A Human-Computer Duet System for Music Performance

Virtual musicians have become a remarkable phenomenon in the contemporary multimedia arts. However, most of the virtual musicians nowadays have not been endowed with abilities to create their own behaviors, or to perform music with human musicians. In this paper, we firstly create a virtual violinist, who can collaborate with a human pianist to perform chamber music automatically without any intervention. The system incorporates the techniques from various fields, including real-time music tracking, pose estimation, and body movement generation. In our system, the virtual musician's behavior is generated based on the given music audio alone, and such a system results in a low-cost, efficient and scalable way to produce human and virtual musicians' co-performance. The proposed system has been validated in public concerts. Objective quality assessment approaches and possible ways to systematically improve the system are also discussed

Transmission potential of Zika virus infection in the South Pacific

Objectives: Zika virus has spread internationally through countries in the South Pacific and Americas. The present study aimed to estimate the basic reproduction number, R0, of Zika virus infection as a measurement of the transmission potential, reanalyzing past epidemic data from the South Pacific. Methods: Incidence data from two epidemics, one on Yap Island, Federal State of Micronesia in 2007 and the other in French Polynesia in 2013-2014, were reanalyzed. R0 of Zika virus infection was estimated from the early exponential growth rate of these two epidemics. Results: The maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of R0 for the Yap Island epidemic was in the order of 4.3-5.8 with broad uncertainty bounds due to the small sample size of confirmed and probable cases. The MLE of R0 for French Polynesia based on syndromic data ranged from 1.8 to 2.0 with narrow uncertainty bounds. Conclusions: The transmissibility of Zika virus infection appears to be comparable to those of dengue and chikungunya viruses. Considering that Aedes species are a shared vector, this finding indicates that Zika virus replication within the vector is perhaps comparable to dengue and chikungunya

Isolated bladder rupture in an elderly patient after blunt trauma. Case report and review

A 74-year-old man presented to the hospital after having a mechanical fall at home on his left side of the body. On arrival he was stable, and investigation revealed fractured left humerus, and he was admitted for observation and pain management. Two days later he started to have severe lower abdominal pain and acute kidney injury. Urinary catheter inserted and about 2 liters of bloody urine emptied, and Abdominopelvic CT scan requested which showed massive fluid in the retroperitoneal area, subsequent CT Cystogram confirmed perforation of the bladder on the left lateral wall. The patient was hemodynamically stable and kept in a high intensive care unit for close observation, and he improved dramatically, and follow-up scan showed healing of perforated bladder. Bladder rupture is not a standard presentation after blunt trauma but should be kept in mind when dealing with elderly patients with pre-existing urinary retention or other medical comorbidities

Management of extensive surgical emphysema with subcutaneous drain: a case report

Subcutaneous emphysema (SE) is a frequent and often self-limiting complication of tube thoracostomy or other cardiothoracic procedures. On rare occasions, severe and extensive surgical emphysema marked by palpable cutaneous tension, dysphagia, dysphonia, palpebral closure or associated with pneumoperitoneum, airway compromise, "tension phenomenon" and respiratory failure require treatment.A 67 year old lady presented with a large spontaneous pneumothorax on the background of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and newly diagnosed lung cancer, developed extensive surgical emphysema following insertion of a chest drain. Immediate improvement was observed after insertion of a large-bore, 26 French (Fr.) intercostal catheter, subcutaneous drain which was maintained under low suction (-5 cm HO) for a further 24 h.Several methods have been described in the literature for the treatment of extensive subcutaneous emphysema, including: emergency tracheostomy, multisite subcutaneous drainage, infraclavicular "blow holes" incisions and subcutaneous drains or simply increasing suction on an in situ chest drain. Here a large-bore, fenestrated, subcutaneous drain maintained on low negative pressure also provided the necessary decompression.In the absence of a comparative study to identify the most effective method to manage extensive subcutaneous emphysema, this case highlights an effective, simple and safe management option

A surgeon-led model to improve operating theatre change-over time and overall efficiency: a randomised controlled trial

Background: The non-operative time during the process of patient change-over between operating theatre cases is a significant source of delay and overall theatre inefficiency. The aim of this study was to integrate and trial a working strategy to improve this change-over time. Method: This was a single-blinded, randomised controlled intervention study comparing a surgeon-led, team-based model of strategies versus routine patient change-over. This model was trialled by a single surgeon, and the primary outcome was the difference in change-over times compared with 4 other surgeons who were blinded and served as controls. Secondary outcome measures included overall differences in complications between the groups, and the number and differences in operative case cancellations due to inadequate theatre time. Results: 1265 patients were randomised into 5 general surgical lists, and included all major and minor cases. Median number of operative cases were 214 per surgeon, with an overall median change over time of 17.9 ± 3.7 min. Surgeon A in the intervention group had a median change-over time of 12.1 ± 5.4 min (p < 0.001), with a median difference of 8.5 min ± 21.4 min (p < 0.0001), translating to a 58% reduction in median change-over time between the intervention and control groups. There were no differences in complication rates amongst the groups. The intervention group had no cancellations due to lack of time, compared with 37 cancellations in the control group. Conclusion: This study demonstrates a statistically significant improvement in median change-over times using this model. This re-design can be implemented without incurring extra costs, staff, or operating theatres