Taming Reversible Halftoning via Predictive Luminance

Traditional halftoning usually drops colors when dithering images with binary dots, which makes it difficult to recover the original color information. We proposed a novel halftoning technique that converts a color image into a binary halftone with full restorability to its original version. Our novel base halftoning technique consists of two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to produce the reversible halftone patterns, and a noise incentive block (NIB) to mitigate the flatness degradation issue of CNNs. Furthermore, to tackle the conflicts between the blue-noise quality and restoration accuracy in our novel base method, we proposed a predictor-embedded approach to offload predictable information from the network, which in our case is the luminance information resembling from the halftone pattern. Such an approach allows the network to gain more flexibility to produce halftones with better blue-noise quality without compromising the restoration quality. Detailed studies on the multiple-stage training method and loss weightings have been conducted. We have compared our predictor-embedded method and our novel method regarding spectrum analysis on halftone, halftone accuracy, restoration accuracy, and the data embedding studies. Our entropy evaluation evidences our halftone contains less encoding information than our novel base method. The experiments show our predictor-embedded method gains more flexibility to improve the blue-noise quality of halftones and maintains a comparable restoration quality with a higher tolerance for disturbances.Comment: to be published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphic

Discovery of a heat-generated compound DHD derived from Patrinia villosa water extract with inhibitory effects on colon cancer cells viability and migration

Introduction: The plant Patrinia villosa Juss. (PV) has long been used as a medicinal herb for treating intestinal disorders. Pharmacological activities such as anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, and anti-cancer effects of compounds isolated from PV have been reported, but these bioactive compounds were not derived from PV water extract (PVW). Therefore, in the present study, we aimed to identify the active component(s) of PVW which exhibit inhibitory activities in colon cancer cells viability and migration.Methods: Human colon cancer HCT116 cells were treated with the isolated compounds of PVW and then subjected to MTT and transwell migration assays.Results: Our results showed that an active compound in PVW, 8,9-didehydro-7-hydroxydolichodial (DHD) inhibited cell viability of HCT116 cells, with IC50 value at 6.1 ± 2.2 μM. Interestingly, DHD was not detected in the herbal material of PV. Further investigation revealed that DHD is in fact a heat-generated compound derived from a natural compound present in PV, namely valerosidate. Valerosidate also reduced cell viability in HCT116 cells, with IC50 value at 22.2 ± 1.1 μM. Moreover, both DHD (2.75 μM) and valerosidate (10.81 μM) suppressed cell migration in HCT116 cells, with inhibitory rates at 74.8% and 74.6%, respectively. In addition, western blot results showed that DHD (5.5 μM) could significantly increase p53 expression by 34.8% and PTEN expression by 13.9%, while valerosidate (21.6 μM) could increase expressions of p53 and PTEN by 26.1% and 34.6%, respectively in HCT116 cells after 48 h treatment.Discussion: Taken together, this is the first report that a naturally-occurring valerosidate present in PV could actually transform to DHD by thermal hydrolysis, and both compounds exhibited inhibitory effects on cell viability and migration in HCT116 cells via increasing the expressions of tumor suppressors (p53 and PTEN). Our findings demonstrated that valerosidate is present in raw herb PV but not in PVW, while DHD is present in PVW rather than in raw herb PV. This difference in chemical profiles of raw herb and boiled water extract of PV may affect the anti-cancer activity, and hence further investigations are warranted

Estimating Infection Attack Rates and Severity in Real Time during an Influenza Pandemic: Analysis of Serial Cross-Sectional Serologic Surveillance Data

This study reports that using serological data coupled with clinical surveillance data can provide real-time estimates of the infection attack rates and severity in an emerging influenza pandemic

Prospective randomized study of thrice weekly six-month and nine-month chemotherapy for cervical tuberculous lymphadenopathy

The aim of this study is to compare the efficacy of a thrice weekly 6- month regimen, 4S3H3R3Z3/2H3R3 (which consists of an initial 4 months of streptomycin (S), isoniazid (H), rifampicin (R), and pyrazinamide (Z) followed by 2 months of isoniazid and rifampicin), with o thrice weekly 9- month regimen, 4S3H3R3Z3/5H3R3 (which consists of an initial 4 months of streptomycin, isoniazid, rifampicin, and pyrazinamide followed by 5 months of isoniazid and rifampicin), in the treatment of cervical tuberculous lymphadenopathy. A total of 113 patients were recruited between August 1987 and December 1993. Twenty-two patients were excluded from the analysis because of defaulting treatment or modification of regimen. Ninety- one patients were included in the analysis. Forty-three patients were given the 6-month regimen, and 48 patients were given the 9-month regimen. Two (5%) patients of the 6-month regimen and one (2%) patient of the 9-month regimen had primary failure after completion of treatment (relative risk, 2.23; 95% confidence interval, 0.21 to 23.76). Of the 88 patients who had initial clinical remission after completion of treatment, the 5-year actuarial remission rates were 89% for the 6-month regimen and 90% for the 9-month regimen (Wilcoxon, p = 0.44). There were no significant differences of both primary failure rate and 5-year actuarial remission rate of the two regimens. The 6-month regimen is recommended as the initial treatment of tuberculous lymphadenopathy.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Risk factors of chronic kidney diseases in Chinese adults with type 2 diabetes

Abstract In this study we conducted a cross sectional study to comprehensively evaluated the risk factors of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in a large sample of Chinese adults under primary care for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We investigated the risk factors associated with the prevalence of CKD in adults with T2DM, who were enrolled in the Risk Factor Assessment and Management Programme for Patients with Diabetes Mellitus (RAMP-DM) of Hong Kong from July 2014 to June 2017. We collected the individual data of 31,574 subjects, with mean age of 63.0 (±10.8) years and mean DM duration of 7.4 (±6.4) years. Of them 9,386 (29.7%) had CKD and 7,452 (23.6%) had micro- or macro-albuminuria. After adjustment for multiple demographic and lifestyle confounders, we identified several modifiable risk factors associated with higher rate of CKD: obesity (OR = 1.54), current smoking (OR = 1.33), higher systolic blood pressure (OR = 1.01), dyslipidemia (OR = 1.32 and 0.61 for triglycerides (TG) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C)), hyperglycemia (OR = 1.11 for HbA1c), diabetic retinopathy (OR = 1.36 and 2.60 for non-sight and sight threatening retinopathy), and stroke (OR = 1.43). The risk factors of lower dialytic blood pressure and coronary heart disease were identified only in men, whereas peripheral arterial disease only in women. In conclusion, several modifiable and gender specific risk factors were significantly associated with higher prevalence of CKD in Chinese adults with T2DM. The high-risk populations identified in this study shall receive regular screening for renal functions to achieve better patient management in primary care settings

Stachyose: One of the Active Fibroblast-proliferating Components in the Root of Rehmanniae Radix (地黃 dì huáng)

This study aimed to investigate and compare the fibroblast-proliferating activities of different Rehmanniae Radix (RR) samples and its chemical components using human normal fibroblast cells Hs27. Those active components were quantified in differently treated RR samples using UPLC so as to correlate activity with component content. Our results showed that dried RR aqueous extract exhibited the most potent fibroblast-proliferating activity. Stronger effect was observed when ethanol with heating was applied in the extraction process. Stachyose and verbascoside were demonstrated for their first time to exhibit significant stimulatory effects on fibroblast proliferation. However, the proliferating effect of dried RR extract did not correlate with the stachyose content, and verbascoside was not responsible for the fibroblast proliferative effect of RR since it was undetectable in all samples. In conclusion, stachyose only contributed in part to the activity of RR, suggesting that other active components might be present and yet to be found

Inferring influenza infection attack rate from seroprevalence data.

Seroprevalence survey is the most practical method for accurately estimating infection attack rate (IAR) in an epidemic such as influenza. These studies typically entail selecting an arbitrary titer threshold for seropositivity (e.g. microneutralization [MN] 1∶40) and assuming the probability of seropositivity given infection (infection-seropositivity probability, ISP) is 100% or similar to that among clinical cases. We hypothesize that such conventions are not necessarily robust because different thresholds may result in different IAR estimates and serologic responses of clinical cases may not be representative. To illustrate our hypothesis, we used an age-structured transmission model to fully characterize the transmission dynamics and seroprevalence rises of 2009 influenza pandemic A/H1N1 (pdmH1N1) during its first wave in Hong Kong. We estimated that while 99% of pdmH1N1 infections became MN1∶20 seropositive, only 72%, 62%, 58% and 34% of infections among age 3-12, 13-19, 20-29, 30-59 became MN1∶40 seropositive, which was much lower than the 90%-100% observed among clinical cases. The fitted model was consistent with prevailing consensus on pdmH1N1 transmission characteristics (e.g. initial reproductive number of 1.28 and mean generation time of 2.4 days which were within the consensus range), hence our ISP estimates were consistent with the transmission dynamics and temporal buildup of population-level immunity. IAR estimates in influenza seroprevalence studies are sensitive to seropositivity thresholds and ISP adjustments which in current practice are mostly chosen based on conventions instead of systematic criteria. Our results thus highlighted the need for reexamining conventional practice to develop standards for analyzing influenza serologic data (e.g. real-time assessment of bias in ISP adjustments by evaluating the consistency of IAR across multiple thresholds and with mixture models), especially in the context of pandemics when robustness and comparability of IAR estimates are most needed for informing situational awareness and risk assessment. The same principles are broadly applicable for seroprevalence studies of other infectious disease outbreaks