We demonstrate a new technique for obtaining fission data for nuclei away from β stability. These types of data are pertinent to the astrophysical r process, crucial to a complete understanding of ...the origin of the heavy elements, and for developing a predictive model of fission. These data are also important considerations for terrestrial applications related to power generation and safeguarding. Experimentally, such data are scarce due to the difficulties in producing the actinide targets of interest. The solenoidal-spectrometer technique, commonly used to study nucleon-transfer reactions in inverse kinematics, has been applied to the case of transfer-induced fission as a means to deduce the fission-barrier height, among other variables. The fission-barrier height of ^{239}U has been determined via the ^{238}U(d,pf) reaction in inverse kinematics, the results of which are consistent with existing neutron-induced fission data indicating the validity of the technique.
In conjunction with the ISBI 2015 conference, we organized a longitudinal lesion segmentation challenge providing training and test data to registered participants. The training data consisted of ...five subjects with a mean of 4.4 time-points, and test data of fourteen subjects with a mean of 4.4 time-points. All 82 data sets had the white matter lesions associated with multiple sclerosis delineated by two human expert raters. Eleven teams submitted results using state-of-the-art lesion segmentation algorithms to the challenge, with ten teams presenting their results at the conference. We present a quantitative evaluation comparing the consistency of the two raters as well as exploring the performance of the eleven submitted results in addition to three other lesion segmentation algorithms. The challenge presented three unique opportunities: (1) the sharing of a rich data set; (2) collaboration and comparison of the various avenues of research being pursued in the community; and (3) a review and refinement of the evaluation metrics currently in use. We report on the performance of the challenge participants, as well as the construction and evaluation of a consensus delineation. The image data and manual delineations will continue to be available for download, through an evaluation website22The Challenge Evaluation Website is: http://smart-stats-tools.org/lesion-challenge-2015 as a resource for future researchers in the area. This data resource provides a platform to compare existing methods in a fair and consistent manner to each other and multiple manual raters.
•Public lesion data base of 21 training data sets and 61 testing data sets.•Fully automated evaluation website.•Comparison between 14 state-of-the-art algorithms and 2 manual delineators.
Objective The quality of a child's motor repertoire at age 3 to 4 months postterm is predictive of later cerebral palsy (CP). Its predictive power for minor neurologic dysfunction (MND) is unclear. ...This study aimed to investigate the predictive value of the quality of the early motor repertoire for the development of MND at school age. Study design We assessed the motor repertoire from video recordings made at 6 to 24 weeks postterm in 82 preterm infants (mean gestational age, 29.7 ± 1.9 weeks; mean birth weight, 1183 ± 302 g). At age 7 to 11 years, Touwen's neurologic examination was performed, and the children were classified as normal (n = 49; 60%), MND (n = 18; 22%), or CP (n = 15; 18%). Results Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that the quality of fidgety movements (FMs) and the quality of the concurrent motor repertoire had independent prognostic value for MND at school age. Abnormal FMs evolved into MND in 64% of the children. Nine of the 28 children with normal FMs and an abnormal concurrent motor repertoire developed abnormally (32%). Only 1 child of the 21 children with normal FMs and a normal concurrent motor repertoire developed MND (5%). Conclusions Assessment of the quality of the early motor repertoire can accurately identify individual infants at high and low risk for MND at school age.
A novel description of kinetic theory dynamics is proposed in terms of resummed moments that embed information of both hydrodynamic and nonhydrodynamic modes. The resulting expansion can be used to ...extend hydrodynamics to higher orders in a consistent and numerically efficient way; at lowest order it reduces to an Israel-Stewart-like theory. This formalism is especially suited to investigate the general problem of particles interacting with fields. We tested the accuracy of this approach against the exact solution of the coupled Boltzmann-Vlasov-Maxwell equations for a plasma in an electromagnetic field undergoing Bjorken-like expansion, including extreme cases characterized by large deviations from local equilibrium and large electric fields. We show that this new resummed method maintains the fast convergence of the traditional method of moments. We also find a new condition, unrelated to Knudsen numbers and pressure corrections, that justifies the truncation of the series even in situations far from local thermal equilibrium.
Invasive fusariosis (IF) has been associated with a poor prognosis. Although recent series have reported improved outcomes, the definition of optimal treatments remains controversial. The objective ...of this study was to evaluate changes in the outcome of IF. We retrospectively analysed 233 cases of IF from 11 countries, comparing demographics, clinical findings, treatment and outcome in two periods: 1985–2000 (period 1) and 2001–2011 (period 2). Most patients (92%) had haematological disease. Primary treatment with deoxycholate amphotericin B was more frequent in period 1 (63% vs. 30%, p <0.001), whereas voriconazole (32% vs. 2%, p <0.001) and combination therapies (18% vs. 1%, p <0.001) were more frequent in period 2. The 90-day probabilities of survival in periods 1 and 2 were 22% and 43%, respectively (p <0.001). In period 2, the 90-day probabilities of survival were 60% with voriconazole, 53% with a lipid formulation of amphotericin B, and 28% with deoxycholate amphotericin B (p 0.04). Variables associated with poor prognosis (death 90 days after the diagnosis of fusariosis) by multivariable analysis were: receipt of corticosteroids (hazard ratio (HR) 2.11, 95% CI 1.18–3.76, p 0.01), neutropenia at end of treatment (HR 2.70, 95% CI 1.57–4.65, p <0.001), and receipt of deoxycholate amphotericin B (HR 1.83, 95% CI 1.06–3.16, p 0.03). Treatment practices have changed over the last decade, with an increased use of voriconazole and combination therapies. There has been a 21% increase in survival rate in the last decade.
The Sørensen-Dice index (SDI) is a widely used measure for evaluating medical image segmentation algorithms. It offers a standardized measure of segmentation accuracy which has proven useful. ...However, it offers diminishing insight when the number of objects is unknown, such as in white matter lesion segmentation of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. We present a refinement for finer grained parsing of SDI results in situations where the number of objects is unknown. We explore these ideas with two case studies showing what can be learned from our two presented studies. Our first study explores an inter-rater comparison, showing that smaller lesions cannot be reliably identified. In our second case study, we demonstrate fusing multiple MS lesion segmentation algorithms based on the insights into the algorithms provided by our analysis to generate a segmentation that exhibits improved performance. This work demonstrates the wealth of information that can be learned from refined analysis of medical image segmentations.
Following homozygosity mapping in a single kindred, we identified nonsense and missense mutations in MYO5B, encoding type Vb myosin motor protein, in individuals with microvillus inclusion disease ...(MVID). MVID is characterized by lack of microvilli on the surface of enterocytes and occurrence of intracellular vacuolar structures containing microvilli. In addition, mislocalization of transferrin receptor in MVID enterocytes suggests that MYO5B deficiency causes defective trafficking of apical and basolateral proteins in MVID.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Our ability to predict invasions has been hindered by the seemingly idiosyncratic context-dependency of individual invasions. However, we argue that robust and useful generalisations in invasion ...science can be made by considering “invasion syndromes” which we define as “a combination of pathways, alien species traits, and characteristics of the recipient ecosystem which collectively result in predictable dynamics and impacts, and that can be managed effectively using specific policy and management actions”. We describe this approach and outline examples that highlight its utility, including: cacti with clonal fragmentation in arid ecosystems; small aquatic organisms introduced through ballast water in harbours; large ranid frogs with frequent secondary transfers; piscivorous freshwater fishes in connected aquatic ecosystems; plant invasions in high-elevation areas; tall-statured grasses; and tree-feeding insects in forests with suitable hosts. We propose a systematic method for identifying and delimiting invasion syndromes. We argue that invasion syndromes can account for the context-dependency of biological invasions while incorporating insights from comparative studies. Adopting this approach will help to structure thinking, identify transferrable risk assessment and management lessons, and highlight similarities among events that were previously considered disparate invasion phenomena.
DNA methylation may be one of the mechanisms by which alcohol consumption is associated with the risk of disease. We conducted a large‐scale, cross‐sectional, genome‐wide DNA methylation association ...study of alcohol consumption and a longitudinal analysis of repeated measurements taken several years apart. Using the Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip, DNA methylation was measured in blood samples from 5606 Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study (MCCS) participants. For 1088 of them, these measures were repeated using blood samples collected a median of 11 years later. Associations between alcohol intake and blood DNA methylation were assessed using linear mixed‐effects regression models. Independent data from the London Life Sciences Prospective Population (LOLIPOP) (N = 4042) and Cooperative Health Research in the Augsburg Region (KORA) (N = 1662) cohorts were used to replicate associations discovered in the MCCS. Cross‐sectional analyses identified 1414 CpGs associated with alcohol intake at P < 10−7, 1243 of which had not been reported previously. Of these novel associations, 1078 were replicated (P < .05) using LOLIPOP and KORA data. Using the MCCS data, we also replicated 403 of 518 previously reported associations. Interaction analyses suggested that associations were stronger for women, non‐smokers, and participants genetically predisposed to consume less alcohol. Of the 1414 CpGs, 530 were differentially methylated (P < .05) in former compared with current drinkers. Longitudinal associations between the change in alcohol intake and the change in methylation were observed for 513 of the 1414 cross‐sectional associations. Our study indicates that alcohol intake is associated with widespread changes in DNA methylation across the genome. Longitudinal analyses showed that the methylation status of alcohol‐associated CpGs may change with alcohol consumption changes in adulthood.
We conducted a large‐scale epigenome‐wide association study of alcohol consumption. Cross‐sectional analyses identified 1414 CpG sites at which blood DNA methylation was associated with alcohol drinking. The majority of these associations had not been reported previously and were replicated using data from independent samples. Methylation changes appeared more pronounced in women, non‐smokers, and participants genetically predisposed to consume less alcohol; comparison of current, former, and never drinkers and longitudinal analyses showed that these changes are at least partially reversible. We conducted a large‐scale epigenome‐wide association study of alcohol consumption.
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