Alcidamea Producta Cress. and its Parasites

This is one the more common bees of this district, and may be found over a wide range of territory, nesting freely whereever convenient sites are to be found from the plains around Los Angeles to at least 5000 feet altitude in the Tehachapi Mountains

Lumbar multifidus characteristics in relation to low back pain, lower limb injury, and body composition in university level athletes

Low back pain (LBP) is highly prevalent within the athletic population despite increased training and intensity. Quality activation of the lumbar musculature is crucial for proper stabilization during athletic movements. Extensive research has indicated a connection between lumbar multifidus (LM) muscle morphology (cross-sectional area (CSA), echo intensity (EI), and CSA asymmetry) and function and the presence of LBP and lower limb injury (LLI) in athletes. However, LM has only been examined in small sample sizes through single sport investigations. Furthermore, body composition has been closely related to skeletal muscle characteristics, yet few studies have examined the influence of body composition parameters on LM morphology and function. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to 1) investigate if LM morphology and function are predictors of LBP and LLI in a large sample of university varsity athletes and 2) examine the relationship between LM characteristics and the body composition in university athletes. A total of 134 university level athletes were included in this study and completed a self-reported questionnaire to acquire data on demographics and history of LBP and LLI. LM characteristics at the 5th lumbar vertebra were assessed via ultrasound and body composition was assessed via dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Manuscript 1 investigated LM morphology and function via ultrasound and the presence of LBP and LLI in the past year via questionnaire. Manuscript 2 examined body composition via DEXA, LM morphology and function via ultrasound, and type of sport via questionnaire. Overall, LM was larger and thicker on the non-dominant side of the lower limb in males. LM thickness was the best predictor of the presence of LBP and type of sport was the best predictor of the presence of LLI. LM cross-sectional area and thickness were both positively correlated with several body composition measurements and echo intensity, and total fat mass, and % body fat were negatively correlated with % thickness change of the LM. This study investigated the relationships between LM, LBP, LLI, and body composition. Using ultrasound to assess LM characteristics may be a tool for team health professionals to perform preseason screening to identify athletes at risk for injury and develop individualized rehabilitation programs for injury prevention

How inter-rater variability relates to aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty: a case study with deep learning-based paraspinal muscle segmentation

Recent developments in deep learning (DL) techniques have led to great performance improvement in medical image segmentation tasks, especially with the latest Transformer model and its variants. While labels from fusing multi-rater manual segmentations are often employed as ideal ground truths in DL model training, inter-rater variability due to factors such as training bias, image noise, and extreme anatomical variability can still affect the performance and uncertainty of the resulting algorithms. Knowledge regarding how inter-rater variability affects the reliability of the resulting DL algorithms, a key element in clinical deployment, can help inform better training data construction and DL models, but has not been explored extensively. In this paper, we measure aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties using test-time augmentation (TTA), test-time dropout (TTD), and deep ensemble to explore their relationship with inter-rater variability. Furthermore, we compare UNet and TransUNet to study the impacts of Transformers on model uncertainty with two label fusion strategies. We conduct a case study using multi-class paraspinal muscle segmentation from T2w MRIs. Our study reveals the interplay between inter-rater variability and uncertainties, affected by choices of label fusion strategies and DL models.Comment: Accepted in UNSURE MICCAI 202

Lumbar multifidus characteristics in university level athletes may be predictors of low back pain and lower limb injury

Introduction: Low back pain (LBP) is highly prevalent in athletes, with decreased lumbar multifidus (LM) crosssectional area (CSA) reported in athletes with LBP and lower limb injury (LLI) as well as decreased LM thickness in athletes with LLI. Previous research has only investigated connections between LM, LBP, and LLI in small samples of athletes in a single sport at a time. This study aimed to (1) examine LM morphology and function across a general sample of male and female university level varsity athletes; (2) investigate whether LM characteristics were predictors of LBP and LLI.Methods: Ultrasound images of LM at L5 were acquired in prone and standing. Body composition was assessed with DEXA and a self-reported questionnaire provided demographics and history of injury. Paired t-tests and independent t-tests compared LM measurements between the sides and sex, respectively. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess possible LM characteristic predictors of LBP and LLI.Results: 134 university varsity athletes were evaluated. LM CSA was larger on the non-dominant side in prone. Increased LM thickness was associated with decreased odds of LBP in the previous 4-week (OR=0.49 [0.27, 0.88], p=0.02) and 3-month (OR=0.43 [0.21, 0.89], p=0.02) in the multivariable model, while a greater number of years playing at the university level was associated with increased odds of LBP (OR=1.29 [1.01, 1.65], p=0.04). Greater LM CSA asymmetry (OR=1.14 [1.01, 1.28], p=0.03) and sport (OR=1.44 [1.04, 1.96], p=0.02) were significant predictors of LLI in the previous 12 months.Conclusion: Leg dominance may play a role in unilateral differences. LM thickness and LM CSA asymmetry were predictors of injury. Preseason screening of LM morphology and function could help identify athletes at risk of LBP and LLI, allowing coaches, medical staff, and training staff to target these individuals and provide specific injury prevention programs

‘Great inhumanity’: scandal, child punishment and policymaking in the early years of the New Poor Law workhouse system

New Poor Law scandals have usually been examined either to demonstrate the cruelty of the workhouse regime or to illustrate the failings or brutality of union staff. Recent research has used these and similar moments of crisis to explore the relationship between local and central levels of welfare administration (the Boards of Guardians in unions across England and Wales and the Poor Law Commission in Somerset House in London) and how scandals in particular were pivotal in the development of further policies. This article examines both the inter-local and local-centre tensions and policy consequences of the Droxford Union and Fareham Union scandal (1836–1837), which exposed the severity of workhouse punishments towards three young children. The article illustrates the complexities of union cooperation and, as a result of the escalation of public knowledge into the cruelties and investigations thereafter, how the vested interests of individuals within a system manifested themselves in particular (in)actions and viewpoints. While the Commission was a reactive and flexible welfare authority, producing new policies and procedures in the aftermath of crises, the policies developed after this particular scandal made union staff, rather than the welfare system as a whole, individually responsible for the maltreatment and neglect of the poor

Writing from the archive: Henry Garnet’s powder-plot letters and archival communication

Through a reading of the archived letters of Henry Garnet (1555–1606), Superior of the Jesuit order in England and suspected Gunpowder plotter, this article investigates the nature of the archive in relation to narrative theory. Figuring the archive as one of the number of narrating voices accrued by the individual record, I argue that models of communication such as those put forward by Roman Jakobson, Wayne C. Booth and Seymour Chatman afford useful insights into the ways in which power is inscribed and reinscribed in the record through successive acts of reading and rewriting