Enabling Customization of Discussion Forums for Blind Users

Online discussion forums have become an integral component of news, entertainment, information, and video-streaming websites, where people all over the world actively engage in discussions on a wide range of topics including politics, sports, music, business, health, and world affairs. Yet, little is known about their usability for blind users, who aurally interact with the forum conversations using screen reader assistive technology. In an interview study, blind users stated that they often had an arduous and frustrating interaction experience while consuming conversation threads, mainly due to the highly redundant content and the absence of customization options to selectively view portions of the conversations. As an initial step towards addressing these usability concerns, we designed PView - a browser extension that enables blind users to customize the content of forum threads in real time as they interact with these threads. Specifically, PView allows the blind users to explicitly hide any post that is irrelevant to them, and then PView automatically detects and filters out all subsequent posts that are substantially similar to the hidden post in real time, before the users navigate to those portions of the thread. In a user study with blind participants, we observed that compared to the status quo, PView significantly improved the usability, workload, and satisfaction of the participants while interacting with the forums

AutoDesc: Facilitating Convenient Perusal of Web Data Items for Blind Users

Web data items such as shopping products, classifieds, and job listings are indispensable components of most e-commerce websites. The information on the data items are typically distributed over two or more webpages, e.g., a ‘Query-Results’ page showing the summaries of the items, and ‘Details’ pages containing full information about the items. While this organization of data mitigates information overload and visual cluttering for sighted users, it however increases the interaction overhead and effort for blind users, as back-and-forth navigation between webpages using screen reader assistive technology is tedious and cumbersome. Existing usability-enhancing solutions are unable to provide adequate support in this regard as they predominantly focus on enabling efficient content access within a single webpage, and as such are not tailored for content distributed across multiple webpages. As an initial step towards addressing this issue, we developed AutoDesc, a browser extension that leverages a custom extraction model to automatically detect and pull out additional item descriptions from the ‘details’ pages, and then proactively inject the extracted information into the ‘Query-Results’ page, thereby reducing the amount of back-and-forth screen reader navigation between the two webpages. In a study with 16 blind users, we observed that within the same time duration, the participants were able to peruse significantly more data items on average with AutoDesc, compared to that with their preferred screen readers as well as with a state-of-the-art solution

Targeted Therapies in Cancer Treatment: Unveiling the Latest Breakthroughs and Promising Approaches

This review article delves into the realm of cancer treatment, specifically focusing on targeted therapies. It aims to present the most recent breakthroughs and promising approaches in this rapidly evolving field. Targeted therapies have emerged as a revolutionary approach in cancer treatment, aiming to selectively and precisely attack cancer cells while sparing normal tissues. This article explores various targeted therapy strategies, including monoclonal antibodies, small molecule inhibitors, immunotherapies, and gene therapies. In recent years, there have been significant advancements in understanding the molecular and genetic basis of cancer, which has led to the identification of novel therapeutic targets. The article sheds light on these newly discovered targets and highlights their potential in designing more effective and personalized treatment regimens for cancer patients. Furthermore, the review addresses the challenges and limitations associated with targeted therapies, such as resistance mechanisms and the heterogeneity of tumors. Strategies to overcome these obstacles are discussed, including combination therapies and the development of next-generation targeted agents. The role of precision medicine in cancer treatment is also explored, emphasizing the importance of biomarker-guided therapy selection to optimize treatment outcomes. Additionally, the review touches upon the integration of targeted therapies with conventional treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, to enhance overall treatment efficacy. Finally, the article examines ongoing clinical trials and preclinical studies that are investigating cutting-edge targeted therapies, showcasing the potential impact of these approaches in transforming cancer care. In conclusion, targeted therapies in cancer treatment represent a rapidly expanding field with remarkable breakthroughs and promising avenues. Understanding the latest advancements and challenges in this domain is essential to harness the full potential of targeted therapies and ultimately improve patient outcomes in the battle against cancer

The Rise of RNA-Based Therapeutics: Recent Advances and Therapeutic Potential

In recent years, RNA-based therapeutics have emerged as a groundbreaking field, offering innovative approaches for drug development and therapeutic interventions. This review article presents a comprehensive exploration of the advancements in RNA-based therapeutics, focusing on key modalities such as RNA interference (RNAi), antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, and other emerging RNA-based therapies. The introduction provides an insightful overview of the potential of RNA as a therapeutic target, highlighting its unique mechanisms of action and its transformative role in precision medicine. Subsequently, the review delves into the intricacies of RNAi, explaining the function of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) in selectively silencing disease-associated genes, thereby opening new avenues for therapeutic interventions. Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are discussed in detail, elucidating how they target mRNA for degradation or modulation of splicing, offering promising solutions for treating genetic disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and viral infections. Additionally, the groundbreaking success of mRNA vaccines is explored, with an emphasis on their role in combatting infectious diseases like COVID-19 and their potential application in cancer immunotherapy and other therapeutic areas. Addressing the critical issue of delivery challenges in RNA-based therapeutics, the review presents various strategies to enhance stability, cellular uptake, and minimize immunogenicity, thereby improving the effectiveness of these therapies in reaching their intended targets. Clinical successes and challenges of RNA-based therapeutics are critically evaluated, providing insights into ongoing clinical trials and approved therapies. Success stories underscore the transformative potential of RNA-based treatments, while safety concerns are addressed, paving the way for safer and more efficient therapeutic applications. The review concludes by exploring future prospects and innovations in the field, highlighting novel delivery strategies, advancements in RNA editing technologies, and the promise of combination therapies to augment therapeutic outcomes. Regulatory considerations and commercialization challenges are also discussed, offering an understanding of the regulatory landscape for RNA-based therapeutics and the potential for market growth. In conclusion, this review article serves as an informative resource for researchers, clinicians, and pharmaceutical professionals, shedding light on the rapid progress in RNA-based therapeutics and their potential to revolutionize disease treatment. By integrating knowledge from diverse sources, this review contributes to advancing the field and underscores the exciting possibilities of RNA-based interventions in improving patient outcomes and addressing unmet medical needs

All in One Place: Ensuring Usable Access to Online Shopping Items for Blind Users

Perusing web data items such as shopping products is a core online user activity. To prevent information overload, the content associated with data items is typically dispersed across multiple webpage sections over multiple web pages. However, such content distribution manifests an unintended side effect of significantly increasing the interaction burden for blind users, since navigating to-and-fro between different sections in different pages is tedious and cumbersome with their screen readers. While existing works have proposed methods for the context of a single webpage, solutions enabling usable access to content distributed across multiple webpages are few and far between. In this paper, we present InstaFetch, a browser extension that dynamically generates an alternative screen reader-friendly user interface in real-time, which blind users can leverage to almost instantly access different item-related information such as description, full specification, and user reviews, all in one place, without having to tediously navigate to different sections in different webpages. Moreover, InstaFetch also supports natural language queries about any item, a feature blind users can exploit to quickly obtain desired information, thereby avoiding manually trudging through reams of text. In a study with 14 blind users, we observed that the participants needed significantly lesser time to peruse data items with InstaFetch, than with a state-of-the-art solution

Towards Accurate Differential Diagnosis with Large Language Models

An accurate differential diagnosis (DDx) is a cornerstone of medical care, often reached through an iterative process of interpretation that combines clinical history, physical examination, investigations and procedures. Interactive interfaces powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) present new opportunities to both assist and automate aspects of this process. In this study, we introduce an LLM optimized for diagnostic reasoning, and evaluate its ability to generate a DDx alone or as an aid to clinicians. 20 clinicians evaluated 302 challenging, real-world medical cases sourced from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) case reports. Each case report was read by two clinicians, who were randomized to one of two assistive conditions: either assistance from search engines and standard medical resources, or LLM assistance in addition to these tools. All clinicians provided a baseline, unassisted DDx prior to using the respective assistive tools. Our LLM for DDx exhibited standalone performance that exceeded that of unassisted clinicians (top-10 accuracy 59.1% vs 33.6%, [p = 0.04]). Comparing the two assisted study arms, the DDx quality score was higher for clinicians assisted by our LLM (top-10 accuracy 51.7%) compared to clinicians without its assistance (36.1%) (McNemar's Test: 45.7, p < 0.01) and clinicians with search (44.4%) (4.75, p = 0.03). Further, clinicians assisted by our LLM arrived at more comprehensive differential lists than those without its assistance. Our study suggests that our LLM for DDx has potential to improve clinicians' diagnostic reasoning and accuracy in challenging cases, meriting further real-world evaluation for its ability to empower physicians and widen patients' access to specialist-level expertise

CoNIC Challenge: Pushing the Frontiers of Nuclear Detection, Segmentation, Classification and Counting

Nuclear detection, segmentation and morphometric profiling are essential in helping us further understand the relationship between histology and patient outcome. To drive innovation in this area, we setup a community-wide challenge using the largest available dataset of its kind to assess nuclear segmentation and cellular composition. Our challenge, named CoNIC, stimulated the development of reproducible algorithms for cellular recognition with real-time result inspection on public leaderboards. We conducted an extensive post-challenge analysis based on the top-performing models using 1,658 whole-slide images of colon tissue. With around 700 million detected nuclei per model, associated features were used for dysplasia grading and survival analysis, where we demonstrated that the challenge's improvement over the previous state-of-the-art led to significant boosts in downstream performance. Our findings also suggest that eosinophils and neutrophils play an important role in the tumour microevironment. We release challenge models and WSI-level results to foster the development of further methods for biomarker discovery

Global, regional, and national burden of neurological disorders, 1990–2016 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background: Neurological disorders are increasingly recognised as major causes of death and disability worldwide. The aim of this analysis from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 is to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date estimates of the global, regional, and national burden from neurological disorders. Methods: We estimated prevalence, incidence, deaths, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs; the sum of years of life lost [YLLs] and years lived with disability [YLDs]) by age and sex for 15 neurological disorder categories (tetanus, meningitis, encephalitis, stroke, brain and other CNS cancers, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron diseases, idiopathic epilepsy, migraine, tension-type headache, and a residual category for other less common neurological disorders) in 195 countries from 1990 to 2016. DisMod-MR 2.1, a Bayesian meta-regression tool, was the main method of estimation of prevalence and incidence, and the Cause of Death Ensemble model (CODEm) was used for mortality estimation. We quantified the contribution of 84 risks and combinations of risk to the disease estimates for the 15 neurological disorder categories using the GBD comparative risk assessment approach. Findings: Globally, in 2016, neurological disorders were the leading cause of DALYs (276 million [95% UI 247–308]) and second leading cause of deaths (9·0 million [8·8–9·4]). The absolute number of deaths and DALYs from all neurological disorders combined increased (deaths by 39% [34–44] and DALYs by 15% [9–21]) whereas their age-standardised rates decreased (deaths by 28% [26–30] and DALYs by 27% [24–31]) between 1990 and 2016. The only neurological disorders that had a decrease in rates and absolute numbers of deaths and DALYs were tetanus, meningitis, and encephalitis. The four largest contributors of neurological DALYs were stroke (42·2% [38·6–46·1]), migraine (16·3% [11·7–20·8]), Alzheimer's and other dementias (10·4% [9·0–12·1]), and meningitis (7·9% [6·6–10·4]). For the combined neurological disorders, age-standardised DALY rates were significantly higher in males than in females (male-to-female ratio 1·12 [1·05–1·20]), but migraine, multiple sclerosis, and tension-type headache were more common and caused more burden in females, with male-to-female ratios of less than 0·7. The 84 risks quantified in GBD explain less than 10% of neurological disorder DALY burdens, except stroke, for which 88·8% (86·5–90·9) of DALYs are attributable to risk factors, and to a lesser extent Alzheimer's disease and other dementias (22·3% [11·8–35·1] of DALYs are risk attributable) and idiopathic epilepsy (14·1% [10·8–17·5] of DALYs are risk attributable). Interpretation: Globally, the burden of neurological disorders, as measured by the absolute number of DALYs, continues to increase. As populations are growing and ageing, and the prevalence of major disabling neurological disorders steeply increases with age, governments will face increasing demand for treatment, rehabilitation, and support services for neurological disorders. The scarcity of established modifiable risks for most of the neurological burden demonstrates that new knowledge is required to develop effective prevention and treatment strategies. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals &lt;1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries