In recent years, we witness the formation of social spaces in computers and networks where children, youths and young adults learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. The question we want ...to ask is: if this participatory culture of user-generated content in which socially constructed and collective intelligence is to be harnessed, what are the critical success factors that determine the acceptance of this participatory culture in the learning environments? As an illustration, the paper describes two studies focused on tertiary students’ perceptions of acceptance of social tools such as Weblogs and instant messaging in facilitating collaborative and collective learning with the aim of tapping onto the collective intelligence of user communities. Congruent to other studies, findings from these two preliminary studies have shown that factors influencing the acceptance of social tools such as Weblogs and instant messaging for learning are dependent on learners’ perceptions of usefulness, followed by usability of the social tools. The paper concludes with design implications for socially constructed, learning environments.
We report an extremely rare case of gas-filled abdominal mass caused by an ovarian teratoma fistulating to the sigmoid colon The patient was an 85-year-old female,who presented with severe abdominal ...distension Urgent computed tomography scan showed a huge abdominal mass with air fluid level and fecal matter inside Communication between the mass and the sigmoid colon was suspected She underwent emergency laparotomy The mass was resected with the involved segment of colon Pathology confirmed squamous cell carcinoma arising from mature cystic teratoma of the ovary.
Fresh groundwater lenses in tropic oceanic islands are important freshwater resources for local inhabitants and ecosystems. These reef‐carbonate islands typically have a dual‐aquifer structure, with ...poorly consolidated Holocene sediments deposited unconformably on Pleistocene limestone reef deposits. Land reclamation has been carried out on the reef flats or shallow water areas in coral islands, a very common practice in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. However, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of how the groundwater system will respond to land reclamation. In this study, the impact of land reclamation on the fresh groundwater lens in an island is investigated using multiple methods: sand‐tank experiments, sharp‐interface analytical solutions, and numerical modeling. This study demonstrates that land reclamation can increase the freshwater storage of the lens and shift the water divide toward the reclamation area. Furthermore, a lower permeability fill material especially with a greater scale or thickness leads to higher freshwater storage. However, the expansion of the lens will be truncated due to the high‐permeability of the lower layer. These observations and findings from the laboratory experiments and two‐dimensional numerical simulations are further ground‐truthed by the three‐dimensional modeling of Yongxing Island in the South China Sea. The findings of this study provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of land reclamation on island groundwater system and the theoretical supports for Small Island Developing States to use the reclamation not only for urban development but also for extra aquifer to enhance the water resource sustainability under the climate change.
Plain Language Summary
Groundwater on oceanic islands in the form of fresh groundwater lenses (FGL) that serve as an important freshwater resource for human consumption and ecosystem services. With intensifying sea‐level rise and global warming, many oceanic islands are shrinking, which leads to the decreasing or even disappearance of the FGL. Land reclamation seems to be the best choice to provide not only valuable land for urban development, but also extra aquifer space for the storage of freshwater resources. In this research, we evaluated the impacts of land reclamation on FGL by using multiple methods: laboratory sand‐tank experiments, analytical solutions, and numerical modeling. Our results show that land reclamation can increase the freshwater storage of the lens and reshape the groundwater system in oceanic islands. Furthermore, a lower permeability fill material especially with a greater scale or thickness leads to higher freshwater storage. However, the expansion of the lens will be truncated due to the high‐permeability of the lower layer on tropical coral islands. Finally, these findings above are also further ground‐truthed by the three‐dimensional modeling of Yongxing Island. Overall, the findings of this work have important global implications for water resources management especially for the Small Island Developing States.
Key Points
The impact of land reclamation on the fresh groundwater lens in island was investigated by laboratory, analytical and numerical methods
Land reclamation increases the fresh groundwater storage and reshapes the groundwater system in the oceanic island
The response of the fresh groundwater lens to land reclamation in islands is subject to the oceanic aquifer structure
To investigate the novel use of computer-aided dynamic navigation for guided endodontics.
Dental casts were fabricated from sets of extracted human teeth. A cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scan ...of each cast, with a molded thermoplastic stent and a radiographic marker attached, was obtained and imported into the planning software of a dynamic navigation implant surgery system. Simulating implant surgery but for guided endodontics, the drilling entry point, angle, pathway, and depth of virtual implants were planned for 29 selected teeth. The radiographic marker was replaced with a jaw tag and mounted in a phantom head. A drill tag was attached to the drill handpiece. Following calibration, guided by the stereoscopic motion-tracking camera via the tags and images on a computer monitor providing real-time dynamic plus visual intraoperative feedback, the handpiece was aligned accordingly and endodontic access cavity preparation carried out. Successful root canal location was confirmed using periapical radiographs and CBCT.
Conservative access cavities were achieved and all the expected canals were successfully located in 26 teeth (n = 29). Due to tracking difficulties, only one canal was located in two maxillary second molars; in a maxillary first molar, only two canals were located and the access preparation for the third canal was misaligned and off-target.
The results of this study demonstrate the potential of using computer-aided dynamic navigation technology in guided endodontics in clinical practice.
Existing computational pipelines for quantitative analysis of high‐content microscopy data rely on traditional machine learning approaches that fail to accurately classify more than a single dataset ...without substantial tuning and training, requiring extensive analysis. Here, we demonstrate that the application of deep learning to biological image data can overcome the pitfalls associated with conventional machine learning classifiers. Using a deep convolutional neural network (DeepLoc) to analyze yeast cell images, we show improved performance over traditional approaches in the automated classification of protein subcellular localization. We also demonstrate the ability of DeepLoc to classify highly divergent image sets, including images of pheromone‐arrested cells with abnormal cellular morphology, as well as images generated in different genetic backgrounds and in different laboratories. We offer an open‐source implementation that enables updating DeepLoc on new microscopy datasets. This study highlights deep learning as an important tool for the expedited analysis of high‐content microscopy data.
Synopsis
Deep learning is used to classify protein subcellular localization in genome‐wide microscopy screens of GFP‐tagged yeast strains. The resulting classifier (DeepLoc) outperforms previous classification methods and is transferable across image sets.
A deep convolutional neural network (DeepLoc) is trained to classify protein subcellular localization in GFP‐tagged yeast cells using over 21,000 labeled single cells.
DeepLoc outperformed previous SVM‐based classifiers on the same dataset.
DeepLoc was used to assess a genome‐wide screen of GFP‐tagged yeast cells exposed to mating pheromone and identified ˜300 proteins with significant localization changes.
DeepLoc can be effectively applied to other image sets with minimal additional training.
Deep learning is used to classify protein subcellular localization in genome‐wide microscopy screens of GFP‐tagged yeast strains. The resulting classifier (DeepLoc) outperforms previous classification methods and is transferable across image sets.
The surface marker CD44 has been identified as one of several markers associated with cancer stem cells (CSC) in solid tumors, but its ubiquitous expression in many cell types, including ...hematopoietic cells, has hindered its use in targeting CSCs. In this study, 28 paired primary tumor and adjacent nontumor gastric tissue samples were analyzed for cell surface protein expression. Cells that expressed pan-CD44 were found to occur at significantly higher frequency in gastric tumor tissues. We identified CD44v8-10 as the predominant CD44 variant expressed in gastric cancer cells and verified its role as a gastric CSC marker by limiting dilution and serial transplantation assays. Parallel experiments using CD133 failed to enrich for gastric CSCs. Analyses of another 26 primary samples showed significant CD44v8-10 upregulation in gastric tumor sites. Exogenous expression of CD44v8-10 but not CD44 standard (CD44s) increased the frequency of tumor initiation in immunocompromised mice. Reciprocal silencing of total CD44 resulted in reduced tumor-initiating potential of gastric cancer cells that could be rescued by CD44v8-10 but not CD44s expression. Our findings provide important functional evidence that CD44v8-10 marks human gastric CSCs and contributes to tumor initiation, possibly through enhancing oxidative stress defense. In addition, we showed that CD44v8-10 expression is low in normal tissues. Because CD44 also marks CSCs of numerous human cancers, many of which may also overexpress CD44v8-10, CD44v8-10 may provide an avenue to target CSCs in other human cancers.
Large-river deltaic estuaries and adjacent continental shelves have experienced multiple phases of transgressions and regressions to form interlayered aquifer-aquitard systems and are expected to ...host vast paleo-terrestrial groundwater hundreds of kilometres offshore. Here, we used offshore hydrogeology, marine geophysical reflections, porewater geochemistry, and paleo-hydrogeological models, and identified a previously unknown offshore freshened groundwater body with a static volume up to 575.6 ± 44.9 km
in the Pearl River Estuary and adjacent continental shelf, with the freshwater extending as far as 55 km offshore. An integrated analysis of stable isotopic compositions and water quality indices reveals the meteoric origins of such freshened groundwater and its significance as potential potable water or raw water source for desalination. Hotspots of offshore freshened groundwater in large-river deltaic estuaries and adjacent continental shelves, likely a global phenomenon, have a great potential for exploitable water resources in highly urbanized coastal areas suffering from freshwater shortage.
Objective
Baseline circulating thrombospondin‐2 (TSP2) level was identified as a potential novel hepatic fibrosis biomarker that associates with development and progression of hepatic fibrosis in ...patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes. Here, we investigated whether circulating TSP2 levels changed with improvement in liver stiffness (LS), which reflects liver fibrosis on transient elastography.
Design
Serum TSP2 levels were measured in participants from a randomized, open‐label intervention study, at baseline and after 24‐weeks treatment of either dapagliflozin 10 mg (N = 30) or sitagliptin 100 mg daily (N = 30). Vibration‐controlled transient elastography was performed to evaluate the severity of hepatic fibrosis and steatosis using LS and controlled attenuation parameter (CAP), respectively.
Patients and Measurements
Among all 60 participants with similar clinical characteristics at baseline (mean HbA1c 8.9%, CAP 289 dB/m and LS 5.8 kPa), despite similar HbA1c lowering, treatment with dapagliflozin, but not sitagliptin, led to significant improvements in body weight (BW) (p = .012), CAP (p = .015) and LS (p = .011) after 24 weeks.
Results
Serum TSP2 level decreased significantly from baseline in dapagliflozin‐treated participants (p = .035), whereas no significant change was observed with sitagliptin. In correlation analysis, change in serum TSP2 levels only positively correlated with change in LS (r = .487, p = .006), but not with changes in BW, CAP or HbA1c after dapagliflozin treatment.
Conclusions
Serum TSP2 level decreased with LS after dapagliflozin treatment, and was independent of improvements in BW, glycemic control and hepatic steatosis, further supporting the potential of serum TSP2 level as a novel hepatic fibrosis biomarker in type 2 diabetes.
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