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Motion estimation is the basic need for the success of many video analysis algorithms such as moving object detection, human activity recognition, etc. Most of the motion estimation algorithms are prone to weather conditions and thus, they fail to estimate the motion in degraded weather. Severe weather situations like snow, rain, haze, smog, etc., degrades the performance and reliability of video analysis algorithms. In this paper, we have analyzed the effect of the haze on motion estimation in hazy videos. We propose a cascaded architecture i.e. haze removal followed by optical flow for motion estimation in hazy videos. The proposed image de-hazing network is build upon the Residual and Inception module concepts and named as ResINet. Further, an optical flow is utilized to estimate the motion information. We have carried out the visual analysis to validate the proposed approach for motion estimation in hazy videos. Also, to validate the proposed ResINet for de-hazing, we carried out the quantitative analysis on two benchmark image de-hazing datasets.

Background and Aims: Patient cooperation, sedation, anxiolysis, and topicalization are important prerequisites for the successful and safe conduct of awake intubation. Because of the pharmacological properties, opioids can facilitate this process. Fentanyl is an opioid agonist and nalbuphine is an agonist-antagonist. This study aims to compare these two opioids for their effect on sedation and intubating conditions during awake fiberoptic intubation. Material and Methods: This randomized double-blind controlled study was conducted on 62 ASA I/II patients of either sex between the age of 20 and 60 years, weight between 40 and 80 kg, with MP class I/II airways requiring general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation. All patients received standard airway topicalization and nebulization. Patients were randomly allocated to one of the two groups according to a computer-generated random number table. Group F (n = 31) received fentanyl 2 μg/kg i.v. and group N (n = 31) received nalbuphine 0.2 mg/kg i.v. over 10 min before intubation. Fiberoptic intubation was attempted and lignocaine spray and propofol boluses were administered as and when required. Hemodynamic responses and intubating conditions were recorded. Repeated measure ANOVA, McNemar test, and Chi-square test or Fischer's exact test were used for data analysis. A P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Cough score (P = 0.458), post-intubation score (P = 1.000), and sedation score (P = 1.000) were comparable among the two groups. Hemodynamic responses and propofol and lignocaine requirements were also comparable. Conclusion: Both fentanyl and nalbuphine provide comparable intubating conditions when used before awake fiberoptic intubation with minimal adverse effects on hemodynamic profile.

Background Management of patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) requires subspecialized, comprehensive, multidisciplinary care. The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation established the Care Center Network (CCN) in 2013 with identified criteria to become a designated CCN site. Despite these criteria, the essential components of an ILD clinic remain unknown. Research Questions How are ILD clinics within the CCN structured? What are the essential components of an ILD clinic according to ILD physician experts, patients, and caregivers? Study Design and Methods This study had three components. First, all 68 CCN sites were surveyed to determine the characteristics of their current ILD clinics. Second, an online, three-round modified Delphi survey was conducted between October and December 2019 with 48 ILD experts participating in total. Items for round 1 were generated using expert interviews. During rounds 1 and 2, experts rated the importance of each item on a 5-point Likert scale. The a priori threshold for consensus was more than 75% of experts rating an item as important or very important. In round 3, experts graded items that met consensus and ranked items deemed essential for an ILD clinic. Third, ILD patient and caregiver focus groups were conducted and analyzed for content to determine their perspectives of an ideal ILD clinic. Results Forty items across four categories (members, infrastructure, resources, and multidisciplinary conference) achieved consensus as essential to an ILD clinic. Patient and caregiver focus groups identified three major themes: comprehensive, patient-centered medical care; expanded access to care; and comprehensive support for living and coping with ILD. Interpretation The essential components of an ILD clinic are well-aligned between physician experts and patients. Future research can use these findings to evaluate the impact of these components on patient outcomes and to inform best practices for ILD clinics throughout the world.

In stroke, there is paralysis or weakness of one side of the body including upper limb, trunk and lower limb leading to the disturbances in the trunk muscles. Trunk is often neglected part in the stroke rehabilitation, trunk training exercises and Swiss ball exercises results in better recruitment of trunk muscles thus improving sitting balance. To compare the effect of core strengthening exercises on Swiss ball and Conventional exercise, to improve trunk balance in hemiplegic patients following stroke. A total number of 70 subjects were screened as per inclusion and exclusion criteria. The subjects were divided into two groups, Group-A received core strengthening exercises on Swiss ball along with conventional treatment and Group-B received core strengthening exercises along with conventional treatment. Subjects showed improvement in trunk balance following 6 weeks of core strengthening exercises.Post-intervention the TIS, BBA and MBI score of both groups improved but the Group-A improved more significantly than Group-B. The level of significance was P

Effective motion estimation is one of the prime steps for any human action recognition (HAR) algorithm. Optical flow (OF) and motion history image (MHI) are two well-known methods for motion estimation in videos. OF has several advantages over MHI. But the major drawback with OF is that it is computationally very expensive as compared to the MHI. Therefore, in this paper, a new motion estimation technique named as Weber Motion History Image (WMHI) is proposed. Here, an extremely fast algorithm is proposed for HAR using WMHI, pose information, and convolutional neural network (CNN). In spite of being fast and less space consuming, the algorithm outperforms the existing pose based CNN results on five benchmark datasets namely JHMDB [1], sub-JHMDB [1] , MPII [2] and HMDB51 [3] and UCF101 [4]. The work mainly focuses on a new efficient algorithm which can be implemented for real-time HAR in videos. For real-time implementation, the two basic criteria on which an algorithm can be analyzed are space and time complexity. The proposed algorithm is faster as compared to the existing OF based HAR systems. In terms of space complexity, the feature size of the proposed algorithm is almost 50% of the existing OF based algorithm. The recognition results still outperform the existing result by a significant margin.

IntroductionThe primary aim of the National Institute of Health Research-funded global health research group, Warwick-India-Canada (WIC), is to reduce the burden of psychotic disorders in India. India has a large pool of undetected and untreated patients with psychosis and a treatment gap exceeding 75%. Evidence-based packages of care have been piloted, but delivery of treatments still remains a challenge. Even when patients access treatment, there is minimal to no continuity of care. The overarching ambition of WIC programme is to improve patient outcomes through (1) developing culturally tailored clinical interventions, (2) early identification and timely treatment of individuals with mental illness and (3) improving access to care by exploiting the potential of digital technologies.Methods and analysisThis multicentre, multicomponent research programme, comprising five work packages and two cross-cutting themes, is being conducted at two sites in India: Schizophrenia Research Foundation, Chennai (South India) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (North India). WIC will (1) develop and evaluate evidence-informed interventions for early and first-episode psychosis; (2) determine pathways of care for early psychosis; (3) investigate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of community care models, including digital and mobile technologies; (4) develop strategies to reduce the burden of mental illnesses among youth; (5) assess the economic burden of psychosis on patients and their carers; and (6) determine the feasibility of an early intervention in psychosis programme in India.Ethics and disseminationThis study was approved by the University of Warwick’s Biomedical and Scientific Research Ethics Committee (reference: REGO-2018-2208), Coventry, UK and research ethics committees of all participating organisations. Research findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed scientific publications, presentations at learnt societies and visual media.

Recognition of human actions from videos can be improved if depth information is available. Depth information certainly helps in segregating foreground motion from the background. Single image depth estimation (SIDE) is a commonly used method for the analysis of weather degraded images. In this study, the idea of SIDE is extended to human action recognition (HAR) on datasets where depth information is not available. Several depth-based HAR algorithms are available but all of them are using the depth information given with the dataset. Some other methods are using depth motion map which refers to the depth of motion in a temporal direction. Here, a new depth-based end-to-end deep network is proposed for HAR in which the frame-wise depth is estimated and this estimated depth is used for processing instead of RGB frame. As colour information is not required for estimating motion, a single channel depth map is used for estimating motion in the video. It makes the system computationally efficient. The proposed method is tested and verified on three benchmark datasets namely JHMDB, HMDB51 and UCF101. The proposed method outperforms the existing state-of-the-art methods for HAR on all the three tested datasets.

We conducted an extensive serological study to quantify population-level exposure and define correlates of immunity against SARS-CoV-2. We found that relative to mild COVID-19 cases, individuals with severe disease exhibited elevated authentic virus-neutralizing titers and antibody levels against nucleocapsid (N) and the receptor binding domain (RBD) and the S2 region of spike protein. Unlike disease severity, age and sex played lesser roles in serological responses. All cases, including asymptomatic individuals, seroconverted by 2 weeks post-PCR confirmation. RBD- and S2-specific and neutralizing antibody titers remained elevated and stable for at least 2-3 months post-onset, whereas those against N were more variable with rapid declines in many samples. Testing of 5882 self-recruited members of the local community demonstrated that 1.24% of individuals showed antibody reactivity to RBD. However, 18% (13/73) of these putative seropositive samples failed to neutralize authentic SARS-CoV-2 virus. Each of the neutralizing, but only 1 of the non-neutralizing samples, also displayed potent reactivity to S2. Thus, inclusion of multiple independent assays markedly improved the accuracy of antibody tests in low seroprevalence communities and revealed differences in antibody kinetics depending on the viral antigen. In contrast to other reports, we conclude that immunity is durable for at least several months after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID19, has caused a pandemic that has infected a pandemic that has infected more than 80 M and killed more than 1.6 M persons worldwide. In the US as of December 2020, it has infected more than 32 M people while causing more than 570,000 deaths. As the pandemic persists, there has been a public demand to reopen schools and university campuses. To consider these demands, it is necessary to rapidly identify those individuals infected with the virus and isolate them so that disease transmission can be stopped. In the present study, we examined the sensitivity of the Quidel Rapid Antigen test for use in screening both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals at the University of Arizona from June to August 2020. A total of 885 symptomatic and 1551 asymptomatic subjects were assessed by antigen testing and real-time PCR testing. The sensitivity of the test for both symptomatic and asymptomatic persons was between 82 and 90%, with some caveats.

The all-weather intelligent surveillance system is the prime challenge for computer vision researchers. The surveillance is mostly done to analyze the human activity in a particular region. Several extreme weather conditions like rain, snow, haze, fog etc. halts the surveillance process and thus decreases the reliability of the surveillance system. Here, an attempt is made to tackle one of these weather situation i.e. haze in case of surveillance. Haze distorts the quality of images and videos captured by camera. Due to poor quality, it is difficult to analyze the haze degraded video for the human activities using the existing state-of-the-art methods for human action recognition (HAR). Therefore, in this paper, a new two level saliency based end-to-end network (TSNet) for HAR in hazy videos is proposed. De-hazing approaches given in [1]-[9] have certain limitations and therefore we fine-tuned the de-hazing network given in [10] for HAR. The concept of rank pooling given in [11] is further utilized to efficiently represent the temporal saliency of the video. The transmission map information is utilized here to fix the spatial saliency in each frame. As currently, there is no dataset available for HAR in hazy video, here a new dataset of hazy video is generated from two benchmark datasets namely HMDB51 [12] and UCF101 [13] by adding synthetic haze. The existing methods for HAR proposed in [11], [14], [15] are applied and compared with the proposed method on proposed hazy-HMDB51 and hazy-UCF101. The proposed method clearly outperforms the above mentioned methods in terms of average recognition rate (ARR).

Automated visual analysis of the object is of prime importance to realize the real-time concept of the internet of things. In this paper, we proposed a real-time fine grained visual analytics system for tracing the visibility of products on retail store shelves. The proposed visual monitoring system (VMS) is aimed to achieve high rates of product recognition, regardless of several real-time challenges like occlusion, different lightening conditions, product orientation etc. To address all these issues, the VMS collects the local feature descriptors which are scale invariant, rotational invariant and illumination invariant from training template images. Once, the testing image uploaded from any camera enabled device, the VMS extracts same local features and matches with the target feature descriptors for finegrained object recognition. This paper also covers the performance of various state-of-the-art local feature descriptors for object detection in context of retail store monitoring/tracking. The performance of the VMS is tested on real time retail shelve images. The results after investigation, the proposed fine-grained VMS shows approximately 90% accuracy in brand level detection.

No abstract available. Article truncated at 150 words. A 56-year-old man with history a of alcohol abuse presents with progressive shortness of breath on exertion, bilateral lower extremity swelling and 12-pound weight gain over two weeks. His transthoracic echocardiography (Figure 1) demonstrated severely increased global right ventricle (RV) size, severely dilated right atrium (RA), severe pulmonary artery (PA) dilation, moderate tricuspid regurgitation (TR) and right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) estimated at 85 + central venous pressure (CVP) in the context of severely reduced RV systolic function. Right heart catheterization (RHC) showed PA pressure (systolic/diastolic, mean) of 94/28, 51 mmHg with a PA occlusion pressure of 12 mmHg. After extensive evaluation, our patient’s presentation of right heart failure seemed to be a manifestation of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. Our patient subsequently had cardiac MRI (cMRI) with findings shown above (Figure 2). CMRI is a valuable, three-dimensional imaging modality that provides detailed morphology of the cardiac chambers along with accurate …

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is one of the most commonly performed bariatric operations in the United States. It involves partitioning a small gastric pouch off the proximal stomach and attaching that pouch directly to the intestine, thereby bypassing the large remainder of the stomach (1,2). Placing a Dobhoff tube (DHT) and confirming its placement can be challenging due to the change in anatomy after the procedure. Here, we have a 65-year-old woman who presented to the hospital with acute encephalopathy and acute hypoxic respiratory failure due to multifocal pneumonia requiring intubation and prolonged ICU stay. A DHT was inserted after intubation for feeding purposes. An abdominal X-ray was obtained to confirm placement of the DHT (Figure 1). Normally the DHT tip should be placed in the 2nd to 3rd portion of the duodenum and would create a C-shaped tracing on the X-ray. However, in our patient who had history of Roux-en-Y …

The study introduced anti-hyperglycemic influence of aqueous extract of Ocimum basilicum seeds (AEOBS) in Streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic rats and estimating its potential to ameliorate altered level of biochemical parameters, serum electrolytes level and haematological indices along with its effect on body weight of treated rats. The albino rats were selected to observe oral glucose tolerance test by oral intake of aq. glucose solution (4g/kg, body weight) in normal rats and estimation of blood glucose level after administration of AEOBS at 250mg/kg, 500mg/kg and standard drug glibenclamide at 0.6mg/kg, body weight. Antidiabetic activity was evaluated in chronic study models by STZ induced diabetes in rats followed by blood glucose estimation. Chronic study model was selected to carry out further studies to evaluate the effect of AEOBS at 250mg/kg, 500mg/kg and standard drug on body weight, alterations in biochemical parameters including AST, ALT, ALP, total bilirubin and total protein, alterations in serum electrolytes like Na+, K+, Cl-, HCO3- along with estimation of haematological indices like red blood cells (RBC), white blood cells (WBC), hemoglobin (Hb), lymphocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils, monocytes and basophils. AEOBS significantly reduced the blood glucose level of diabetic rats at both doses. Body weight was also improved significantly. Similarly, the levels of biochemical parameters, serum electrolytes, and haematological indices were significantly ameliorated at both doses of AEOBS. The histopathological results revealed reconstitution of pancreatic islets towards normal cellular architecture in rats treated with AEOBS. The results illustrated that AEOBS have eminent antidiabetic potential in STZ effectuated diabetes in rats and can be extensively used for the treatment of diabetes mellitus-II and its associated complications including anaemia, diabetic nephropathy, liver dysfunction, and immunosuppression.

In this paper, we propose a novel feature extraction and retrieval technique for medical images. Our proposed technique (LPVCoP) extracts similarity between grayscale images by using the relationship between reference pixel and its surrounding neighbor pixels through peak/valley edges which are obtained by taking directional derivatives. LPVCoP uses the co-occurrence among the first-order directional derivatives of reference pixel and second neighborhood adjoining pixels. The working of the proposed technique has been checked by implementing it in MATLAB and verifying the result on Computer Tomography (CT) databases. The retrieval results of the proposed technique are compared with the existing technique of image retrieval in terms of average retrieval rate (ARR) and average retrieval precision (ARP). The retrieval results of the LPVCoP are better as compared to the existing techniquesfor image retrieval.

BACKGROUND Coccidioidomycosis, an endemic fungal infection, is more likely to be symptomatic and severe among those receiving allogeneic transplants. While several case series have been published for various transplanted organs, none has described the incidence and outcomes in those receiving lung transplants within the coccidioidal endemic region. METHODS Patients receiving a heart-lung, single-lung, or bilateral-lung transplantation at the University of Arizona between 1985 and 2009 were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS Coccidioidomycosis occurred post transplantation in 11 (5.8%) of 189 patients. All but one patient was diagnosed with pulmonary coccidioidomycosis and only one had a history of prior coccidioidomycosis. Two patients received transplants from donors found to have coccidioidomycosis at the time of transplantation and one death was directly attributed to coccidioidomycosis. The risk of developing active coccidioidomycosis was significantly higher if the patient did not receive some type of antifungal therapy post transplantation (P

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a very important tool for the analysis of a process/system from its cradle to grave. This technique is very useful in the estimation of energy usage and environmental load by a product/system. The demand of sugar is very high in the world market. So sugar industry is the leading industry, which produces sugar with the help of sugarcane mostly. In sugar industry, different sizes of sugar crystals and also some by-products such as bagasse, molasses, filter cake and ash are produced. Out of these, some are used an input resource in other plants like power plant and distillery for optimal utilization of waste produced in sugar industry. The outputs of power plant (electricity and steam) used in mills, distilleries, residences of sugar industry and supply to grid for sell. The molasses is the waste of sugar which is used for the production of ethanol, so molasses is a by-product of sugar industry. LCA and waste management methods are very helpful to analyse and reduce the environmental effects.

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. A 25-year-old woman with a past medical history significant for pulmonary coccidioidomycosis and poorly controlled type I diabetes mellitus presented to the emergency department with a chief complaint of 4 days of progressively worsening shortness of breath and 3-4 days of intermittent hemoptysis. Initial CT scan demonstrated progressive tree-in-bud and ground glass opacities in the right upper and lower lung lobes suggesting worsening of her ongoing coccidiomycosis (Figure 1). On hospital day 3 she began to have worsening hypoxemia and hemoptysis requiring transfer to the intensive care unit. Interventional radiology was consulted who performed an emergent right sided bronchial artery embolization with the ethylene vinyl alcohol polymer, Onyxtm. After embolization her chest radiographs demonstrated evidence of the embolization material in the pulmonary vasculature (Figure 2). Ethylene vinyl alcohol polymer, Onyxtm is a liquid embolic substance which solidifies after contact with ionic materials (1). This results in a rapid, irreversible and ...

The mortality rate for Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) is estimated to be ∼12% and for toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) it is around 30%. It continues to be a severe life-threatening drug reaction. We present a 60-year-old Caucasian man with a medical history significant for breast cancer status post mastectomy and chemotherapy with docetaxel and cyclophosphamide who presented with severe mucositis and a progressing skin rash consistent with SJS. He was started on high-dose corticosteroids and IVIG but continued to have worsening mucosal ulcerations and severe bleeding from the oral, conjunctival and genital mucosa. He underwent several rounds of plasmapheresis and additional high-dose steroids with mild improvement in the mucocutaneous manifestations. He subsequently developed respiratory failure, which required mechanical ventilation, as well as disseminated intravascular coagulation, diffuse alveolar haemorrhage, with Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia which led to his demise on hospital day 15.

No abstract available. Article truncated at 150 words. A 25 year-old man was admitted to the ICU with acute renal failure and acute respiratory failure from fluid overload after attempting to cross the border. The patient was successfully extubated after five days of mechanical ventilation and renal replacement therapy. Following extubation, the patient had a bowel movement and passed a 23cm adult Ascaris lumbricoides. He was treated with a single dose of albendazole 400 mg. Ascariasis is a very common helminthic infection, particularly in pediatric populations, and affects mostly the gastrointestinal tract. When infective eggs are swallowed by the host, larvae hatch in the GI tract. The larvae invade the GI mucosa and then are brought into the lungs via portal circulation. The larvae can then move up the tracheobronchial tree and then are swallowed into the GI tract where the mature worms form (1). While our patient had a simple gastrointestinal infection, several pulmonary complications of ascariasis ...

The highly successful architecture and protocols of today’s Internet may operate poorly in environments characterized by very long delay paths and frequent network partitions. Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are emerging solutions to networks that experience frequent network partitions and large end-to-end delays. In this paper, we study how to provide high-performance routing technique in DTNs. We develop a multicasting mechanism based on requirement of path discovery and overall situation awareness of link availability to address the challenges of opportunistic link connectivity in DTNs. Simulation results show that this method can achieve a better message delivery ratio than existing approaches, e.g. DTBR (a dynamic tree-based routing), with similar delay performance. ERBR approach also achieves better efficiency performance when the probability of link unavailability is high and the duration of link downtime is large.

A new feature descriptor, local auxiliary color maximum vector pattern (LACMVP) has been proposed in this paper for image indexing and retrieval. The presented method synergize the color and texture information by taking a cardinal (red, green, blue) and an auxiliary channel (value) from two different color spaces (RGB and HSV). A vector pattern comprising of magnitude, sign and position patterns are calculated for the maximum local difference between the center pixel and its neighbor from the auxiliary channel. In essence LACMVP converts the image into local vectors along the maximum edge of the inter-chromatic texture pattern. The performance evaluation of proposed method has been done by performing natural image retrieval on Corel-10K and texture retrieval on MIT VisTex dataset. The results when compared with existing state-of-the-art techniques using standard performance evaluation measure like precision, recall, F1-score and G-score, showed a substantial improvement.