2,462 research outputs found
REMAP:An online remote sensing application for land cover classification and monitoring
Recent assessments of progress towards global conservation targets have revealed a paucity of indicators suitable for assessing the changing state of ecosystems. Moreover, land managers and planners are often unable to gain timely access to the maps they need to support their routine decision-making. This deficiency is partly due to a lack of suitable data on ecosystem change, driven mostly by the considerable technical expertise needed to develop ecosystem maps from remote sensing data. We have developed a free and open-access online remote sensing and environmental modelling application, the Remote Ecosystem Monitoring and Assessment Pipeline (Remap; https://remap-app.org), that enables volunteers, managers and scientists with little or no experience in remote sensing to generate classifications (maps) of land cover and land use change over time. Remap utilizes the geospatial data storage and analysis capacity of Google Earth Engine and requires only spatially resolved training data that define map classes of interest (e.g. ecosystem types). The training data, which can be uploaded or annotated interactively within Remap, are used in a random forest classification of up to 13 publicly available predictor datasets to assign all pixels in a focal region to map classes. Predictor datasets available in Remap represent topographic (e.g. slope, elevation), spectral (archival Landsat image composites) and climatic variables (precipitation, temperature) that are relevant to the distribution of ecosystems and land cover classes. The ability of Remap to develop and export high-quality classified maps in a very short (<10Â min) time frame represents a considerable advance towards globally accessible and free application of remote sensing technology. By enabling access to data and simplifying remote sensing classifications, Remap can catalyse the monitoring of land use and change to support environmental conservation, including developing inventories of biodiversity, identifying hotspots of ecosystem diversity, ecosystem-based spatial conservation planning, mapping ecosystem loss at local scales and supporting environmental education initiatives
Prenatal development is linked to bronchial reactivity: epidemiological and animal model evidence
Chronic cardiorespiratory disease is associated with low birthweight suggesting the importance of the developmental environment. Prenatal factors affecting fetal growth are believed important, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. The influence of developmental programming on bronchial hyperreactivity is investigated in an animal model and evidence for comparable associations is sought in humans. Pregnant Wistar rats were fed either control or protein-restricted diets throughout pregnancy. Bronchoconstrictor responses were recorded from offspring bronchial segments. Morphometric analysis of paraffin-embedded lung sections was conducted. In a human mother-child cohort ultrasound measurements of fetal growth were related to bronchial hyperreactivity, measured at age six years using methacholine. Protein-restricted rats' offspring demonstrated greater bronchoconstriction than controls. Airway structure was not altered. Children with lesser abdominal circumference growth during 11-19 weeks' gestation had greater bronchial hyperreactivity than those with more rapid abdominal growth. Imbalanced maternal nutrition during pregnancy results in offspring bronchial hyperreactivity. Prenatal environmental influences might play a comparable role in humans
Phonon Density of States of LaFeAsO1-xFx
We have studied the phonon density of states (PDOS) in LaFeAsO1-xFx with
inelastic neutron scattering methods. The PDOS of the parent compound(x=0) is
very similar to the PDOS of samples optimally doped with fluorine to achieve
the maximum Tc (x~0.1). Good agreement is found between the experimental PDOS
and first-principle calculations with the exception of a small difference in Fe
mode frequencies. The PDOS reported here is not consistent with conventional
electron-phonon mediated superconductivity
Cerebellar c9RAN proteins associate with clinical and neuropathological characteristics of C9ORF72 repeat expansion carriers.
Clinical and neuropathological characteristics associated with G4C2 repeat expansions in chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9ORF72), the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia, are highly variable. To gain insight on the molecular basis for the heterogeneity among C9ORF72 mutation carriers, we evaluated associations between features of disease and levels of two abundantly expressed "c9RAN proteins" produced by repeat-associated non-ATG (RAN) translation of the expanded repeat. For these studies, we took a departure from traditional immunohistochemical approaches and instead employed immunoassays to quantitatively measure poly(GP) and poly(GA) levels in cerebellum, frontal cortex, motor cortex, and/or hippocampus from 55 C9ORF72 mutation carriers [12 patients with ALS, 24 with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and 19 with FTLD with motor neuron disease (FTLD-MND)]. We additionally investigated associations between levels of poly(GP) or poly(GA) and cognitive impairment in 15 C9ORF72 ALS patients for whom neuropsychological data were available. Among the neuroanatomical regions investigated, poly(GP) levels were highest in the cerebellum. In this same region, associations between poly(GP) and both neuropathological and clinical features were detected. Specifically, cerebellar poly(GP) levels were significantly lower in patients with ALS compared to patients with FTLD or FTLD-MND. Furthermore, cerebellar poly(GP) associated with cognitive score in our cohort of 15 patients. In the cerebellum, poly(GA) levels similarly trended lower in the ALS subgroup compared to FTLD or FTLD-MND subgroups, but no association between cerebellar poly(GA) and cognitive score was detected. Both cerebellar poly(GP) and poly(GA) associated with C9ORF72 variant 3 mRNA expression, but not variant 1 expression, repeat size, disease onset, or survival after onset. Overall, these data indicate that cerebellar abnormalities, as evidenced by poly(GP) accumulation, associate with neuropathological and clinical phenotypes, in particular cognitive impairment, of C9ORF72 mutation carriers
How manipulating task constraints in small-sided and conditioned games shapes emergence of individual and collective tactical behaviours in football: A systematic review
Background:
Small-Sided and Conditioned Games are characterised by modifications of field dimensions, number of players, rules of the game, manipulations used to shape the key task constraints that performers need to satisfy in practice. Evidence has already demonstrated the importance of designing practice to enhance understanding of tactical behaviours in football, but there is a lack of information about how coaches can manipulate task constraints to support tactical learning.
Objective:
To investigate which task constraints have been most often manipulated in studies of SSCGs; and what impact each manipulation had on emerging tactical behaviours, technical–tactical actions, and positional relationships between players.
Methods:
PubMed, Web of Science, Scielo, and Academic Google databases were searched for relevant reports without time limits. The criteria adopted for inclusion were: a) studies performed with football players; b) studies that included SSCGs as an evaluation method; c) studies that investigated tactical behaviours in SSCGs; and d), articles in English and Portuguese.
Results:
The electronic database search included 24 articles in the review. Of these, five manipulated field dimensions, six manipulated number of players involved, five manipulated field dimensions and number of players, five used different scoring targets, two altered the number of players and scoring target, and one manipulated the number of players, field dimension, and scoring target.
Conclusion:
Among the task constraints analyzed in this systematic review, manipulation of number of players and playing field dimensions concomitantly occurred most frequentl
How manipulating task constraints in small-sided and conditioned games shapes emergence of individual and collective tactical behaviours in football: A systematic review
Background:
Small-Sided and Conditioned Games are characterised by modifications of field dimensions, number of players, rules of the game, manipulations used to shape the key task constraints that performers need to satisfy in practice. Evidence has already demonstrated the importance of designing practice to enhance understanding of tactical behaviours in football, but there is a lack of information about how coaches can manipulate task constraints to support tactical learning.
Objective:
To investigate which task constraints have been most often manipulated in studies of SSCGs; and what impact each manipulation had on emerging tactical behaviours, technical–tactical actions, and positional relationships between players.
Methods:
PubMed, Web of Science, Scielo, and Academic Google databases were searched for relevant reports without time limits. The criteria adopted for inclusion were: a) studies performed with football players; b) studies that included SSCGs as an evaluation method; c) studies that investigated tactical behaviours in SSCGs; and d), articles in English and Portuguese.
Results:
The electronic database search included 24 articles in the review. Of these, five manipulated field dimensions, six manipulated number of players involved, five manipulated field dimensions and number of players, five used different scoring targets, two altered the number of players and scoring target, and one manipulated the number of players, field dimension, and scoring target.
Conclusion:
Among the task constraints analyzed in this systematic review, manipulation of number of players and playing field dimensions concomitantly occurred most frequentl
Feasibility of Universal Anomaly Detection without Knowing the Abnormality in Medical Images
Many anomaly detection approaches, especially deep learning methods, have
been recently developed to identify abnormal image morphology by only employing
normal images during training. Unfortunately, many prior anomaly detection
methods were optimized for a specific "known" abnormality (e.g., brain tumor,
bone fraction, cell types). Moreover, even though only the normal images were
used in the training process, the abnormal images were often employed during
the validation process (e.g., epoch selection, hyper-parameter tuning), which
might leak the supposed ``unknown" abnormality unintentionally. In this study,
we investigated these two essential aspects regarding universal anomaly
detection in medical images by (1) comparing various anomaly detection methods
across four medical datasets, (2) investigating the inevitable but often
neglected issues on how to unbiasedly select the optimal anomaly detection
model during the validation phase using only normal images, and (3) proposing a
simple decision-level ensemble method to leverage the advantage of different
kinds of anomaly detection without knowing the abnormality. The results of our
experiments indicate that none of the evaluated methods consistently achieved
the best performance across all datasets. Our proposed method enhanced the
robustness of performance in general (average AUC 0.956)
Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Digital Pathology: Assess Zero-shot Segmentation on Whole Slide Imaging
The segment anything model (SAM) was released as a foundation model for image
segmentation. The promptable segmentation model was trained by over 1 billion
masks on 11M licensed and privacy-respecting images. The model supports
zero-shot image segmentation with various segmentation prompts (e.g., points,
boxes, masks). It makes the SAM attractive for medical image analysis,
especially for digital pathology where the training data are rare. In this
study, we evaluate the zero-shot segmentation performance of SAM model on
representative segmentation tasks on whole slide imaging (WSI), including (1)
tumor segmentation, (2) non-tumor tissue segmentation, (3) cell nuclei
segmentation. Core Results: The results suggest that the zero-shot SAM model
achieves remarkable segmentation performance for large connected objects.
However, it does not consistently achieve satisfying performance for dense
instance object segmentation, even with 20 prompts (clicks/boxes) on each
image. We also summarized the identified limitations for digital pathology: (1)
image resolution, (2) multiple scales, (3) prompt selection, and (4) model
fine-tuning. In the future, the few-shot fine-tuning with images from
downstream pathological segmentation tasks might help the model to achieve
better performance in dense object segmentation
Flavones induce neutrophil apoptosis by down-regulation of Mcl-1 via a proteasomal-dependent pathway
Neutrophil apoptosis and subsequent nonphlogistic clearance by surrounding phagocytes are key to the successful resolution of neutrophilic inflammation, with dysregulated apoptosis reported in multiple human inflammatory diseases. Enhancing neutrophil apoptosis has proresolution and anti-inflammatory effects in preclinical models of inflammation. Here we investigate the ability of the flavones apigenin, luteolin, and wogonin to induce neutrophil apoptosis in vitro and resolve neutrophilic inflammation in vivo. Human neutrophil apoptosis was assessed morphologically and by flow cytometry following incubation with apigenin, luteolin, and wogonin. All three flavones induced time- and concentration-dependent neutrophil apoptosis (apigenin, EC(50)=12.2 μM; luteolin, EC(50)=14.6 μM; and wogonin, EC(50)=28.9 μM). Induction of apoptosis was caspase dependent, as it was blocked by the broad-spectrum caspase inhibitor Q-VD-OPh and was associated with both caspase-3 and caspase-9 activation. Flavone-induced apoptosis was preceded by down-regulation of the prosurvival protein Mcl-1, with proteasomal inhibition preventing flavone-induced Mcl-1 down-regulation and apoptosis. The flavones abrogated the survival effects of mediators that prolong neutrophil life span, including lipoteichoic acid, peptidoglycan, dexamethasone, and granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor, by driving apoptosis. Furthermore, wogonin enhanced resolution of established neutrophilic inflammation in a zebrafish model of sterile tissue injury. Wogonin-induced resolution was dependent on apoptosis in vivo as it was blocked by caspase inhibition. Our data show that the flavones induce neutrophil apoptosis and have potential as neutrophil apoptosis-inducing anti-inflammatory, proresolution agents.—Lucas, C. D., Allen, K. C., Dorward, D. A., Hoodless, L. J., Melrose, L. A., Marwick, J. A., Tucker, C. S., Haslett, C., Duffin, R., Rossi, A. G. Flavones induce neutrophil apoptosis by down-regulation of Mcl-1 via a proteasomal-dependent pathway
Cell Spatial Analysis in Crohn's Disease: Unveiling Local Cell Arrangement Pattern with Graph-based Signatures
Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic and relapsing inflammatory condition that
affects segments of the gastrointestinal tract. CD activity is determined by
histological findings, particularly the density of neutrophils observed on
Hematoxylin and Eosin stains (H&E) imaging. However, understanding the broader
morphometry and local cell arrangement beyond cell counting and tissue
morphology remains challenging. To address this, we characterize six distinct
cell types from H&E images and develop a novel approach for the local spatial
signature of each cell. Specifically, we create a 10-cell neighborhood matrix,
representing neighboring cell arrangements for each individual cell. Utilizing
t-SNE for non-linear spatial projection in scatter-plot and Kernel Density
Estimation contour-plot formats, our study examines patterns of differences in
the cellular environment associated with the odds ratio of spatial patterns
between active CD and control groups. This analysis is based on data collected
at the two research institutes. The findings reveal heterogeneous
nearest-neighbor patterns, signifying distinct tendencies of cell clustering,
with a particular focus on the rectum region. These variations underscore the
impact of data heterogeneity on cell spatial arrangements in CD patients.
Moreover, the spatial distribution disparities between the two research sites
highlight the significance of collaborative efforts among healthcare
organizations. All research analysis pipeline tools are available at
https://github.com/MASILab/cellNN.Comment: Submitted to SPIE Medical Imaging. San Diego, CA. February 202
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