Sound-Dr: Reliable Sound Dataset and Baseline Artificial Intelligence System for Respiratory Illnesses

As the burden of respiratory diseases continues to fall on society worldwide, this paper proposes a high-quality and reliable dataset of human sounds for studying respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia and COVID-19. It consists of coughing, mouth breathing, and nose breathing sounds together with metadata on related clinical characteristics. We also develop a proof-of-concept system for establishing baselines and benchmarking against multiple datasets, such as Coswara and COUGHVID. Our comprehensive experiments show that the Sound-Dr dataset has richer features, better performance, and is more robust to dataset shifts in various machine learning tasks. It is promising for a wide range of real-time applications on mobile devices. The proposed dataset and system will serve as practical tools to support healthcare professionals in diagnosing respiratory disorders. The dataset and code are publicly available here: https://github.com/ReML-AI/Sound-Dr/.Comment: 9 pages, PHMAP2023, PH

Combination Antifungal Therapy for Cryptococcal Meningitis

Background Combination antifungal therapy (amphotericin B deoxycholate and flucytosine) is the recommended treatment for cryptococcal meningitis but has not been shown to reduce mortality, as compared with amphotericin B alone. We performed a randomized, controlled trial to determine whether combining flucytosine or high-dose fluconazole with high-dose amphotericin B improved survival at 14 and 70 days. Methods We conducted a randomized, three-group, open-label trial of induction therapy for cryptococcal meningitis in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection. All patients received amphotericin B at a dose of 1 mg per kilogram of body weight per day; patients in group 1 were treated for 4 weeks, and those in groups 2 and 3 for 2 weeks. Patients in group 2 concurrently received flucytosine at a dose of 100 mg per kilogram per day for 2 weeks, and those in group 3 concurrently received fluconazole at a dose of 400 mg twice daily for 2 weeks. Results A total of 299 patients were enrolled. Fewer deaths occurred by days 14 and 70 among patients receiving amphotericin B and flucytosine than among those receiving amphotericin B alone (15 vs. 25 deaths by day 14; hazard ratio, 0.57; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.30 to 1.08; unadjusted P=0.08; and 30 vs. 44 deaths by day 70; hazard ratio, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.39 to 0.97; unadjusted P=0.04). Combination therapy with fluconazole had no significant effect on survival, as compared with monotherapy (hazard ratio for death by 14 days, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.44 to 1.41; P=0.42; hazard ratio for death by 70 days, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.45 to 1.11; P=0.13). Amphotericin B plus flucytosine was associated with significantly increased rates of yeast clearance from cerebrospinal fluid (−0.42 log10 colony-forming units [CFU] per milliliter per day vs. −0.31 and −0.32 log10 CFU per milliliter per day in groups 1 and 3, respectively; P<0.001 for both comparisons). Rates of adverse events were similar in all groups, although neutropenia was more frequent in patients receiving a combination therapy. Conclusions Amphotericin B plus flucytosine, as compared with amphotericin B alone, is associated with improved survival among patients with cryptococcal meningitis. A survival benefit of amphotericin B plus fluconazole was not found

Revisiting Single-server Algorithms for Outsourcing Modular Exponentiation

We investigate the problem of securely outsourcing modular exponentiations to a single, malicious computational resource. We revisit recently proposed schemes using single server and analyse them against two fundamental security properties, namely privacy of inputs and verifiability of outputs. Interestingly, we observe that the chosen schemes do not appear to meet both the security properties. In fact we present a simple polynomial-time attack on each algorithm, allowing the malicious server either to recover a secret input or to convincingly fool the client with wrong outputs. Then we provide a fix to the identified problem in the ExpSOS scheme. With our fix and without pre-processing, the improved scheme becomes the best to-date outsourcing scheme for single-server case. Finally we present the first precomputation-free single-server algorithm, \pi ExpSOS for simultaneous exponentiations

Resignation Culture in Vietnam Today: Issues and Recommendations

Resignation culture is a political culture, a culture of behavior based on conscience when leaders see themselves as having shortcomings, shortcomings, or in other words, they are no longer worthy to undertake the task. will resign. Voluntary resignation is a serious expression of a leader's high self-esteem, political leadership, and moral integrity. Self-resignation requires putting the interests of the organization and society above the interests of individuals and local interests, bravely overcoming selfishness, ambition for power, and vanity of the leader. manage. Based on clarifying a number of theoretical issues about the resignation culture, the study analyzes the current situation (manifestations) of the resignation culture in Vietnam, thereby proposing recommendations to build and develop the resignation culture in Vietnam

What Glues a Homodimer Together: Systematic Analysis of the Stabilizing Effect of an Aromatic Hot Spot in the Protein–Protein Interface of the tRNA-Modifying Enzyme Tgt

<i>Shigella</i> bacteria constitute the causative agent of bacillary dysentery, an acute inflammatory disease causing the death of more than one million humans per year. A null mutation in the <i>tgt</i> gene encoding the tRNA-modifying enzyme tRNA-guanine transglycosylase (Tgt) was found to drastically decrease the pathogenicity of <i>Shigella</i> bacteria, suggesting the use of Tgt as putative target for selective antibiotics. The enzyme is only functionally active as a homodimer; thus, interference with the formation of its protein–protein interface is an attractive opportunity for therapeutic intervention. To better understand the driving forces responsible for the assembly, stability, and formation of the homodimer, we studied the properties of the residues that establish the dimer interface in detail. We performed site-directed mutagenesis and controlled shifts in the monomer/dimer equilibrium ratio in solution in a concentration-dependent manner by native mass spectrometry and used crystal structure analysis to elucidate the geometrical modulations resulting from mutational variations. The wild-type enzyme exhibits nearly exclusive dimer geometry. A patch of four aromatic amino acids, embedded into a ring of hydrophobic residues and further stabilized by a network of H-bonds, is essential for the stability of the dimer’s contact. Accordingly, any perturbance in the constitution of this aromatic patch by nonaromatic residues reduces dimer stability significantly, with some of these exchanges resulting in a nearly exclusively monomeric state. Apart from the aromatic hot spot, the interface comprises an extended loop-helix motif that exhibits remarkable flexibility. In the destabilized mutated variants, the loop-helix motif adopts deviating conformations in the interface region, and a number of water molecules, penetrating into the interface, are observed