Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Static and Animated 3D Scene Generation from Free-form Text Descriptions.

Generating coherent and useful image/video scenes from a free-form textual description is technically a very difficult problem to handle. Textual description of the same scene can vary greatly from person to person, or sometimes even for the same person from time to time. As the choice of words and syntax vary while preparing a textual description, it is challenging for the system to reliably produce a consistently desirable output from different forms of language input. The prior works of scene generation have been mostly confined to rigorous sentence structures of text input which restrict the freedom of users to write description. In our work, we study a new pipeline that aims to generate static as well as animated 3D scenes from different types of free-form textual scene description without any major restriction. In particular, to keep our study practical and tractable, we focus on a small subspace of all possible 3D scenes, containing various combinations of cube, cylinder and sphere. We design a two-stage pipeline. In the first stage, we encode the free-form text using an encoder-decoder neural architecture. In the second stage, we generate a 3D scene based on the generated encoding. Our neural architecture exploits state-of-the-art language model as encoder to leverage rich contextual encoding and a new multi-head decoder to predict multiple features of an object in the scene simultaneously. For our experiments, we generate a large synthetic data-set which contains 13,00,000 and 14,00,000 samples of unique static and animated scene descriptions, respectively. We achieve 98.427% accuracy on test data set in detecting the 3D objects features successfully. Our work shows a proof of concept of one approach towards solving the problem, and we believe with enough training data, the same pipeline can be expanded to handle even broader set of 3D scene generation problems.
Cost-Effectiveness of the Use of Gold Anchor™ Markers in Prostate Cancer

Introduction A common treatment for prostate cancer is external beam radiation therapy. A way to target the radiation is to use implantable gold fiducial markers (GFMs). The GFMs serve as reference points enabling tumor localization during treatment. Today, there are several GFMs available on the market but no clinical guidelines as to which one to use. The aim of this study was to estimate the cost-effectiveness of Gold Anchor GFMs (Naslund Medical AB, Huddinge, Sweden) implanted with a 22G needle, compared to other GFMs implanted with a 17-18G needle, in the prostate gland of patients with prostate cancer. Methods Costs, life years, and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) were estimated over a lifelong time horizon for each treatment strategy using a decision-analytic model. Data used in the model were obtained from published literature or were estimated by an expert elicitation technique. The primary outcome measure was an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). Results Gold Anchor GFM was found to be a dominant alternative with both lower costs [-8.7 US Dollars (USD)] and a gain in QALYs (0.015) when compared with other GFMs. The lower cost was achieved by fewer visits for imaging in treatment planning, and by reduced risk of infections and sepsis. The QALY gain was driven by a reduced risk of sepsis. Conclusion The use of Gold Anchor GFMs as reference points to target radiation is a cost-effective alternative when compared to other GFMs. However, this analysis is based on expert elicitation regarding some crucial parameters, and further clinical studies of the use of GFMs are needed.
Assessing the Outcome of Adult Kidney Transplantation from a Deceased Expanded Criteria Donor: A Descriptive Study

Background End-stage renal disease (ESRD) creates a great burden on the quality of life. Patients after kidney transplantation have been reported to have a greater quality of life and better outcomes health outcomes. Therefore, it is important to optimize the best method of following well-constructed criteria such as the expanded criteria donor (ECD) to reduce the chances of rejection rate and deaths post-transplantation particularly in elderly patients in conjunction with the kidney profile donor index (KDPI). Methods This is a retrospective descriptive study of all patients who received kidney transplantation from a deceased donor from the ECD as well as ECD with donation after cardiac death (DCD) at St. Joseph Health Care Hospital over a 24 month time period from January 2017 to January 2019. All adult recipients from standard criteria donor (SCD) and living donors were excluded from the study. Results The study included 60 patients with 36 (60%) from the ECD and 24 (40%) were from the ECD/DCD group. The most common cause of ESRD among recipients was diabetes mellitus (DM) involving 23 (38.3%) of the patients. The creatinine outcome was the highest in the ECD/DCD group at one month (211 ± 71) and the lowest creatinine recorded was also in the ECD/DCD at 12 months (160 ± 78). Lastly, only four patients died in 12 months and only six recipients reported graft loss over 12 months. Conclusion Descriptive data of the included ECD/DCD showed increase trend in survivability of the recipients when used among the elderly, giving us more insight on the benefits of ECD/DCD transplantation.
Hyper IgE syndrome (Job syndrome) in Syria: a case report

ABSTRACT Hyper IgE syndrome (HIES) is a medical condition that can be sporadic or hereditary. It consists of multiple overlapping primary immunodeficiency conditions and is characterized by a classical triad of high immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels, recurrent pneumonia with pneumatocele and recurrent cold skin abscesses from staphylococcus infections. Eosinophilia is also common in HIES patients. HIES is often underdiagnosed in Syria as it cannot be confirmed without genetic testing, which is unavailable across Syria for HIES. We present the first case from Syria of a suspected child with HIES that has some additional distinct features. Other cases in a regional country carried atypical novel mutations, which may indicate that these mutations may exist in Syria as well. However, our case had findings that were not reported with other HIES cases. Determining these genes in the case presented was not possible, and future studies need to overcome this hurdle.
Hole-transport material-free perovskite-based solar cells

Recent discoveries have revealed a breakthrough in the photovoltaics (PVs) field using organometallic perovskites as light harvesters in the solar cell. The organometal perovskite arrangement is self-assembled as alternate layers via a simple low-cost procedure. These organometal perovskites promise several benefits not provided by the separate constituents. This overview concentrates on implementing perovskites in PV cells such that the perovskite layers are used as the light harvester as well as the hole-conducting component. Eliminating hole-transport material (HTM) in this solar-cell structure avoids oxidation, reduces costs, and provides better stability and consistent results. Aspects of HTM-free perovskite solar cells discussed in this article include (1) depletion regions, (2) high voltages, (3) panchromatic responses, (4) chemical modifications, and (5) contacts in HTM-free perovskite solar cells. Elimination of HTM could expand possibilities to explore new interfaces in these solar cells, while over the long term, these uniquely structured HTM-free solar cells could offer valuable benefits for future PV and optoelectronics applications.
Disentangling Associations Among Maternal Lifetime and Prenatal Stress, Psychological Functioning During Pregnancy, Maternal Race/Ethnicity, and Infant Negative Affectivity at Age 6 Months: A Mixtures Approach

Abstract Purpose: Maternal stress and psychological dysfunction in pregnancy are independently linked with fetal neurodevelopment. Stress encompasses environmental stressors and psychological and physiological responses. Stressors and psychopathology co-occur with patterns differing by race/ethnicity. We aimed to extend environmental mixtures methodology to elucidate prenatal stress associations with infant negative affectivity (NA) in a racially/ethnically mixed cohort. Methods: Participants were mother/infant dyads (n=445) in a prospective pregnancy cohort study in two urban US settings in 2011–2018. During pregnancy, women completed the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised, Crisis in Family Systems-Revised, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Checklist-Civilian version; the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised assessed NA in 6-month olds. Using weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression, we developed a weighted maternal stress index encompassing lifetime and current life events and symptoms of depression and PTSD. Stress-by-race/ethnicity interactions allowed differential contributions of individual stress domains by maternal race/ethnicity. Results: Mothers were majority black (44%) or Hispanic (37%). Stress questionnaire and infant NA scores were similar by race/ethnicity. The WQS prenatal stress score was positively associated with infant NA (β: 0.40 [95% confidence interval 0.16–0.64]). PTSD was the strongest contributor to the WQS score in Hispanic women (59%), whereas in black women, lifetime stress and depressive symptoms accounted for 38% and 35%, respectively, of the association with NA. Conclusions: Extending environmental mixtures methodology to stress research may disentangle complex associations among lifetime and current stressful life events and psychological symptomatology and their contributions to early childhood neurobehavioral outcomes. Consideration of effect modification by race/ethnicity may inform understanding of differing vulnerability across racial/ethnic groups.
Feasibility and nutritional impact of laparoscopic assisted tailored subtotal gastrectomy for middle-third gastric cancer

BACKGROUND Laparoscopic assisted total gastrectomy (LaTG) is associated with reduced nutritional status, and the procedure is not easily carried out without extensive expertise. A small remnant stomach after near-total gastrectomy confers no significant nutritional benefits over total gastrectomy. In this study, we developed a modified laparoscopic subtotal gastrectomy procedure, termed laparoscopic-assisted tailored subtotal gastrectomy (LaTSG). AIM To evaluate the feasibility and nutritional impact of LaTSG compared to those of LaTG in patients with advanced middle-third gastric cancer (GC). METHODS We retrospectively analyzed surgical and oncological outcomes and postoperative nutritional status in 92 consecutive patients with middle-third GC who underwent radical laparoscopic gastrectomy at Department of Pancreatic Stomach Surgery, National Cancer Center/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and Peking Union Medical College between 2013 and 2017. Of these 92 patients, 47 underwent LaTSG (LaTSG group), and the remaining underwent LaTG (LaTG group). RESULTS Operation time (210 ± 49.8 min vs 208 ± 50.0 min, P > 0.05) and intraoperative blood loss (152.3 ± 166.1 mL vs 188.9 ± 167.8 mL, P > 0.05) were similar between the groups. The incidence of postoperative morbidities was lower in the LaTSG group than in the LaTG group (4.2% vs 17.8%, P < 0.05). Postoperatively, nutritional indices did not significantly differ, until postoperative 12 mo. Albumin, prealbumin, total protein, hemoglobin levels, and red blood cell counts were significantly higher in the LaTSG group than in the LaTG group (P < 0.05). No significant differences in Fe or C-reaction protein levels were found between the two groups. Endoscopic examination demonstrated that reflux oesophagitis was more common in the LaTG group (0% vs 11.1%, P < 0.05). Kaplan–Meier analysis showed a significant improvement in the overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) in the LaTSG group. Multivariate analysis showed that LaTSG was an independent prognostic factor for OS (P = 0.048) but not for DFS (P = 0.054). Subgroup analysis showed that compared to LaTG, LaTSG improved the survival of patients with stage III cancers, but not for other stages. CONCLUSION For advanced GC involving the middle third stomach, LaTSG can be a good option with reduced morbidity and favorable nutritional status and oncological outcomes.
First United Arab Emirates consensus on diagnosis and management of inflammatory bowel diseases: A 2020 Delphi consensus

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are the main entities of inflammatory bowel disease characterized by chronic remittent inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. The incidence and prevalence are on the rise worldwide, and the heterogeneity between patients and within individuals over time is striking. The progressive advance in our understanding of the etiopathogenesis coupled with an unprecedented increase in therapeutic options have changed the management towards evidence-based interventions by clinicians with patients. This guideline was stimulated and supported by the Emirates Gastroenterology and Hepatology Society following a systematic review and a Delphi consensus process that provided evidence- and expert opinion-based recommendations. Comprehensive up-to-date guidance is provided regarding diagnosis, evaluation of disease severity, appropriate and timely use of different investigations, choice of appropriate therapy for induction and remission phase according to disease severity, and management of main complications.
Robotic Semi-Automated Transcranial Doppler Assessment of Cerebrovascular Autoregulation in Post-Concussion Syndrome: Methodological Considerations

Post-concussion syndrome (PCS) refers to a constellation of physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Despite its incidence and impact, the underlying mechanisms of PCS are unclear. We hypothesized that impaired cerebral autoregulation (CA) is a contributor. In this article, we present our protocol for non-invasively assessing CA in patients with TBI and PCS in a real-world clinical setting. A prospective, observational study was integrated into outpatient clinics at a tertiary neurosurgical center. Data points included: demographics, symptom profile (Post-Concussion Symptom Scale [PCSS]) and neuropsychological assessment (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated-Battery [CANTAB]). Cerebrovascular metrics (nMxa co-efficient and the transient hyperaemic-response ratio [THRR]) were collected using transcranial Doppler (TCD), finger plethysmography, and bespoke software (ICM+). Twelve participants were initially recruited but 2 were excluded after unsuccessful insonation of the middle cerebral artery (MCA); 10 participants (5 patients with TBI, 5 healthy controls) were included in the analysis (median age 26.5 years, male to female ratio: 7:3). Median PCSS scores were 6/126 for the TBI patient sub-groups. Median CANTAB percentiles were 78 (healthy controls) and 25 (TBI). nMxa was calculated for 90% of included patients, whereas THRR was calculated for 50%. Median study time was 127.5 min and feedback (n = 6) highlighted the perceived acceptability of the study. This pilot study has demonstrated a reproducible assessment of PCS and CA metrics (non-invasively) in a real-world setting. This protocol is feasible and is acceptable to participants. By scaling this methodology, we hope to test whether CA changes are correlated with symptomatic PCS in patients post-TBI.
Genetic basis for the essentiality of a bacterial anti-sigma factor involved in virulence

During decades-long infections in the cystic fibrosis (CF) airway, Pseudomonas aeruginosa undergoes selection. One such bacterial genetic adaptation frequently observed in CF isolates is mutation of mucA. MucA inhibits the sigma factor AlgU. In clinical isolates, mucA mutations lead to AlgU misregulation, resulting in a mucoid phenotype that is associated with poor CF disease outcomes. Here we show that, paradoxically, a portion of the mucA gene is essential for P. aeruginosa viability. We demonstrate that mucA is no longer essential in a strain lacking algU, that mucA alleles that encode for proteins that do not bind to AlgU are insufficient for bacterial viability, and that mucA is no longer essential in mutant strains containing AlgU variants with reduced sigma factor activity. Finally, we found that overexpression of algU prevents cell growth in the absence of MucA, and that this phenotype can be rescued by overproduction of RpoD, the housekeeping sigma factor. Together, these results suggest that in the absence of MucA, the inability to regulate AlgU activity may inhibit essential housekeeping functions, resulting in the loss of bacterial viability. Finally, we speculate that essentiality of anti-sigma factors that regulate envelope function may be a widespread phenomenon in bacteria.
Genetic integration of behavioural and endocrine components of the stress response

The vertebrate stress response comprises a suite of behavioural and physiological traits that must be functionally integrated to ensure organisms cope adaptively with acute stressors. Natural selection should favour functional integration, leading to a prediction of genetic integration of these traits. Despite the implications of such genetic integration for our understanding of human and animal health, as well as evolutionary responses to natural and anthropogenic stressors, formal quantitative genetic tests of this prediction are lacking. Here we demonstrate that acute stress response components in Trinidadian guppies are both heritable and integrated on the major axis of genetic covariation. This integration could either facilitate or constrain evolutionary responses to selection, depending upon the alignment of selection with this axis. Such integration also suggests artificial selection on the genetically correlated behavioural responses to stress could offer a viable non-invasive route to the improvement of health and welfare in captive animal populations.
Mass measurement of neutron-deficient nuclei close to the N = Z line

The masses of neutron-deficient nuclei close to A=80 are impo rtant for modeling the astrophysical rapid proton capture process (rp process) [1]. The rp proces s occurs as a sequence of β-decays and proton captures in various astrophysical sites, such as on the surface of an accreting neutron star. The rp process flows close to the N = Z nuclei up to 56Ni. At higher masses, the path will broaden and shift by about one or two units towards stable nuc lei. The decay properties of several neutron-deficient nuclei ne ar A=80 have been studied at the IGISOL facility in a series of experiments [2]. These invest iga ions are now extended to precision mass measurements of the nuclei. The masses of 79,80,81,82,83Y, 83,84,85,86,88Zr, 85,86,87,88Nb and96,98Mo have been measured in the precision trap of the JYFLTRAP Pe nning trap at IGISOL. The mass of 84Zr has been measured for the first time. The accuracy of the Q EC values and proton separation energies, which are important for the rp process , could be improved significantly for the studied neutron-deficient nuclei.
The classical limit of mean-field quantum spin systems

The theory of strict deformation quantization of the two sphere $S^2\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ is used to prove the existence of the classical limit of mean-field quantum spin chains, whose ensuing Hamiltonians are denoted by $H_N$ and where $N$ indicates the number of sites. Indeed, since the fibers $A_{1/N}=M_{N+1}(\mathbb{C})$ and $A_0=C(S^2)$ form a continuous bundle of $C^*$-algebras over the base space $I=\{0\}\cup 1/\mathbb{N}^*\subset[0,1]$, one can define a strict deformation quantization of $A_0$ where quantization is specified by certain quantization maps $Q_{1/N}: \tilde{A}_0 \rightarrow A_{1/N}$, with $\tilde{A}_0$ a dense Poisson subalgebra of $A_0$. Given now a sequence of such $H_N$, we show that under some assumptions a sequence of eigenvectors $\psi_N$ of $H_N$ has a classical limit in the sense that $\omega_0(f):=\lim_{N\to\infty}\langle\psi_N,Q_{1/N}(f)\psi_N\rangle$ exists as a state on $A_0$ given by $\omega_0(f)=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^nf(\Omega_i)$, where $n$ is some natural number. We give an application regarding spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) and moreover we show that the spectrum of such a mean-field quantum spin system converges to the range of some polynomial in three real variables restricted to the sphere $S^2$.
Probing the topology of the quantum analog of a classical skyrmion

In magnetism, skyrmions correspond to classical three-dimensional spin textures characterized by a topological invariant that keeps track of the winding of the magnetization in real space, a property that cannot be easily generalized to the quantum case since the orientation of a quantum spin is in general ill-defined. Moreover, as we show, the quantum skyrmion state cannot be directly observed in modern experiments that probe the local magnetization of the system. However, we show that this novel quantum state can still be identified and fully characterized by a special local three-spin correlation function defined on neighbouring lattice sites -- the scalar chirality -- which reduces to the classical topological invariant for large systems, and which is shown to be nearly constant in the quantum skyrmion phase.
Weakly-supervised Object Localization for Few-shot Learning and Fine-grained Few-shot Learning.

Few-shot learning (FSL) aims to learn novel visual categories from very few samples, which is a challenging problem in real-world applications. Many methods of few-shot classification work well on general images to learn global representation. However, they can not deal with fine-grained categories well at the same time due to a lack of subtle and local information. We argue that localization is an efficient approach because it directly provides the discriminative regions, which is critical for both general classification and fine-grained classification in a low data regime. In this paper, we propose a Self-Attention Based Complementary Module (SAC Module) to fulfill the weakly-supervised object localization, and more importantly produce the activated masks for selecting discriminative deep descriptors for few-shot classification. Based on each selected deep descriptor, Semantic Alignment Module (SAM) calculates the semantic alignment distance between the query and support images to boost classification performance. Extensive experiments show our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets under various settings, especially on the fine-grained few-shot tasks. Besides, our method achieves superior performance over previous methods when training the model on miniImageNet and evaluating it on the different datasets, demonstrating its superior generalization capacity. Extra visualization shows the proposed method can localize the key objects more interval.
Complex nature of exchange splitting in oxide ferromagnets: A spin-resolved photoemission study of EuO.

The electronic structure of the ferromagnetic semiconductor EuO is investigated by means of spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory. Our spin-resolved data reveals that, while the macroscopic magnetization of the sample vanishes at the Curie temperature $T_C$, the experimentally-determined exchange splitting of the O 2$p$ band persists at least up to $T_{C}$ if the picture of fluctuating spin-blocks is assumed. We discuss possible temperature-related spectral changes by analyzing ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases, directional effect due to spin orbit coupling, as well as effects due to sample aging. Our calculations with a Hubbard $U$ term reveal a complex nature of the local exchange splitting on the oxygen site and in conduction bands, shining a new light on the interpretation of previous optical and photoemission spectroscopic results.