Language Grounded QFormer for Efficient Vision Language Understanding

Large-scale pretraining and instruction tuning have been successful for training general-purpose language models with broad competencies. However, extending to general-purpose vision-language models is challenging due to the distributional diversity in visual inputs. A recent line of work explores vision-language instruction tuning, taking inspiration from the Query Transformer (QFormer) approach proposed in BLIP-2 models for bridging frozen modalities. However, these approaches rely heavily on large-scale multi-modal pretraining for representation learning before eventual finetuning, incurring a huge computational overhead, poor scaling, and limited accessibility. To that end, we propose a more efficient method for QFormer-based vision-language alignment and demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy compared to existing baselines in improving the efficiency of vision-language pretraining.Comment: Preprint Under Revie

Nano-Biotechnology for Bacteria Identification and Potent Anti-bacterial Properties: A Review of Current State of the Art

Sepsis is a critical disease caused by the abrupt increase of bacteria in human blood, which subsequently causes a cytokine storm. Early identification of bacteria is critical to treating a patient with proper antibiotics to avoid sepsis. However, conventional culture-based identification takes a long time. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is not so successful because of the complexity and similarity in the genome sequence of some bacterial species, making it difficult to design primers and thus less suitable for rapid bacterial identification. To address these issues, several new technologies have been developed. Recent advances in nanotechnology have shown great potential for fast and accurate bacterial identification. The most promising strategy in nanotechnology involves the use of nanoparticles, which has led to the advancement of highly specific and sensitive biosensors capable of detecting and identifying bacteria even at low concentrations in very little time. The primary drawback of conventional antibiotics is the potential for antimicrobial resistance, which can lead to the development of superbacteria, making them difficult to treat. The incorporation of diverse nanomaterials and designs of nanomaterials has been utilized to kill bacteria efficiently. Nanomaterials with distinct physicochemical properties, such as optical and magnetic properties, including plasmonic and magnetic nanoparticles, have been extensively studied for their potential to efficiently kill bacteria. In this review, we are emphasizing the recent advances in nano-biotechnologies for bacterial identification and anti-bacterial properties. The basic principles of new technologies, as well as their future challenges, have been discussed

Comparative study of renal function test and thyroid hormone in chronic kidney disease

Introduction: Biochemical parameters (urea, creatinine, uric acid, T3, T4, TSH) important in prognosis, monitoring of thyroid dysfunction, and chronic kidney disease. The present study was attempted to analyze these parameters in CKD patients and a healthy control group. Materials and methods: Fifty healthy control and 5o were chronic kidney disease subjects were taken serum urea, creatinine uric acid analyzed on the auto analyzer and T3, T4, TSH estimated on immunoassay analyzer. Ethical permission was taken from the institutional ethical committee. Results: Level of urea, creatinine, uric acid, and thyroid hormone T3, T4, TSH were found to be significant in the present study when compared with the control group. (Þ<0.0001). Conclusion: It was observed that levels of urea, creatinine, uric acid, and T3, T4, TSH deranged value found in chronic kidney disease subjects

Glycoconjugates coated gold nanorods based novel biosensor for optical detection and photothermal ablation of food borne bacteria

Foodborne bacterial species have been identified as the major cause in most of the severe pathogen related diseases. Conventional methods like plating and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) are time overriding and laborious. Fast detection of bacterial species in food is a proximate obligation to guarantee food safety. Nanotechnology has emerged as a great field in case of rapid detection of pathogens in recent years. In the present work, gold nanorods, (AuNRs) based sensor was developed for swift and sensitive detection of foodborne bacteria. AuNRs has good electro-optical properties due to its Near-Infrared (NIR) absorption and scattering in surface plasmon resonance (SPR) wavelength regions. By exploiting the sugar based adhesion properties of bacteria, the sugar capped AuNRs can be used as potential nanobiosensor to detect the food borne bacteria. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) coated AuNRs were covalently functionalized with different types of amine terminated sugar using EDC coupling reaction. The sensitivity of synthesized nanobiosensor was probed by lectin binding assay and also with food borne bacteria (Escherichia coli) by using spectrophotometric and microscopic techniques. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was also used to probe the specificity of our synthesized biosensor through lectin-sugar interaction. Due to the specific interaction of sugar coated probe with foodborne bacteria, our nanoprobe has shown significant and selective photoablation of targeted bacteria. This nanorod based nanobiosensor can be an ideal candidate for optical detection and ablation of foodborne bacteria

Comparative risk of malignancies and infections in patients with rheumatoid arthritis initiating abatacept versus other biologics: a multi-database real-world study

BACKGROUND: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are at an increased risk of developing certain cancers and infections compared with the general population. Biologic and targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (b/tsDMARDs) are effective treatment options for RA, but limited evidence is available on the comparative risks among b/tsDMARDs. We assessed the risk of malignancies and infections in patients with RA who initiated abatacept versus other b/tsDMARDs in a real-world setting. METHODS: This retrospective, observational study used administrative data from three large US healthcare databases (MarketScan, PharMetrics, and Optum) to identify patients treated with abatacept or other b/tsDMARDs. In both groups, age-stratified incidence rates (IRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for total malignancy and hospitalized infections; propensity score matching and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% CIs for total malignancy, lung cancer, lymphoma, breast cancer, non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), hospitalized infections, opportunistic infections, and tuberculosis (TB), both within individual databases and in meta-analyses across the three databases. RESULTS: A rounded total of 19.2, 13.6, and 4.2 thousand patients initiating abatacept and 55.3, 40.8, and 13.8 thousand initiating other b/tsDMARDs were identified in the MarketScan, PharMetrics, and Optum databases, respectively. The IRs for total malignancy and hospitalized infections were similar between the two groups in each age stratum. In meta-analyses, total malignancy risk (HR [95% CI] 1.09 [1.02-1.16]) of abatacept versus other b/tsDMARDs was slightly but statistically significantly increased; small, but not statistically significant, increases were seen for lung cancer (1.10 [0.62-1.96]), lymphoma (1.27 [0.94-1.72]), breast cancer (1.15 [0.92-1.45]), and NMSC (1.10 [0.93-1.30]). No significant increase in hospitalized infections (0.96 [0.84-1.09]) or opportunistic infections (1.06 [0.96-1.17]) was seen. For TB, low event counts precluded meta-analysis. CONCLUSIONS: In this real-world multi-database study, the risks for specific cancers and infections did not differ significantly between patients in the abatacept and other b/tsDMARDs groups. The slight increase in total malignancy risk associated with abatacept needs further investigation. These results are consistent with the established safety profile of abatacept

Учебная программа учреждения высшего образования по учебной дисциплине для специальности 1-23 01 12 Музейное дело и охрана историко-культурного наследия (по направлениям)

Программа построена в соответствии с традиционным в славяноведении страноведческим принципом изложения материала в контексте этноконфессиональных, культурных и государственно-политических особенностей славянских стран. При этом она затрагивает основные проблемы истории всего региона Центральной, Восточной и Юго-Восточной Европы. Структурно курс, построенный по проблемно-хронологическому принципу, делится на разделы, которые соответствуют важнейшим этапам истории славянских стран