Publications

We demonstrate a system for capturing multi-thousand frame-per-second (fps) video using a dense array of cheap 30 fps CMOS image sensors. A benefit of using a camera array to capture high-speed video is that we can scale to higher speeds by simply adding more cameras. Even at extremely high frame rates, our array architecture supports continuous streaming to disk from all of the cameras. This allows us to record unpredictable events, in which nothing occurs before the event of interest that could be used to trigger the beginning of recording. Synthesizing one high-speed video sequence using images from an array of cameras requires methods to calibrate and correct those cameras' varying radiometric and geometric properties. We assume that our scene is either relatively planar or is very far away from the camera and that the images can therefore be aligned using projective transforms. We analyze the errors from this assumption and present methods to make them less visually objectionable. We also present a new method to automatically color match our sensors. Finally, we demonstrate how to compensate for spatial and temporal distortions caused by the electronic rolling shutter, a common feature of low-end CMOS sensors.

<ns4:p><ns4:bold>Background</ns4:bold>: Never before have clinical trials drawn as much public attention as those testing interventions for COVID-19. We aimed to describe the worldwide COVID-19 clinical research response and its evolution over the first 100 days of the pandemic.</ns4:p><ns4:p><ns4:bold>Methods:</ns4:bold>Descriptive analysis of planned, ongoing or completed trials by April 9, 2020 testing any intervention to treat or prevent COVID-19, systematically identified in trial registries, preprint servers, and literature databases. A survey was conducted of all trials to assess their recruitment status up to July 6, 2020.</ns4:p><ns4:p><ns4:bold>Results:</ns4:bold>Most of the 689 trials (overall target sample size 396,366) were small (median sample size 120; interquartile range [IQR] 60-300) but randomized (75.8%; n=522) and were often conducted in China (51.1%; n=352) or the USA (11%; n=76). 525 trials (76.2%) planned to include 155,571 hospitalized patients, and 25 (3.6%) planned to include 96,821 health-care workers. Treatments were evaluated in 607 trials (88.1%), frequently antivirals (n=144) or antimalarials (n=112); 78 trials (11.3%) focused on prevention, including 14 vaccine trials. No trial investigated social distancing. Interventions tested in 11 trials with &gt;5,000 participants were also tested in 169 smaller trials (median sample size 273; IQR 90-700). Hydroxychloroquine alone was investigated in 110 trials. While 414 trials (60.0%) expected completion in 2020, only 35 trials (4.1%; 3,071 participants) were completed by July 6. Of 112 trials with detailed recruitment information, 55 had recruited &lt;20% of the targeted sample; 27 between 20-50%; and 30 over 50% (median 14.8% [IQR 2.0-62.0%]).</ns4:p><ns4:p><ns4:bold>Conclusions:</ns4:bold>The size and speed of the COVID-19 clinical trials agenda is unprecedented. However, most trials were small investigating a small fraction of treatment options. The feasibility of this research agenda is questionable, and many trials may end in futility, wasting research resources. Much better coordination is needed to respond to global health threats.</ns4:p>

Abstract Background Physicians sometimes consider whether or not to perform diagnostic testing in healthy people, but it is unknown whether nonextreme values of diagnostic tests typically encountered in such populations have any predictive ability, in particular for risk of death. The goal of this study was to quantify the associations among population reference intervals of 152 common biomarkers with all-cause mortality in a representative, nondiseased sample of adults in the United States. Methods The study used an observational cohort derived from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a representative sample of the United States population consisting of 6 survey waves from 1999 to 2010 with linked mortality data (unweighted N = 30 651) and a median followup of 6.1 years. We deployed an X-wide association study (XWAS) approach to systematically perform association testing of 152 diagnostic tests with all-cause mortality. Results After controlling for multiple hypotheses, we found that the values within reference intervals (10–90th percentiles) of 20 common biomarkers used as diagnostic tests or clinical measures were associated with all-cause mortality, including serum albumin, red cell distribution width, serum alkaline phosphatase, and others after adjusting for age (linear and quadratic terms), sex, race, income, chronic illness, and prior-year healthcare utilization. All biomarkers combined, however, explained only an additional 0.8% of the variance of mortality risk. We found modest year-to-year changes, or changes in association from survey wave to survey wave from 1999 to 2010 in the association sizes of biomarkers. Conclusions Reference and nonoutlying variation in common biomarkers are consistently associated with mortality risk in the US population, but their additive contribution in explaining mortality risk is minor.

Overall, our study has validated genetic variants that are likely to contribute to melanoma susceptibility in the Greek population.

Ultrasonography may be helpful in diagnosing giant-cell arteritis, but cautious interpretation of the test results based on clinical presentation and pretest probability of the disease is imperative.

Power consumption has become a major constraint in the design of processors today. To optimize a processor for energy-efficiency requires an examination of energy-performance trade-offs in all aspects of the processor design space, including both architectural and circuit design choices. In this paper, we apply an integrated architecture-circuit optimization framework to map out energy-performance trade-offs of several different high-level processor architectures. We show how the joint architecture-circuit space provides a trade-off range of approximately 6.5x in performance for 4x energy, and we identify the optimal architectures for different design objectives. We then show that many of the designs in this space come at very high marginal costs. Our results show that, for a large range of design objectives, voltage scaling is effective in efficiently trading off performance and energy, and that the choice of optimal architecture and circuits does not change much during voltage scaling. Finally, we show that with only two designs--a dual-issue in-order design and a dual-issue out-of-order design, both properly optimized-a large part of the energy-performance trade-off space can be covered within 3% of the optimal energy-efficiency.

Background. To describe and compare love-related mortality in German and Italian operas of the 19th century, as operas are perfectly suited as a setting to study the relationship between love and premature death.Method. This is a historic cohort study of named characters in the 19th century operas by Italian and German composers included in a modern reference work. Follow-up lasted from the start of the opera until the final curtain. We calculated overall and cause-specific (e.g. love, violence) mortality, and proportional mortality ratios.Results: Among 76 eligible operas (23 German and 53 Italian) with 614 named characters, we recorded 118 deaths. The risk of dying young in opera is substantial, accounting for 94 of the 118 deaths. Violence was the main direct cause of death (62.7%) and love the main indirect cause (39.8%). The risk of dying of love was almost twice as high in Italian operas compared to German ones (46.8% versus 26.8%). Women experienced an almost double risk of dying of love compared to men (54.8% versus 31.6%).Discussion: This is the first empirical study on the contribution of passionate love to premature mortality. Its novelty lies in the use of opera as a source of epidemiological data. Our findings support the hypothesis that Italians are more passionate than Germans, resulting in proportionately more young people dying because of love in Italian operas. These findings provide further evidence for a link between emotion and mortality.

Associations between Plasma Lipid Mediators and Chronic Daily Headache Outcomes in Patients Randomized to a Low Linoleic Acid Diet with or without Added Omega-3 Fatty Acids