Comprehensive Evaluation of Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System

Background & objectives: The electronic surveillance system has been applied in healthcare associated infection surveillance. We conducted an evaluation of the real-time healthcare associated infection surveillance system (RT-HAISS) to understand the early warning effect. Methods: We evaluated our RT-HAISS on a dataset of 29074 patients at the Wuxi traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospital in 2020, encompassing sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, Youden index and false alarm rate.Results: 466 HAIs were confirmed in this hospital in 2020, The RT-HAISS warned the monitors a total of 1715 cases, with 2040 early warning entries and 1736 false alarm entries. The sensitivity and the specificity were 65.24% and 95.74%, respectively. The Youden index was 0.62. In addition, the positive predictive value was 14.90%, and the negative predictive value was 83.86%, with 85.10% of false alarm rate.Conclusion: The RT-HAISS is an important technical mean for healthcare associated infection surveillance, it’s necessary to further explore the improvement of real-time surveillance system

Style Generation: Image Synthesis based on Coarsely Matched Texts

Previous text-to-image synthesis algorithms typically use explicit textual instructions to generate/manipulate images accurately, but they have difficulty adapting to guidance in the form of coarsely matched texts. In this work, we attempt to stylize an input image using such coarsely matched text as guidance. To tackle this new problem, we introduce a novel task called text-based style generation and propose a two-stage generative adversarial network: the first stage generates the overall image style with a sentence feature, and the second stage refines the generated style with a synthetic feature, which is produced by a multi-modality style synthesis module. We re-filter one existing dataset and collect a new dataset for the task. Extensive experiments and ablation studies are conducted to validate our framework. The practical potential of our work is demonstrated by various applications such as text-image alignment and story visualization. Our datasets are published at https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/mengyaocui/style-generation

Control of quantum coherence of photons exploiting quantum entanglement

Accurately controlling the quantum coherence of photons is pivotal for their applications in quantum sensing and quantum imaging. Here, we propose the utilization of quantum entanglement and local phase manipulation techniques to control the higher-order quantum coherence of photons. By engineering the spatially varying phases in the transverse plane, we can precisely manipulate the spatial structure of the second-order coherence function of entangled photon pairs without changing the photon intensity distribution of each photon. Our approach can readily be extended to higher-order quantum coherence control. These results could potentially stimulate new experimental research and applications of optical quantum coherence.Comment: 9 page, 7 figures, and a supplementary materia

Saccharomyces cerevisiae Est3p dimerizes in vitro and dimerization contributes to efficient telomere replication in vivo

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae at least five genes, EST1, EST2, EST3, TLC1 and CDC13, are required for telomerase activity in vivo. The telomerase catalytic subunit Est2p and telomerase RNA subunit Tlc1 constitute the telomerase core enzyme. Est1p and Est3p are the other subunits of telomerase holoenzyme. In order to dissect the function of Est3p in telomere replication, we over-expressed and purified recombinant wild-type and mutant Est3 proteins. The wild-type protein, as well as the K71A, E104A and T115A mutants were able to dimerize in vitro, while the Est3p-D49A, -K68A or -D166A mutant showed reduced ability to dimerize. Mutations in Est3p that decreased dimerization also appeared to cause telomere shortening in vivo. Double point mutation of Est3p-D49A-K68A and single point mutation of Est3p-K68A showed similar telomere shortening, suggesting that the K68 residue might be more important for telomerase activity. The ectopic co-expression of K71A or T115A mutant with wild-type Est3p using centromere plasmids caused telomere shortening, while co-expression of the D49A, K68A, D86A or F103A mutants with wild-type Est3p had no effect on telomere length regulation. These data suggested that dimerization is important for Est3p function in vivo

The feasibility and safety of sharp recanalization for superior vena cava occlusion in hemodialysis patients: A retrospective cohort study

Introduction: Hemodialysis catheter‐related superior vena cava (SVC) occlusions can cause considerable morbidity for patients and be challenging to treat if refractory to conventional guide wire transversal. This pilot study assessed the feasibility and safety of sharp recanalization of SVC occlusion in hemodialysis patients.Methods: This study retrospectively enrolled hemodialysis patients treated in West China Hospital diagnosed with SVC occlusion who failed traditional guide wire transversal from January 2014 to November 2017. In brief, a guide wire from the femoral approach was advanced to the lower end of the obstructive lesion to act as a target, while the stiff end of hydrophilic wire was advanced though a jugular approach. Under fluoroscopic guidance in biplane imaging, the occlusive SVC lesion was penetrated with the stiff wire that was snared and pulled through. Graded dilation of the SVC and subsequent tunneled‐cuffed catheter implantation were performed. Demographic information and clinical outcomes were recorded and evaluated.Findings: Sixteen patients with a mean age of 62 ± 13 years (13 females and 3 males) who received SVC sharp recanalization were included in this study. The sharp recanalization procedure was successfully performed in 14 patients (87.5%). Two patients were complicated with SVC laceration and hemopericardium but remained asymptomatic and required no surgical repair. One patient suffered ventricular fibrillation during procedure. Despite the return of spontaneous circulation, the patient unfortunately died of gastrointestinal tract bleeding after 3 days in ICU. Follow‐up suggested the 6‐month catheter patency to be 92.85% and 12‐month catheter patency to be 58.33%. No long‐term procedure‐related complications were recorded.Discussion: Sharp recanalization might be a feasible strategy in managing SVC occlusion in hemodialysis patients. The potential life‐threatening complications (cardiac arrhythmia and SVC laceration) necessitate strict eligibility screening, skillful operation, and avoidance of over‐dilation of SVC.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153765/1/hdi12804.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153765/2/hdi12804_am.pd

1,3-Bis(4-methyl­benz­yl)pyrimidine-2,4(1H,3H)-dione

In the title mol­ecule, C20H20N2O2, the central pyrimidine ring forms dihedral angles of 71.9 (1) and 69.8 (1)° with the two benzene rings. In the crystal, weak inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link mol­ecules into centrosymmetric dimers. The crystal packing exhibits also π–π inter­actions as indicated by short distances of 3.674 (2) Å between the centroids of the pyrimidine rings of neighbouring mol­ecules