3,610 research outputs found
Influence of peptidylarginine deiminase type 4 genotype and shared epitope on clinical characteristics and autoantibody profile of rheumatoid arthritis.
Background: Recent evidence suggests that distinction
of subsets of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) depending on anticyclic
citrullinated peptide antibody (anti-CCP) status may
be helpful in distinguishing distinct aetiopathologies and in
predicting the course of disease. HLA-DRB1 shared
epitope (SE) and peptidylarginine deiminase type 4
(PADI4) genotype, both of which have been implicated in
anti-CCP generation, are assumed to be associated with
RA.
Objectives: To elucidate whether PADI4 affects the
clinical characteristics of RA, and whether it would
modulate the effect of anti-CCPs on clinical course. The
combined effect of SE and PADI4 on autoantibody profile
was also analysed.
Methods: 373 patients with RA were studied. SE,
padi4_94C.T, rheumatoid factor, anti-CCPs and antinuclear
antibodies (ANAs) were determined. Disease
severity was characterised by cumulative therapy
intensity classified into ordinal categories (CTI-1 to CTI-3)
and by Steinbrocker score.
Results: CTI was significantly associated with disease
duration, erosive disease, disease activity score (DAS) 28
and anti-CCPs. The association of anti-CCPs with CTI was
considerably influenced by padi4_94C.T genotype (C/C:
ORadj=0.93, padj=0.92; C/T: ORadj=2.92,
padj=0.093; T/T: ORadj=15.3, padj=0.002). Carriage of
padi4_94T exhibited a significant trend towards higher
Steinbrocker scores in univariate and multivariate
analyses. An association of padi4_94C.T with ANAs
was observed, with noteworthy differences depending on
SE status (SE2: ORadj=6.20, padj,0.04; SE+:
ORadj=0.36, padj=0.02) and significant heterogeneity
between the two SE strata (p=0.006).
Conclusions: PADI4 genotype in combination with anti-
CCPs and SE modulates clinical and serological characteristics
of RA
Perencanaan Kebutuhan Tenaga Kependidikan Berdasarkan Analisis Beban Kerja di Lingkungan Perguruan Tinggi (Studi pada Program Pascasarjana Universitas Brawijaya )
Merencanakan kebutuhan tenaga kependidikan dalam hal ini bukan hanya yang berkaitan dengan kuantitas, akan tetapi juga kualitas dari sumber daya manusia yang dibutuhkan. Sehingga dalam hal ini seharusnya analisis beban kerja memainkan peranan yang penting sebab pengadaan tenaga kependidikan yang tidak didasari oleh analisis yang tepat, akan selalu menimbulkan masalah misalnya pendistribusian tenaga kependidikan yang saat ini masih belum mengacu pada kebutuhan tiap unit kerja yang sebenarnya dalam artian belum didasarkan pada beban kerja yang ada. Sehingga dalam perencanaan kebutuhan tenaga kependidikan di lingkungan unit kerja yang ada di Universitas Brawijaya khususnya pada Program Pascasarjana makaperlu dianalisis beban kerja setiap tenaga kependidikan dan juga menganalisis kebutuhan tenaga kependidikan pada unit layanan yang ada di program pascasarjana.Dalam penelitian ini data yang dikumpulkan berdasarkan Observasi atau pengamatan langsung yang dilakukan dalam mengumpulkan data dimana langsung mengamati aktivitas kegiatan yang dilaksanakan oleh tenaga kependidikan di tiap bagian misalnya mengamati berapa waktu yang dibutuhkan oleh tenaga kependidikan dalam mengerjakan suatu pekerjaan selain itu juga dengan wawancara yang dilakukan dalam hal ini adalah menanyakan langung kepada narasumber ataui nforman yang melaksanakan jabatan tersebut selanjutnya dilakukan dokumentasi dalam hal ini dilaksanakan dengan cara mengumpulkan data-data yang berasal dari catatan-catatan, dokumen-dokumen yang dianggap berkaitan dengan masalah yang di telitibaik berupa daftar tupoksi tiap jabatan ataupun data kepegawaian tiap tenaga kependidikan yang berada di Program Pascasarjana.Dengan adanya hasil perhitungan analisis beban kerja pada Program Pascasarjana maka dapat diketahui jabatan-jabatan mana saja yang mengalami kelebihan beban kerja dan kekurangan beba nkerjanya
Direct observation of substitutional Ga after ion implantation in Ge by means of extended x-ray absorption fine structure
We present an experimental lattice location study of Ga atoms in Ge after ion implantation at elevated temperature (250°C). Using extended x-rayabsorption fine structure (EXAFS) experiments and a dedicated sample preparation method, we have studied the lattice location of Ga atoms in Ge with a concentration ranging from 0.5 at. % down to 0.005 at. %. At Ga concentrations ≤0.05 at.%, all Ga dopants are substitutional directly after ion implantation, without the need for post-implantation thermal annealing. At higher Ga concentrations, a reduction in the EXAFS amplitude is observed, indicating that a fraction of the Ga atoms is located in a defective environment. The local strain induced by the Ga atoms in the Ge matrix is independent of the Ga concentration and extends only to the first nearest neighbor Ge shell, where a 1% contraction in bond length has been measured, in agreement with density functional theory calculations.We acknowledge the support from the Research Foundation
Flanders, the epi-team from imec, the KU Leuven
GOA 09/06 project, the IUAP program P6/42 and the Australian
Research Council. S.C. acknowledges support from
OCAS NV by an OCAS-endowed chair at Ghent University
Spitzer-IRAC survey of molecular jets in Vela-D
We present a survey of H2 jets from young protostars in the Vela-D molecular
cloud (VMR-D), based on Spitzer -IRAC data between 3.6 and 8.0 micron. Our
search has led to the identification of 15 jets and about 70 well aligned knots
within 1.2 squared degree. We compare the IRAC maps with observations of the H2
1-0 S(1) line at 2.12 micron, with a Spitzer-MIPS map at 24 and 70 micron, and
with a map of the dust continuum emission at 1.2 mm. We find a association
between molecular jets and dust peaks. The jet candidate exciting sources have
been searched for in the published catalog of the Young Stellar Objects of
VMR-D. We selected all the sources of Class II or earlier which are located
close to the jet center and aligned with it.The association between jet and
exciting source was validated by estimating the differential extinction between
the jet opposite lobes. We are able to find a best-candidate exciting source in
all but two jets. Four exciting sources are not (or very barely) observed at
wavelengths shorter than 24 micron, suggesting they are very young protostars.
Three of them are also associated with the most compact jets. The exciting
source Spectral Energy Distributions have been modeled by means of the
photometric data between 1.2 micron and 1.2 mm. From SEDs fits we derive the
main source parameters, which indicate that most of them are low-mass
protostars. A significant correlation is found between the projected jet length
and the [24] - [70] color, which is consistent with an evolutionary scenario
according to which shorter jets are associated with younger sources. A rough
correlation is found between IRAC line cooling and exciting source bolometric
luminosity, in agreement with the previous literature. The emerging trend
suggests that mass loss and mass accretion are tightly related phenomena and
that both decrease with time.Comment: Accepted by The Astrophysical Journa
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Accurate Diagnosis of COVID-19 Patients Using Chest X-Ray Image Databases from Italy, Canada, and the USA
Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), famously known as COVID-19, has quickly become a global pandemic. Chest X-ray (CXR) imaging has proven reliable, fast, and cost-effective for identifying COVID-19 infections, which proceeds to display atypical unilateral patchy infiltration in the lungs like typical pneumonia. We employed the deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) ResNet-34 to detect and classify CXR images from patients with COVID-19 and Viral Pneumonia and Normal Controls.
Methods: We created a single database containing 781 source CXR images from four different international sub-databases: the Società Italiana di Radiologia Medica e Interventistica (SIRM), the GitHub Database, the Radiology Society of North America (RSNA), and the Kaggle Chest X-ray Database for COVID-19 (n = 240), Viral Pneumonia (n = 274), and Normal Controls (n = 267). Images were resized, normalized, without any augmentation, and arranged in m batches of 16 images before supervised training, testing, and cross-validation of the DCNN classifier.
Results: The ResNet-34 had a diagnostic accuracy as of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of the true-positive rate versus the false-positive rate with the area under the curve (AUC) of 1.00, 0.99, and 0.99, for COVID-19 and Viral Pneumonia patient and Normal control CXR images; respectively. This accuracy implied identical high sensitivity and specificity values of 100, 99, and 99% for the three groups, respectively. ResNet-34 achieved a success rate of 100%, 99.6%, and 98.9% for classifying CXR images of the three groups, with an overall accuracy of 99.5% for the testing subset for diagnosis/prognosis.
Conclusions: Based on this high classification precision, we believe the output activation map of the final layer of the ResNet-34 is a powerful tool for the accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 infection from CXR images
Stimulated perturbation on the neutron flux distribution in the mutually-dependent source-to-absorber geometry
The complexity of the neutron transport phenomenon throws its shadows on
every physical system wherever neutron is produced or absorbed. The Monte Carlo
N-Particle Transport Code (MCNP) was used to investigate the flux perturbations
in the neutron field caused by an absorber. The geometry of the present
experiment was designed to reach a simulation of an isotopic neutron field. The
neutron source was a AmBe with the production physics of neutrons is
dependent only on alpha-beryllium interaction and is independent of what
happened to the neutron after it was generated. The geometries have been
designed to get a volume of uniform neutron densities within a spherical volume
of radius 15 cm in every neutron energy group up to 10 MeV. Absorbers of
different dimensions were placed within the volume to investigate the field
perturbation. Different neutron absorbers were used to correlate the phenomenon
to the integral cross-section of the absorber. Flux density inside and outside
the absorber samples was determined, while the spatial neutron flux
distribution produced by the AmBe source without an absorber was taken as a
reference. This study displayed that absorbers of various dimensions perturb
the neutron field in a way that is dependent on the absorption and scattering
cross-sections, particularly in the neutron resonance region. Unlike the simple
picture of reducing the number density of neutrons, the perturbation was found
to influence the moderation of neutrons in the medium, significantly above 1
MeV.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, 26 reference
Inter- and intragrain currents in bulk melt-grown YBaCuO rings
A simple contactless method suitable to discern between the intergrain
(circular) current, which flows in the thin superconducting ring, and the
intragrain current, which does not cross the weakest link, has been proposed.
At first, we show that the intergrain current may directly be estimated from
the magnetic flux density measured by the Hall sensor positioned
in the special points above/below the ring center. The experimental
and the numerical techniques to determine the value are discussed. Being
very promising for characterization of a current flowing across the joints in
welded YBaCuO rings (its dependencies on the temperature and the external
magnetic field as well as the time dissipation), the approach has been applied
to study corresponding properties of the intra- and intergrain currents flowing
across the -twisted grain boundaries which are frequent in bulk
melt-textured YBaCuO samples. We present experimental data related to the flux
penetration inside a bore of MT YBaCuO rings both in the non-magnetized, virgin
state and during the field reversal. The shielding properties and their
dependence on external magnetic fields are also studied. Besides, we consider
the flux creep effects and their influence on the current re-distribution
during a dwell.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures (EPS), RevTeX4. In the revised version,
corrections to perturbing effects near the weak links are introduced, one
more figure is added. lin
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