An anti-aliasing method for parallel rendering

We describe a parallel rendering method based on the adaptive supersampling technique to produce anti-aliased images with minimal memory consumption. Unlike traditional supersampling methods, this one does not supersample every pixel, but only those edge pixels. We consider various strategies to reduce the memory consumption in order for the method to be applicable in situations where limited or fixed amount of pre-allocated memory is available. This is a very important issue, especially in parallel rendering. We have implemented our algorithm on a parallel machine based on the message passing model. Towards the end of the paper, we present some experimental results on the memory usage and the performance of the method.published_or_final_versio

Peripartum tuberculosis as a form of immunorestitution disease

The aim of this study was to assess the clinical spectrum of peripartum tuberculosis from the perspective of immunorestitution disease. Of 29 patients with peripartum tuberculosis, 27 (93.1%) had extrapulmonary tuberculosis, 20 (69%) of whom were affected in the central nervous system. Twenty-two (75.9%) patients had no clinical features suggestive of tuberculosis during pregnancy. The median time from delivery to the onset of immunorestitution was 4 days, but treatment with antituberculous therapy was delayed for a median time of 27 days after the onset of symptoms. Despite therapy, 11 (38%) patients died and 4 (13.8%) had residual functional deficits. Peripartum tuberculosis is an important differential diagnosis of postpartum fever (of unknown origin) without localized signs.postprin

Clinical and molecular epidemiological features of coronavirus HKU1-associated community-acquired pneumonia

Background. Recently, we described the discovery of a novel group 2 coronavirus, coronavirus HKU1 (CoV-HKU1), from a patient with pneumonia. However, the clinical and molecular epidemiological features of CoV-HKU1-associated pneumonia are unknown. Methods. Prospectively collected (during a 12-month period) nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPAs) from patients with community-acquired pneumonia from 4 hospitals were subjected to reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction, for detection of CoV-HKU1. The epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of patients with CoV-HKU1-associated pneumonia were analyzed. The pol, spike (S), and nucleocapsid (N) genes were also sequenced. Results. NPAs from 10 (2.4%) of 418 patients with community-acquired pneumonia were found to be positive for CoV-HKU1. All 10 cases occurred in spring and winter. Nine of these patients were adults, and 4 had underlying diseases of the respiratory tract. In the 6 patients from whom serum samples were available, all had a 4-fold change in immunoglobulin (Ig) G titer and/or presence of IgM against CoV-HKU1. The 2 patients who died had significantly lower hemoglobin levels, monocyte counts, albumin levels, and oxygen saturation levels on admission and had more-extensive involvement visible on chest radiographs. Sequence analysis of the pol, S, and N genes revealed 2 genotypes of CoV-HKU1. Conclusions. CoV-HKU1 accounts for 2.4% of community-acquired pneumonia, with 2 genotypes in the study population. Without performance of diagnostic tests, the illness was clinically indistinguishable from other community-acquired pneumonia illnesses. © 2005 by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved.published_or_final_versio

Scene context-aware salient object detection

Salient object detection identifies objects in an image that grab visual attention. Although contextual features are considered in recent literature, they often fail in real-world complex scenarios. We observe that this is mainly due to two issues: First, most existing datasets consist of simple foregrounds and backgrounds that hardly represent real-life scenarios. Second, current methods only learn contextual features of salient objects, which are insufficient to model high-level semantics for saliency reasoning in complex scenes. To address these problems, we first construct a new large-scale dataset with complex scenes in this paper. We then propose a context-aware learning approach to explicitly exploit the semantic scene contexts. Specifically, two modules are proposed to achieve the goal: 1) a Semantic Scene Context Refinement module to enhance contextual features learned from salient objects with scene context, and 2) a Contextual Instance Transformer to learn contextual relations between objects and scene context. To our knowledge, such high-level semantic contextual information of image scenes is under-explored for saliency detection in the literature. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in complex scenarios for saliency detection, and transfers well to other existing datasets. The code and dataset are available at https://github.com/SirisAvishek/Scene_Context_Aware_Saliency

Early diagnosis of Exophiala CAPD peritonitis by 18S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and its clinical significance

Phenotypic identification of fungi in clinical microbiology laboratoreis is often difficult and late, especially for slow growing and rarely encountered fungi. We describe the application of 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequencing in the early diagnosis of a case of Exophiala peritonitis. A yeast-like fungus was isolated from the dialysate fluid of a 66-year-old man undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. It grew slowly after 12 days of incubation to yield mature cultures to permit recognition of microscopic features resembling those of Exophiala, a dematiacerous mold. 18S rRNA gene sequencing provided results 12 days earlier than phenotypic identification and revealed 15 base difference (0.9%) between the isolate and Exophiala sp. strain GHP 1205 (GenBank Accession no. AJ232954), indicating that the isolate most closely resembles a strain of Exophiala species. The patient responded to 4 weeks of intravenous amphotericin B therapy. Early identification of the fungus was important for the choice of anti-fungal regimen. As opportunistic fungal infections in immunocompromised patients are globally emerging problems, the development of molecular techniques for fungal identification is crucial for early diagnosis and appropriate treatment. © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Development of a standard treatment protocol for severe acute respiratory syndrome

A series of 31 patients with probable SARS, diagnosed from WHO criteria, were treated according to a treatment protocol consisting of antibacterials and a combination of ribavirin and methylprednisolone. Through experience with the first 11 patients, we were able to finalise standard dose regimens, including pulsed methylprednisolone. One patient recovered on antibacterial treatment alone, 17 showed rapid and sustained responses, and 13 achieved improvement with step-up or pulsed methylprednisolone. Four patients required short periods of non-invasive ventilation. No patient required intubation or mechanical ventilation. There was no mortality or treatment morbidity in this series.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Spontaneous haemopneumothorax: Current management

Spontaneous haemopneumothorax (SHP) can be life threatening and is an important cause for unexplained signs of significant hypovolaemia. There is still some debate relating to patient selection and timing of surgery, particularly in those who become stable following chest tube insertion without further blood loss. Review of the literature over the past decade in the management of SHP are presented and discussed. Surgery should be considered early in the management of SHP to reduce morbidity associated with continued haemorrhage and inadequate drainage. Lower postoperative complications and shorter hospital stay following video assisted thoracic surgery compared with thoracotomy have led to its increased acceptance as an alternative approach for SHP patients who are haemodynamically stable.link_to_subscribed_fulltex