Subhasish Das, Visnu Pritom Chowdhury, Md Amran Gazi
et al.
Abstract Linear growth faltering and stunting in children is associated with inflammation of small gut. Intestinal alkaline phosphatase prevents gut inflammation from subclinical bacterial infection that becomes impaired in the presence of neuraminidase-3 (Neu3) activity. We investigated if total Neu3 in children at 15 months can predict their linear growth at later ages (at 18, 21, and 24 months). We collected data from 189 children enrolled in the Malnutrition and Enteric Disease Study (MAL-ED) birth cohort study in Bangladesh. We determined total Neu3 activity in stool samples at 15 months of age and measured its association with length-for-age z-scores (LAZ) at 18, 21, and 24 months of age, in addition to their socio-demographic conditions using bi-variate and multivariable linear regression analyses. We found that total Neu3 at 15 months was negatively associated with the LAZ-score at 18 (regression coefficient -0.004, 95% CI -0.006 to -0.001, p < 0.01), 21 (-0.003, 95% CI -0.006, -0.001, p < 0.01), and 24 (-0.004, 95% CI -0.006, -0.001, p < 0.01) months of age after adjusting the covariates. In conclusion, total neuraminidase-3 in stool is a significant predictor of linear growth in young children and would be key in early detection of linear growth faltering and stunting.
The web-based dynamic geometry software CindyJS is a versatile tool to create interactive applications for mathematics and other topics. In this workshop, we will look at a code package that makes the creation of animations in CindyJS easier and more streamlined. Animations, which can then be embedded into presentations or be used in (lecture) videos. The focus lies on the creation of the animations themselves and some of the technical and artistic fundamentals to do so.
Reconstructing a surface from a point cloud is an underdetermined problem. We use a neural network to study and quantify this reconstruction uncertainty under a Poisson smoothness prior. Our algorithm addresses the main limitations of existing work and can be fully integrated into the 3D scanning pipeline, from obtaining an initial reconstruction to deciding on the next best sensor position and updating the reconstruction upon capturing more data.
Establishing a high-selectivity and rapid detection technology for trace index components in complex samples is of great significance for real-time and on-site drug quality evaluation. In this study, a molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensor with highly selective recognition and detection of trace hyperoside was prepared using chitosan functionalized Nitrogen-doped graphene composite coated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs/N-GR@CS) as electrode substrate modification material, and the deposition of AuNPs further improved the conductivity of the modified electrode. With the aid of molecular imprinting technology, polymer films with high selectivity and identification of hyperoside were successfully prepared on glassy carbon electrodes (GCE) by self-assembly using hyperoside as template molecule and acrylamide as functional monomer. Because the acrylamide can accept protons through the olefinic double bond and firmly polymerize with each other, while it binds with hyperoside through hydrogen bonds. Therefore, the hyperoside can be easily dissociated in the eluate, which offers a condition for formating a molecularly imprinted polymer film to highly select hyperoside. The highly conductive N-GR@CS modified at the bottom of the polymer film provides the possibility to electrocatalyze hyperoside, and facilitate electron transfer to amplify the response signal. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the sensor showed a detection limit was 6.42 × 10−8 mol l−1 (S/N = 3) with a good linear relationship in the range of 2.15 × 10−7 to 2.15 × 10−5 mol l−1. Moreover, it displayed good reproducibility and stability, and could realize the direct and highly selective detection of trace hyperoside in complex samples. In consequence, this study is expected to provide a convenient and reliable method for on-site real-time evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) quality with reference to the index components.
This paper presents a new approach to computation of geometric continuity for parametric bi-cubic patches, based on a simple mathematical reformulation which leads to simple additional conditions to be applied in the patching computation. The paper presents an Hermite formulation of a bicubic parametric patch, but reformulations can be made also for Bézier and B-Spline patches as well. The presented approach is convenient for the cases when valencies of corners are different from the value 4, in general.
We survey the treatment of sex and gender in the Computer Graphics research literature from an algorithmic fairness perspective. The established practices on the use of gender and sex in our community are scientifically incorrect and constitute a form of algorithmic bias with potential harmful effects. We propose ways of addressing these as technical limitations.
Order-independent transparency schemes rely on low-order approximations of transmittance as a function of depth. We introduce a new wavelet representation of this function and an algorithm for building and evaluating it efficiently on a GPU. We then extend the order-independent Phenomenological Transparency algorithm to our representation and introduce a new phenomenological approximation of chromatic aberration under refraction. This generates comparable image quality to reference A-buffering for challenging cases such as smoke coverage, more realistic refraction, and comparable or better performance and bandwidth to the state-of-the-art Moment transparency with a simpler implementation.
Projection mapping seamlessly merges real and virtual worlds. Although much effort was made to improve its image qualities so far, projection mapping is still unnatural. We introduce the first steps towards natural projection mapping by making the projection results consistent with the light field context of our daily scene.
In this paper we adapt the RBF Solver to work with quaternions by taking advantage of their Lie Algebra and exponential map. This will allow to work with quaternions as if they were normal vectors in R^3 and blend them in a very efficient way.
We propose a collaborative 3D modeling system, which is based on the blockchain technology. Our approach uses the blockchain to communicate with modeling tools and to provide them a decentralized database of the mesh modification history. This approach also provides a server-less version control system: users can commit their modifications to the blockchain and checkout others' modifications from the blockchain. As a result, our system enables users to do collaborative modeling without any central server.
We present the OpenAI Remote Rendering Backend (ORRB), a system that allows fast and customizable rendering of robotics environments. It is based on the Unity3d game engine and interfaces with the MuJoCo physics simulation library. ORRB was designed with visual domain randomization in mind. It is optimized for cloud deployment and high throughput operation. We are releasing it to the public under a liberal MIT license: https://github.com/openai/orrb .
To efficiently simulate very thin, inextensible materials like cloth or paper, it is tempting to replace force-based thin-plate dynamics with hard isometry constraints. Unfortunately, naive formulations of the constraints induce membrane locking---artificial stiffening of bending modes due to the inability of discrete kinematics to reproduce exact isometries. We propose a simple set of meshless isometry constraints, based on moving-least-squares averaging of the strain tensor, which do not lock, and which can be easily incorporated into standard constrained Lagrangian dynamics integration.
A new algorithm for line clipping against convex polyhedron is given. The suggested algorithm is faster for higher number of facets of the given polyhedron than the traditional Cyrus-Beck's and others algorithms with complexity O(N) . The suggested algorithm has O(N) complexity in the worst N case and expected O(sqrt(N))) complexity. The speed up is achieved because of 'known order' of triangles. Some principal results of comparisons of selected algorithms are presented and give some imagination how the proposed algorithm could be used effectively.
In this report we describe a mesh editing system that we implemented that uses a natural stretching and bending energy defined over smooth surfaces. As such, this energy behaves uniformly under various mesh resolutions. All of the elements of our approach already exist in the literature. We hope that our discussions of these energies helps to shed light on the behaviors of these methods and provides a unified discussion of these methods.
We propose Möbius transformations as the natural rotation and scaling tools for editing spherical images. As an application we produce spherical Droste images. We obtain other self-similar visual effects using rational functions, elliptic functions, and Schwarz-Christoffel maps.