InterTracker: Discovering and Tracking General Objects Interacting with Hands in the Wild

Understanding human interaction with objects is an important research topic for embodied Artificial Intelligence and identifying the objects that humans are interacting with is a primary problem for interaction understanding. Existing methods rely on frame-based detectors to locate interacting objects. However, this approach is subjected to heavy occlusions, background clutter, and distracting objects. To address the limitations, in this paper, we propose to leverage spatio-temporal information of hand-object interaction to track interactive objects under these challenging cases. Without prior knowledge of the general objects to be tracked like object tracking problems, we first utilize the spatial relation between hands and objects to adaptively discover the interacting objects from the scene. Second, the consistency and continuity of the appearance of objects between successive frames are exploited to track the objects. With this tracking formulation, our method also benefits from training on large-scale general object-tracking datasets. We further curate a video-level hand-object interaction dataset for testing and evaluation from 100DOH. The quantitative results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Specifically, in scenes with continuous interaction with different objects, we achieve an impressive improvement of about 10% as evaluated using the Average Precision (AP) metric. Our qualitative findings also illustrate that our method can produce more continuous trajectories for interacting objects.Comment: IROS 202

THE LATE AND PERSISTENT PATHOGENIC EFFECTS OF CADMIUM AT VERY LOW LEVELS ON THE KIDNEY OF RATS

Cadmium (Cd) is an important nephrotoxic pollutant. To examine late effects on the kidney of individuals previously exposed to chronic Cd at very low levels, male Wistar rats were given 20 nmol/kg i.p. injections of Cd every other day for 4 weeks. At the 20th, 28th, 36th, 44th and 52nd week of the study, renal metal accumulation, morphology and function were examined. Immunochemical staining was performed to detect renal 3-nitrotyrosine (3-NT) accumulation, metallothionein (MT) expression, cell proliferation and global DNA methylation. Results showed that renal Cd concentration and MT expression along with 3- NT accumulation were significantly higher in the Cd group than that in the control. Histopathologically renal tubule damage at the early stage and hyperplasia at the late stage were observed in the Cd group. Renal fibrosis in glomeruli was evident in the Cd group, particularly at the late stage of the study. Immunoreactivity of global DNA methylation was markedly diminished in the Cd group at both 20th and 52nd weeks. These results suggest that previous exposure to chronic Cd at very low level induced persistent damaging effects on the kidney along with increases in cell proliferation and global DNA hypomethylation

Application of 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging in gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor with elevated CA199: a case report and review of literature

BackgroundGallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor (GIPT) is a nonspecific chronic proliferative inflammation of the gallbladder. At present, the pathogenesis is not clear, which may be related to bacterial and viral infections, congenital diseases, gallstones, chronic cholangitis and so on. GIPT is rare and the imaging examination has no obvious specificity. There are few reports on the 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging characteristics of GIPT. In this paper, 18F-FDG PET/CT findings of GIPT with elevated CA199 are reported and the literature is reviewed.Case descriptionA 69-year-old female patient presented with recurrent intermittent right upper abdominal pain for more than 1 year, followed by nausea and vomiting for 3 hours, without fever, dizziness, chest tightness and other symptoms. Complete CT, MRI, PET/CT and related laboratory tests, CEA (-), AFP (-), Ca199 224.50U/mL ↑,18F-FDG PET/CT images showed uneven thickening at the bottom of the gallbladder, slightly increased gallbladder volume, eccentric and localized thickening of the gallbladder body wall, nodular soft tissue density shadow, clear boundary, smooth gallbladder wall, presence and smooth hepatobiliary interface, increased FDG radioactivity uptake, SUVmax was 10.2.The tumor was resected after operation and was diagnosed as gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor by postoperative pathology.Conclusion18F-FDGPET/CT imaging has a certain significance for gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor. In patients with chronic cholecystitis, when the CA199 increases, the gallbladder wall appears localized thickening, the hepatobiliary interface exists and is smooth, and the 18F-FDG metabolism is mildly to moderately increase. Gallbladder cancer cannot be diagnosed alone, and the possibility of gallbladder inflammatory pseudotumor should also be considered. However, it should be noted that the cases with unclear diagnosis should still be actively treated with surgery, so as not to delay the treatment opportunity

A real-world study of anlotinib as third-line or above therapy in patients with her-2 negative metastatic breast cancer

BackgroundAntiangiogenic agents provides an optional treatment strategy for patients with metastatic breast cancer. The present study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of anlotinib as third-line or above therapy for patients with HER-2 negative metastatic breast cancer.MethodsPatients with HER-2 negative metastatic breast cancer who have failed from prior therapy and treated with anlotinib monotherapy or combined with chemotherapy or immunotherapy from June 2018 to December 2020 were retrospectively analyzed based on real-world clinical practice. The primary end point was progression free survival (PFS). Secondary end points included objective response rate (ORR), disease control rate (DCR), overall survival (OS) and safety.Results47 patients with HER-2 negative metastatic breast cancer received anlotinib monotherapy or combination therapy as third-line or above therapy. In the general population, 10 patients achieved PR, 25 patients had SD and 12 patients had PD. The overall ORR and DCR were 21.3% and 74.5%, respectively. Subgroup analysis suggested that there were no statistically significant differences in ORR and DCR with respect to HR status (positive vs. negative), treatment programs (monotherapy vs. combination) and treatment type in combination group (chemotherapy vs. immunotherapy). The patients who did not received previously anti-angiogenesis therapy had superior DCR (84.8% vs. 50.0%, P=0.012). Median PFS and OS were 5.0 months (95% CI=4.3-5.7) and 21.0 (95% CI=14.9-27.1) months, respectively. The PFS (6.5m vs. 3.5m, P=0.042)and OS (28.2m vs. 12.6m, P=0.040) were better in HR positive patients than HR negative patients. And simultaneously, patients who received anlotinib combination therapy obtained better PFS (5.5m vs. 3.0m, P=0.045). The incidence of Grade 3-4 adverse events(AEs) was 31.9%.ConclusionsAnlotinib monotherapy or combination therapy provide a viable third-line or above therapeutic strategy in patients with HER-2 negative metastatic breast cancer, a median PFS of 5.0 months was obtained with well tolerated toxicity

Original Article MiR-199a inhibits the ability of proliferation and migration by regulating CD44-Ezrin signaling in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma cells

Abstract: Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC), the second most common form of human cancer, is an epithelial skin tumor, which can result in metastasis with lethal consequences accounting for about 20% of all skin cancer-related deaths. The metastasis is the main reason for cSCC-related deaths with an overall 5-year survival rate < 30% in cases that spread systemically. The role of miRNAs has been involved in SCC of different origins. Recent data have revealed that the expression of miRNA-199a was changed in many human cancers. In this study, we found that miR-199a was significantly decreased in cSCC tissues, which had an inverse relationship with CD44. MiR-199a specifically regulated the expression of CD44 at mRNA and protein levels, and the interaction between CD44 and Ezrin in cSCC cells. Moreover, the suppressive role of miR-199a in cell migration in cSCC cells was also associated with the activity of MMP2 and MMP9. Taken together, our data indicated that increased expression of endogenous mature miR-199a might prevent the growth and migration of human cSCC via decreasing the expression of CD44 and regulating the interaction between CD44 and Ezrin, which may provide a potentially important therapeutic target for human cSCC

Porcine RIG-I and MDA5 Signaling CARD Domains Exert Similar Antiviral Function Against Different Viruses

The RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs) RIG-I and MDA5 play critical roles in sensing and fighting viral infections. Although RIG-I and MDA5 have similar molecular structures, these two receptors have distinct features during activation. Further, the signaling domains of the N terminal CARD domains (CARDs) in RIG-I and MDA5 share poor similarity. Therefore, we wonder whether the CARDs of RIG-I and MDA5 play similar roles in signaling and antiviral function. Here we expressed porcine RIG-I and MDA5 CARDs in 293T cells and porcine alveolar macrophages and found that MDA5 CARDs exhibit higher expression and stronger signaling activity than RIG-I CARDs. Nevertheless, both RIG-I and MDA5 CARDs exert comparable antiviral function against several viruses. Transcriptome analysis showed that MDA5 CARDs are more effective in regulating downstream genes. However, in the presence of virus, both RIG-I and MDA5 CARDs exhibit similar effects on downstream gene transcriptions, reflecting their antiviral function