Rain removal from a video is a challenging problem and has been recently investigated extensively. Nevertheless, the problem of rain removal from a single image was rarely studied in the literature, ...where no temporal information among successive images can be exploited, making the problem very challenging. In this paper, we propose a single-image-based rain removal framework via properly formulating rain removal as an image decomposition problem based on morphological component analysis. Instead of directly applying a conventional image decomposition technique, the proposed method first decomposes an image into the low- and high-frequency (HF) parts using a bilateral filter. The HF part is then decomposed into a "rain component" and a "nonrain component" by performing dictionary learning and sparse coding. As a result, the rain component can be successfully removed from the image while preserving most original image details. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.
The ability to manipulate and sort droplets is a fundamental issue in droplet-based microfluidics. Various lab-on-a-chip applications can only be realized if droplets are systematically categorized ...and sorted. These micron-sized droplets act as ideal reactors which compartmentalize different biological and chemical reagents. Array processing of these droplets hinges on the competence of the sorting and integration into the fluidic system. Recent technological advances only allow droplets to be actively sorted at the rate of kilohertz or less. In this review, we present state-of-the-art technologies which are implemented to efficiently sort droplets. We classify the concepts according to the type of energy implemented into the system. We also discuss various key issues and provide insights into various systems.
This review presents the fundamentals of different active methods for sorting droplets in microfluidics.
Objective To evaluate the use of prospective screening for the HLA-B*58:01 allele to identify Taiwanese individuals at risk of severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs) induced by allopurinol ...treatment.Design National prospective cohort study.Setting 15 medical centres in different regions of Taiwan, from July 2009 to August 2014.Participants 2926 people who had an indication for allopurinol treatment but had not taken allopurinol previously. Participants were excluded if they had undergone a bone marrow transplant, were not of Han Chinese descent, and had a history of allopurinol induced hypersensitivity. DNA purified from 2910 participants’ peripheral blood was used to assess the presence of HLA-B*58:01. Main outcome measures Incidence of allopurinol induced SCARs with and without screening.Results Participants who tested positive for HLA-B*58:01 (19.6%, n=571) were advised to avoid allopurinol, and were referred to an alternate drug treatment or advised to continue with their prestudy treatment. Participants who tested negative (80.4%, n=2339) were given allopurinol. Participants were interviewed once a week for two months to monitor symptoms. The historical incidence of allopurinol induced SCARs, estimated by the National Health Insurance research database of Taiwan, was used for comparison. Mild, transient rash without blisters developed in 97 (3%) participants during follow-up. None of the participants was admitted to hospital owing to adverse drug reactions. SCARs did not develop in any of the participants receiving allopurinol who screened negative for HLA-B*58:01. By contrast, seven cases of SCARs were expected, based on the estimated historical incidence of allopurinol induced SCARs nationwide (0.30% per year, 95% confidence interval 0.28% to 0.31%; P=0.0026; two side one sample binomial test).Conclusions Prospective screening of the HLA-B*58:01 allele, coupled with an alternative drug treatment for carriers, significantly decreased the incidence of allopurinol induced SCARs in Taiwanese medical centres.
Introduction
Both daily and event‐driven (ED) pre‐exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) have been demonstrated to be highly effective among men who have sex with men (MSM). Prevention‐effective adherence ...proposes that PrEP adherence should be aligned with the risk of HIV, which could be applied to both daily and ED PrEP adherence measurement. The objective of this study was to describe the relationship between the use of PrEP and sex events among the MSM PrEP users and identify factors associated with adherence among daily and ED MSM PrEP users.
Methods
A multicentre, observational, prospective cohort study was conducted at three hospital‐based clinics in three urban cities of Taiwan from January 2018 to December 2019. MSM ages 18 years or older – at high risk of HIV acquisition and taking PrEP during the study period – were included in the analysis. MSM PrEP users were allowed to choose between daily and ED PrEP based on their preference. Data on sociodemographic characteristics, mental health, sexual behaviours, substance use and PrEP‐taking behaviours were collected at each visit.
Results
A total of 374 MSM were included in the analysis with 1,054 visits. More than half (56%) of the PrEP users chose ED at the baseline and 150 regimen switches were reported by 21% of the participants. There was only one seroconversion documented during the study period. Most (84.2%) of the MSM PrEP users were able to adhere to PrEP during the most recent anal intercourse in the past one month. Among ED PrEP users with suboptimal adherence, the majority (81.9%) missed the pre‐coital dose. In the multivariable analysis, we found that participants who switched from daily to an ED dosing regimen were associated with poorer adherence to PrEP.
Conclusions
A high level of PrEP adherence was observed among the majority of MSM in a real‐world setting. On the other hand, Taiwanese MSM switching from daily to ED dosing regimens were less likely to adhere to PrEP, suggesting that novel approaches focusing on a dosing switch would be necessary for MSM to improve their adherence to PrEP.
Decomposition of an image into multiple semantic components has been an effective research topic for various image processing applications such as image denoising, enhancement, and inpainting. In ...this paper, we present a novel self-learning based image decomposition framework. Based on the recent success of sparse representation, the proposed framework first learns an over-complete dictionary from the high spatial frequency parts of the input image for reconstruction purposes. We perform unsupervised clustering on the observed dictionary atoms (and their corresponding reconstructed image versions) via affinity propagation, which allows us to identify image-dependent components with similar context information. While applying the proposed method for the applications of image denoising, we are able to automatically determine the undesirable patterns (e.g., rain streaks or Gaussian noise) from the derived image components directly from the input image, so that the task of single-image denoising can be addressed. Different from prior image processing works with sparse representation, our method does not need to collect training image data in advance, nor do we assume image priors such as the relationship between input and output image dictionaries. We conduct experiments on two denoising problems: single-image denoising with Gaussian noise and rain removal. Our empirical results confirm the effectiveness and robustness of our approach, which is shown to outperform state-of-the-art image denoising algorithms.
A golden opportunity: A novel gold‐catalyzed oxidative ring‐expansion of unactivated cyclopropylalkynes using Ph2SO has been developed (see scheme). For substrates bearing a donor group at the ...cyclopropane ring, preliminary results reveal a distinct cleavage of the cyclopropane unit; such a ring cleavage is further applicable to the synthesis of 2H‐pyrans. L=P(tBu)2(o‐biphenyl), Tf=triflate.
A highly compressed image is usually not only of low resolution, but also suffers from compression artifacts (blocking artifact is treated as an example in this paper). Directly performing image ...super-resolution (SR) to a highly compressed image would also simultaneously magnify the blocking artifacts, resulting in an unpleasing visual experience. In this paper, we propose a novel learning-based framework to achieve joint single-image SR and deblocking for a highly-compressed image. We argue that individually performing deblocking and SR (i.e., deblocking followed by SR, or SR followed by deblocking) on a highly compressed image usually cannot achieve a satisfactory visual quality. In our method, we propose to learn image sparse representations for modeling the relationship between low- and high-resolution image patches in terms of the learned dictionaries for image patches with and without blocking artifacts, respectively . As a result, image SR and deblocking can be simultaneously achieved via sparse representation and morphological component analysis (MCA)-based image decomposition. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.
Lipotoxicity leads to numerous metabolic disorders such as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Luteolin, apigenin, and chrysin are three flavones with known antioxidant and anti‐inflammatory properties, ...but whether they inhibit lipotoxicity‐mediated NLRP3 inflammasome activation was unclear. To address this question, we used J774A.1 macrophages and Kupffer cells stimulated with 100 μM palmitate (PA) in the presence or absence of 20 μM of each flavone. PA increased p‐PERK, p‐IRE1α, p‐JNK1/2, CHOP, and TXNIP as well as p62 and LC3‐II expression and induced autophagic flux damage. Caspase‐1 activation and IL‐1β release were also noted after 24 h of exposure to PA. In the presence of the PERK inhibitor GSK2656157, PA‐induced CHOP and TXNIP expression and caspase‐1 activation were mitigated. Compared with PA treatment alone, Bcl‐2 coupled to beclin‐1 was elevated and autophagy was reversed by the JNK inhibitor SP600125. With luteolin, apigenin, and chrysin treatment, PA‐induced ROS production, ER stress, TXNIP expression, autophagic flux damage, and apoptosis were ameliorated. Moreover, TXNIP binding to NLRP3 and IL‐1β release in response to LPS/PA challenge were reduced. These results suggest that luteolin, apigenin, and chrysin protect hepatic macrophages against PA‐induced NLRP3 inflammasome activation and autophagy damage by attenuating endoplasmic reticulum stress.
The purpose of the study is to identify a set of key indicators with weightings for health tourism destinations by using an advanced analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, derived from the ...official, academic, and professional opinions of the experts. The AHP method allocated weightings to the evaluation criteria selected by the fifteen experts. After expert evaluations were conducted, the three dimensions and eleven sub-dimensions of the initial health tourism destination were obtained as follows: (1) special demands and indications-medical care, health promotion, and tourism and leisure; (2) natural environment-climate, air, water, and light; (3) leisure activities and general demands-sports, therapeutic activities, interactions with animals and plants, and diet. The results revealed that the dimensions of special demands and indications were given the most attention and that the sub-dimensions of sports promotion were the highest ranked by expert groups. The official and academic opinions suggested that health tourism destinations should focus on special demands and indications, while professionals tended to consider the natural environment as a primary concern. In particular, they considered that good air quality can help people release pressure, relax, activate lymphocytes, improve immune function, and enhance disease immunity. The health tourism destination index can contribute to the overall strategic planning process by identifying improvements in activities and enhancing competitiveness in health tourism management by using benchmarking to further improve tourists' experience and satisfaction.
Melatonin exerts a wide range of effects among various tissues and organs. However, there is currently no study to investigate the genetic determinants of melatonin secretion. Here, we conducted a ...genome-wide association study (GWAS) for melatonin secretion using morning urine 6-hydroxymelatonin sulfate-to-creatinine ratio (UMCR). We initially enrolled 5000 participants from Taiwan Biobank in this study. After excluding individuals that did not have their urine collected in the morning, those who had history of neurological or psychiatric disorder, and those who failed to pass quality control, association of single nucleotide polymorphisms with log-transformed UMCR adjusted for age, sex and principal components of ancestry were analyzed. A second model additionally adjusted for estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). A total of 2373 participants underwent the genome-wide analysis. Five candidate loci associated with log UMCR (P value ranging from 6.83 × 10
to 3.44 × 10
) encompassing ZFHX3, GALNT15, GALNT13, LDLRAD3 and intergenic between SEPP1 and FLJ32255 were identified. Similar results were yielded with further adjustment for eGFR. Interestingly, the identified genes are associated with circadian behavior, neuronal differentiation, motor disorders, anxiety, and neurodegenerative diseases. We conducted the first GWAS for melatonin secretion and identified five candidate genetic loci associated with melatonin level. Replication and functional studies are needed in the future.
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