analyzed by low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and density functional theory (DFT) calculation. In addition, the vibrational properties of these overlayers were studied by high-resolution electron loss spectroscopy. In both phases, oxygen occupies the threefold coordinated hcp site along the densely packed rows on an otherwise unreconstructed surface, i.e. the O atoms are attached to two atoms in the first Ru layer Ru(1) and to one Ru atom in the second layer Ru(2), forming zigzag chains along the troughs. While in the low-coverage c(2 times 4)-O phase, the bond lengths of O to Ru(1) and Ru(2) are 2.08 A and 2.03 A, respectively, corresponding bond lengths in the high-coverage (2 times 1)-2O phase are 2.01 A and 2.04 A (LEED). Although the adsorption energy decreases by 220 meV with O coverage (DFT calculations), we observe experimentally a shortening of the Ru(1)-O bond length with O coverage. This effect could not be reconciled with the present DFT-GGA calculations. The nu(Ru-O) stretch mode is found at 67 meV [c(2 times 4)-2O] and 64 meV [(2 times 1)pg-2O].Comment: 10 pages, figures are available as hardcopies on request by mailing [email protected], submitted to Phys. Rev. B (8. Aug. 97), other related publications can be found at http://www.rz-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm

The TREC2001 video track: information retrieval on digital video information

The development of techniques to support content-based access to archives of digital video information has recently started to receive much attention from the research community. During 2001, the annual TREC activity, which has been benchmarking the performance of information retrieval techniques on a range of media for 10 years, included a ”track“ or activity which allowed investigation into approaches to support searching through a video library. This paper is not intended to provide a comprehensive picture of the different approaches taken by the TREC2001 video track participants but instead we give an overview of the TREC video search task and a thumbnail sketch of the approaches taken by different groups. The reason for writing this paper is to highlight the message from the TREC video track that there are now a variety of approaches available for searching and browsing through digital video archives, that these approaches do work, are scalable to larger archives and can yield useful retrieval performance for users. This has important implications in making digital libraries of video information attainable

Synthesis and Characterization of Epoxy Thermosetting Polymers from Glycidylated Organosolv Lignin and Bisphenol A

International audienceDiglycidylether of bisphenol A and isophorone diamine (IPDA) are industrially used for polyepoxide curing. Herein, glycidylated Organosolv lignin (GOL) is cured with diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A and IPDA for intensive studies. Organosolv lignin (OL) is therefore first glycidylated with epichlorohydrin to a material with an epoxy content of 3.2 mmol g–1 and analyzed via FT‐IR, 1H and 31P NMR. Epoxy thermosets with up to 42 wt% GOL are cured in differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) crucibles, analyzing the residual reaction heat. Characterization of dog bone shaped specimens is described with regard to structural properties from scanning electron microscopy and FT‐IR, thermal properties by DSC and thermogravimetric analysis, as well as mechanical properties by dynamic mechanical analysis and stress/strain measurements. A lignin content between 8% and 33% leads to higher crosslinking density, resulting in a higher glass transition, lower swelling percentage, and increased stiffness (Young's modulus) if compared to non‐GOL polymers