In order to evaluate the performance of a molecular Hain line probe assay （Hain LPA） for rapid detection of rifampicin and isoniazid resistance of Mycobocterium tuberculosis in China, 1612 smear positive patients we...In order to evaluate the performance of a molecular Hain line probe assay （Hain LPA） for rapid detection of rifampicin and isoniazid resistance of Mycobocterium tuberculosis in China, 1612 smear positive patients were consecutively enrolled in this study. Smear positive sputum specimens were collected for Hain LPA and conventional drug susceptibility testing （DST）. The sensitivity and specificity of Hain LPA were analyzed by using conventional DST as golden reference. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value {PPV） and negative predictive value （NPV） for rifampicin resistance detection were 88.33%, 97.66%, 81.54%, and 98.62%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV for isoniazid resistance detection were 80.25%, 98.07%, 87.25%, and 96.78%, respectively. These findings suggested that Hain LPA can be an effective method worthy of broader use in China.展开更多
AIM: To identify the clinical outcomes of hepato-cellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with inconsistent α-fetoprotein (AFP) levels which were initially high and then low at recurrence.METHODS: We retrospectively include...AIM: To identify the clinical outcomes of hepato-cellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with inconsistent α-fetoprotein (AFP) levels which were initially high and then low at recurrence.METHODS: We retrospectively included 178 patients who underwent liver resection with high preoperative AFP levels (≥ 200 ng/dL). Sixty-nine HCC patients had recurrence during follow-up and were grouped by their AFP levels at recurrence: group Ⅰ, AFP ≤ 20 ng/dL (n = 16); group Ⅱ, AFP 20-200 ng/dL (n = 24); and group Ⅲ, AFP ≥ 200 ng/dL (n = 29). Their preoperative clinical characteristics, accumulated recurrence rate, and recurrence-to-death survival rate were compared. Three patients, one in each group, underwentliver resection twice for primary and recurrent HCC. AFP immunohistochemistry of primary and recurrent HCC specimens were examined.RESULTS: In this study, 23% of patients demon-strated normal AFP levels at HCC recurrence. The AFP levels in these patients were initially high. There were no significant differences in clinical characteristics between the three groups except for the mean recur-rence interval (21.8 ± 14.6, 12.3 ± 7.7, 8.3 ± 6.6 mo, respectively, P < 0.001) and survival time (40.2 ± 19.9, 36.1 ± 22.4, 21.9 ± 22.0 mo, respectively, P = 0.013). Tumor size > 5 cm, total bilirubin > 1.2 mg/dL, vessel invasion, Child classification B, group Ⅲ, and recurrence interval < 12 mo, were risk factors for survival rate. Cox regression analysis was performed and vessel invasion, group Ⅲ, and recurrence interval were independent risk factors. The recurrence inter-val was significant longer in group Ⅰ (P < 0.001). The recurrence-to-death survival rate was significantly bet-ter in group Ⅱ (P = 0.016). AFP staining was strong in the primary HCC specimens and was reduced at recur-rence in group Ⅰ specimens.CONCLUSION: Patients in group Ⅰ with inconsistent AFP levels had a longer recurrence interval and worse recurrence-to-death survival rate than those in group Ⅱ. This clinical presentation may be caused展开更多
HIV is a retrovirus that infects and impairs the cells and functions of the immune system. It has caused a great challenge to global public health systems and leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), if not...HIV is a retrovirus that infects and impairs the cells and functions of the immune system. It has caused a great challenge to global public health systems and leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), if not attended to in good time. Antiretroviral therapy is used for managing the virus in a patient’s lifetime. Some of the symptoms of the disease include lean body mass and many opportunistic infections. This study has developed a SIAT mathematical model to investigate the impact of inconsistency in treatment of the disease. The arising non-linear differential equations have been obtained and analyzed. The DFE and its stability have been obtained and the study found that it is locally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is less than unity. The endemic equilibrium has been obtained and found to be globally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is greater than unity. Numerical solutions have been obtained and analyzed to give the trends in the spread dynamics. The inconsistency in treatment uptake has been analyzed through the numerical solutions. The study found that when the treatment rate of those infected increases, it leads to an increase in treatment population, which slows down the spread of HIV and vice versa. An increase in the rate of treatment of those with AIDS leads to a decrease in the AIDS population, the reverse happens when this rate decreases. The study recommends that the community involvement in advocating for consistent treatment of HIV to curb the spread of the disease.展开更多
A non-linear HIV-TB co-infection has been formulated and analyzed. The positivity and invariant region has been established. The disease free equilibrium and its stability has been determined. The local stability was ...A non-linear HIV-TB co-infection has been formulated and analyzed. The positivity and invariant region has been established. The disease free equilibrium and its stability has been determined. The local stability was determined and found to be stable under given conditions. The basic reproduction number was obtained and according to findings, co-infection diminishes when this number is less than unity, and persists when the number is greater than unity. The global stability of the endemic equilibrium was calculated. The impact of HIV on TB was established as well as the impact of TB on HIV. Numerical solution was also done and the findings indicate that when the rate of HIV treatment increases the latent TB increases while the co-infected population decreases. When the rate of HIV treatment decreases the latent TB population decreases and the co-infected population increases. Encouraging communities to prioritize the consistent treatment of HIV infected individuals must be emphasized in order to reduce the scourge of HIV-TB co-infection.展开更多
The visualization and assessment of retinal microvasculature are important in the study,diagnosis,monitoring,and guidance of treatment of ocular and systemic diseases.With the introduction of optical coherence tomogra...The visualization and assessment of retinal microvasculature are important in the study,diagnosis,monitoring,and guidance of treatment of ocular and systemic diseases.With the introduction of optical coherence tomography angiography(OCTA),it has become possible to visualize the retinal microvasculature volumetrically and without a contrast agent.Many lab-based and commercial clinical instruments,imaging protocols and data analysis methods and metrics,have been applied,often inconsistently,resulting in a confusing picture that represents a major barrier to progress in applying OCTA to reduce the burden of disease.Open data and software sharing,and cross-comparison and pooling of data from different studies are rare.These inabilities have impeded building the large databases of annotated OCTA images of healthy and diseased retinas that are necessary to study and define characteristics of specific conditions.This paper addresses the steps needed to standardize OCTA imaging of the human retina to address these limitations.Through review of the OCTA literature,we identify issues and inconsistencies and propose minimum standards for imaging protocols,data analysis methods,metrics,reporting of findings,and clinical practice and,where this is not possible,we identify areas that require further investigation.We hope that this paper will encourage the unification of imaging protocols in OCTA,promote transparency in the process of data collection,analysis,and reporting,and facilitate increasing the impact of OCTA on retinal healthcare delivery and life science investigations.展开更多
Surface acoustic wave(SAW)is a powerful technique for investigating quantum phases appearing in twodimensional electron systems.The electrons respond to the piezoelectric field of SAW through screening,attenuating its...Surface acoustic wave(SAW)is a powerful technique for investigating quantum phases appearing in twodimensional electron systems.The electrons respond to the piezoelectric field of SAW through screening,attenuating its amplitude,and shifting its velocity,which is described by the relaxation model.In this work,we systematically study this interaction using orders of magnitude lower SAW amplitude than those in previous studies.At high magnetic fields,when electrons form highly correlated states such as the quantum Hall effect,we observe an anomalously large attenuation of SAW,while the acoustic speed remains considerably high,inconsistent with the conventional relaxation model.This anomaly exists only when the SAW power is sufficiently low.展开更多
Most existing image inpainting methods aim to fill in the missing content in the inside-hole region of the target image. However, the areas to be restored in realistically degraded images are unspecified. Previous stu...Most existing image inpainting methods aim to fill in the missing content in the inside-hole region of the target image. However, the areas to be restored in realistically degraded images are unspecified. Previous studies have failed to recover the degradations due to the absence of the explicit mask indication. Meanwhile, inconsistent patterns are blended complexly with the image content. Therefore, estimating whether certain pixels are out of distribution and considering whether the object is consistent with the context is necessary. Motivated by these observations, a two-stage blind image inpainting network, which utilizes global semantic features of the image to locate semantically inconsistent regions and then generates reasonable content in the areas, is proposed. Specifically, the representation differences between inconsistent and available content are first amplified, iteratively predicting the region to be restored from coarse to fine. A confidence-driven inpainting network based on prediction masks is then used to estimate the information regarding missing regions. Furthermore, a multiscale contextual aggregation module is introduced for spatial feature transfer to refine the generated contents. Extensive experiments over multiple datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can generate visually plausible and structurally complete results that are particularly effective in recovering diverse degraded images.展开更多
Fault detection and diagnosis(FDD) facilitates reliable operation of systems. Various approaches have been proposed for FDD like Analytical redundancy(AR), Principal component analysis(PCA), Discrete event system(DES)...Fault detection and diagnosis(FDD) facilitates reliable operation of systems. Various approaches have been proposed for FDD like Analytical redundancy(AR), Principal component analysis(PCA), Discrete event system(DES) model etc., in the literature. Performance of FDD schemes greatly depends on accuracy of the sensors which measure the system parameters.Due to various reasons like faults, communication errors etc.,sensors may occasionally miss or report erroneous values of some system parameters to FDD engine, resulting in measurement inconsistency of these parameters. Schemes like AR, PCA etc.,have mechanisms to handle measurement inconsistency, however,they are computationally heavy. DES based FDD techniques are widely used because of computational simplicity, but they cannot handle measurement inconsistency efficiently. Existing DES based schemes do not use Measurement inconsistent(MI)parameters for FDD. These parameters are not permanently unmeasurable or erroneous, so ignoring them may lead to weak diagnosis. To address this issue, we propose a Measurement inconsistent discrete event system(MIDES) framework, which uses MI parameters for FDD at the instances they are measured by the sensors. Otherwise, when they are unmeasurable or erroneously reported, the MIDES invokes an estimator diagnoser that predicts the state(s) the system is expected to be in, using the subsequent parameters measured by the other sensors. The efficacy of the proposed method is illustrated using a pumpvalve system. In addition, an MIDES based intrusion detection system has been developed for detection of rogue dynamic host configuration protocol(DHCP) server attack by mapping the attack to a fault in the DES framework.展开更多
基金supported by Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Project(2009-04-01)
文摘In order to evaluate the performance of a molecular Hain line probe assay （Hain LPA） for rapid detection of rifampicin and isoniazid resistance of Mycobocterium tuberculosis in China, 1612 smear positive patients were consecutively enrolled in this study. Smear positive sputum specimens were collected for Hain LPA and conventional drug susceptibility testing （DST）. The sensitivity and specificity of Hain LPA were analyzed by using conventional DST as golden reference. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value {PPV） and negative predictive value （NPV） for rifampicin resistance detection were 88.33%, 97.66%, 81.54%, and 98.62%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV for isoniazid resistance detection were 80.25%, 98.07%, 87.25%, and 96.78%, respectively. These findings suggested that Hain LPA can be an effective method worthy of broader use in China.
文摘AIM: To identify the clinical outcomes of hepato-cellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with inconsistent α-fetoprotein (AFP) levels which were initially high and then low at recurrence.METHODS: We retrospectively included 178 patients who underwent liver resection with high preoperative AFP levels (≥ 200 ng/dL). Sixty-nine HCC patients had recurrence during follow-up and were grouped by their AFP levels at recurrence: group Ⅰ, AFP ≤ 20 ng/dL (n = 16); group Ⅱ, AFP 20-200 ng/dL (n = 24); and group Ⅲ, AFP ≥ 200 ng/dL (n = 29). Their preoperative clinical characteristics, accumulated recurrence rate, and recurrence-to-death survival rate were compared. Three patients, one in each group, underwentliver resection twice for primary and recurrent HCC. AFP immunohistochemistry of primary and recurrent HCC specimens were examined.RESULTS: In this study, 23% of patients demon-strated normal AFP levels at HCC recurrence. The AFP levels in these patients were initially high. There were no significant differences in clinical characteristics between the three groups except for the mean recur-rence interval (21.8 ± 14.6, 12.3 ± 7.7, 8.3 ± 6.6 mo, respectively, P < 0.001) and survival time (40.2 ± 19.9, 36.1 ± 22.4, 21.9 ± 22.0 mo, respectively, P = 0.013). Tumor size > 5 cm, total bilirubin > 1.2 mg/dL, vessel invasion, Child classification B, group Ⅲ, and recurrence interval < 12 mo, were risk factors for survival rate. Cox regression analysis was performed and vessel invasion, group Ⅲ, and recurrence interval were independent risk factors. The recurrence inter-val was significant longer in group Ⅰ (P < 0.001). The recurrence-to-death survival rate was significantly bet-ter in group Ⅱ (P = 0.016). AFP staining was strong in the primary HCC specimens and was reduced at recur-rence in group Ⅰ specimens.CONCLUSION: Patients in group Ⅰ with inconsistent AFP levels had a longer recurrence interval and worse recurrence-to-death survival rate than those in group Ⅱ. This clinical presentation may be caused
文摘HIV is a retrovirus that infects and impairs the cells and functions of the immune system. It has caused a great challenge to global public health systems and leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), if not attended to in good time. Antiretroviral therapy is used for managing the virus in a patient’s lifetime. Some of the symptoms of the disease include lean body mass and many opportunistic infections. This study has developed a SIAT mathematical model to investigate the impact of inconsistency in treatment of the disease. The arising non-linear differential equations have been obtained and analyzed. The DFE and its stability have been obtained and the study found that it is locally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is less than unity. The endemic equilibrium has been obtained and found to be globally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is greater than unity. Numerical solutions have been obtained and analyzed to give the trends in the spread dynamics. The inconsistency in treatment uptake has been analyzed through the numerical solutions. The study found that when the treatment rate of those infected increases, it leads to an increase in treatment population, which slows down the spread of HIV and vice versa. An increase in the rate of treatment of those with AIDS leads to a decrease in the AIDS population, the reverse happens when this rate decreases. The study recommends that the community involvement in advocating for consistent treatment of HIV to curb the spread of the disease.
文摘A non-linear HIV-TB co-infection has been formulated and analyzed. The positivity and invariant region has been established. The disease free equilibrium and its stability has been determined. The local stability was determined and found to be stable under given conditions. The basic reproduction number was obtained and according to findings, co-infection diminishes when this number is less than unity, and persists when the number is greater than unity. The global stability of the endemic equilibrium was calculated. The impact of HIV on TB was established as well as the impact of TB on HIV. Numerical solution was also done and the findings indicate that when the rate of HIV treatment increases the latent TB increases while the co-infected population decreases. When the rate of HIV treatment decreases the latent TB population decreases and the co-infected population increases. Encouraging communities to prioritize the consistent treatment of HIV infected individuals must be emphasized in order to reduce the scourge of HIV-TB co-infection.
基金the Australian National Health&Medical Research Council(project and fellowship grant no.:GNT1116360,GNT1188694,GNT1054712,and MRF1142962)the Raine Foundation,Ophthalmic Research Institute of Australia,and the McCusker Charitable Foundation for his and his team's work in OCTA.
文摘The visualization and assessment of retinal microvasculature are important in the study,diagnosis,monitoring,and guidance of treatment of ocular and systemic diseases.With the introduction of optical coherence tomography angiography(OCTA),it has become possible to visualize the retinal microvasculature volumetrically and without a contrast agent.Many lab-based and commercial clinical instruments,imaging protocols and data analysis methods and metrics,have been applied,often inconsistently,resulting in a confusing picture that represents a major barrier to progress in applying OCTA to reduce the burden of disease.Open data and software sharing,and cross-comparison and pooling of data from different studies are rare.These inabilities have impeded building the large databases of annotated OCTA images of healthy and diseased retinas that are necessary to study and define characteristics of specific conditions.This paper addresses the steps needed to standardize OCTA imaging of the human retina to address these limitations.Through review of the OCTA literature,we identify issues and inconsistencies and propose minimum standards for imaging protocols,data analysis methods,metrics,reporting of findings,and clinical practice and,where this is not possible,we identify areas that require further investigation.We hope that this paper will encourage the unification of imaging protocols in OCTA,promote transparency in the process of data collection,analysis,and reporting,and facilitate increasing the impact of OCTA on retinal healthcare delivery and life science investigations.
基金supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(Grant Nos.2021YFA1401900 and 2019YFA0308403)the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No.XDB33030000)+1 种基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.92065104,12074010,and 12141001)the Innovation Program for Quantum Science and Technology(Grant No.2021ZD0302602)for sample fabrication and measurement。
文摘Surface acoustic wave(SAW)is a powerful technique for investigating quantum phases appearing in twodimensional electron systems.The electrons respond to the piezoelectric field of SAW through screening,attenuating its amplitude,and shifting its velocity,which is described by the relaxation model.In this work,we systematically study this interaction using orders of magnitude lower SAW amplitude than those in previous studies.At high magnetic fields,when electrons form highly correlated states such as the quantum Hall effect,we observe an anomalously large attenuation of SAW,while the acoustic speed remains considerably high,inconsistent with the conventional relaxation model.This anomaly exists only when the SAW power is sufficiently low.
基金supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China(No.ZR2020MF140)the Major Scientific and Technological Projects of CNPC(No.ZD2019-183-004)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No.20CX05019A).
文摘Most existing image inpainting methods aim to fill in the missing content in the inside-hole region of the target image. However, the areas to be restored in realistically degraded images are unspecified. Previous studies have failed to recover the degradations due to the absence of the explicit mask indication. Meanwhile, inconsistent patterns are blended complexly with the image content. Therefore, estimating whether certain pixels are out of distribution and considering whether the object is consistent with the context is necessary. Motivated by these observations, a two-stage blind image inpainting network, which utilizes global semantic features of the image to locate semantically inconsistent regions and then generates reasonable content in the areas, is proposed. Specifically, the representation differences between inconsistent and available content are first amplified, iteratively predicting the region to be restored from coarse to fine. A confidence-driven inpainting network based on prediction masks is then used to estimate the information regarding missing regions. Furthermore, a multiscale contextual aggregation module is introduced for spatial feature transfer to refine the generated contents. Extensive experiments over multiple datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can generate visually plausible and structurally complete results that are particularly effective in recovering diverse degraded images.
基金supported by TATA Consultancy Services(TCS),India through TCS Research Fellowship Program
文摘Fault detection and diagnosis(FDD) facilitates reliable operation of systems. Various approaches have been proposed for FDD like Analytical redundancy(AR), Principal component analysis(PCA), Discrete event system(DES) model etc., in the literature. Performance of FDD schemes greatly depends on accuracy of the sensors which measure the system parameters.Due to various reasons like faults, communication errors etc.,sensors may occasionally miss or report erroneous values of some system parameters to FDD engine, resulting in measurement inconsistency of these parameters. Schemes like AR, PCA etc.,have mechanisms to handle measurement inconsistency, however,they are computationally heavy. DES based FDD techniques are widely used because of computational simplicity, but they cannot handle measurement inconsistency efficiently. Existing DES based schemes do not use Measurement inconsistent(MI)parameters for FDD. These parameters are not permanently unmeasurable or erroneous, so ignoring them may lead to weak diagnosis. To address this issue, we propose a Measurement inconsistent discrete event system(MIDES) framework, which uses MI parameters for FDD at the instances they are measured by the sensors. Otherwise, when they are unmeasurable or erroneously reported, the MIDES invokes an estimator diagnoser that predicts the state(s) the system is expected to be in, using the subsequent parameters measured by the other sensors. The efficacy of the proposed method is illustrated using a pumpvalve system. In addition, an MIDES based intrusion detection system has been developed for detection of rogue dynamic host configuration protocol(DHCP) server attack by mapping the attack to a fault in the DES framework.
