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We present a method for performing real-time facial animation of a 3D avatar from binocular video. Existing facial animation methods fail to automatically capture precise and subtle facial motions for driving a photo-realistic 3D avatar "in-the-wild" (i.e., variability in illumination, camera noise). The novelty of our approach lies in a light-weight process for specializing a personalized face model to new environments that enables extremely accurate real-time face tracking anywhere. Our method uses a pre-trained high-fidelity personalized model of the face that we complement with a novel illumination model to account for variations due to lighting and other factors often encountered in-the-wild (e.g., facial hair growth, makeup, skin blemishes). Our approach comprises two steps. First, we solve for our illumination model's parameters by applying analysis-by-synthesis on a short video recording. Using the pairs of model parameters (rigid, non-rigid) and the original images, we learn a regression for real-time inference from the image space to the 3D shape and texture of the avatar. Second, given a new video, we fine-tune the real-time regression model with a few-shot learning strategy to adapt the regression model to the new environment. We demonstrate our system's ability to precisely capture subtle facial motions in unconstrained scenarios, in comparison to competing methods, on a diverse collection of identities, expressions, and real-world environments.

Background Existing research indicates that tea drinking may exert beneficiary effects on mental health. However, associations between different types of tea intake and mental health such as depression have not been fully examined. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of green tea, fermented tea, and floral tea consumption with depressive symptoms. Methods We used data from the 2018 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, a nationwide survey on older adults in mainland China. A total of 13,115 participants (mean age 83.7 years, 54.2% were women) with valid responses were included in the analysis. The type (green, fermented [black, Oolong, white, yellow, dark, and compressed teas], and floral) and the frequency of tea consumption were recorded, and depressive symptoms were assessed using 10-item of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-10). We examined the associations between the type and the frequency of tea intake and depression, controlling for a set of demographic, socioeconomic, psychosocial, behavioral, and health-related variables. Results Overall, intakes of green tea, fermented tea, and floral tea were all significantly associated with lower prevalence of depressive symptoms, independent of other risk factors. Compared with the group of no tea intake, the adjusted ORs of depressive symptoms for daily green tea, fermented tea, and floral tea intake were 0.85 (95% CI: 0.76–0.95), 0.87 (95% CI: 0.76–0.99), and 0.70 (95% CI: 0.59–0.82), respectively. Linear associations were observed between the frequencies of all three types of tea intake and depressive symptoms (P Conclusions Among Chinese older adults, regularly consumed any type of tea (green, fermented, or floral) were less likely to show depressive symptoms, the associations seemed more pronounced among floral tea and green tea drinkers.

Si Chen,* Yingling Liu,* Kaiguang Zhang, Lele Chen Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230001, Anhui, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Si ChenDepartment of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, #17 Lvjiang Road, Hefei, 230001, Anhui, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail css81729@sina.comIntroduction: Gastric cancer is one of the main reasons of cancer-induced death, exploring the molecular mechanisms of gastric cancer progression is critical for gastric cancer therapy. Here, we studied the role of cysteine protease inhibitor CST1 in gastric cancer progression.Methods: Matrigel-coated or -uncoated transwell assay was used to determine the effect of CST1 on gastric cancer invasion and migration, luciferase reporter system was used to determine the effect of CST1 on Wnt pathway activity.Results: CST1 had high expression levels in gastric cancer tissues and cells, patients who had high CST1 expression had poor outcome. Overexpression of CST1 increased gastric cancer migration and invasion, while knockdown of CST1 suppressed gastric cancer migration invasion. Mechanism analysis showed CST1 promoted WNT signaling pathway activity, promoted the nuclear translocation of β-catenin and the expression of Wnt signaling targets. Inhibition of Wnt pathway in CST1 overexpression cells inhibited migration and invasion, suggesting CST1 promoted gastric cancer cell migration and invasion through activating the Wnt pathway.Conclusion: In summary, we found CST1 promoted gastric cancer migration and invasion through activating Wnt signaling, providing a novel target for gastric cancer therapy.Keywords: CST1, gastric cancer, invasion, migration, Wnt pathway

Periungual warts are common warts that grow on the periungual or nail margin, and it's challenging to remove them due to their particular location, causing its high recurrence rate and brings difficulties to the treatments. We successfully cured two cases of stubborn periungual warts by local hyperthermia. A male with warts on his hands and knees and a girl with periungual warts on her fingers received local hyperthermia of 44 °C for 30 min a time. One month after the last treatment, their lesions disappeared entirely and did not relapse during the follow-up period. These two cases showed that local hyperthermia might be a safe and effective method for treating periungual warts in patients with poor traditional treatment.

Port-wine stains are congenital vascular malformations that affect the quality of life of children and their parents. This study used the Family Dermatology Life Quality Index and Children’s Dermatology Life Quality Index to examine the effects of port-wine stains on the quality of life of children and their parents, including an in-depth, systematic analysis of the moderating effects of the children’s sex and port-wine stain classification. The study included 43 children (25 girls and 18 boys) and their parents. The presence of a port-wine stain had a significantly greater impact on the quality of life of mothers than on that of fathers (p

Depression is the most commonly diagnosed disorder among patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Understanding the association between the depression and the cognitive and physical function has important clinical implications in promoting the quality of life. Although evidences existed that patients with TBI experienced depression, cognitive impairment, and reduction in physical function. However, the relationship among these three conditions was not well understood. In the current study, we used the Hamilton Depression Scale, Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Basic Scale, and Activity of Daily Living Scale to assess the conditions of depression, cognition, and activities of daily living (ADL) among 145 TBI patients. To better understand the relationship between depression, cognition, and ADL, the data was analyzed using binary logistic regression. The Odds Ratio (OR) was computed to explore the risk of cognitive impairment and low-activities of daily living with depression. A total of 62.9% (n = 90/145) of patients lived with depression. The risk of cognitive impairment was 2.30 times higher for patients with depression than patients without depression (OR = 2.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.08, 4.90), and the risk of low-activities of daily living was 5.14 times higher for patients with depression than patients without depression (OR = 5.14, 95% CI 2.17, 12.14). Compared to patients without depression, patients with depression scored worse on tests of language and visual-spatial perception, and were slower on tests of executive functioning. In summary, this study provides initial evidence that depression significantly affects the cognition and ADL of TBI patients.

There is a connection between the frontal negative slow wave (FNSW) and the arousal inhibition in the hedonic purchase context. To calculate the FNSW (400–800 ms), event-related potentials (ERPs) method was applied to depict the neural substrates on prudent and impulsive consumers’ behaviors within various states of promotion. Promotion types include the pure price promotion and the mixed promotion (a mixture of a charitable donation and a discount). Behaviorally, consumers response more quickly in the pure price promotion condition and they express a preference for the mixed promotion. More importantly, a larger FNSW emerged in the impulsive consumers than the prudent, suggesting that the former might tend to control their eagerness to consume hedonic items. Compared with the price promotion as the worse option, the mixed promotion as the better option caused more perceptual conflict, leading to an increase in N2 amplitude. It suggests that consumers incline to reject the worse offers. These results also reveal that people primarily have to search negative promotion information by their insight and subsequently impulsive consumers inhibit the responses to the promotion information. The method of ERPs and FNSW should be helpful for marketing researchers and professionals on hedonic consumption and sales promotion.

Objectives A second outbreak of COVID-19 happened in China. We assessed the impact of quarantine duration on psychological outcomes and vaccination intention. Methods A cross-sectional online survey was employed. Participants were invited to complete the measurement of quarantine duration, social distancing, psychological distress, wellbeing (WHO-5), and vaccination intention. Multiple linear and logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between quarantine duration and social distancing, psychological distress, wellbeing, as well as vaccination intention. Results Of the 944 participants, 17.2% (7.8% quarantined for 1–7 days and 9.4% quarantined for > 7 days) of the sample have been quarantined. Quarantine for 1–7 days raised the social distancing(β = 2.61 95% CI 1.90–3.33) and vaccination intention (OR = 2.16 95% CI 1.22–3.82) .While quarantine for > 7 days was associated with the increases the social distancing(β = 3.00 95% CI 2.37–3.64) and psychological distress (β = 1.03 95% CI 0.22–1.86), and the decrease of wellbeing(β = 1.27 95% CI 0.29–2.26). Conclusions Longer quarantine duration reported a greater impact on social distancing and psychological distress, and a poorer wellbeing during the second COVID-19 pandemic. Quarantine for 1–7 days associated with the increase of vaccination intention. The duration of quarantine should be considered when preparing for immunization programs and preventing psychological disorders during COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE Although hearing difficulty is associated with cognitive impairment, little is known about the potential mechanisms involved. This study assessed the mediating effects of leisure activities and psychological resilience on the association between hearing difficulty and cognitive impairment. METHODS Two waves of Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (2011-2014) were used in the current analysis. Hearing difficulty, leisure activities and psychological resilience were measured at baseline. Cognitive function was assessed using the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination. The data were analyzed using generalized structural equation modeling with adjustment for confounding factors. RESULTS Of the 4267 participants at baseline, 33.5% (1430) reported hearing difficulty. The incidence of cognitive impairment was 15.3% (651) during the 3-year follow-up. Hearing difficulty increased the risk of cognitive impairment (odds ratio [OR] = 1.59, 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 1.26-1.92). Leisure activities and psychological resilience partly mediated the association between hearing difficulty and cognitive impairment. Hearing difficulty was negatively related to leisure activities (β = -0.23, 95% CI: -0.41 to -0.05) and psychological resilience (β = -0.34, 95% CI: -0.57 to -0.11). Furthermore, leisure activities (OR = 0.92, 95% CI: 0.89-0.96) and psychological resilience (OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.93-0.98) would significantly decrease the risk of cognitive impairment. CONCLUSIONS Hearing difficulty was associated with the incidence of cognitive impairment in older adults. Leisure activities and psychological resilience mediated the relationship. Participation in leisure activity and promoting psychological resilience may be candidate interventions in preventing cognitive impairment among the individuals with hearing difficulty.

In this work, an innovative composite hydrogel composed of curdlan (CD)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogels with a 3-d network structure was successfully prepared by freeze-thaw processing. The presence of interactions, changes in crystallinity, and thermal behaviour were investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and thermogravimetry (TGA and DTG), respectively. The morphology of the hydrogels was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). With the increase of PVA concentration, the composite hydrogel had a greater mechanical strength while remaining remarkably ductile as evinced by tensile test results. PVA content affects the swelling and water retention of CD/PVA hydrogels. The results of CCK-8 assay showed that CD/PVA hydrogels have no cytotoxic effect on the mouse fibroblast L929 cells. The AO/EB double-staining experiment further proved that the cells in the composite hydrogels had good cytocompatibility. The porous biohydrogels developed in the present work can provide an ideal cell growth environment as a scaffold. CD/PVA hydrogels highlight the value of this system for cell adhesion and proliferation, and further soft tissue engineering application.

Objectives . We used longitudinal cohort data to examine the effect of leisure activities and psychological wellbeing on the risk of cognitive impairment among Chinese older adults with hearing difficulty (HD). Study design . This prospective cohort study included 10,341 cognitively normal individuals aged 65 years or more at baseline from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity survey (from 2002 to 2011). Main outcome measures . Hearing difficulty, leisure activities and psychological wellbeing were measured at baseline. Cognitive function was assessed using the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Cognitive impairment was defined as an MMSE score of less than 18 points. Results . During a median follow-up of 5.6 years (59,869 person-years), 2,614 participants developed cognitive impairment. Cox proportional hazards models showed that the multi-adjusted hazard ratio (HR, 95% confidence interval) of cognitive impairment was 1.42 (1.28–1.58) for HD. Participants with a healthy lifestyle had a lower risk of cognitive impairment (HR = 0.77, 95% CI 0.69–0.85). Furthermore, participants with HD and a healthy lifestyle (HR = 1.67, 95% CI 1.27–2.18) had a lower HR of cognitive impairment than those with HD and an unhealthy lifestyle (HR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.61–2.14). A healthy lifestyle also delayed the onset of cognitive impairment by 0.50 years in people with HD. Conclusions . HD was associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment, but a healthy lifestyle may decrease the risk of cognitive impairment related to HD and delay the onset of cognitive impairment.

Objectives We used longitudinal cohort data to explore the association between self-reported hearing difficulty (SHD) and cognitive as well as physical functioning, and whether the association is mediated by social isolation. Study design 16,786 observations from participants aged 65 and older in two waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, a community‐based cohort study, were analyzed. Main outcome measures Cognitive impairment was assessed using the Chinese version of the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). Activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) were used as indicators of physical functioning. Results Generalized structural equation modelling (GSEM) analysis showed that SHD increased the risk cognitive impairment (odds ratio [OR] = 2.93, 95 % confidence intervals [CI] 2.61–3.30), ADL disability (OR = 2.10, 95 % CI 1.86–2.38), and IADL disability (OR = 2.39, 95 % CI 2.12–2.68). Social isolation mediated the association of SHD with cognitive functioning, but not with physical functioning. SHD was positively associated with social isolation (OR = 1.23, 95 % CI 1.07–1.42), and social isolation was significantly associated with cognitive impairment (OR = 2.09, 95 % CI 1.74–2.50). Indirect effects of SHD explained 12.3 % of the variance in cognitive impairment via social isolation. Conclusions SHD was associated with adverse cognitive and physical functioning in older adults. Cognitive but not physical functioning was indirectly influenced by SHD via social isolation.

BACKGROUND This study examined the combined effects of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) and educational attainment on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was performed among community residents with T2DM. Good glycemic control was defined as HbA1c

High-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is a life-threatening disease occurs in hypobaric hypoxia (HH) environment, which could be treated by Dexamethasone, but might cause side-effects. Potentilla anserina L polysaccharide (PAP) holds promising physiological and pharmacological properties which could be beneficial for HAPE treatment. In our study, the anti-hypoxia effect of PAP was firstly investigated through anti-normobaric hypoxia test and anti-acute hypoxia test. Then we established a model of HAPE and measured the lung water content, pathological changes and MDA, NO, SOD, GSH concentrations in lung tissues. We also evaluated the protein and mRNA levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, VEGF, NF-κB and HIF-1α) by ELISA kits, RT-PCR and Western blotting. As expected, PAP could dramatically reduce the lung water content, alleviate lung tissue injury, and inhibit MDA and NO production, it also promote SOD activity and GSH expression. In addition, it has been found that PAP blocked the NF-κB and HIF-1α signaling pathway activation, inhibited the generation of downstream pro-inflammatory cytokines. Therefore, PAP provides great potential in HAPE treatment mainly through suppression of oxidative stress and inflammatory suppression.

Background The primary care reform developed in Xiamen City stood out among the dozens of pilot reforms conducted in China. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the reform. Methods The data were collected from the Annual Statistical Report on Xiamen's Hospitals and face-to-face questionnaire interviews among physicians (n = 107) and community members (n = 399). Binary logistic regression was performed to analyze the factors influencing the community members' preference for treatment in community health centers (CHCs). Results The drug cost declined nearly 3.0% in hospitals, and outpatient visits increased more quickly (27.1%) in CHCs. A total of 86.2% of community members preferred to receive treatment for slight illness or chronic diseases in CHCs, and 77.9% of them were willing to be referred to CHCs during the recovery period. Patients who were managed by the general practice (GP) team showed higher percentages in examining and controlling blood pressure and blood glucose. Conclusion The reform in Xiamen was easily accepted by physicians and community members. The reform had rendered initial achievements in reducing drug income in hospitals, increasing outpatient visits in CHCs, seeking health care in CHCs, and controlling blood pressure and glucose for patients with chronic diseases.

Purpose Globally, there is a high incidence of gastric cancer (GC). Leucine zipper-EF-hand containing transmembrane protein 1 (LETM1) is reported to play a vital role in several human malignancies. However, there is limited understanding of the role of LETM1 in GC. This study aims to investigate the effects of LETM1 on proliferation, migration, and invasion of GC cells. Materials and methods The expression levels of LETM1 in the normal gastric mucosal epithelial cells (GES-1) and GC cells were analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and western blotting. CCK-8, wound healing, and Transwell invasion assays were performed to evaluate the effect of LETM1 knockdown or overexpression on the proliferation, migration, and invasion of the GC cells, respectively. Additionally, the effect of LETM1 knockdown or overexpression on GC cell apoptosis was determined by flow cytometry. Furthermore, the effect of LETM1 knockdown or overexpression on the expression levels of PI3K/Akt signaling pathway-related proteins was evaluated by western blotting. Results The GC cells exhibited markedly higher mRNA and protein expression levels of LETM1 than the GES-1 cells. Additionally, the knockdown of LETM1 remarkably suppressed the GC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion, and promoted the apoptosis of GC cells, which were reversed upon LETM1 overexpression. Furthermore, the western blotting analysis indicated that LETM1 facilitates GC progression via the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway. Conclusions LETM1 acts as an oncogenic gene to promote GC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion via the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway. Therefore, LETM1 may be a potential target for GC diagnosis and treatment.

Glioma is one of the most common and aggressive types of primary brain tumors. The accurate segmentation of subcortical brain structures is crucial to the study of gliomas in that it helps the monitoring of the progression of gliomas and aids the evaluation of treatment outcomes. However, the large amount of required human labor makes it difficult to obtain the manually segmented Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data, limiting the use of precise quantitative measurements in the clinical practice. In this work, we try to address this problem by developing a 3D Convolutional Neural Network (3D CNN) based model to automatically segment gliomas. The major difficulty of our segmentation model comes with the fact that the location, structure, and shape of gliomas vary significantly among different patients. In order to accurately classify each voxel, our model captures multiscale contextual information by extracting features from two scales of receptive fields. To fully exploit the tumor structure, we propose a novel architecture that hierarchically segments different lesion regions of the necrotic and non-enhancing tumor (NCR/NET), peritumoral edema (ED) and GD-enhancing tumor (ET). Additionally, we utilize densely connected convolutional blocks to further boost the performance. We train our model with a patch-wise training schema to mitigate the class imbalance problem. The proposed method is validated on the BraTS 2017 dataset1 and it achieves Dice scores of 0.72, 0.83 and 0.81 for the complete tumor, tumor core and enhancing tumor, respectively. These results are comparable to the reported state-of-the-art results, and our method is better than existing 3D-based methods in terms of compactness, time and space efficiency.

Speech perception is a crucial function of the human auditory system, but speech is not only an acoustic signal—visual cues from a talker’s face and articulators (lips, teeth, and tongue) carry considerable linguistic information. These cues offer substantial and important improvements to speech comprehension when the acoustic signal suffers degradations like background noise or impaired hearing. However, useful visual cues are not always available, such as when talking on the phone or listening to a podcast. We are developing a system for generating a realistic speaking face from speech audio input. The system uses novel deep neural networks trained on a large audio-visual speech corpus. It is designed to run in real time so that it can be used as an assistive listening device. Previous systems have shown improvements in speech perception only for the most degraded speech. Our design differs notably from earlier ones in that it does not use a language model—instead, it makes a direct transformation from speech audio to face video. This allows the temporal coherence between the acoustic and visual modalities to be preserved, which has been shown to be crucial to cross-modal perceptual binding.