InfoGCN++: Learning Representation by Predicting the Future for Online Skeleton-based Action Recognition.

Skeleton-based action recognition has made significant advancements recently, with models like InfoGCN showcasing remarkable accuracy. However, these models exhibit a key limitation: they necessitate complete action observation prior to classification, which constrains their applicability in realtime situations such as surveillance and robotic systems. To overcome this barrier, we introduce InfoGCN++, an innovative extension of InfoGCN, explicitly developed for online skeletonbased action recognition.

Scrotal calciphylaxis in a fifty-one-year-old man with end-stage renal disease and prior bacteremia.

Isolated, ischemic scrotal lesions are an uncommon manifestation of systemic calciphylaxis. This highly morbid disease seen in patients with end-stage renal disease and other risk factors for small vessel calcification results in tissue necrosis and ulceration. Scrotal calciphylaxis is uncommon and difficult to diagnose in patients with comorbid conditions that cause isolated genital skin lesions, including prior systemic infections.

Global challenges with providing vascular access care during COVID era.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected health care systems and dialysis access care in the US and across the globe. Beyond the initial challenges posed by the pandemic and despite the actions taken by health care leaders/organizations/professional societies such as the "Maintaining Lifelines for ESKD Patients" joint statement, there continues to be delays in providing timely care and performing elective and emergent dialysis access procedures worldwide. The aim of this study was to assess the global challenges associated with providing dialysis vascular access care across the international vascular access community during the pandemic.

Towards a Comprehensive and Robust Micromanipulation System with Force-Sensing and VR Capabilities.

In this modern world, with the increase of complexity of many technologies, especially in the micro and nanoscale, the field of robotic manipulation has tremendously grown. Microrobots and other complex microscale systems are often to laborious to fabricate using standard microfabrication techniques, therefore there is a trend towards fabricating them in parts then assembling them together, mainly using micromanipulation tools. Here, a comprehensive and robust micromanipulation platform is presented, in which four micromanipulators can be used simultaneously to perform complex tasks, providing the user with an intuitive environment.

Lessons learnt and future directions in managing dialysis access during the COVID 19 pandemic: Patient and provider experience in the United States.

Background: The COVID 19 pandemic adversely impacted delivery of preventive, routine, urgent, and essential care worldwide. Dialysis access care was particularly affected due to the lack of specific guidelines regarding procedures for its creation and maintenance. Early guidance by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid was inadvertently interpreted as guidance to stop dialysis access procedures.

Considerations in Access Cannulation: Traditional and Evolving Approaches.

Needle cannulation of hemodialysis access is the soft underbelly of hemodialysis access care that has remained unchanged for a long time. Cannulation error results in complications such as infiltration, hematoma, subsequent revision procedures, and potential loss of hard-earned access. The "best" cannulation method is contingent upon access type and characteristics along with local expertise.

Gauss's law for networks directly reveals community boundaries.

The study of network topology provides insight into the function and behavior of physical, social, and biological systems. A natural step towards discovering the organizing principles of these complex topologies is to identify a reduced network representation using cohesive subgroups or communities. This procedure often uncovers the underlying mechanisms governing the functional assembly of complex networks.

Visual Analytics Tools for Sustainable Lifecycle Design: Current Status, Challenges, and Future Opportunities.

The rapid rise in technologies for data collection has created an unmatched opportunity to advance the use of data-rich tools for lifecycle decision-making. However, the usefulness of these technologies is limited by the ability to translate lifecycle data into actionable insights for human decision-makers. This is especially true in the case of sustainable lifecycle design (SLD), as the assessment of environmental impacts, and the feasibility of making corresponding design changes, often relies on human expertise and intuition.

MotionFlow: Visual Abstraction and Aggregation of Sequential Patterns in Human Motion Tracking Data.

Pattern analysis of human motions, which is useful in many research areas, requires understanding and comparison of different styles of motion patterns. However, working with human motion tracking data to support such analysis poses great challenges. In this paper, we propose MotionFlow, a visual analytics system that provides an effective overview of various motion patterns based on an interactive flow visualization.

Heat-passing framework for robust interpretation of data in networks.

Researchers are regularly interested in interpreting the multipartite structure of data entities according to their functional relationships. Data is often heterogeneous with intricately hidden inner structure. With limited prior knowledge, researchers are likely to confront the problem of transforming this data into knowledge.

Graftula: a composite access consisting of a graft used to repair a dysfunctional hemodialysis fistula.

Nonmaturing or dysfunctional hemodialysis fistulas are often repaired with interposition grafts placed either within the fistula (fistula-to-fistula configuration), or connected to another vein (fistula-to-vein configuration). The goal of this study was to compare the survival and usefulness of the composite accesses thus created, which we call "graftulas," with upperarm grafts. This was a retrospective study wherein we determined the survival and thrombosis rates of graftulas (n=24) and upper arm grafts (n=31) placed 1/1/07 through 12/31/09 and followed through 11/30/10.

Back to the future: how biology and technology could change the role of PTFE grafts in vascular access management.

Although the arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is the preferred mode of dialysis vascular access, AVF maturation failure remains a huge clinical problem, often resulting in a prolonged duration of use of tunneled dialysis catheters. In contrast, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) grafts do not suffer from early failure, but have significant problems with later stenosis and thrombosis. This review will initially summarize the pathology and pathogenesis of PTFE graft dysfunction and will then use this as a basis for describing some novel therapies, which may have the potential to reduce PTFE graft dysfunction.

3DMolNavi: a web-based retrieval and navigation tool for flexible molecular shape comparison.

Background: Many molecules of interest are flexible and undergo significant shape deformation as part of their function, but most existing methods of molecular shape comparison treat them as rigid shapes, which may lead to incorrect measure of the shape similarity of flexible molecules. Currently, there still is a limited effort in retrieval and navigation for flexible molecular shape comparison, which would improve data retrieval by helping users locate the desirable molecule in a convenient way.

Results: To address this issue, we develop a web-based retrieval and navigation tool, named 3DMolNavi, for flexible molecular shape comparison.

Global geometric affinity for revealing high fidelity protein interaction network.

Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis presents an essential role in understanding the functional relationship among proteins in a living biological system. Despite the success of current approaches for understanding the PPI network, the large fraction of missing and spurious PPIs and a low coverage of complete PPI network are the sources of major concern. In this paper, based on the diffusion process, we propose a new concept of global geometric affinity and an accompanying computational scheme to filter the uncertain PPIs, namely, reduce the spurious PPIs and recover the missing PPIs in the network.

Using diffusion distances for flexible molecular shape comparison.

Background: Many molecules are flexible and undergo significant shape deformation as part of their function, and yet most existing molecular shape comparison (MSC) methods treat them as rigid bodies, which may lead to incorrect shape recognition.

Results: In this paper, we present a new shape descriptor, named Diffusion Distance Shape Descriptor (DDSD), for comparing 3D shapes of flexible molecules. The diffusion distance in our work is considered as an average length of paths connecting two landmark points on the molecular shape in a sense of inner distances.

Estimating view parameters from random projections for Tomography using spherical MDS.

Background: During the past decade, the computed tomography has been successfully applied to various fields especially in medicine. The estimation of view angles for projections is necessary in some special applications of tomography, for example, the structuring of viruses using electron microscopy and the compensation of the patient's motion over long scanning period.

Methods: This work introduces a novel approach, based on the spherical multidimensional scaling (sMDS), which transforms the problem of the angle estimation to a sphere constrained embedding problem.

Robust principal axes determination for point-based shapes using least median of squares.

A robust technique for determining the principal axes of a 3D shape represented by a point set, possibly with noise, is presented. We use techniques from robust statistics to guide the classical principal component analysis (PCA) computation. Our algorithm is based on a robust statistics method: least median of squares (LMS), for outlier detection.

IDSS: deformation invariant signatures for molecular shape comparison.

Background: Many molecules of interest are flexible and undergo significant shape deformation as part of their function, but most existing methods of molecular shape comparison (MSC) treat them as rigid bodies, which may lead to incorrect measure of the shape similarity of flexible molecules.

Results: To address the issue we introduce a new shape descriptor, called Inner Distance Shape Signature (IDSS), for describing the 3D shapes of flexible molecules. The inner distance is defined as the length of the shortest path between landmark points within the molecular shape, and it reflects well the molecular structure and deformation without explicit decomposition.

Three dimensional shape comparison of flexible proteins using the local-diameter descriptor.

Background: Techniques for inferring the functions of the protein by comparing their shape similarity have been receiving a lot of attention. Proteins are functional units and their shape flexibility occupies an essential role in various biological processes. Several shape descriptors have demonstrated the capability of protein shape comparison by treating them as rigid bodies.

Using least median of squares for structural superposition of flexible proteins.

Background: The conventional superposition methods use an ordinary least squares (LS) fit for structural comparison of two different conformations of the same protein. The main problem of the LS fit that it is sensitive to outliers, i.e.

Fast protein tertiary structure retrieval based on global surface shape similarity.

Characterization and identification of similar tertiary structure of proteins provides rich information for investigating function and evolution. The importance of structure similarity searches is increasing as structure databases continue to expand, partly due to the structural genomics projects. A crucial drawback of conventional protein structure comparison methods, which compare structures by their main-chain orientation or the spatial arrangement of secondary structure, is that a database search is too slow to be done in real-time.

Passive transfer of polyethylene glycol to liposomal-recombinant human FVIII enhances its efficacy in a murine model for hemophilia A.

The replacement therapy using recombinant human FVIII (rFVIII) is the first line of therapy for hemophilia A. Approximately 15-30% of the patients develop inhibitory antibodies. Recently, we reported that liposomes composed of phosphatidylserine (PS) could reduce the immunogenicity of rFVIII.

Characterization of local geometry of protein surfaces with the visibility criterion.

Experimentally determined protein tertiary structures are rapidly accumulating in a database, partly due to the structural genomics projects. Included are proteins of unknown function, whose function has not been investigated by experiments and was not able to be predicted by conventional sequence-based search. Those uncharacterized protein structures highlight the urgent need of computational methods for annotating proteins from tertiary structures, which include function annotation methods through characterizing protein local surfaces.