The Chinese University of Hong Kong

About: The Chinese University of Hong Kong is a education organization based out in Hong Kong, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Computer science. The organization has 43411 authors who have published 93672 publications receiving 3066651 citations.

Antimicrobial activities of silver dressings: an in vitro comparison.

Abstract: A range of silver-coated or -impregnated dressings are now commercially available for use but comparative data on their antimicrobial efficacies are limited. The antibacterial activities of five commercially available silver-coated/impregnated dressings were compared against nine common burn-wound pathogens, namely methicillin-sensitive and -resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Enterococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Proteus vulgaris, Acinetobacter baumannii and a multi-drug-efflux-positive Acinetobacter baumannii (BM4454), using a broth culture method. The rapidity and extent of killing of these pathogens under in vitro conditions were evaluated. All five silver-impregnated dressings investigated exerted bactericidal activity, particularly against Gram-negative bacteria, including Enterobacter species, Proteus species and E. coli. The spectrum and rapidity of action, however, ranged widely for different dressings. Acticoat and Contreet had a broad spectrum of bactericidal activities against both Gram-positive and -negative bacteria. Contreet was characterized by a very rapid bactericidal action and achieved a reduction of > or =10,000 c.f.u. ml(-1) in the first 30 min for Enterobacter cloacae, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumanii. Other dressings demonstrated a narrower range of bactericidal activities. Understanding the characteristics of these dressings may enable them to be targeted more appropriately according to the specific requirements for use of a particular dressing, as in for prophylaxis in skin grafting or for an infected wound with MRSA.

Interpreting the Latent Space of GANs for Semantic Face Editing

Abstract: Despite the recent advance of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in high-fidelity image synthesis, there lacks enough understanding of how GANs are able to map a latent code sampled from a random distribution to a photo-realistic image. Previous work assumes the latent space learned by GANs follows a distributed representation but observes the vector arithmetic phenomenon. In this work, we propose a novel framework, called InterFaceGAN, for semantic face editing by interpreting the latent semantics learned by GANs. In this framework, we conduct a detailed study on how different semantics are encoded in the latent space of GANs for face synthesis. We find that the latent code of well-trained generative models actually learns a disentangled representation after linear transformations. We explore the disentanglement between various semantics and manage to decouple some entangled semantics with subspace projection, leading to more precise control of facial attributes. Besides manipulating gender, age, expression, and the presence of eyeglasses, we can even vary the face pose as well as fix the artifacts accidentally generated by GAN models. The proposed method is further applied to achieve real image manipulation when combined with GAN inversion methods or some encoder-involved models. Extensive results suggest that learning to synthesize faces spontaneously brings a disentangled and controllable facial attribute representation.

Mental disorders among persons with chronic back or neck pain: results from the World Mental Health Surveys.

Abstract: This paper reports cross-national data concerning back or neck pain comorbidity with mental disorders. We assessed (a) the prevalence of chronic back/neck pain, (b) the prevalence of mental disorders among people with chronic back/neck pain, (c) which mental disorder had strongest associations with chronic back/neck pain, and (d) whether these associations are consistent across countries. Population surveys of community-dwelling adults were carried out in 17 countries in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific (N=85,088). Mental disorders were assessed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview, third version (CIDI 3.0): anxiety disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder/agoraphobia, posttraumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety disorder), mood disorders (major depression and dysthymia), and alcohol abuse or dependence. Back/neck pain was ascertained by self-report. Between 10% and 42% reported chronic back/neck pain in the previous 12 months. After adjusting for age and sex, mental disorders were more common among persons with back/neck pain than among persons without. The pooled odds ratios were 2.3 [95% CI=2.1-2.5] for mood disorders, 2.2 [95% CI=2.1-2.4] for anxiety disorders, and 1.6 [95% CI=1.4-1.9] for alcohol abuse/dependence in people with versus without chronic back/neck pain. Although prevalence rates of back/neck pain were generally lower than in previous reports, mental disorders were associated with chronic back/neck pain. The strength of association was stronger for mood and anxiety disorders than for alcohol abuse/dependence. The association of mental disorders with back/neck pain showed a consistent pattern across both developed and developing countries.

Does Culture Matter? A Cross-Cultural Study of Executives’ Choice, Decisiveness, and Risk Adjustment in International Marketing:

Abstract: The authors investigate whether a manager's home culture significantly influences his or her international marketing decisions. They also examine whether the impact of home culture diminishes in an...

Motion detail preserving optical flow estimation

Abstract: We discuss the cause of a severe optical flow estimation problem that fine motion structures cannot always be correctly reconstructed in the commonly employed multi-scale variational framework. Our major finding is that significant and abrupt displacement transition wrecks small-scale motion structures in the coarse-to-fine refinement. A novel optical flow estimation method is proposed in this paper to address this issue, which reduces the reliance of the flow estimates on their initial values propagated from the coarser level and enables recovering many motion details in each scale. The contribution of this paper also includes adaption of the objective function and development of a new optimization procedure. The effectiveness of our method is borne out by experiments for both large- and small-displacement optical flow estimation.