Gender-Specific Effects of Mood on Alcohol-Seeking Behaviors: Preliminary Findings Using Intravenous Alcohol Self-Administration.

BACKGROUND: Although negative mood has long been implicated in differences in alcohol seeking by men and women, little research has used precise, well-controlled laboratory experiments to examine how negative mood affects alcohol-seeking behaviors. METHODS: A total of 34 (19 women) community-dwelling, alcohol-using adults aged 21 to 32 (mean age = 24.86, SD = 3.40, 74.3% Caucasian; Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test [AUDIT] = 10.1, SD = 3.4) completed 2 counterbalanced intravenous alcohol self-administration sessions: one under negative mood and one under neutral mood. Fourteen individuals (9 women; mean age = 25.00, SD = 2.77) participated in an alcohol "liking" experiment (i.e., free access [FA] drinking) and 20 individuals (10 women; mean age = 24.77, SD = 3.73) participated in an alcohol "wanting" experiment, in which gaining access to alcohol required progressively effortful work. There was no significant difference between men and women on the AUDIT, t(32) = -0.38, p = 0.71. RESULTS: Priming with negative mood induction caused a significant decrease in self-reported mood (mean change = -1.85, t(32) = -6.81, p < 0.001), as intended. In FA, negative mood was associated with a significantly increased peak breath alcohol concentration (BrAC; F = 9.41, p = 0.01), with a trend toward a greater effect in men than in women (F = 2.67, p = 0.13). Negative mood also had a significant effect on peak BrAC achieved in the progressive work paradigm (F = 5.28, p = 0.04), with a significantly stronger effect in men (F = 5.35, p = 0.03) than women; men also trended toward more consistent work for alcohol across both neutral and negative sessions. CONCLUSIONS: These preliminary findings demonstrate a gender-specific response on how mood affects alcohol seeking and suggest gender-specific interventions to prevent mood-based alcohol consumption.

MSeg: A Composite Dataset for Multi-Domain Semantic Segmentation.

We present MSeg, a composite dataset that unifies semantic segmentation datasets from different domains. A naive merge of the constituent datasets yields poor performance due to inconsistent taxonomies and annotation practices. We reconcile the taxonomies and bring the pixel-level annotations into alignment by relabeling more than 220,000 object masks in more than 80,000 images, requiring more than 1.34 years of collective annotator effort. The resulting composite dataset enables training a single semantic segmentation model that functions effectively across domains and generalizes to datasets that were not seen during training. We adopt zero-shot cross-dataset transfer as a benchmark to systematically evaluate a model's robustness and show that MSeg training yields substantially more robust models in comparison to training on individual datasets or naive mixing of datasets without the presented contributions. A model trained on MSeg ranks first on the WildDash-v1 leaderboard for robust semantic segmentation, with no exposure to WildDash data during training. We evaluate our models in the 2020 Robust Vision Challenge (RVC) as an extreme generalization experiment. MSeg training sets include only three of the seven datasets in the RVC; more importantly, the evaluation taxonomy of RVC is different and more detailed. Surprisingly, our model shows competitive performance and ranks second. To evaluate how close we are to the grand aim of robust, efficient, and complete scene understanding, we go beyond semantic segmentation by training instance segmentation and panoptic segmentation models using our dataset. Moreover, we also evaluate various engineering design decisions and metrics, including resolution and computational efficiency. Although our models are far from this grand aim, our comprehensive evaluation is crucial for progress. We share all the models and code with the community.

Grace, Inspiration, Fulfillment, Timeless, Soulful (GIFTS): The Why and How of Podcasts for Recognition and Mentoring of Faculty in Medicine.

This commentary offers the reader an alternative to mentoring through the use of PODCASTS. By providing the listener with an understanding of the challenges and opportunities for self-reflection and sharing of experiences by the interviewees, we are impacting the listener attitudes and future goals through lessons learned.

A Curious Case of Croup: Laryngotracheitis Caused by COVID-19.

We describe a case of croup in a 14-month-old boy caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019. The patient presented with classic signs and symptoms consistent with croup. Workup was remarkable for a positive point-of-care test for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. This case represents recognition of a new clinical entity caused by coronavirus disease 2019.

Computational discrimination between natural images based on gaze during mental imagery.

When retrieving image from memory, humans usually move their eyes spontaneously as if the image were in front of them. Such eye movements correlate strongly with the spatial layout of the recalled image content and function as memory cues facilitating the retrieval procedure. However, how close the correlation is between imagery eye movements and the eye movements while looking at the original image is unclear so far. In this work we first quantify the similarity of eye movements between recalling an image and encoding the same image, followed by the investigation on whether comparing such pairs of eye movements can be used for computational image retrieval. Our results show that computational image retrieval based on eye movements during spontaneous imagery is feasible. Furthermore, we show that such a retrieval approach can be generalized to unseen images.

Solving Square Jigsaw Puzzle by Hierarchical Loop Constraints.

We present a novel computational puzzle solver for square-piece image jigsaw puzzles with no prior information such as piece orientation or anchor pieces. By "piece" we mean a square $d$d x $d$d block of pixels, where we investigate pieces as small as 7 × 7 pixels. To reconstruct such challenging puzzles, we propose to find maximum geometric consensus between pieces, specifically hierarchical piece loops. The proposed algorithm seeks out loops of four pieces and aggregates the smaller loops into higher order "loops of loops" in a bottom-up fashion. In contrast to previous puzzle solvers which aim to maximize compatibility measures between all pairs of pieces and thus depend heavily on the pairwise compatibility measures used, our approach reduces the dependency on the pairwise compatibility measures which become increasingly uninformative for small scales and instead exploits geometric agreement among pieces. Our contribution also includes an improved pairwise compatibility measure which exploits directional derivative information along adjoining boundaries of the pieces. We verify the proposed algorithm as well as its individual components with mathematical analysis and reconstruction experiments.

Symptomatic hyponatremia in association with a low-iodine diet and levothyroxine withdrawal prior to I131 in patients with metastatic thyroid carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Strategies to improve I131 uptake in thyroid carcinoma include levothyroxine (LT4) withdrawal or thyrotropin (TSH) administration along with a low-iodine diet. We report five patients with papillary or follicular thyroid carcinoma who developed symptomatic hyponatremia during LT4 withdrawal and low-iodine diet. RESULTS: Four patients had pulmonary and/or brain metastases. All had restricted iodine intakes during LT4 withdrawal. Presenting complaints included weakness, dizziness, fainting spells, lethargy, and/or nausea. Baseline serum sodium levels while on LT4 suppression were normal. During presentation all were hypothyroid and serum sodium ranged from 110 to 121 mmol/L (normal 135-148). Despite hyponatremia, the plasma renin activity and serum aldosterone levels were suppressed, indicating volume expansion. The hyponatremia responded to fluid restriction and normalized after LT4 replacement. Low sodium intake, inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion syndrome (SIADH)-like disorder secondary to hypothyroidism and/or lung or cerebral metastases may have contributed to hyponatremia. CONCLUSIONS: The development of hyponatremia during LT4 withdrawal and low-iodine diet in otherwise healthy patients with thyroid carcinoma is extremely rare. However, elderly patients with metastatic thyroid carcinoma need observation during LT4 withdrawal combined with a low-iodine diet and should receive instruction to take iodine-free sodium chloride. Free water restriction may be necessary in some patients.

Interactive tensor field design and visualization on surfaces.

Designing tensor fields in the plane and on surfaces is a necessary task in many graphics applications, such as painterly rendering, pen-and-ink sketching of smooth surfaces, and anisotropic remeshing. In this article, we present an interactive design system that allows a user to create a wide variety of symmetric tensor fields over 3D surfaces either from scratch or by modifying a meaningful input tensor field such as the curvature tensor. Our system converts each user specification into a basis tensor field and combines them with the input field to make an initial tensor field. However, such a field often contains unwanted degenerate points which cannot always be eliminated due to topological constraints of the underlying surface. To reduce the artifacts caused by these degenerate points, our system allows the user to move a degenerate point or to cancel a pair of degenerate points that have opposite tensor indices. These operations provide control over the number and location of the degenerate points in the field. We observe that a tensor field can be locally converted into a vector field so that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the set of degenerate points in the tensor field and the set of singularities in the vector field. This conversion allows us to effectively perform degenerate point pair cancellation and movement by using similar operations for vector fields. In addition, we adapt the image-based flow visualization technique to tensor fields, therefore allowing interactive display of tensor fields on surfaces. We demonstrate the capabilities of our tensor field design system with painterly rendering, pen-and-ink sketching of surfaces, and anisotropic remeshing.

Negative urgency, mood induction, and alcohol seeking behaviors.

BACKGROUND: Negative urgency, defined as impulsive risk-taking during extreme negative emotional states, is the most important impulsivity-related trait for alcohol-related problems and alcohol dependence. However, how negative urgency imparts risk for alcohol-related problems is not yet well understood. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to examine how negative urgency relates to separable aspects of the emotional experience and alcohol-seeking behaviors. METHODS: A total of 34 (19 women) community-dwelling, alcohol-using adults aged 21-32 (mean age=24.86, SD=3.40, 74.3% Caucasian) completed two counterbalanced intravenous alcohol self-administration sessions: one during a neutral mood condition and one during a negative mood condition. RESULTS: Negative urgency was associated with 1) greater mood change following negative mood induction (F=4.38, df=15, p=0.002, η2=0.87), but was unrelated to changes in craving or cortisol release in response to mood induction; 2) greater alcohol craving prior to and after an alcohol prime (F=3.27, p=0.02, η2=0.86), but only in the negative and not the neutral mood condition; and 3) higher peak BrAC (F=2.13, df=42, p=0.02, η2=0.48), continuing to increase intoxication level over a longer period (F=3.77, df=42, p<0.001, η2=0.62), and more alcohol seeking (F=21.73, df=22, p<0.001, η2=0.94) throughout the negative session. Negative urgency was associated with overall lower cortisol release. CONCLUSIONS: These results highlight the importance of assessing behavioral indicators of negative urgency under mood condition, and suggest that negative urgency may amplify alcohol self-administration through increased negative emotional reactivity to mood events and increased alcohol craving after initial alcohol exposure, leading to maintenance of alcohol related behavior.

Effect of a high saturated fat and no-starch diet on serum lipid subfractions in patients with documented atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a diet of high saturated fat and avoidance of starch (HSF-SA) results in weight loss without adverse effects on serum lipids in obese nondiabetic patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twenty-three patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease participated in a prospective 6-week trial at the Christiana Care Medical Center in Newark, Del, between August 2000 and September 2001. All patients were obese (mean +/- SD body mass index [BMI], 39.0+/-7.3 kg/m2) and had been treated with statins before entry in the trial. Fifteen obese patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (BMI, 36.1+/-9.7 kg/m2) and 8 obese patients with reactive hypoglycemia (BMI, 46.8+/-10 kg/m2) were monitored during an HSF-SA diet for 24 and 52 weeks, respectively, between 1997 and 2000. RESULTS: In patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, mean +/- SD total body weight (TBW) decreased 5.2%+/-2.5% (P<.001) as did body fat percentage (P=.02). Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic analysis of lipids showed decreases in total triglycerides (P<.001), very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) triglycerides (P<.001), VLDL size (P<.001), large VLDL concentration (P<.001), and medium VLDL concentration (P<.001). High-density lipoprotein (HDL) and LDL concentrations were unchanged, but HDL size (P=.01) and LDL size (P=.02) increased. Patients with polycystic ovary syndrome lost 14.3%+/-20.3% of TBW (P=.008) and patients with reactive hypoglycemia lost 19.9%+/-8.7% of TBW (P<.001) at 24 and 52 weeks, respectively, without adverse effects on serum lipids. CONCLUSION: An HSF-SA diet results in weight loss after 6 weeks without adverse effects on serum lipid levels verified by nuclear magnetic resonance, and further weight loss with a lipid-neutral effect may persist for up to 52 weeks.

Results of use of metformin and replacement of starch with saturated fat in diets of patients with type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE: To improve glycemic control by substituting saturated fat for starch, to identify any adverse effect on lipids masked by the extensive use of metformin and lipid-lowering drugs, and to attempt to separate dietary effects from effects of multiple drugs. METHODS: We undertook a retrospective review of medical records of patients who completed 1 year of follow-up after dietary prescription. The study subjects included 151 patients in the diet group (whose dietary instructions included high saturated fat but starch avoidance) and 132 historical control subjects (who were allowed unlimited monounsaturated fat but had restriction of starch in their diets). RESULTS: Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels improved in both study groups (-1.4 +/- 0.2% [P<0.001]; 95% confidence interval [CI], -1.9 to -0.9). Use of metformin was associated with a decrease in HbA1c (-0.12 +/- 0.003%/mo [P<0.001]; 95% CI, -0.17 to -0.07). The diet group had an additional decrease of -0.7 +/- 0.2% (P<0.001; 95% CI, -1.1 to -0.3). Weight increase was associated with the use of insulin (+0.3 +/- 0.07 kg/mo [P<0.001]; 95% CI, 0.2 to 0.5), sulfonylurea (+0.18 +/- 0.06 kg/mo [P<0.01]; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.30), and troglitazone (+0.7 +/- 0.2 kg/mo [P<0.005]; 95% CI, 0.3 to 1.2). Although not statistically significant, metformin therapy showed a trend for weight loss (-0.14 +/- 0.08 kg/mo; P = 0.07). An additional weight loss was noted in the diet group (-2.65 +/- 0.62 kg [P<0.001]; 95% CI, -3.87 to -1.44). Hydroxymethylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase inhibitor use was associated with reduced total cholesterol level (-1.7 +/- 0.6 mg/dL per month [P<0.005]; 95% CI, -2.9 to -0.5). The diet group had an additional decrease of -13.0 +/- 4.5 mg/dL (P<0.001; 95% CI, -21.9 to -4.1). No significant effect of the diet on triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein, or high-density lipoprotein levels was detected. CONCLUSION: Addition of saturated fat and removal of starch from a high-monounsaturated fat and starch-restricted diet improved glycemic control and were associated with weight loss without detectable adverse effects on serum lipids.

Silicon isotopes indicate enhanced carbon export efficiency in the North Atlantic during deglaciation.

Today's Sargasso Sea is nutrient starved, except for episodic upwelling events caused by wind-driven winter mixing and eddies. Enhanced diatom opal burial in Sargasso Sea sediments indicates that silicic acid, a limiting nutrient today, may have been more available in subsurface waters during Heinrich Stadials, millennial-scale climate perturbations of the last glacial and deglaciation. Here we use the geochemistry of opal-forming organisms from different water depths to demonstrate changes in silicic acid supply and utilization during the most recent Heinrich Stadial. We suggest that during the early phase (17.5-18 ka), wind-driven upwelling replenished silicic acid to the subsurface, resulting in low Si utilization. By 17 ka, stratification reduced the surface silicic acid supply leading to increased Si utilization efficiency. This abrupt shift in Si cycling would have contributed to high regional carbon export efficiency during the recent Heinrich Stadial, despite being a period of increasing atmospheric CO2.

Basic level scene understanding: categories, attributes and structures.

A longstanding goal of computer vision is to build a system that can automatically understand a 3D scene from a single image. This requires extracting semantic concepts and 3D information from 2D images which can depict an enormous variety of environments that comprise our visual world. This paper summarizes our recent efforts toward these goals. First, we describe the richly annotated SUN database which is a collection of annotated images spanning 908 different scene categories with object, attribute, and geometric labels for many scenes. This database allows us to systematically study the space of scenes and to establish a benchmark for scene and object recognition. We augment the categorical SUN database with 102 scene attributes for every image and explore attribute recognition. Finally, we present an integrated system to extract the 3D structure of the scene and objects depicted in an image.