The main objective of this study was to analyze how the use of digital resources contributes to improving cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control and basic math skills in early childhood education.
...Ninety children, aged 5–6 years, were divided into three groups. One group received the intervention in paper and pencil format, another group received the same intervention in digital format, and a third was a non-treatment group. Executive functions were evaluated using the Eriksen flanker task, while basic mathematical skills were evaluated using the Test for Diagnosis Assessment of Mathematical Disabilities (TEDI-MATH).
The results showed significant improvements in the two groups that received the intervention. However, there were no differences between the two modalities of intervention, except in the total reaction time for the tasks of inhibitory control. The group that received the intervention in digital format obtained shorter total reaction times.
The data obtained support the idea that it is possible to improve executive functioning and basic math skills in early childhood education. However, it was the content and not the format of the tasks used that determined the observed changes.
•Virtual programme based on gesture-controlled games improved the cognitive flexibility.•Digital group obtained better scores in cognitive flexibility.•Data showed improve in cognitive flexibility for early childhood education.•Score in inhibitory control was higher in digital group.•All groups obtained higher scores in basic mathematic skills after training.
Introducción: Las áreas impactadas por minería en bosques tropicales requieren de la aplicación de estrategias de restauración ecológica, pero este proceso, muchas veces involucra el uso de especies ...vegetales exóticas, desconociendo los efectos sobre la regeneración ecológica de los sitios donde se introducen. Objetivo: Evaluar el efecto de las plantaciones de Acacia mangium (planta exótica) sobre la rehabilitación ecológica temprana (suelo y vegetación) de áreas impactadas por minería de oro a cielo abierto en la selva pluvial tropical del Chocó, Colombia. Métodos: Se seleccionaron 16 áreas mineras como unidades de muestreo (ocho reforestadas con A. mangium y ocho en sucesión natural) en dos localidades. En cada unidad de muestreo se estableció una parcela de 2 × 50 m (cuatro parcelas por escenario de muestreo y localidad), donde se analizó la fertilidad del suelo (parámetros físicos y químicos) y se cuantificó el número de individuos de cada especie de planta vascular. Resultados: Se registraron 73 especies (69 géneros, 45 familias). La densidad de individuos fue mayor en áreas de sucesión natural que en aquellas reforestadas con A. mangium; por el contrario, la riqueza y diversidad de especies fueron superiores bajo las plantaciones de A. mangium. La similitud florística fue baja entre escenarios sucesionales (especies compartidas 35.6 %). El suelo mostró mejores condiciones (especialmente, N-NHO3) en áreas con A. mangium que en áreas en regeneración natural. Conclusiones: Las plantaciones de A. mangium parecen facilitar la rehabilitación temprana de la fertilidad del suelo y la vegetación en las minas abandonadas; por lo tanto, esta especie puede jugar un papel importante para la implementación de estrategias de restauración ecológica de áreas impactadas por minería de oro a cielo abierto en el Chocó y otros sistemas forestales tropicales con condiciones ambientales y de perturbación similares.
Background
Identification of patients on admission to hospital with coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia who can develop poor outcomes has not yet been comprehensively assessed.
...Objective
To compare severity scores used for community-acquired pneumonia to identify high-risk patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.
Design
PSI, CURB-65, qSOFA, and MuLBSTA, a new score for viral pneumonia, were calculated on admission to hospital to identify high-risk patients for in-hospital mortality, admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), or use of mechanical ventilation. Area under receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC), sensitivity, and specificity for each score were determined and AUROC was compared among them.
Participants
Patients with COVID-19 pneumonia included in the SEMI-COVID-19 Network.
Key results
We examined 10,238 patients with COVID-19. Mean age of patients was 66.6 years and 57.9% were males. The most common comorbidities were as follows: hypertension (49.2%), diabetes (18.8%), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (12.8%). Acute respiratory distress syndrome (34.7%) and acute kidney injury (13.9%) were the most common complications. In-hospital mortality was 20.9%. PSI and CURB-65 showed the highest AUROC (0.835 and 0.825, respectively). qSOFA and MuLBSTA had a lower AUROC (0.728 and 0.715, respectively). qSOFA was the most specific score (specificity 95.7%) albeit its sensitivity was only 26.2%. PSI had the highest sensitivity (84.1%) and a specificity of 72.2%.
Conclusions
PSI and CURB-65, specific severity scores for pneumonia, were better than qSOFA and MuLBSTA at predicting mortality in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Additionally, qSOFA, the simplest score to perform, was the most specific albeit the least sensitive.
Aim
Several factors influence the condition of the periapical tissues associated with root filled teeth. The primary objective of this study was to retrospectively evaluate the extent and speed of ...bone healing of large periapical lesions associated with nonsurgical root canal treatment or retreatment. The secondary objective was to analyse the relationship between the time to complete healing when analysed using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) and other possible predictors that affect healing.
Methodology
Seventy‐nine patients were treated during the years 2013–2020 with large periapical lesions of endodontic origin (10–15 mm) as observed on intraoral periapical radiographs (IOPAR) were included. IOPAR and CBCT were available before treatment and during the follow‐up (IOPAR every 6 months and CBCT every 12 months). The volume of periapical lesions was calculated by OsiriX Lite software. Variables such as initial volume of the lesion, age, gender, type of treatment or type of root canal filling were compared to identify the differences between healed and unhealed lesions. Pearson's Chi‐square test was used for categorical variables, the t‐test for age and the Wilcoxon test for initial volume of the lesion. The association between time to healing and the variables was assessed using univariate analysis and multivariate analysis. The Wilcoxon test was used to observe the association of healing time with categorical variables and the correlation index was measured with the quantitative variables.
Results
Of the 79 cases analysed, 60 lesions (76%) were completely healed as verified by CBCT in a mean healing time of 19 months, of which 60% healed fully between 12 and 18 months. Increase in age of patient and larger initial volume of the lesion were associated with a significantly longer healing time (p < .001). Gender, filling material and type of treatment did not have a significant effect on the healing process (p > .05).
Conclusions
Clinicians should be aware that periapical lesions in older patients and larger areas of bone loss take longer to heal. CBCT monitoring of large periapical lesions is critical and it can help clinicians in the decision‐making process.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis that produces pulmonary damage. Radiological imaging is the preferred technique for the assessment of TB longitudinal ...course. Computer-assisted identification of biomarkers eases the work of the radiologist by providing a quantitative assessment of disease. Lung segmentation is the step before biomarker extraction. In this study, we present an automatic procedure that enables robust segmentation of damaged lungs that have lesions attached to the parenchyma and are affected by respiratory movement artifacts in a Mycobacterium Tuberculosis infection model. Its main steps are the extraction of the healthy lung tissue and the airway tree followed by elimination of the fuzzy boundaries. Its performance was compared with respect to a segmentation obtained using: (1) a semi-automatic tool and (2) an approach based on fuzzy connectedness. A consensus segmentation resulting from the majority voting of three experts' annotations was considered our ground truth. The proposed approach improves the overlap indicators (Dice similarity coefficient, 94% ± 4%) and the surface similarity coefficients (Hausdorff distance, 8.64 mm ± 7.36 mm) in the majority of the most difficult-to-segment slices. Results indicate that the refined lung segmentations generated could facilitate the extraction of meaningful quantitative data on disease burden.
This case report describes a primary cardiac tumor, classified as venous malformation, diagnosed in an asymptomatic child. The tumor was located in the left atrium near the mitral valve without ...affecting the mitral valve's functioning. Complete resection of the lesion was performed because of the risk of systemic embolism. The lesion consisted of fibrous tissue with multiple venous vascular channels. The patient did not have similar lesions in other locations. Vascular primary cardiac tumors are extremely rare. Hemangiomas and lymphangiomas have been described previously, but to our knowledge, this is the first primary cardiac tumor identified as a venous malformation.
Standard cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) involves the acquisition of at least 360 projections rotating through 360 degrees. Nevertheless, there are cases in which only a few projections can be ...taken in a limited angular span, such as during surgery, where rotation of the source-detector pair is limited to less than 180 degrees. Reconstruction of limited data with the conventional method proposed by Feldkamp, Davis and Kress (FDK) results in severe artifacts. Iterative methods may compensate for the lack of data by including additional prior information, although they imply a high computational burden and memory consumption.
We present an accelerated implementation of an iterative method for CBCT following the Split Bregman formulation, which reduces computational time through GPU-accelerated kernels. The implementation enables the reconstruction of large volumes (>1024
pixels) using partitioning strategies in forward- and back-projection operations. We evaluated the algorithm on small-animal data for different scenarios with different numbers of projections, angular span, and projection size. Reconstruction time varied linearly with the number of projections and quadratically with projection size but remained almost unchanged with angular span. Forward- and back-projection operations represent 60% of the total computational burden.
Efficient implementation using parallel processing and large-memory management strategies together with GPU kernels enables the use of advanced reconstruction approaches which are needed in limited-data scenarios. Our GPU implementation showed a significant time reduction (up to 48 ×) compared to a CPU-only implementation, resulting in a total reconstruction time from several hours to few minutes.
Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), one of the crucial steps for carcinoma cells to acquire invasive capacity, results from the disruption of cell–cell contacts and the acquisition of a ...motile mesenchymal phenotype. Although the transcriptional events controlling EMT have been extensively studied, in recent years, several posttranscriptional mechanisms have emerged as critical in the regulation of EMT during tumor progression. In this review, we highlight the regulation of posttranscriptional events in EMT by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). RBPs are responsible for controlling pre-mRNA splicing, capping, and polyadenylation, as well as mRNA export, turnover, localization, and translation. We discuss the most relevant aspects of RBPs controlling the metabolism of EMT-related mRNAs, and describe the implication of novel posttranscriptional mechanisms regulating EMT in response to different signaling pathways. Novel insight into posttranscriptional regulation of EMT by RBPs is uncovering new therapeutic targets in cancer invasion and metastasis.
•A flexible test setup to study lap splices in reinforced concrete is proposed.•Several tensile configurations found in the literature have been studied.•An evaluation matrix was used to determine ...the most efficient alternative.•An experimental work has been carried out to assess the proposed test setup.•The test resulted to be affordable, with low scatter and with high sensitivity.
Connecting reinforcement bars in their longitudinal direction is often needed in reinforced concrete structures. These connections must guarantee a correct stress transmission between bars without excessive cracking or inadmissible slips, and they are commonly executed by overlapping the reinforcement bars in a procedure known as a lap splice. In the absence of a standard or widely recognized test, three or four point bending tests are often used for the experimental study of lap-splices in tension. This test configuration shows inherent limitations, large costs and, usually, significant scatter.
In this paper the authors have selected, fine-tuned and evaluated a specific test configuration for studying lap splices in reinforcement bars submitted to tensile forces. The proposed experiment was designed to be flexible and affordable in terms of cost, time consumption and required testing equipment. Consequently, it is possible to carry out multiple reruns of the experiments, minimizing the uncertainty and providing a good starting point for applying statistic methodologies. In contrast to the regular test configurations, the selected setup makes possible to directly obtain the bond-slip curves of the spliced bars. The experimental work carried out to assess the reliability, sensitivity and scatter of the proposed configuration shows promising results.
We report the finding of two partial specimens of Cryptolepas rhachianecti (Cirripedia, Coronulidae), a coronulid barnacle known only to inhabit the skin of gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus), in ...Pleistocene-aged sediments from the Canoa Basin, Ecuador. While the historical range of gray whales includes the North Pacific and North Atlantic, to our knowledge this is the first inferred evidence of a gray whale population having resided within the South Pacific. We describe the two Cryptolepas rhachianecti fossils, use isotopic analysis to investigate evidence of migration in their host whales, and discuss their implications for our understanding of gray whale evolutionary history.
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