Car make and model recognition under limited lighting conditions at night

Car make and model recognition (CMMR) has become an important part of intelligent transport systems. Information provided by CMMR can be utilized when license plate numbers cannot be identified or fake number plates are used. CMMR can also be used when a certain model of a vehicle is required to be automatically identified by cameras. The majority of existing CMMR methods are designed to be used only in daytime when most of the car features can be easily seen. Few methods have been developed to cope with limited lighting conditions at night where many vehicle features cannot be detected. The aim of this work was to identify car make and model at night by using available rear view features. This paper presents a one-class classifier ensemble designed to identify a particular car model of interest from other models. The combination of salient geographical and shape features of taillights and license plates from the rear view is extracted and used in the recognition process. The majority vote from support vector machine, decision tree, and k-nearest neighbors is applied to verify a target model in the classification process. The experiments on 421 car makes and models captured under limited lighting conditions at night show the classification accuracy rate at about 93 %

PPAR-α and glucocorticoid receptor synergize to promote erythroid progenitor self-renewal

Many acute and chronic anaemias, including haemolysis, sepsis and genetic bone marrow failure diseases such as Diamond–Blackfan anaemia, are not treatable with erythropoietin (Epo), because the colony-forming unit erythroid progenitors (CFU-Es) that respond to Epo are either too few in number or are not sensitive enough to Epo to maintain sufficient red blood cell production. Treatment of these anaemias requires a drug that acts at an earlier stage of red cell formation and enhances the formation of Epo-sensitive CFU-E progenitors. Recently, we showed that glucocorticoids specifically stimulate self-renewal of an early erythroid progenitor, burst-forming unit erythroid (BFU-E), and increase the production of terminally differentiated erythroid cells. Here we show that activation of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPAR-α) by the PPAR-α agonists GW7647 and fenofibrate synergizes with the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) to promote BFU-E self-renewal. Over time these agonists greatly increase production of mature red blood cells in cultures of both mouse fetal liver BFU-Es and mobilized human adult CD34+ peripheral blood progenitors, with a new and effective culture system being used for the human cells that generates normal enucleated reticulocytes. Although Ppara−/− mice show no haematological difference from wild-type mice in both normal and phenylhydrazine (PHZ)-induced stress erythropoiesis, PPAR-α agonists facilitate recovery of wild-type but not Ppara−/− mice from PHZ-induced acute haemolytic anaemia. We also show that PPAR-α alleviates anaemia in a mouse model of chronic anaemia. Finally, both in control and corticosteroid-treated BFU-E cells, PPAR-α co-occupies many chromatin sites with GR; when activated by PPAR-α agonists, additional PPAR-α is recruited to GR-adjacent sites and presumably facilitates GR-dependent BFU-E self-renewal. Our discovery of the role of PPAR-α agonists in stimulating self-renewal of early erythroid progenitor cells suggests that the clinically tested PPAR-α agonists we used may improve the efficacy of corticosteroids in treating Epo-resistant anaemias.United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant HR0011-14-2-0005)United States. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (Grant W81WH-12-1-0449)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Grant 2 P01 HL032262-25

Serious adverse events reported in placebo randomised controlled trials of oral naltrexone: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist used in many different conditions, both licensed and unlicensed. It is used at widely varying doses from 3 - 250 mg. The aim of this review was to evaluate the safety of oral naltrexone by examining the risk of serious adverse events (SAEs) in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of naltrexone compared to placebo. Methods A systematic search of Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, other databases and clinical trials registries was undertaken up to March 2018. Parallel placebo-controlled RCTs longer than 4 weeks published after 1/1/2001, of oral naltrexone at any dose were selected. Any condition and age group were included, excluding only studies for opioid or ex-opioid users, due to possible opioid/opioid antagonist interactions. The systematic review used the guidance of the Cochrane Handbook throughout. Numerical data was independently extracted by two people and cross-checked. Risk of bias was assessed with the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool. Meta-analyses were performed using Stata 15 and R, using random and fixed effects models throughout. Results Eighty-nine RCTs with 11194 participants were found, studying alcohol use disorders, various psychiatric disorders, impulse control disorders, other addictions, obesity, Crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia and cancers. Twenty-six studies (4,960 participants) recorded SAEs occurring by arm of study. There was no evidence of increased risk of SAEs for naltrexone compared to placebo, relative risk (RR) 0.84 (95% CI: 0.66 to 1.06). Sensitivity analyses pooling risk differences supported this conclusion (RD = -0.01 (-0.02, 0.00)) and subgroup analyses showed that results were consistent across different doses and disease groups. The quality of evidence for this outcome was judged high using the GRADE criteria. Conclusions Naltrexone does not appear to increase the risk of SAEs over placebo. These findings confirm the safety of naltrexone when used in licensed indications and encourage investments to undertake efficacy studies in unlicensed indications

Varieties of living things: Life at the intersection of lineage and metabolism

publication-status: Publishedtypes: Articl

Social media in undergraduate medical education: A systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: There are over 3.81 billion worldwide active social media (SoMe) users. SoMe are ubiquitous in medical education, with roles across undergraduate programmes, including professionalism, blended learning, well being and mentoring. Previous systematic reviews took place before recent explosions in SoMe popularity and revealed a paucity of high-quality empirical studies assessing its effectiveness in medical education. This review aimed to synthesise evidence regarding SoMe interventions in undergraduate medical education, to identify features associated with positive and negative outcomes. METHODS: Authors searched 31 key terms through seven databases, in addition to references, citation and hand searching, between 16 June and 16 July 2020. Studies describing SoMe interventions and research on exposure to existing SoMe were included. Title, abstract and full paper screening were undertaken independently by two reviewers. Included papers were assessed for methodological quality using the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI) and/or the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) instrument. Extracted data were synthesised using narrative synthesis. RESULTS: 112 studies from 26 countries met inclusion criteria. Methodological quality of included studies had not significantly improved since 2013. Engagement and satisfaction with SoMe platforms in medical education are described. Students felt SoMe flattened hierarchies and improved communication with educators. SoMe use was associated with improvement in objective knowledge assessment scores and self-reported clinical and professional performance, however evidence for long term knowledge retention was limited. SoMe use was occasionally linked to adverse impacts upon mental and physical health. Professionalism was heavily investigated and considered important, though generally negative correlations between SoMe use and medical professionalism may exist. CONCLUSIONS: Social media is enjoyable for students who may improve short term knowledge retention and can aid communication between learners and educators. However, higher-quality study is required to identify longer-term impact upon knowledge and skills, provide clarification on professionalism standards and protect against harms

WSES guidelines for management of Clostridium difficile infection in surgical patients

In the last two decades there have been dramatic changes in the epidemiology of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), with increases in incidence and severity of disease in many countries worldwide. The incidence of CDI has also increased in surgical patients. Optimization of management of C difficile, has therefore become increasingly urgent. An international multidisciplinary panel of experts prepared evidenced-based World Society of Emergency Surgery (WSES) guidelines for management of CDI in surgical patients.Peer reviewe