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Angewandte Chemie (International Ed. in... Jun 2024Polysulfides are significant compounds in life science, pharmaceutical science, and material science. Therefore, polysulfide construction is in great demand. The...
Polysulfides are significant compounds in life science, pharmaceutical science, and material science. Therefore, polysulfide construction is in great demand. The controllable sequential installation on both ends of S-S motif faces an enormous challenge, due to the reversible covalent S-S bond. A library was established with two divergent mask groups for bilateral unsymmetrical disulfurating reagents (R1O-SS-SO2R2). Sequential coupling was successfully achieved with preferential activation of S-SO2 bond (37.6 kcal/mol) and controllable activation of S-O bond (54.8 kcal/mol) superior to S-S bond (62.0 kcal/mol), enabled untrammeled installation on the bilateral sides of S-S motif to afford unsymmetrical disulfides and trisulfides, even for natural products, pharmaceuticals, peptides, and protein (bovine serum albumin) cross-linkage successively.
PubMed: 38923731
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202408158 -
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis... Jun 2024Recent advances in the understanding of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have led to remarkable progress in visual editing and synthesis tasks, capitalizing on the...
Recent advances in the understanding of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have led to remarkable progress in visual editing and synthesis tasks, capitalizing on the rich semantics that are embedded in the latent spaces of pre-trained GANs. However, existing methods are often tailored to specific GAN architectures and are limited to either discovering global semantic directions that do not facilitate localized control, or require some form of supervision through manually provided regions or segmentation masks. In this light, we present an architecture-agnostic approach that jointly discovers factors representing spatial parts and their appearances in an entirely unsupervised fashion. These factors are obtained by applying a semi-nonnegative tensor factorization on the feature maps, which in turn enables context-aware local image editing with pixel-level control. In addition, we show that the discovered appearance factors correspond to saliency maps that localize concepts of interest, without using any labels. Experiments on a wide range of GAN architectures and datasets show that, in comparison to the state of the art, our method is far more efficient in terms of training time and, most importantly, provides much more accurate localized control.
PubMed: 38923485
DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2024.3415506 -
Angewandte Chemie (International Ed. in... Jun 2024Hydrogel actuators with complex 3D initial shapes show numerous important applications, but it remains challenging to fabricate such actuators. This article describes a...
Hydrogel actuators with complex 3D initial shapes show numerous important applications, but it remains challenging to fabricate such actuators. This article describes a polyelectrolyte-based strategy for modulating small-scale internal stresses within hydrogels to construct complex actuators with tailored 3D initial shapes. Introducing polyelectrolytes into precursor solutions significantly enhances the volume shrinkage of hydrogel networks during polymerization, allowing us to modulate internal stresses. Photopolymerization of these polyelectrolyte-containing solutions through a mask produces mechanically strong hydrogel sheets with large patterned internal stresses. Consequently, these hydrogel sheets attain complex 3D initial shapes at equilibrium, in contrast to the planar initial configuration of 2D actuators. We demonstrate that these 3D actuators can reversibly transform into other 3D shapes (i.e., 3D-to-3D shape transformations) in response to external stimuli. Additionally, we develop a predictive model based on the Flory-Rehner theory to analyze the polyelectrolyte-mediated shrinking behaviors of hydrogel networks during polymerization, allowing precise modulation of shrinkage and internal stress. This polyelectrolyte-boosted shrinking mechanism paves a route to the fabrication of high-performance 3D hydrogel actuators.
PubMed: 38922734
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202410383 -
Minerva Anestesiologica Jun 2024Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often require multiple interventions receiving general anesthesia during their lifetimes. However, a single negative...
Behavioral training and mirroring techniques to prepare for elective anesthesia in children with autism spectrum disorder: a prospective evaluation of implemented program.
BACKGROUND
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often require multiple interventions receiving general anesthesia during their lifetimes. However, a single negative experience may trigger and/or aggravate anxiety and subsequent development of unwanted behavior. This monocentric study assessed the compliance with mask induction of children with ASD who followed a preoperative preparation using behavioral training with positive reinforcement technique and use of mirroring technique.
METHODS
Prospective observational study including all children with ASD scheduled for day case treatment receiving general anesthesia, from November 2019 to August 2022. The primary outcome was Induction Compliance Checklist (ICC) score. The secondary outcomes were child's anxiety in the operating room assessed by the modified Yale Anxiety Scale (mYPAS), the comportment of the child in the recovery room, parental satisfaction about perioperative management (0 to 10 numerical scale) and the satisfaction of the caregivers about anesthetic management (0 to 10 numerical scale). Behavioral changes were assessed one month after the procedure when possible.
RESULTS
In total, 43 children from 1 to 17 years old were included. Median ICC score was 3 [1-6]. Induction Compliance was considered as excellent in 18.6% of patients, good in 39.5%, fair in 14.0% and poor in 27.9%. Seven patients (16.3%) needed restraint during induction.
CONCLUSIONS
The use of behavioral and mirroring techniques implemented as a preparation program for children with ASD could facilitate mask induction of anesthesia. Such a preparation achieves good to excellent compliance in almost 60% of patients.
PubMed: 38922283
DOI: 10.23736/S0375-9393.24.18021-2 -
Toxics Jun 2024Since the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been debates regarding the transmission modes of contagious viruses, including the influenza virus and severe...
Since the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been debates regarding the transmission modes of contagious viruses, including the influenza virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), along with its variants [...].
PubMed: 38922123
DOI: 10.3390/toxics12060443 -
Journal of Imaging Jun 2024The preservation of historical monuments presents a formidable challenge, particularly in monitoring the deterioration of building materials over time. Chateau de...
The preservation of historical monuments presents a formidable challenge, particularly in monitoring the deterioration of building materials over time. Chateau de Chambord's facade suffers from common issues such as flaking and spalling, which require meticulous stone and joint mapping from experts manually for restoration efforts. Advancements in computer vision have allowed machine-learning models to help in the automatic segmentation process. In this research, a custom architecture defined as SAM-SVM is proposed, to perform stone segmentation, based on the Segment Anything Model (SAM) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). By exploiting the zero-shot learning capabilities of SAM and its customizable input parameters, we obtain segmentation mask for stones and joints, which are then classified using SVM. Two more SAMs (three in total) are used, depending on how many stones are left to segment. Through extensive experimentation and evaluation, supported by computer vision methods, the proposed architecture achieves a Dice coefficient of 85%. Our results highlight the potential of SAM in cultural heritage conservation, providing a scalable and efficient solution for stone segmentation in historic monuments. This research contributes valuable insights and methodologies to the ongoing conservation efforts of Château de Chambord and could be extrapolated to other monuments.
PubMed: 38921625
DOI: 10.3390/jimaging10060148 -
Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) Jun 2024We compared the managing of prevention methods for SARS-CoV-2 infections in dental offices before and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study...
We compared the managing of prevention methods for SARS-CoV-2 infections in dental offices before and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to find out the varieties of infection prevention methods used by dentists before and during the pandemic and compare them. We designed a digital transversal questionnaire with 15 closed questions that was sent to 150 dentists in Bucharest, Romania. We received = 112 valid answers during July-August 2021 from dentists of all age groups (25-60 years), with a sex ratio of 0.36, which agreed to anonymously participate in this study. The results showed an increase in types and amount of personal protection equipment (i.e., ocular/facial protection, supplemental gown, and upgrading the FFP1 masks to FFP2 or FFP3). Ocular protection showed statistical significance by gender but not by age group. Vaccination rate against SARS-CoV-2 was at 80% of the participant dentists at the time of the survey and had statistical significance. However, vaccination status of the patients did not alter dentists' protection protocol.
PubMed: 38921284
DOI: 10.3390/healthcare12121169 -
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland) Jun 2024During the COVID-19 pandemic, people exhibited various forms of adjustments. This study examines how situational factors (i.e., the severity of COVID-19) and individual...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people exhibited various forms of adjustments. This study examines how situational factors (i.e., the severity of COVID-19) and individual differences (i.e., the HEXACO traits) affect one's COVID-19-related responses regarding behaviors (i.e., mask-wearing and hoarding), worries (i.e., worrying about infecting and spreading COVID-19), and attitudes (i.e., discrimination and empathy toward people infecting COVID-19) in China. With a sample of 927 participants, our results show that the severity of COVID-19 was predictive of all the responses, and its predictive value was more pronounced relative to personality traits. Concerning the association between personality traits and responses, Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness were predictive of one's behaviors, Emotionality was predictive of one's worries, and almost all the HEXACO traits were associated with one's attitudes toward people infected with COVID-19. This study sheds some light on understanding how situations and individual differences shape one's responses in a time of emergency.
PubMed: 38920814
DOI: 10.3390/bs14060482 -
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) May 2024Few-shot learning, especially few-shot image classification (FSIC), endeavors to recognize new categories using only a handful of labeled images by transferring...
Few-shot learning, especially few-shot image classification (FSIC), endeavors to recognize new categories using only a handful of labeled images by transferring knowledge from a model trained on base categories. Despite numerous efforts to address the challenge of deficient transferability caused by the distribution shift between the base and new classes, the fundamental principles remain a subject of debate. In this paper, we elucidate a decline in performance occurs and information is transferred during the testing phase, examining it from a frequency spectrum perspective. Specifically, we adopt causality on the frequency space for FSIC. With our causal assumption, non-causal frequencies (e.g., background knowledge) act as confounders between causal frequencies (e.g., object information) and predictions. Our experimental results reveal that different frequency components represent distinct semantics, and non-causal frequencies adversely affect transferability, resulting in suboptimal performance. Subsequently, we suggest a straightforward but potent approach, namely the (FRSM), to weight the frequency and mitigate the impact of non-causal frequencies. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed FRSM method significantly enhanced the transferability of the FSIC model across nine testing datasets.
PubMed: 38920482
DOI: 10.3390/e26060473 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2024Studies suggest a relationship between the emotional evocativeness of visual imagery and viewer responses, however, there is limited understanding of these associations,...
INTRODUCTION
Studies suggest a relationship between the emotional evocativeness of visual imagery and viewer responses, however, there is limited understanding of these associations, especially as they relate to viewers' personal experiences of adversities.
METHODS
In this exploratory study, we examined the relationship between the visual content of mask images and viewers' responses. In an online survey 699 participants (of = 1,010 total initial participants) rated 98 masks based on valence, arousal, and personal relevance and completed the Life Events Checklist. The masks included those created by service members (SMs) with traumatic brain injury (TBI), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depicting physical, psychological, and moral injuries and matched neutral masks created by creative arts therapists and arts in health scholars.
FINDINGS
The findings indicated that responses to mask image content (traumatic versus neutral) were associated with viewers' personal history of adversity and trauma. Specifically, images representing injury/trauma provoked stronger reactions on valence and arousal than neutral images. Moreover, participants with personal histories of trauma had heightened emotional responses to distressing imagery.
DISCUSSION
These findings have implications for art therapists as well as for clinical and general populations in that these results highlight the potential impact of distressing imagery particularly for individuals with personal histories of experiencing or witnessing traumatic events.
PubMed: 38919795
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1337927