Automated nuclei segmentation and classification are the keys to analyze and understand the cellular characteristics and functionality, supporting computer-aided digital pathology in disease ...diagnosis. However, the task still remains challenging due to the intrinsic variations in size, intensity, and morphology of different types of nuclei. Herein, we propose a self-guided ordinal regression neural network for simultaneous nuclear segmentation and classification that can exploit the intrinsic characteristics of nuclei and focus on highly uncertain areas during training. The proposed network formulates nuclei segmentation as an ordinal regression learning by introducing a distance decreasing discretization strategy, which stratifies nuclei in a way that inner regions forming a regular shape of nuclei are separated from outer regions forming an irregular shape. It also adopts a self-guided training strategy to adaptively adjust the weights associated with nuclear pixels, depending on the difficulty of the pixels that is assessed by the network itself. To evaluate the performance of the proposed network, we employ large-scale multi-tissue datasets with 276349 exhaustively annotated nuclei. We show that the proposed network achieves the state-of-the-art performance in both nuclei segmentation and classification in comparison to several methods that are recently developed for segmentation and/or classification.
Depressive disorders have been found to be a significant health issue among industrial workers, resulting from work-related factors and causing serious burdens for the workers as well as their ...employers. Literature on mental health problems of Vietnamese industrial workers has been limited, despite the rapid foreign investment-fueled industrialization process of the country. This study aimed to fill the gap in literature by examining the prevalence of depressive disorders and their potential associated factors among a cohort of Vietnamese industrial workers. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 3 industrial areas in Hanoi and Bac Ninh. A total of 289 workers agreed to participate in the study. Generalized linear mixed models were applied to identify associated factors with depression status of respondents. 38.6% of participants reported suffering depression. Factors found to be positively associated with the possibility of having depression and higher PHQ9 score were long working hours, suffering more health problems, and health hazards exposure at work. Meanwhile, being females, having more children, living with parents, engaging in smoking, and being local workers were found to correlate with lower likelihood of being depressed. The findings suggested the importance of regular health screening, work safety assurance, and social support outside of workplace on the mental health of the workers.
We investigate the opto-electronic properties of hexagonal boron nitride grown by high temperature plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. We combine atomic force microscopy, spectroscopic ...ellipsometry, and photoluminescence spectroscopy in the deep ultraviolet to compare the quality of hexagonal boron nitride grown either on sapphire or highly oriented pyrolytic graphite. For both substrates, the emission spectra peak at 235 nm, indicating the high optical quality of hexagonal boron nitride grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The epilayers on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite demonstrate superior performance in the deep ultraviolet (down to 210 nm) compared to those on sapphire. These results reveal the potential of molecular beam epitaxy for the growth of hexagonal boron nitride on graphene, and more generally, for fabricating van der Waals heterostructures and devices by means of a scalable technology.
Bi-parental mapping populations have been commonly utilized to identify and characterize quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling resistance to soybean cyst nematode (SCN, Heterodera glycines ...Ichinohe). Although this approach successfully mapped a large number of SCN resistance QTL, it captures only limited allelic diversity that exists in parental lines, and it also has limitations for genomic resolution. In this study, a genome-wide association study (GWAS) was performed using a diverse set of 553 soybean plant introductions (PIs) belonging to maturity groups from III to V to detect QTL/genes associated with SCN resistance to HG Type 0.
Over 45,000 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers generated by the SoySNP50K iSelect BeadChip (http// www.soybase.org ) were utilized for analysis. GWAS identified 14 loci distributed over different chromosomes comprising 60 SNPs significantly associated with SCN resistance. Results also confirmed six QTL that were previously mapped using bi-parental populations, including the rhg1 and Rhg4 loci. GWAS identified eight novel QTL, including QTL on chromosome 10, which we have previously mapped by using a bi-parental population. In addition to the known loci for four simple traits, such as seed coat color, flower color, pubescence color, and stem growth habit, two traits, like lodging and pod shattering, having moderately complex inheritance have been confirmed with great precision by GWAS.
The study showed that GWAS can be employed as an effective strategy for identifying complex traits in soybean and for narrowing GWAS-defined genomic regions, which facilitates positional cloning of the causal gene(s).
In the last few decades modeling deformation and flow in porous media has been of great interest due to its possible application areas in various fields of engineering such as biomechanics, soil ...mechanics, geophysics, physical chemistry and material sciences. Due to the high complexity and in most cases also unknown geometry of porous media on the microscale, a fully resolved model is nearly impossible to obtain, but most of the times also not necessary to answer important questions. As a consequence, one switches to a macroscopic approach. Such a mathematical description of porous media on the macroscale leads to a volume-coupled multi-field problem, wherein the interface between the two phases is not resolved explicitly. In this work we propose a numerical approach for modeling incompressible flow through a nearly incompressible elastic matrix under finite deformations. After a short overview of physical and mathematical fundamentals, the system equations are formulated and different representations are introduced and analyzed. Based on thermodynamic principles, a general constitutive law is derived, which allows the integration of arbitrary strain energy functions for the skeleton. Discretization in space with three primary variables and discretization in time using the one-step-theta method lead to a complete discrete formulation, which includes both finite deformations as well as full coupling of structural and fluid phases. Therein, we include dynamic effects, especially a time and space dependent porosity. Due to the compressibility of the solid phase, the porosity and its time derivative is not depending on the determinant of the deformation gradient only, but also on the pore pressure, which is an effect that is neglected in many publications. Considering this and also a general version of Darcy’s law, we derive two finite element formulations in a straightforward way, which, along with the numerical illustrations, provide a new numerical scheme for solving large deformation porous media problems.
Child maltreatment remains a major health threat globally that requires the understanding of socioeconomic and cultural contexts to craft effective interventions. However, little is known about ...research agendas globally and the development of knowledge-producing networks in this field of study. This study aims to explore the bibliometric overview on child maltreatment publications to understand their growth from 1916 to 2018. Data from the Web of Science Core Collection were collected in May 2018. Only research articles and reviews written in the English language were included, with no restrictions by publication date. We analyzed publication years, number of papers, journals, authors, keywords and countries, and presented the countries collaboration and co-occurrence keywords analysis. From 1916 to 2018, 47,090 papers (53.0% in 2010⁻2018) were published in 9442 journals. Child Abuse & Neglect (2576 papers; 5.5%); Children and Youth Services Review (1130 papers; 2.4%) and Pediatrics (793 papers, 1.7%) published the most papers. The most common research areas were Psychology (16,049 papers, 34.1%), Family Studies (8225 papers, 17.5%), and Social Work (7367 papers, 15.6%). Among 192 countries with research publications, the most prolific countries were the United States (26,367 papers), England (4676 papers), Canada (3282 papers) and Australia (2664 papers). We identified 17 authors who had more than 60 scientific items. The most cited papers (with at least 600 citations) were published in 29 journals, headed by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (7 papers) and the Lancet (5 papers). This overview of global research in child maltreatment indicated an increasing trend in this topic, with the world's leading centers located in the Western countries led by the United States. We called for interdisciplinary research approaches to evaluating and intervening on child maltreatment, with a focus on low-middle income countries (LMICs) settings and specific contexts.
Summary
Objective
Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) is a serious iatrogenic condition, predominantly related to the hormone used to induce oocyte maturation during IVF treatment. Kisspeptin is ...a hypothalamic neuropeptide that has recently been demonstrated to safely trigger final oocyte maturation during IVF treatment even in women at high risk of OHSS. However, to date, the safety of kisspeptin has not been compared to current hormonal triggers of oocyte maturation.
Design
We conducted a retrospective single‐centre cohort study investigating symptoms and clinical parameters of early OHSS in women at high risk of OHSS (antral follicle count or total number of follicles on day of trigger ≥23) triggered with human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) (n = 40), GnRH agonist (GnRHa; n = 99) or kisspeptin (n = 122) at Hammersmith Hospital IVF unit, London, UK (2013‐2016).
Results
Clinical Parameters of OHSS: Median ovarian volume was larger following hCG (138 ml) than GnRHa (73 ml; P < .0001), and in turn kisspeptin (44 ml; P < .0001). Median ovarian volume remained enlarged 20‐fold following hCG, 8‐fold following GnRHa and 5‐fold following kisspeptin compared to prestimulation ovarian volumes. Mean (±SD) ascitic volumes were lesser following GnRHa (9 ± 44 ml) and kisspeptin (5 ± 8 ml) than hCG (62 ± 84 ml; P < .0001). Symptoms of OHSS were most frequent following hCG and least frequent following kisspeptin. Diagnosis of OHSS: The odds ratio for OHSS diagnosis was 33.6 (CI 12.6‐89.5) following hCG and 3.6 (CI 1.8‐7.1) following GnRHa, when compared to kisspeptin.
Conclusion
Triggering oocyte maturation by inducing endogenous gonadotrophin release is preferable to the use of exogenous hCG in women at high risk of OHSS.
An air-filled substrate integrated waveguide (AFSIW) slot array antenna based on multilayer PCB process is proposed. For comparison and demonstration purposes, 1 × 4 slot array antennas based on both ...AFSIW and conventional dielectric-filled SIW (DFSIW) operating at 30.5 GHz are designed, fabricated and measured. The exampled AFSIW 1 × 4 slot array antenna achieves 44 and 18% narrower measured H-plane and E-plane half-power beamwidth, respectively, and simulated radiation efficiency improved by 1.6%, resulting in an overall measured gain improvement of 3.5 dB compared with its DFSIW counterpart. This antenna is of high interest for the design of efficient arrays based on high-performance AFSIW feeding network.
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