GPU Computing Gems Emerald Edition offers practical techniques in parallel computing using graphics processing units (GPUs) to enhance scientific research. The first volume in Morgan Kaufmann's ...Applications of GPU Computing Series, this book offers the latest insights and research in computer vision, electronic design automation, and emerging data-intensive applications. It also covers life sciences, medical imaging, ray tracing and rendering, scientific simulation, signal and audio processing, statistical modeling, video and image processing.This book is intended to help those who are facing the challenge of programming systems to effectively use GPUs to achieve efficiency and performance goals. It offers developers a window into diverse application areas, and the opportunity to gain insights from others' algorithm work that they may apply to their own projects. Readers will learn from the leading researchers in parallel programming, who have gathered their solutions and experience in one volume under the guidance of expert area editors. Each chapter is written to be accessible to researchers from other domains, allowing knowledge to cross-pollinate across the GPU spectrum. Many examples leverage NVIDIA's CUDA parallel computing architecture, the most widely-adopted massively parallel programming solution. The insights and ideas as well as practical hands-on skills in the book can be immediately put to use.Computer programmers, software engineers, hardware engineers, and computer science students will find this volume a helpful resource. For useful source codes discussed throughout the book, the editors invite readers to the following website: Covers the breadth of industry from scientific simulation and electronic design automation to audio / video processing, medical imaging, computer vision, and moreMany examples leverage NVIDIA's CUDA parallel computing architecture, the most widely-adopted massively parallel programming solutionOffers insights and ideas as well as practical "hands-on" skills you can immediately put to use
Organofluorine compounds are central to modern chemistry, and broadly applicable transformations that generate them efficiently and enantioselectively are in much demand. Here we introduce efficient ...catalytic methods for the addition of allyl and allenyl organoboron reagents to fluorine-substituted ketones. These reactions are facilitated by readily and inexpensively available catalysts and deliver versatile and otherwise difficult-to-access tertiary homoallylic alcohols in up to 98% yield and >99:1 enantiomeric ratio. Utility is highlighted by a concise enantioselective approach to the synthesis of the antiparasitic drug fluralaner (Bravecto, presently sold as the racemate). Different forms of ammonium-organofluorine interactions play a key role in the control of enantioselectivity. The greater understanding of various non-bonding interactions afforded by these studies should facilitate the future development of transformations that involve fluoroorganic entities.
AbstractObjectiveTo assess the association between covid-19 vaccines and risk of thrombocytopenia and thromboembolic events in England among adults.DesignSelf-controlled case series study using ...national data on covid-19 vaccination and hospital admissions.SettingPatient level data were obtained for approximately 30 million people vaccinated in England between 1 December 2020 and 24 April 2021. Electronic health records were linked with death data from the Office for National Statistics, SARS-CoV-2 positive test data, and hospital admission data from the United Kingdom’s health service (NHS).Participants29 121 633 people were vaccinated with first doses (19 608 008 with Oxford-AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) and 9 513 625 with Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2 mRNA)) and 1 758 095 people had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. People aged ≥16 years who had first doses of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 or BNT162b2 mRNA vaccines and any outcome of interest were included in the study.Main outcome measuresThe primary outcomes were hospital admission or death associated with thrombocytopenia, venous thromboembolism, and arterial thromboembolism within 28 days of three exposures: first dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine; first dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine; and a SARS-CoV-2 positive test. Secondary outcomes were subsets of the primary outcomes: cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), ischaemic stroke, myocardial infarction, and other rare arterial thrombotic events.ResultsThe study found increased risk of thrombocytopenia after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination (incidence rate ratio 1.33, 95% confidence interval 1.19 to 1.47 at 8-14 days) and after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test (5.27, 4.34 to 6.40 at 8-14 days); increased risk of venous thromboembolism after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination (1.10, 1.02 to 1.18 at 8-14 days) and after SARS-CoV-2 infection (13.86, 12.76 to 15.05 at 8-14 days); and increased risk of arterial thromboembolism after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination (1.06, 1.01 to 1.10 at 15-21 days) and after SARS-CoV-2 infection (2.02, 1.82 to 2.24 at 15-21 days). Secondary analyses found increased risk of CVST after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination (4.01, 2.08 to 7.71 at 8-14 days), after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination (3.58, 1.39 to 9.27 at 15-21 days), and after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test; increased risk of ischaemic stroke after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination (1.12, 1.04 to 1.20 at 15-21 days) and after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test; and increased risk of other rare arterial thrombotic events after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination (1.21, 1.02 to 1.43 at 8-14 days) and after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.ConclusionIncreased risks of haematological and vascular events that led to hospital admission or death were observed for short time intervals after first doses of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and BNT162b2 mRNA vaccines. The risks of most of these events were substantially higher and more prolonged after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after vaccination in the same population.
Portions of East Asia often experienced extremely heavy rainfall events over the last decade. Intense atmospheric rivers (ARs), eddy transports of moisture over the middle latitudes, contributed ...significantly to these events. Although previous studies pointed out that landfalling ARs will become more frequent under global warming, the extent to which ARs produce extreme rainfall over East Asia in a warmer climate remains unclear. Here we evaluate changes in the frequency and intensity of AR‐related extreme heavy rainfall under global warming using a set of high‐resolution global and regional atmospheric simulations. We find that both the AR‐related water vapor transport and rainfall intensify over the southern and western slopes of mountains over East Asia in a warmer climate. ARs are responsible for a large fraction of the increase in the occurrence of extreme rainfall in boreal spring and summer. ARs will bring unprecedented extreme rainfall over East Asia under global warming.
Plain Language Summary
In July 2018 and July 2020, East Asia suffered from extremely heavy rainfall events. The heavy rainfall was observed over a broad area because of organized water vapor flow associated with atmospheric rivers (ARs). ARs received increasing attention over the past decade because of such hazardous events. Under global warming, water vapor transports by ARs are enhanced. Using a set of global and regional atmospheric model simulations, we assessed the great role of ARs in the future extreme rainfall events. ARs with increased water vapor will bring record‐breaking extreme rainfall when they make landfall over China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Such a great importance of ARs may also be found over other mid‐latitude regions, including western North America and Europe.
Key Points
Atmospheric rivers bring extreme rainfall over East Asia in current and future climates
Atmospheric rivers are responsible for a large fraction of the increase in extreme rainfall over East Asia under global warming
Intensified water vapor transports by atmospheric rivers cause record‐breaking extreme rainfall events in a warmer climate
Emerging reports of rare neurological complications associated with COVID-19 infection and vaccinations are leading to regulatory, clinical and public health concerns. We undertook a self-controlled ...case series study to investigate hospital admissions from neurological complications in the 28 days after a first dose of ChAdOx1nCoV-19 (n = 20,417,752) or BNT162b2 (n = 12,134,782), and after a SARS-CoV-2-positive test (n = 2,005,280). There was an increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome (incidence rate ratio (IRR), 2.90; 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.15-3.92 at 15-21 days after vaccination) and Bell's palsy (IRR, 1.29; 95% CI: 1.08-1.56 at 15-21 days) with ChAdOx1nCoV-19. There was an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke (IRR, 1.38; 95% CI: 1.12-1.71 at 15-21 days) with BNT162b2. An independent Scottish cohort provided further support for the association between ChAdOx1nCoV and Guillain-Barré syndrome (IRR, 2.32; 95% CI: 1.08-5.02 at 1-28 days). There was a substantially higher risk of all neurological outcomes in the 28 days after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test including Guillain-Barré syndrome (IRR, 5.25; 95% CI: 3.00-9.18). Overall, we estimated 38 excess cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome per 10 million people receiving ChAdOx1nCoV-19 and 145 excess cases per 10 million people after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. In summary, although we find an increased risk of neurological complications in those who received COVID-19 vaccines, the risk of these complications is greater following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.
Myocarditis is more common after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination, but the risks in younger people and after sequential vaccine doses are less ...certain.
A self-controlled case series study of people ages 13 years or older vaccinated for COVID-19 in England between December 1, 2020, and December 15, 2021, evaluated the association between vaccination and myocarditis, stratified by age and sex. The incidence rate ratio and excess number of hospital admissions or deaths from myocarditis per million people were estimated for the 1 to 28 days after sequential doses of adenovirus (ChAdOx1) or mRNA-based (BNT162b2, mRNA-1273) vaccines, or after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.
In 42 842 345 people receiving at least 1 dose of vaccine, 21 242 629 received 3 doses, and 5 934 153 had SARS-CoV-2 infection before or after vaccination. Myocarditis occurred in 2861 (0.007%) people, with 617 events 1 to 28 days after vaccination. Risk of myocarditis was increased in the 1 to 28 days after a first dose of ChAdOx1 (incidence rate ratio, 1.33 95% CI, 1.09-1.62) and a first, second, and booster dose of BNT162b2 (1.52 95% CI, 1.24-1.85; 1.57 95% CI, 1.28-1.92, and 1.72 95% CI, 1.33-2.22, respectively) but was lower than the risks after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test before or after vaccination (11.14 95% CI, 8.64-14.36 and 5.97 95% CI, 4.54-7.87, respectively). The risk of myocarditis was higher 1 to 28 days after a second dose of mRNA-1273 (11.76 95% CI, 7.25-19.08) and persisted after a booster dose (2.64 95% CI, 1.25-5.58). Associations were stronger in men younger than 40 years for all vaccines. In men younger than 40 years old, the number of excess myocarditis events per million people was higher after a second dose of mRNA-1273 than after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test (97 95% CI, 91-99 versus 16 95% CI, 12-18). In women younger than 40 years, the number of excess events per million was similar after a second dose of mRNA-1273 and a positive test (7 95% CI, 1-9 versus 8 95% CI, 6-8).
Overall, the risk of myocarditis is greater after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination and remains modest after sequential doses including a booster dose of BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. However, the risk of myocarditis after vaccination is higher in younger men, particularly after a second dose of the mRNA-1273 vaccine.
An operationally simple in situ protection/deprotection strategy that significantly expands the scope of kinetically controlled catalytic Z‐ and E‐selective olefin metathesis is introduced. Prior to ...the addition of a sensitive Mo‐ or Ru‐based complex, treatment of a hydroxy‐ or a carboxylic‐acid‐containing olefin with commercially available HB(pin) or readily accessible HB(trip)2 (pin=pinacolato, trip=2,4,6‐tri(isopropyl)phenyl) for 15 min is sufficient for efficient generation of a desired product. Routine workup leads to quantitative deprotection. A range of stereochemically defined Z‐ and E‐alkenyl chlorides, bromides, fluorides, and boronates or Z‐trifluoromethyl‐substituted alkenes with a hydroxy or carboxylic acid group were thus prepared in 51–97 % yield with 93 to >98 % stereoselectivity. We also show that, regardless of whether a polar functional unit is present or not, a small amount of HB(pin) may be used to remove residual water, significantly enhancing efficiency.
Without a trace: Alkenes containing a hydroxy and/or a carboxylic acid group were converted into Z or E alkenes through one‐pot operations consisting of in situ protection, catalytic cross‐metathesis, and deprotection by mild workup/purification. Prior to the addition of a sensitive Mo or Ru complex, treatment of the olefin with HB(pin) or readily available HB(trip)2 for 15 min was sufficient for the efficient generation of a desired product (see scheme).
Deep neural network (DNN)-based video analysis has become one of the most essential and challenging tasks to capture implicit information from video streams. Although DNNs significantly improve the ...analysis quality, they introduce intensive compute and memory demands and require dedicated hardware for efficient processing. The customized heterogeneous system is one of the promising solutions with general-purpose processors (CPUs) and specialized processors (DNN Accelerators). Among various heterogeneous systems, the combination of CPU and FPGA has been intensively studied for DNN inference with improved latency and energy consumption compared to CPU + GPU schemes and with increased flexibility and reduced time-to-market cost compared to CPU + ASIC designs. However, deploying DNN-based video analysis on CPU + FPGA systems still presents challenges from the tedious RTL programming, the intricate design verification, and the time-consuming design space exploration. To address these challenges, we present a novel framework, called EcoSys, to explore co-design and optimization opportunities on CPU-FPGA heterogeneous systems for accelerating video analysis. Novel technologies include 1) a coherent memory space shared by the host and the customized accelerator to enable efficient task partitioning and online DNN model refinement with reduced data transfer latency; 2) an end-to-end design flow that supports high-level design abstraction and allows rapid development of customized hardware accelerators from Python-based DNN descriptions; 3) a design space exploration (DSE) engine that determines the design space and explores the optimized solutions by considering the targeted heterogeneous system and user-specific constraints; and 4) a complete set of co-optimization solutions, including a layer-based pipeline, a feature map partition scheme, and an efficient memory hierarchical design for the accelerator and multithreading programming for the CPU. In this article, we demonstrate our design framework to accelerate the long-term recurrent convolution network (LRCN), which analyzes the input video and output one semantic caption for each frame. EcoSys can deliver 314.7 and 58.1 frames/s by targeting the LRCN model with AlexNet and VGG-16 backbone, respectively. Compared to the multithreaded CPU and pure FPGA design, EcoSys achieves <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">20.6\times </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">5.3\times </tex-math></inline-formula> higher throughput performance.
Flaviviruses are major causes of infectious disease. The vast global, social and economic impact due to morbidity and mortality associated with diseases caused by these viruses urgently demands ...effective therapeutic interventions. There is currently no specific antiviral therapy available for the effective clinical treatment of infections by any of the flaviviridae. Development of more effective vaccines and antiviral agents for the prevention and treatment of most flavivirus infections remains a clear public health priority in the 21st century.
This review describes some of the recent discoveries in the field of flavivirus inhibitor development, with a particular focus on targeting viral proteins. Emphasis is placed on the advances published during the 2012-2015 period.
The field of drug discovery targeting viral proteins has progressed slowly in recent years. New information, particularly on structures, location and mechanisms of action of established protein targets have been reported. There have also been studies on repurposing known drugs as templates for targeting flavivirus proteins and these hits could be promising templates for developing new more potent inhibitors. Further research should be conducted to improve in vitro assays that better reflect the conditions found in cellular environments.
In the hierarchy of cellular targets damaged by ionizing radiation (IR), classical models of radiation toxicity place DNA at the top. Yet, many prokaryotes are killed by doses of IR that cause little ...DNA damage. Here we have probed the nature of Mn-facilitated IR resistance in Deinococcus radiodurans, which together with other extremely IR-resistant bacteria have high intracellular Mn/Fe concentration ratios compared to IR-sensitive bacteria. For in vitro and in vivo irradiation, we demonstrate a mechanistic link between Mn(II) ions and protection of proteins from oxidative modifications that introduce carbonyl groups. Conditions that inhibited Mn accumulation or Mn redox cycling rendered D. radiodurans radiation sensitive and highly susceptible to protein oxidation. X-ray fluorescence microprobe analysis showed that Mn is globally distributed in D. radiodurans, but Fe is sequestered in a region between dividing cells. For a group of phylogenetically diverse IR-resistant and IR-sensitive wild-type bacteria, our findings support the idea that the degree of resistance is determined by the level of oxidative protein damage caused during irradiation. We present the case that protein, rather than DNA, is the principal target of the biological action of IR in sensitive bacteria, and extreme resistance in Mn-accumulating bacteria is based on protein protection.
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