Many-shot from Low-shot: Learning to Annotate using Mixed Supervision for Object Detection

Object detection has witnessed significant progress by relying on large, manually annotated datasets. Annotating such datasets is highly time consuming and expensive, which motivates the development of weakly supervised and few-shot object detection methods. However, these methods largely underperform with respect to their strongly supervised counterpart, as weak training signals \emph{often} result in partial or oversized detections. Towards solving this problem we introduce, for the first time, an online annotation module (OAM) that learns to generate a many-shot set of \emph{reliable} annotations from a larger volume of weakly labelled images. Our OAM can be jointly trained with any fully supervised two-stage object detection method, providing additional training annotations on the fly. This results in a fully end-to-end strategy that only requires a low-shot set of fully annotated images. The integration of the OAM with Fast(er) R-CNN improves their performance by $17\%$ mAP, $9\%$ AP50 on PASCAL VOC 2007 and MS-COCO benchmarks, and significantly outperforms competing methods using mixed supervision.Comment: Accepted at ECCV 2020. Camera-ready version and Appendice

The impact of depression and physical multimorbidity on health-related quality of life in China: a national longitudinal quantile regression study

The co-occurrence of mental and physical chronic conditions is a growing concern and a largely unaddressed challenge in low-and-middle-income countries. This study aimed to investigate the independent and multiplicative effects of depression and physical chronic conditions on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in China, and how it varies by age and gender. We used two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2011, 2015), including 9227 participants aged ≥ 45 years, 12 physical chronic conditions and depressive symptoms. We used mixed-effects linear regression to assess the effects of depression and physical multimorbidity on HRQoL, which was measured using a proxy measure of Physical Component Scores (PCS) and Mental Component Scores (MCS) of the matched SF-36 measure. We found that each increased number of physical chronic conditions, and the presence of depression were independently associated with lower proxy PCS and MCS scores. There were multiplicative effects of depression and physical chronic conditions on PCS (− 0.83 points, 95% CI − 1.06, − 0.60) and MCS scores (− 0.50 points, 95% CI − 0.73, − 0.27). The results showed that HRQoL decreased markedly with multimorbidity and was exacerbated by the presence of co-existing physical and mental chronic conditions

Effect of multimorbidity on utilisation and out-of-pocket expenditure in Indonesia: quantile regression analysis

Background Multimorbidity (the presence of two or more non-communicable diseases) is a major growing challenge for many low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Yet, its effects on health care costs and financial burden for patients have not been adequately studied. This study investigates the effect of multimorbidity across the different percentiles of healthcare utilisation and out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE). Methods We conducted a secondary data analysis of the 2014/2015 Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS-5), which included 13,798 respondents aged ≥40 years. Poisson regression was used to assess the association between sociodemographic characteristics and the total number of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), while multivariate logistic regression and quantile regression analysis was used to estimate the associations between multimorbidity, health service use and OOPE. Results Overall, 20.8% of total participants had two or more NCDs in 2014/2015. The number of NCDs was associated with higher healthcare utilisation (coefficient 0.11, 95% CI 0.07–0.14 for outpatient care and coefficient 0.09 (95% CI 0.02–0.16 for inpatient care) and higher four-weekly OOPE (coefficient 27.0, 95% CI 11.4–42.7). The quantile regression results indicated that the marginal effect of having three or more NCDs on the absolute amount of four-weekly OOPE was smaller for the lower percentiles (at the 25th percentile, coefficient 1.0, 95% CI 0.5–1.5) but more pronounced for the higher percentile of out-of-pocket spending distribution (at the 90th percentile, coefficient 31.0, 95% CI 15.9–46.2). Conclusion Multimorbidity is positively correlated with health service utilisation and OOPE and has a significant effect, especially among those in the upper tail of the utilisation/costs distribution. Health financing strategies are urgently required to meet the needs of patients with multimorbidity, particularly for vulnerable groups that have a higher level of health care utilisation

Medical costs and out-of-pocket expenditures associated with multimorbidity in China: quantile regression analysis

Objective Multimorbidity is a growing challenge in low-income and middle-income countries. This study investigates the effects of multimorbidity on annual medical costs and the out-of-pocket expenditures (OOPEs) along the cost distribution. Methods Data from the nationally representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS 2015), including 10 592 participants aged ≥45 years and 15 physical and mental chronic diseases, were used for this nationally representative cross-sectional study. Quantile multivariable regressions were employed to understand variations in the association of chronic disease multimorbidity with medical cost and OOPE. Results Overall, 69.5% of middle-aged and elderly Chinese had multimorbidity in 2015. Increased number of chronic diseases was significantly associated with greater health expenditures across every cost quantile groups. The effect of chronic diseases on total medical cost was found to be larger among the upper tail than those in the lower tail of the cost distributions (coefficients 12, 95% CI 6 to 17 for 10th percentile; coefficients 296, 95% CI 71 to 522 for 90th percentile). Annual OOPE also increased with chronic diseases from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile. Multimorbidity had larger effects on OOPE and was more pronounced at the upper tail of the health expenditure distribution (regression coefficients of 8 and 84 at the 10th percentile and 75th percentile, respectively). Conclusion Multimorbidity is associated with escalating healthcare costs in China. Further research is required to understand the impact of multimorbidity across different population groups

Half-dose verteporfin photodynamic therapy for bullous variant of central serous chorioretinopathy: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Central serous chorioretinopathy is characterized by serous neurosensory detachment of the macula and it usually resolves spontaneously with good visual prognosis. In some patients, however, the serous retinal detachment might be very extensive and can result in bullous exudative retinal detachment. We evaluated the use of half-dose verteporfin photodynamic therapy for the treatment of bullous retinal detachment in idiopathic central serous chorioretinopathy.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We report the case of a 51-year-old Chinese man who presented with blurred vision in his right eye and superior visual field defect due to bullous variant of central serous chorioretinopathy. No improvement in vision and retinal detachment was noted after three months of observation and a short course of oral acetazolamide. He was then treated with half-dose verteporfin photodynamic therapy and his visual acuity improved from 20/70 to 20/25 within one month of treatment. Three months after photodynamic therapy, there was complete resolution of sub-retinal fluid and bullous retinal detachment. No recurrence of central serous chorioretinopathy was noted in three years of follow-up.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We report the beneficial effect of photodynamic therapy with half-dose verteporfin as a treatment option for bullous retinal detachment caused by central serous chorioretinopathy.</p

Future changes in tropical cyclone activity in the North Indian Ocean projected by high-resolution MRI-AGCMs

Open Access at publisher's web site: http://www.springerlink.com/content/b682734237171631

Pathologic response rates after neoadjuvant therapy for sarcoma: A single institution study

(1) Background: Pathologic necrosis of soft tissue sarcomas (STS) has been used to determine treatment response, but its relationship to neoadjuvant treatments remains indeterminate. In this retrospective, single institution study, we hypothesized that neoadjuvant chemoradiation (NA-CRT) yields higher rates of pathologic complete response (pCR) than neoadjuvant radiation (NA-XRT) or chemotherapy (NA-CT) alone. (2) Methods: Patients with extremity STS between 2011–2020 who received neoadjuvant treatment were included. pCR was defined as percent necrosis of the surgical specimen greater than or equal to 90%. (3) Results: 79 patients were analyzed. 51.9% of the population were male with a mean age of 58.4 years. 49.4% identified as Non-Hispanic White. Twenty-six (32.9%) patients achieved pCR while 53 (67.1%) did not. NA-CT (OR 15.82, 95% CI = 2.58–96.9, p = 0.003 in univariate (UVA) and OR 24.7, 95% CI = 2.88–211.2, p = 0.003 in multivariate (MVA), respectively) and NA-XRT (OR 5.73, 95% CI = 1.51–21.8, p = 0.010 in UVA and OR 7.95, 95% CI = 1.87–33.7, p = 0.005 in MVA, respectively) was significantly associated with non-pCR when compared to NA-CRT. The analysis also demonstrated that grade 3 tumors, when using grade 2 as reference, also had significantly higher odds of achieving pCR (OR 0.23, 95% CI = 0.06–0.80, p = 0.022 in UVA and OR 0.16, 95% CI = 0.04–0.70, p = 0.015 in MVA, respectively). (4) Conclusion: NA-CRT yields superior pCR compared to other neoadjuvant regimens. This extends to higher grade tumors

Integer and half-integer flux-quantum transitions in a niobium/iron-pnictide loop

The recent discovery of iron-based superconductors challenges the existing paradigm of high-temperature superconductivity. Owing to their unusual multi-orbital band structure, magnetism, and electron correlation, theories propose a unique sign reversed s-wave pairing state, with the order parameter changing sign between the electron and hole Fermi pockets. However, because of the complex Fermi surface topology and material related issues, the predicted sign reversal remains unconfirmed. Here we report a novel phase-sensitive technique for probing unconventional pairing symmetry in the polycrystalline iron-pnictides. Through the observation of both integer and half-integer flux-quantum transitions in composite niobium/iron-pnictide loops, we provide the first phase-sensitive evidence of the sign change of the order parameter in NdFeAsO0.88F0.12, lending strong support for microscopic models predicting unconventional s-wave pairing symmetry. These findings have important implications on the mechanism of pnictide superconductivity, and lay the groundwork for future studies of new physics arising from the exotic order in the FeAs-based superconductors.Comment: 23 pages, including 4 figures and supplementary informatio

MultiMetEval: comparative and multi-objective analysis of genome-scale metabolic models

Comparative metabolic modelling is emerging as a novel field, supported by the development of reliable and standardized approaches for constructing genome-scale metabolic models in high throughput. New software solutions are needed to allow efficient comparative analysis of multiple models in the context of multiple cellular objectives. Here, we present the user-friendly software framework Multi-Metabolic Evaluator (MultiMetEval), built upon SurreyFBA, which allows the user to compose collections of metabolic models that together can be subjected to flux balance analysis. Additionally, MultiMetEval implements functionalities for multi-objective analysis by calculating the Pareto front between two cellular objectives. Using a previously generated dataset of 38 actinobacterial genome-scale metabolic models, we show how these approaches can lead to exciting novel insights. Firstly, after incorporating several pathways for the biosynthesis of natural products into each of these models, comparative flux balance analysis predicted that species like Streptomyces that harbour the highest diversity of secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters in their genomes do not necessarily have the metabolic network topology most suitable for compound overproduction. Secondly, multi-objective analysis of biomass production and natural product biosynthesis in these actinobacteria shows that the well-studied occurrence of discrete metabolic switches during the change of cellular objectives is inherent to their metabolic network architecture. Comparative and multi-objective modelling can lead to insights that could not be obtained by normal flux balance analyses. MultiMetEval provides a powerful platform that makes these analyses straightforward for biologists. Sources and binaries of MultiMetEval are freely available from https://github.com/PiotrZakrzewski/MetEv​al/downloads