VIAssist: Adapting Multi-modal Large Language Models for Users with Visual Impairments

Individuals with visual impairments, encompassing both partial and total difficulties in visual perception, are referred to as visually impaired (VI) people. An estimated 2.2 billion individuals worldwide are affected by visual impairments. Recent advancements in multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) have showcased their extraordinary capabilities across various domains. It is desirable to help VI individuals with MLLMs' great capabilities of visual understanding and reasoning. However, it is challenging for VI people to use MLLMs due to the difficulties in capturing the desirable images to fulfill their daily requests. For example, the target object is not fully or partially placed in the image. This paper explores how to leverage MLLMs for VI individuals to provide visual-question answers. VIAssist can identify undesired images and provide detailed actions. Finally, VIAssist can provide reliable answers to users' queries based on the images. Our results show that VIAssist provides +0.21 and +0.31 higher BERTScore and ROUGE scores than the baseline, respectively.Comment: Accepted to IEEE International Workshop on Foundation Models for Cyber-Physical Systems & Internet of Things (FMSys 2024

Association between daytime nap duration and risks of frailty: Findings from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

IntroductionNight sleep duration and total sleep duration are associated with frailty. However, the association between daytime nap duration and the risks of frailty has not been explored thoroughly.MethodsThis study used data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Participants aged 60 years and older at baseline were included in this study. Individuals with daytime nap duration were categorized into four groups: no napping, short napping (< 30 min), moderate napping (30–89 min), and extended napping (≥90 min). Frailty was assessed using a modified Physical Frailty Phenotype (PFP) scale. Non-frail participants at baseline were followed up for 4 years. The association between nap duration and risks of frailty at baseline and incident frailty was evaluated by logistic regression and discrete-time Cox regression analyses, respectively.ResultsIn total, 5,126 participants were included in this study. For individuals with night sleep duration of ≥9 h, short nappers showed higher odds [odds ratio (OR) = 4.08, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.30–12.78] for frailty compared with non-habitual nappers at baseline, while moderate nappers were less likely to be frail (OR = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.04–0.73). In the follow-up study, short nappers showed higher risks for frailty compared with participants of the no napping group with night sleep duration of < 6 h [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.91, 95% CI: 1.07–3.43] or 6–9 h (HR = 1.97, 95% CI: 1.18–3.30). Compared with short nappers, older adults with extended napping (HR = 0.41, 95% CI: 0.22–0.77) showed lower risks for frailty in those with night sleep duration of 6–9 h. For individuals with night sleep duration of ≥9 h, moderate napping (HR = 0.20, 95% CI: 0.05–0.77) decreased the risks for frailty compared with short napping.ConclusionAmong older adults with night sleep duration of < 9 h, short nappers posed higher risks for frailty compared with non-habitual nappers. Extended naps for those with a night sleep duration of 6–9 h or moderate naps for those with night sleep duration of ≥9 h could lower the risk of frailty compared with short naps. Future studies on the timing, purpose, frequency, and quality of daytime napping and objectively measured nap duration are needed to explore the association between daytime napping and risks of frailty

The Role of the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AhR) in the Immune Response against Microbial Infections

Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), an important nuclear receptor, regulates the cellular response to environmental stressors. It is well known for its critical functions in toxicology, but is currently considered an essential regulator of diseases, with specific modulatory effects on immune, antimicrobial and inflammatory responses. The present chapter discusses AhR’s function and mechanism in the immune response against microbial infections

Dual RNA-Seq Unveils Pseudomonas plecoglossicida htpG Gene Functions During Host-Pathogen Interactions With Epinephelus coioides

Pseudomonas plecoglossicida is a temperature-dependent opportunistic pathogen which is associated with a variety of diseases in fish. During the development of “white nodules” disease, the expression of htpG in P. plecoglossicida was found to be significantly up-regulated at its virulent temperature of 18°C. The infection of htpG-RNAi strain resulted in the onset time delay, reduction in mortality and infection symptoms in spleen of Epinephelus coioides, and affected the bacterial tissue colonization. In order to reveal the effect of htpG silencing of P. plecoglossicida on the virulence regulation in P. plecoglossicida and immune response in E. coioides, dual RNA-seq was performed and a pathogen-host integration network was constructed. Our results showed that infection induced the expression of host genes related to immune response, but attenuated the expression of bacterial virulence genes. Novel integration was found between host immune genes and bacterial virulence genes, while IL6, IL1R2, IL1B, and TLR5 played key roles in the network. Further analysis with GeneMANIA indicated that flgD and rplF might play key roles during the htpG-dependent virulence regulation, which was in accordance with the reduced biofilm production, motility and virulence in htpG-RNAi strain. Meanwhile, IL6 and IL1B were found to play key roles during the defense against P. plecoglossicida, while CELA2, TRY, CPA1, CPA2, and CPB1 were important targets for P. plecoglossicida attacking to the host