Multi-Centre, Multi-Vendor and Multi-Disease Cardiac Segmentation: The M&Ms Challenge

The emergence of deep learning has considerably advanced the state-of-the-art in cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) segmentation. Many techniques have been proposed over the last few years, bringing the accuracy of automated segmentation close to human performance. However, these models have been all too often trained and validated using cardiac imaging samples from single clinical centres or homogeneous imaging protocols. This has prevented the development and validation of models that are generalizable across different clinical centres, imaging conditions or scanner vendors. To promote further research and scientific benchmarking in the field of generalizable deep learning for cardiac segmentation, this paper presents the results of the Multi-Centre, Multi-Vendor and Multi-Disease Cardiac Segmentation (M&Ms) Challenge, which was recently organized as part of the MICCAI 2020 Conference. A total of 14 teams submitted different solutions to the problem, combining various baseline models, data augmentation strategies, and domain adaptation techniques. The obtained results indicate the importance of intensity-driven data augmentation, as well as the need for further research to improve generalizability towards unseen scanner vendors or new imaging protocols. Furthermore, we present a new resource of 375 heterogeneous CMR datasets acquired by using four different scanner vendors in six hospitals and three different countries (Spain, Canada and Germany), which we provide as open-access for the community to enable future research in the field

All for Sport for All: Perspectives of Sport for People with a Disability in Europe.

Due to the nature of the Preparatory Action Project, this Summary Report is not meant to be a scientific paper covering all details and concepts related to disability sport, nor was it able to include all kinds and varieties of disability sports or national disability sport sector aspects, information, activities, practices and contributions. This Summary Report nonetheless has been duly built on the information received from national project and associate partners who are experts in the field and who duly researched information and practices within the time and resources given. The report shall be read together with the detailed work package and sector reports that are available online at www.allforsport.eu and include further country data, practices and references. In regards of proper use of terminology, the All for Sport for All project team has been aware and acknowledges that there are considerable debates on the different terms related to the sector. We are aware that the translation and use of some terms might be difficult and used differently in each European country2, such as e.g. “disabled people” or “disability sports”. However, the international team has decided and is confident that even an incoherent use of terms within the project or this publication (e.g. “sport for people with a disability” and “disability sport” to describe sport activities that have been developed for people with a disability) will not detract substantially from the general points we wish to make. For reasons of legibility, we also refrained from referring in every case to both sexes. References to persons are generally not gender-specific. The report’s objective is to provide the reader and especially the EU and national sport authorities and stakeholders dealing with sport for people with a disability or with disability in general with an overview and review of the current status quo of the sector. The Summary Report reflects the view of the experts involved in this project activity. By drawing conclusions and recommendations, the report shall help opening the door for a broader European dimension of disability sport with further trans-nationa

Niche Breadth: Causes and Consequences for Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation

Niche breadth is a unifying concept spanning diverse aspects of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. Niche breadth usually refers to the diversity of resources used or environments tolerated by an individual, population, species, or clade. Here we review key research in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology in light of niche breadth. Namely, we explore the role of niche breadth in shaping geographic distributions and species richness from local to landscape scales, how niche breadth evolves and influences lineage diversification, and its use for understanding species invasions, responses to climate change, vulnerability to extinction, and ecosystem functioning. This diverse literature informs a research agenda that identifies focused needs for further progress: testing the hierarchical nature of niche breadth (e.g., of individuals, populations, and species); quantifying correlations in niche breadth among different niche axes and the role of environmental drivers and organismal constraints in generating these correlations; and evaluating the factors that decouple fundamental and realized niches. We describe how this research agenda could help unify disparate subdisciplines and shed light on key questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation

Did population collapse influence individual fecundity of Northwest Atlantic cod?

We examined the influence of population collapse on individual potential fecundity and total population egg production (TEP) of three northwest Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) populations: northern cod (Divisions 2J3KL), southern Grand Bank cod (NAFO Divisions 3NO), and southern Newfoundland cod (Subdivision 3Ps). Fecundity at length increased in conjunction with population collapse for two (3NO, 3Ps) of the three populations. Subsequent moderate population recovery between the 1990s and 2000s in 3Ps was accompanied by a decrease in fecundity at length. A large decrease in fecundity at length for 3NO during the same time period, despite little or no population recovery, coupled with the fact that there was no obvious difference in fish condition between the two time periods, suggested that density-independent factors could be contributing to the changes in fecundity. Use of pre-collapse fecundity–length relationships to estimate TEP in the post-collapse period resulted in underestimation of TEP by as much as 30% in 3NO and 46% in 3Ps, whereas in 2J3KL, TEP was overestimated by as much as 18%. Although the results do not fully support the hypothesis of an inverse relationship between population size and fecundity, they do demonstrate the variable nature of cod fecundity which, if not accounted for, can lead to erroneous perceptions of stock reproductive potential