Conditional Image-Text Embedding Networks

This paper presents an approach for grounding phrases in images which jointly learns multiple text-conditioned embeddings in a single end-to-end model. In order to differentiate text phrases into semantically distinct subspaces, we propose a concept weight branch that automatically assigns phrases to embeddings, whereas prior works predefine such assignments. Our proposed solution simplifies the representation requirements for individual embeddings and allows the underrepresented concepts to take advantage of the shared representations before feeding them into concept-specific layers. Comprehensive experiments verify the effectiveness of our approach across three phrase grounding datasets, Flickr30K Entities, ReferIt Game, and Visual Genome, where we obtain a (resp.) 4%, 3%, and 4% improvement in grounding performance over a strong region-phrase embedding baseline.Comment: ECCV 2018 accepted pape

Object co-location and memory reuse for Java programs

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A review of 10 children on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis

The experience of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis in children of the Queen Mary Hospital for the past 11 years was reviewed. Seven boys and three girls (aged 4.3 to 15.9 years) were treated for a mean of 27 months (range 5 to 58 months). There was significant biochemical improvement and patients led an active life on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. The commonest complications were peritonitis, occurring on average once per 10 patient-months and mostly due to Staphylococcus spp. The median catheter survival time was 30 months. There were two technique failures due to fungal peritonitis which necessitated transfer to haemodialysis due to fungal peritonitis. The only mortality was due to concurrent cardiac disease. This review supports that children with renal failure in Hong Kong can be maintained on long term dialysis with a reasonable quality of life. However, significant morbidity due to infective and mechanical complications still exists. Continuous ambulatory peitonitis dialysis remains a temporary treatment modality while patients are waiting for renal transplantation.published_or_final_versio

Study on antioxidant activity of Echinacea purpurea L. extracts and its impact on cell viability

This study investigates the antioxidant activity of Echinacea Purpurea L. (EP) extracts and its impact on cell viability. The polysaccharides content of EP was 159.8 ± 12.4 mg/g dry weight (DW), with extracts obtained by applying 55% ethanol at 55°C containing 11.0 ±1.0 mg gallic acid equivalent/g DW of total phenolic compound. Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity, 0.1 mg/mL of EP extracts exhibited only 30% when compared to the ascorbic acid at the same concentration. Reducing power of extractsincreased linearly with its concentration and the concentration at 2.0 mg/mL reached about 65% of ascorbic acid at 0.3 mg/mL. The chelating capacity of ferrous iron (Fe2+) was 70% as good as that of thesynthetic metal chelater EDTA when added to 5.0 mg/mL of EP extracts. The DPPH scavenging capacity showed 85.1% at 0.5 mg/mL of extracts and with half-effective doses (ED50) was measured at 0.23mg/mL. The superoxide anions scavenging capacity of EP extracts was nearly equivalent to ascorbic acid (91.1% vs 93.0%) at the same concentration of 1.6 mg/mL and ED50 was 0.32 and 0.13 mg/mL, respectively. Microculture tetrazolium assays showed extracts had 92% cell viability at 1.6 mg/mL forchicken’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and 84% for RAW 264.7 macrophages, neither reaching the IC50 level. In summary, the EP extracts had antioxidant activity similar to that of ascorbic acid, but have no serious effect on inhibiting chicken’s PBMCs viability

Evidence of the influence of phonon density on Tm³⁺ upconversion luminescence in tellurite and germanate glasses

Author name used in this publication: C. L. MakAuthor name used in this publication: W. L. TsuiAuthor name used in this publication: K. H. Wong2001-2002 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

New flexible silicone-based EEG dry sensor material compositions exhibiting improvements in lifespan, conductivity, and reliability

© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This study investigates alternative material compositions for flexible silicone-based dry electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes to improve the performance lifespan while maintaining high-fidelity transmission of EEG signals. Electrode materials were fabricated with varying concentrations of silver-coated silica and silver flakes to evaluate their electrical, mechanical, and EEG transmission performance. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of the initial electrode development identified some weak points in the sensors’ construction, including particle pull-out and ablation of the silver coating on the silica filler. The newly-developed sensor materials achieved significant improvement in EEG measurements while maintaining the advantages of previous silicone-based electrodes, including flexibility and non-toxicity. The experimental results indicated that the proposed electrodes maintained suitable performance even after exposure to temperature fluctuations, 85% relative humidity, and enhanced corrosion conditions demonstrating improvements in the environmental stability. Fabricated flat (forehead) and acicular (hairy sites) electrodes composed of the optimum identified formulation exhibited low impedance and reliable EEG measurement; some initial human experiments demonstrate the feasibility of using these silicone-based electrodes for typical lab data collection applications

Polarity of influenza H5N1 virus infection in respiratory epithelial cells and the impact of basolateral release of cytokines in disease pathogenesis

Poster Presentations: Virus Host Interaction/PathogenesisINTRODUCTION: Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1) is the first avian influenza virus that documented to cause respiratory disease and death in human. The biological basis for the severe human disease and high fatality rate remains unclear. We have previously demonstrated that when compared to human H1N1 and H3N2 influenza viruses, infection of influenza H5N1 virus led to the hyper-induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines in human primary macrophages and ...postprin

Coffee consumption and prostate cancer risk: further evidence for inverse relationship

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Higher consumption of coffee intake has recently been linked with reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer (PC) incidence, although meta-analysis of other studies that examine the association between coffee consumption and overall PC risk remains inconclusive. Only one recent study investigated the association between coffee intake and grade-specific incidence of PC, further evidence is required to understand the aetiology of aggressive PCs. Therefore, we conducted a prospective study to examine the relationship between coffee intake and overall as well as grade-specific PC risk.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a prospective cohort study of 6017 men who were enrolled in the Collaborative cohort study in the UK between 1970 and 1973 and followed up to 31st December 2007. Cox Proportional Hazards Models were used to evaluate the association between coffee consumption and overall, as well as Gleason grade-specific, PC incidence.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Higher coffee consumption was inversely associated with risk of high grade but not with overall risk of PC. Men consuming 3 or more cups of coffee per day experienced 55% lower risk of high Gleason grade disease compared with non-coffee drinkers in analysis adjusted for age and social class (HR 0.45, 95% CI 0.23-0.90, p value for trend 0.01). This association changed a little after additional adjustment for Body Mass Index, smoking, cholesterol level, systolic blood pressure, tea intake and alcohol consumption.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Coffee consumption reduces the risk of aggressive PC but not the overall risk.</p

Elliptic logarithms, diophantine approximation and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

Most, if not all, unconditional results towards the abc-conjecture rely ultimately on classical Baker's method. In this article, we turn our attention to its elliptic analogue. Using the elliptic Baker's method, we have recently obtained a new upper bound for the height of the S-integral points on an elliptic curve. This bound depends on some parameters related to the Mordell-Weil group of the curve. We deduce here a bound relying on the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer, involving classical, more manageable quantities. We then study which abc-type inequality over number fields could be derived from this elliptic approach.Comment: 20 pages. Some changes, the most important being on Conjecture 3.2, three references added ([Mas75], [MB90] and [Yu94]) and one reference updated [BS12]. Accepted in Bull. Brazil. Mat. So

An inflatable and wearable wireless system for making 32-channel electroencephalogram measurements

© 2001-2011 IEEE. Potable electroencephalography (EEG) devices have become critical for important research. They have various applications, such as in brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Numerous recent investigations have focused on the development of dry sensors, but few concern the simultaneous attachment of high-density dry sensors to different regions of the scalp to receive qualified EEG signals from hairy sites. An inflatable and wearable wireless 32-channel EEG device was designed, prototyped, and experimentally validated for making EEG signal measurements; it incorporates spring-loaded dry sensors and a novel gasbag design to solve the problem of interference by hair. The cap is ventilated and incorporates a circuit board and battery with a high-tolerance wireless (Bluetooth) protocol and low power consumption characteristics. The proposed system provides a 500/250 Hz sampling rate, and 24 bit EEG data to meet the BCI system data requirement. Experimental results prove that the proposed EEG system is effective in measuring audio event-related potential, measuring visual event-related potential, and rapid serial visual presentation. Results of this work demonstrate that the proposed EEG cap system performs well in making EEG measurements and is feasible for practical applications