bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Dynamics of D‐dimer in non‐small cell lung cancer patients receiving radical surgery and its association with postoperative venous thromboembolism
Authors: Ke Lihui , Cui Songping , Chen Shuo , Hu Bin , Li Hui 
Published: July 2020

AbstractBackgroundVenous thromboembolism (VTE) occurs at a high rate after lung cancer surgery and can be attributed to various clinical risk factors. Here, we aimed to determine whether early detection of perioperative D‐dimer and risk‐stratified cutoff values would improve the diagnostic efficacy of VTE.MethodsIn this case‐control study, D‐dimer results were acquired from 171 non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients preoperatively and at the first, third, and fifth day after surgery. VTE was confirmed by Doppler ultrasonography and computer tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA). Repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze how D‐dimer changed with time and the effects of risk factors on D‐dimer levels. We then compared sensitivity, specificity and negative predictive value, using both adjusted and unadjusted cutoff values.ResultsVTE occurred in 23 patients (13.5%) of the study population. D‐dimer levels increased unsustainably after lung cancer surgery (P < 0.001) due to a trough on the third day, and patients who had undergone thoracotomy (P < 0.001) and those at a more advanced tumor stage (P = 0.037) had higher D‐dimer levels. Area under the curve of D‐dimer was greatest on the third day (0.762 [P < 0.001, 95% CI: 0.643–0.882]). Applying stratified cutoff values improved the specificity in the video‐assisted thoracoscopy surgery (VATS) (P = 0.004) and thoracotomy groups (P < 0.001).ConclusionsD‐dimer levels elevated with fluctuation in NSCLC patients after surgery. Surgical options and tumor stages had an impact on D‐dimer levels. With regard to VTE diagnosis, stratified cutoff values by these two factors showed better accuracy compared with a collective one..Key pointsSignificant findings of the studyThe changing pattern of perioperative D‐dimer levels in NSCLC patients who received surgical therapy in a major teaching hospital in Beijing, China was revealed.What this study addsRisk‐stratified D‐dimer cutoff values adjusted to surgical methods and disease stages would benefit the exclusion of postoperative venous thromboembolism.
Impact of previous percutaneous coronary intervention on cardiovascular outcomes and mortality after lung cancer surgery: A nationwide study in Korea
Authors: Yoon Dong Woog , Shin Dong Wook , Cho Jong Ho , Lee Jong‐Hwan , Yang Jeong Hoon , Han Kyungdo , Park Sang Hyun 
Published: July 2020

BackgroundThe number of patients with operable lung cancer with a history of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has increased. However, cardiovascular outcomes and mortality, according to the time from PCI to surgery, and the follow‐up time after surgery are largely unknown. Here, we aimed to compare the cardiovascular outcomes and mortality of these patients with a history of PCI to those of patients without a history of PCI.MethodsUsing the Korean National Health Insurance Service Database, we selected 30 750 patients who underwent surgery for lung cancer between 2006 and 2014. Study outcome variables were all‐cause mortality, revascularization, intensive care unit (ICU) readmission, and stroke incidence. Patients were followed‐up until 2016.ResultsOf the 30 750 patients, 513 (1.7%) underwent PCI before surgery. The PCI group did not show an increased risk of death, ICU readmission, or stroke within one year of surgery, despite an increased risk of revascularization. However, one year after surgery, they showed a higher risk of death and revascularization than the non‐PCI group. The risk of revascularization was highest when the interval between PCI and surgery was <1 year and remained high when the interval was >3 years.ConclusionsPatients who underwent PCI before surgery for lung cancer were at a higher risk of death than those in the non‐PCI group at one year after surgery. In addition, they showed higher short‐ and long‐term risks of revascularization than patients in the non‐PCI group. Careful long‐term management of cardiovascular risk is necessary for this population.
Common clinical thresholds of intraoperative hypotension and 30‐day mortality following surgery: A retrospective cohort study
Authors: Dony Philippe , Seidel Laurence , Pirson Magali , Haller Guy 
Published: July 2020

BackgroundA wide range of thresholds define intraoperative hypotension and can be used to guide intraoperative blood pressure management. Many clinicians use the systolic blood pressure (SBP) <80 mmHg, the mean arterial pressure (MAP) <60 mmHg and the SBP percent drop from baseline (ΔSBP) >20% as alarming limits that should not be exceeded. Whether these common thresholds are valid limits that can inform clinicians on a possible increased risk of post‐operative complications, particularly 30‐day mortality, is currently unclear.MethodsWe performed a retrospective registry‐based cohort study between January 2015 and July 2016 using departmental hospital databases and the National Death Registry. Uni‐ and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the association between each of these three thresholds and 30‐day post‐operative mortality. Six specific markers of hypotension were used.ResultsOf 11 304 patients, 86 (0.76%) died within 30 days following surgery. All intraoperative hypotension markers for SBP < 80 mmHg and MAP < 60 mmHg were significantly associated with 30‐day mortality (P < .005). Markers of ΔSBP > 20% were not significant. After adjustment for age, gender, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score, emergency status and risk related to the type of surgery, both SBP < 80 mmHg and MAP < 60 mmHg (the per cent area under the threshold marker) showed the strongest associations with 30‐day mortality, with odds ratios (ORs) of 3.02 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.81‐5.07) and 3.77 (95% CI 2.25‐6.31) respectively.ConclusionsCommonly accepted thresholds of intraoperative hypotension, such as an SBP of 80 mmHg and an MAP of 60 mmHg, are valid alarming limits that are significantly and independently associated with 30‐day mortality.
A nonsense variant in the KRT14 gene in a domestic shorthair cat with epidermolysis bullosa simplex
Authors: Dettwiler M. , Leuthard F. , Bauer A. , Jagannathan V. , Lourenço A. M. , Pereira H. , Leeb T. , Welle M. M. 
Published: July 2020

SummaryEpidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS) is a hereditary blistering disease affecting the skin and mucous membranes. It has been reported in humans, cattle, buffaloes and dogs, but so far not in cats. In humans, EBS is most frequently caused by variants in the KRT5 or KRT14 genes. Here, we report a case of feline epidermolysis bullosa simplex and describe the causative genetic variant. An 11‐month‐old male domestic shorthair cat presented with a history of sloughed paw pads and ulcerations in the oral cavity and inner aspect of the pinnae, starting a few weeks after birth. Clinical and histopathological findings suggested a congenital blistering disease with a split formation within the basal cell layer of the epidermis and oral mucous epithelium. The genetic investigation revealed a homozygous nonsense variant in the KRT14 gene (c.979C>T, p.Gln327*). Immunohistochemistry showed a complete absence of keratin 14 staining in all epithelia present in the biopsy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of feline EBS, and the first report of a spontaneous pathogenic KRT14 variant in a non‐human species. The homozygous genotype in the affected cat suggests an autosomal recessive mode of inheritance.
Archaeometric analysis of ceramic production in Tiwanaku state (c.500–1000 ce): An exploratory study
Authors: Ogalde J. P. , Korpisaari A. , Riera‐Soto C. , Arriaza B. , Paipa C. , Leyton P. , Campos‐Vallette M. , Lara N. , Chacama J. 
Published: July 2020

The chemical and mineralogical characterization of seven ceramic fragments produced within Tiwanaku state (c.500–1000 ce) is reported. The instrumental techniques used included X‐ray elemental and mineralogical chemical analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning and light microscopy. The results indicate there are several clay types, although they show similarities, such as the use of a plant‐based temper. The red colour of the decoration is hematite, and manganese oxides such as jacobsite are present in the black. The white colour is a mixture of gypsum and clay, and the orange is a mixture of hematite and clay. The use of colours, the quality of the clays and the temperatures reached during pottery firing point to expertise in ceramic production and to complex decision‐making processes. The multi‐elemental archaeometric approach documented here could become an important tool to shed a light on ancient ceramic technology and the internal variance of Tiwanaku pottery.
Emicizumab treatment and monitoring in a paediatric cohort: real‐world data
Authors: Barg Assaf A. , Livnat Tami , Budnik Ivan , Avishai Einat , Brutman‐Barazani Tami , Tamarin Ilia , Bashari Dalia , Misgav Mudi , Kenet Gili 
Published: July 2020

AbstractReal‐world data on emicizumab use and monitoring in paediatric severe haemophilia A (HA) patients are scarce. We therefore sought to evaluate safety, efficacy, and laboratory monitoring of emicizumab prophylaxis in a cohort of 40 children with severe HA, including 22 non‐inhibitor patients and nine infants younger than one year. Bleeding, trauma, adverse events, and surgeries were documented during a median follow‐up of 45 weeks. Emicizumab levels, activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) values, and thrombin generation were measured before and during therapy. Twenty patients experienced zero bleeds. All bleeding was trauma‐related, and bleeding risk was positively correlated with the length of emicizumab prophylaxis. Sixteen surgical interventions were performed in 12 patients, with no thrombotic complications or thrombotic microangiopathy. Prolonged aPTT values normalised after emicizumab initiation, correlating with an increase in emicizumab plasma levels. Elevation in the thrombin generation was observed following emicizumab prophylaxis, with lower values recorded in younger infants. Emicizumab prophylaxis was safe and well tolerated. As all bleedings were trauma‐related, laboratory monitoring could not predict bleeding risk. Our results do not support routine thrombin generation monitoring in children treated by emicizumab, yet further studies are warranted in the context of surgical procedures.
Risk factors for psychological distress during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Israel: Loneliness, age, gender, and health status play an important role
Authors: Horesh Danny , Kapel Lev‐Ari Rony , Hasson‐Ohayon Ilanit 
Published: July 2020

ObjectiveResearch on the psychological toll of the COVID‐19 pandemic is being conducted in various countries. This study aimed to examine risk factors for mental health problems among Israeli adults during this crisis.MethodsA total of 204 participants took part in the study. They completed self‐report questionnaires assessing perceived stress, anxiety, quality of life, and various questions related to quarantine, pre‐existing health issues, and worries related to the virus. The study took place during the last two weeks of March 2020.ResultsThe majority of participants reported relatively high levels of perceived stress and corona‐related worries, but low levels of anxiety. Female gender, younger age, corona‐related loneliness, and pre‐existing chronic illness were all related to higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of quality of life.ConclusionsWhile considering the preliminary nature of these results, the current study highlights risk factors for psychological distress in light of the corona pandemic. Attention should be given to sociodemographic variables that were identified as related to psychological distress, as well as to the important role of loneliness, when screening and treating people during this crisis. More research is needed in order to fully understand the scope and correlates of psychological difficulties during these challenging times.
Persistence Analysis of Multi‐scale Planar Structure Graph in Point Clouds
Authors: Lejemble T. , Mura C. , Barthe L. , Mellado N. 
Published: July 2020

AbstractModern acquisition techniques generate detailed point clouds that sample complex geometries. For instance, we are able to produce millimeter‐scale acquisition of whole buildings. Processing and exploring geometrical information within such point clouds requires scalability, robustness to acquisition defects and the ability to model shapes at different scales. In this work, we propose a new representation that enriches point clouds with a multi‐scale planar structure graph. We define the graph nodes as regions computed with planar segmentations at increasing scales and the graph edges connect regions that are similar across scales. Connected components of the graph define the planar structures present in the point cloud within a scale interval. For instance, with this information, any point is associated to one or several planar structures existing at different scales. We then use topological data analysis to filter the graph and provide the most prominent planar structures.Our representation naturally encodes a large range of information. We show how to efficiently extract geometrical details (e.g. tiles of a roof), arrangements of simple shapes (e.g. steps and mean ramp of a staircase), and large‐scale planar proxies (e.g. walls of a building) and present several interactive tools to visualize, select and reconstruct planar primitives directly from raw point clouds. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated by an extensive evaluation on a variety of input data, as well as by comparing against state‐of‐the‐art techniques and by showing applications to polygonal mesh reconstruction.
Progressive Real‐Time Rendering of One Billion Points Without Hierarchical Acceleration Structures
Authors: Schütz Markus , Mandlburger Gottfried , Otepka Johannes , Wimmer Michael 
Published: July 2020

AbstractResearch in rendering large point clouds traditionally focused on the generation and use of hierarchical acceleration structures that allow systems to load and render the smallest fraction of the data with the largest impact on the output. The generation of these structures is slow and time consuming, however, and therefore ill‐suited for tasks such as quickly looking at scan data stored in widely used unstructured file formats, or to immediately display the results of point‐cloud processing tasks.We propose a progressive method that is capable of rendering any point cloud that fits in GPU memory in real time, without the need to generate hierarchical acceleration structures in advance. Our method supports data sets with a large amount of attributes per point, achieves a load performance of up to 100 million points per second, displays already loaded data in real time while remaining data is still being loaded, and is capable of rendering up to one billion points using an on‐the‐fly generated shuffled vertex buffer as its data structure, instead of slow‐to‐generate hierarchical structures. Shuffling is done during loading in order to allow efficiently filling holes with random subsets, which leads to a higher quality convergence behavior.
Spherical Gaussian Light‐field Textures for Fast Precomputed Global Illumination
Authors: Currius R. R. , Dolonius D. , Assarsson U. , Sintorn E. 
Published: July 2020

AbstractWe describe a method to use Spherical Gaussians with free directions and arbitrary sharpness and amplitude to approximate the precomputed local light field for any point on a surface in a scene. This allows for a high‐quality reconstruction of these light fields in a manner that can be used to render the surfaces with precomputed global illumination in real‐time with very low cost both in memory and performance. We also extend this concept to represent the illumination‐weighted environment visibility, allowing for high‐quality reflections of the distant environment with both surface‐material properties and visibility taken into account. We treat obtaining the Spherical Gaussians as an optimization problem for which we train a Convolutional Neural Network to produce appropriate values for each of the Spherical Gaussians' parameters. We define this CNN in such a way that the produced parameters can be interpolated between adjacent local light fields while keeping the illumination in the intermediate points coherent.
Facial Expression Synthesis using a Global‐Local Multilinear Framework
Authors: Wang M. , Bradley D. , Zafeiriou S. , Beeler T. 
Published: July 2020

AbstractWe present a practical method to synthesize plausible 3D facial expressions for a particular target subject. The ability to synthesize an entire facial rig from a single neutral expression has a large range of applications both in computer graphics and computer vision, ranging from the efficient and cost‐effective creation of CG characters to scalable data generation for machine learning purposes. Unlike previous methods based on multilinear models, the proposed approach is capable to extrapolate well outside the sample pool, which allows it to plausibly predict the identity of the target subject and create artifact free expression shapes while requiring only a small input dataset. We introduce global‐local multilinear models that leverage the strengths of expression‐specific and identity‐specific local models combined with coarse motion estimations from a global model. Experimental results show that we achieve high‐quality, plausible facial expression synthesis results for an individual that outperform existing methods both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Fast and Robust QEF Minimization using Probabilistic Quadrics
Authors: Trettner P. , Kobbelt L. 
Published: July 2020

AbstractError quadrics are a fundamental and powerful building block in many geometry processing algorithms. However, finding the minimizer of a given quadric is in many cases not robust and requires a singular value decomposition or some ad‐hoc regularization. While classical error quadrics measure the squared deviation from a set of ground truth planes or polygons, we treat the input data as genuinely uncertain information and embed error quadrics in a probabilistic setting (“probabilistic quadrics”) where the optimal point minimizes theexpectedsquared error. We derive closed form solutions for the popular plane and triangle quadrics subject to (spatially varying, anisotropic) Gaussian noise. Probabilistic quadrics can be minimized robustly by solving a simple linear system— 50×faster than SVD. We show that probabilistic quadrics have superior properties in tasks like decimation and isosurface extraction since they favor more uniform triangulations and are more tolerant to noise while still maintaining feature sensitivity. A broad spectrum of applications can directly benefit from our new quadrics as a drop‐in replacement which we demonstrate with mesh smoothing via filtered quadrics and non‐linear subdivision surfaces.
An Efficient Transport Estimator for Complex Layered Materials
Authors: Gamboa Luis E. , Gruson Adrien , Nowrouzezahrai Derek 
Published: July 2020

AbstractLayered materials capture subtle, realistic reflection behaviors that traditional single‐layer models lack. Much of this is due to the complex subsurface light transport at the interfaces of – and in the media between – layers. Rendering with these materials can be costly, since we must simulate these transport effects at every evaluation of the underlying reflectance model. Rendering an image requires thousands of such evaluations, per pixel. Recent work treats this complexity by introducing significant approximations, requiring large precomputed datasetsper material, or simplifying the light transport simulations within the materials. Even the most effective of these methods struggle with the complexity induced by high‐frequency variation in reflectance parameters and micro‐surface normal variation, as well as anisotropic volumetric scattering between the layer interfaces. We present a more efficient, unbiased estimator for light transport in such general, complex layered appearance models. By conducting an analysis of the types of transport paths that contribute most to the aggregate reflectance dynamics, we propose an effective and unbiased path sampling method that reduces variance in the reflectance evaluations. Our method additionally supports reflectance importance sampling, does not rely on any precomputation, and so integrates readily into existing renderers. We consistently outperform the state‐of‐the‐art by~2 – 6× in equal‐quality (i.e., equal error) comparisons.
Fast and Robust Stochastic Structural Optimization
Authors: Cui Qiaodong , Langlois Timothy , Sen Pradeep , Kim Theodore 
Published: July 2020

AbstractStochastic structural analysis can assess whether a fabricated object will break under real‐world conditions. While this approach is powerful, it is also quite slow, which has previously limited its use to coarse resolutions (e.g., 26 × 34 × 28). We show that this approach can be made asymptotically faster, which in practice reduces computation time by two orders of magnitude, and allows the use of previously‐infeasible resolutions. We achieve this by showing that the probability gradient can be computed in linear time instead of quadratic, and by using a robust new scheme that stabilizes the inertia gradients used by the optimization. Additionally, we propose a constrained restart method that deals with local minima, and a sheathing approach that further reduces the weight of the shape. Together, these components enable the discovery of previously‐inaccessible designs.
Style‐Controllable Speech‐Driven Gesture Synthesis Using Normalising Flows
Authors: Alexanderson Simon , Henter Gustav Eje , Kucherenko Taras , Beskow Jonas 
Published: July 2020

AbstractAutomatic synthesis of realistic gestures promises to transform the fields of animation, avatars and communicative agents. In off‐line applications, novel tools can alter the role of an animator to that of a director, who provides only high‐level input for the desired animation; a learned network then translates these instructions into an appropriate sequence of body poses. In interactive scenarios, systems for generating natural animations on the fly are key to achieving believable and relatable characters. In this paper we address some of the core issues towards these ends. By adapting a deep learning‐based motion synthesis method called MoGlow, we propose a new generative model for generating state‐of‐the‐art realistic speech‐driven gesticulation. Owing to the probabilistic nature of the approach, our model can produce a battery of different, yet plausible, gestures given the same input speech signal. Just like humans, this gives a rich natural variation of motion. We additionally demonstrate the ability to exert directorial control over the output style, such as gesture level, speed, symmetry and spacial extent. Such control can be leveraged to convey a desired character personality or mood. We achieve all this without any manual annotation of the data. User studies evaluating upper‐body gesticulation confirm that the generated motions are natural and well match the input speech. Our method scores above all prior systems and baselines on these measures, and comes close to the ratings of the original recorded motions. We furthermore find that we can accurately control gesticulation styles without unnecessarily compromising perceived naturalness. Finally, we also demonstrate an application of the same method to full‐body gesticulation, including the synthesis of stepping motion and stance.