Systemic corticosteroid use to manage uncontrolled asthma and its associated healthcare burden may account for important health-related adverse effects. We conducted a systematic literature review to ...investigate the real-world extent and burden of systemic corticosteroid use in asthma. We searched MEDLINE and Embase databases to identify English-language articles published in 2010-2017, using search terms for asthma with keywords for oral corticosteroids and systemic corticosteroids. Observational studies, prescription database analyses, economic analyses, and surveys on oral/systemic corticosteroid use in children (>5 yr old), adolescents (12-17 yr old), and adults with asthma were included. We identified and reviewed 387 full-text articles, and our review included data from 139 studies. The included studies were conducted in Europe, North America, and Asia. Overall, oral/systemic corticosteroids were commonly used for asthma management and were more frequently used in patients with severe asthma than in those with milder disease. Long-term oral/systemic corticosteroid use was, in general, less frequent than short-term use. Compared with no use, long-term and repeated short-term oral/systemic corticosteroid use were associated with an increased risk of acute and chronic adverse events, even when doses were comparatively low. Greater oral/systemic corticosteroid exposure was also associated with increased costs and healthcare resource use. This review provides a comprehensive overview of oral/systemic corticosteroid use and associated adverse events for patients with all degrees of asthma severity and exposure duration. We report that oral/systemic corticosteroid use is prevalent in asthma management, and the risks of acute and chronic complications increase with the cumulative oral corticosteroid dosage.
Berry phase and Berry curvature have become ubiquitous concepts in physics, relevant to a variety of phenomena, such as polarization, various Hall effects, etc. Studies of these phenomena call for ...characterization of Berry phase or curvature which is largely limited to theory, and a few measurements in optical lattices. In this work, we report polarimetry of high-harmonic emission from solids and exploit this novel capability to directly retrieve the Berry curvature of α-quartz. We show that the two manifestations of broken inversion symmetry in solids lead to perpendicular or parallel polarization of even harmonics with respect to the driving field. Using semiclassical transport theory, we retrieve the Berry curvature from spectra measured in perpendicular polarization, the results being supported by ab initio calculation. Our work demonstrates an approach for the direct measurement of Berry curvature in solids, which could serve as a benchmark for theoretical studies.
On Data Augmentation for GAN Training Tran, Ngoc-Trung; Tran, Viet-Hung; Nguyen, Ngoc-Bao ...
IEEE transactions on image processing,
2021, Volume:
30
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Recent successes in Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have affirmed the importance of using more data in GAN training. Yet it is expensive to collect data in many domains such as medical ...applications. Data Augmentation (DA) has been applied in these applications. In this work, we first argue that the classical DA approach could mislead the generator to learn the distribution of the augmented data, which could be different from that of the original data. We then propose a principled framework, termed Data Augmentation Optimized for GAN (DAG), to enable the use of augmented data in GAN training to improve the learning of the original distribution. We provide theoretical analysis to show that using our proposed DAG aligns with the original GAN in minimizing the Jensen-Shannon (JS) divergence between the original distribution and model distribution. Importantly, the proposed DAG effectively leverages the augmented data to improve the learning of discriminator and generator. We conduct experiments to apply DAG to different GAN models: unconditional GAN, conditional GAN, self-supervised GAN and CycleGAN using datasets of natural images and medical images. The results show that DAG achieves consistent and considerable improvements across these models. Furthermore, when DAG is used in some GAN models, the system establishes state-of-the-art Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) scores. Our code is available ( https://github.com/tntrung/dag-gans ).
Stretchable electronic devices with intrinsically stretchable components have significant inherent advantages, including simple fabrication processes, a high integrity of the stacked layers, and low ...cost in comparison with stretchable electronic devices based on non‐stretchable components. The research in this field has focused on developing new intrinsically stretchable components for conductors, semiconductors, and insulators. New methodologies and fabrication processes have been developed to fabricate stretchable devices with intrinsically stretchable components. The latest successful examples of stretchable conductors for applications in interconnections, electrodes, and piezoresistive devices are reviewed here. Stretchable conductors can be used for electrode or sensor applications depending on the electrical properties of the stretchable conductors under mechanical strain. A detailed overview of the recent progress in stretchable semiconductors, stretchable insulators, and other novel stretchable materials is also given, along with a discussion of the associated technological innovations and challenges. Stretchable electronic devices with intrinsically stretchable components such as field‐effect transistors (FETs), photodetectors, light‐emitting diodes (LEDs), electronic skins, and energy harvesters are also described and a new strategy for development of stretchable electronic devices is discussed. Conclusions and future prospects for the development of stretchable electronic devices with intrinsically stretchable components are discussed.
Stretchable electronic devices based on stretchable components with intrinsic stretchability have significant advantages over other strategies including a simple fabrication process, high integrity of stacked layers, and low cost. Recent developments in methodologies and fabrication processes to fabricate stretchable devices with intrinsically stretchable components, which are of interest in many exciting next‐generation applications, such as e‐skin, personal healthcare, robotics, and human–machine interfaces, are reviewed.
Stretchable and conformal humidity sensors that can be attached to the human body for continuously monitoring the humidity of the environment around the human body or the moisture level of the human ...skin can play an important role in electronic skin and personal healthcare applications. However, most stretchable humidity sensors are based on the geometric engineering of non-stretchable components and only a few detailed studies are available on stretchable humidity sensors under applied mechanical deformations. In this paper, we propose a transparent, stretchable humidity sensor with a simple fabrication process, having intrinsically stretchable components that provide high stretchability, sensitivity, and stability along with fast response and relaxation time. Composed of reduced graphene oxide-polyurethane composites and an elastomeric conductive electrode, this device exhibits impressive response and relaxation time as fast as 3.5 and 7 s, respectively. The responsivity and the response and relaxation time of the device in the presence of humidity remain almost unchanged under stretching up to a strain of 60% and after 10,000 stretching cycles at a 40% strain. Further, these stretchable humidity sensors can be easily and conformally attached to a finger for monitoring the humidity levels of the environment around the human body, wet objects, or human skin.
Imbuing bio-inspired sensory devices with intelligent functions of human sensory organs has been limited by challenges in emulating the preprocessing abilities of sensory organs such as reception, ...filtering, adaptation, and sensory memory at the device level itself. Merkel cells, which is a part of tactile sensory organs, form synapse-like connections with afferent neuron terminals referred to as Merkel cell-neurite complexes. Here, inspired by structure and intelligent functions of Merkel cell-neurite complexes, we report a flexible, artificial, intrinsic-synaptic tactile sensory organ that mimics synapse-like connections using an organic synaptic transistor with ferroelectric nanocomposite gate dielectric of barium titanate nanoparticles and poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene). Modulation of the post-synaptic current of the device induced by ferroelectric dipole switching due to triboelectric-capacitive coupling under finger touch allowed reception and slow adaptation. Modulation of synaptic weight by varying the nanocomposite composition of gate dielectric layer enabled tuning of filtering and sensory memory functions.
The paper deals with
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•A novel hierarchical global path planning approach for mobile robots in a cluttered environment.•A proposed particle swarm optimization with an accelerated update methodology based ...on Pareto dominance principle.•Providing optimal global robot paths with computational efficiency.
In this paper, a novel hierarchical global path planning approach for mobile robots in a cluttered environment is proposed. This approach has a three-level structure to obtain a feasible, safe and optimal path. In the first level, the triangular decomposition method is used to quickly establish a geometric free configuration space of the robot. In the second level, Dijkstra's algorithm is applied to find a collision-free path used as input reference for the next level. Lastly, a proposed particle swarm optimization called constrained multi-objective particle swarm optimization with an accelerated update methodology based on Pareto dominance principle is employed to generate the global optimal path with the focus on minimizing the path length and maximizing the path smoothness. The contribution of this work consists in: (i) The development of a novel optimal hierarchical global path planning approach for mobile robots moving in a cluttered environment; (ii) The development of proposed particle swarm optimization with an accelerated update methodology based on Pareto dominance principle to solve robot path planning problems; (iii) Providing optimal global robot paths in terms of the path length and the path smoothness taking into account the physical robot system limitations with computational efficiency. Simulation results in various types of environments are conducted in order to illustrate the superiority of the hierarchical approach.
Using a variational approach, we establish the equivalence between a weighted volume minimization principle and the existence of a conical Calabi–Yau structure on horospherical cones with mild ...singularities. This allows us to do explicit computations on the examples arising from rank-two symmetric spaces, showing the existence of many irregular horospherical cones.
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