A Causal And-Or Graph Model for Visibility Fluent Reasoning in Tracking Interacting Objects

Tracking humans that are interacting with the other subjects or environment remains unsolved in visual tracking, because the visibility of the human of interests in videos is unknown and might vary over time. In particular, it is still difficult for state-of-the-art human trackers to recover complete human trajectories in crowded scenes with frequent human interactions. In this work, we consider the visibility status of a subject as a fluent variable, whose change is mostly attributed to the subject's interaction with the surrounding, e.g., crossing behind another object, entering a building, or getting into a vehicle, etc. We introduce a Causal And-Or Graph (C-AOG) to represent the causal-effect relations between an object's visibility fluent and its activities, and develop a probabilistic graph model to jointly reason the visibility fluent change (e.g., from visible to invisible) and track humans in videos. We formulate this joint task as an iterative search of a feasible causal graph structure that enables fast search algorithm, e.g., dynamic programming method. We apply the proposed method on challenging video sequences to evaluate its capabilities of estimating visibility fluent changes of subjects and tracking subjects of interests over time. Results with comparisons demonstrate that our method outperforms the alternative trackers and can recover complete trajectories of humans in complicated scenarios with frequent human interactions.Comment: accepted by CVPR 201

Characterisation of the vitreous proteome in proliferative diabetic retinopathy

Background: Diabetes can lead to serious microvascular complications such as proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), which results in severe vision loss. The diabetes-induced alterations in the vitreous protein composition in diabetic patients with PDR may be responsible for the presence of PDR. The vitreous humour can be utilised in a variety of studies aimed toward the discovery of new targets for the treatment or prevention of PDR and the identification of novel disease mechanisms. The aim of this study was to compare the protein profile of vitreous humour from diabetic patients with PDR with that of vitreous humour from normal human eyes donated for corneal transplant. Results: Vitreous humour from type 2 diabetic patients with PDR (n = 10) and from normal human eyes donated for corneal transplant (n = 10) were studied. The comparative proteomic analysis was performed using twodimensional fluorescence difference gel electrophoresis (2-D DIGE). Differentially produced proteins (abundance ratio> 2 or <-2, p < 0.01) were identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and MALDI-TOF tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 1242 protein spots were detected on the 2-D master gel of the samples, and 57 spots that exhibited statistically significant variations were successfully identified. The spots corresponded to peptide fragments of 29 proteins, including 8 proteins tha

Management of Hepatic Encephalopathy by Traditional Chinese Medicine

In spite of the impressive progress in the investigation of hepatic encephalopathy (HE), the complex mechanisms underlying the onset and deterioration of HE are still not fully understood. Currently, none of the existing theories provide conclusive explanations on the symptoms that link liver dysfunction to nervous system disorders and clinical manifestations. This paper summarized the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches used for HE in modern medicine and traditional Chinese medicine and provided future perspective in HE therapies from the viewpoint of holistic and personalized Chinese medicine

The value of age IgG and IL6 in estimating time of viral clearance in asymptomatic or mild patients with COVID-19

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between Age, immunoglobin G (IgG), immunoglobin M (IgM), procalcitonin (PCT), and interleukin-6 (IL6), and the time to clear viral nucleic acids in asymptomatic and mild coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, as well as evaluated the predictive value of these biochemical indicators.MethodsWe performed a retrospective analysis on 1,570 individuals who were admitted to Tianjin First Central Hospital and diagnosed with asymptomatic or mild cases. Laboratory data were collected, including age, gender, levels of IgG, IgM, PCT and IL6, as well as results of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) nucleic acid test. These data were statistically analyzed using SPSS software, version 24.0.ResultsThe results indicated that among mild patients, Age, IgG, and the time to clear viral nucleic acids were higher than asymptomatic patients (p < 0.05). And the time to clear viral nucleic acids was significantly correlated with Age, IgG, IgM, PCT, and IL6 (p < 0.05), IgG (r = −0.445, p < 0.001) showed moderate correlations. Using logistic regression analysis, we identified older age, high IL6 levels, and low IgG levels were risk factors for nucleic acid clearance exceeding 14 days (p < 0.05). When combining these three indicators to predict the probability of nucleic acid clearance exceeding 14 days in the 1,570 patients, the AUROC was found to be 0.727.ConclusionAge, IgG, and IL6 could potentially serve as useful predictors for nucleic acid clearance exceeding 14 days in asymptomatic and mild COVID-19 patients

Exploration and identification of six novel ferroptosis-related hub genes as potential gene signatures for peripheral nerve injury

Specific biomarkers of ferroptosis after peripheral nerve injury (PNI) are still under debate. In this study, 52 differentially expressed ferroptosis-related genes (DE-FRGs) were retrieved from publicly accessible sequencing data of intact and injured samples of rats with sciatic nerve crush injury. Functional enrichment analyses revealed that adipogenesis, mitochondrial gene sets, and pathways of MAPK, p53, and CD28 family were predominantly engaged in ferroptosis after PNI. Next, Cdkn1a, Cdh1, Hif1a, Hmox1, Nfe2l2, and Tgfb1 were investigated as new ferroptosis-associated hub genes after PNI. Subsequently, clustering correlation heatmap shows six hub genes are linked to mitochondria. The immunofluorescence assay at 0, 1, 4, 7, and 14 days indicated the temporal expression patterns of Tgfb1, Hmox1, and Hif1a after PNI were consistent with ferroptosis validated by PI and ROS staining, while Cdh1, Cdkn1a, and Nfe2l2 were the opposite. In summary, this study identified six hub genes as possible ferroptosis-related biomarkers for PNI, which may offer therapeutic targets for peripheral nerve regeneration and provide a therapeutic window for ferroptosis