How To Introduce On-Line Agricultural Products Navigation System On Google Earth Success

In the agriculture industry many brokers exploit the benefits between farmers and customers and decrease farmers’ income. As technology has developed, the internet has become the best advertising medium for many industries. In light of this, this study based on Google Earth, has designed an on-line Agricultural Products Navigation System operated by mobile devices which can easily exclude brokers, and build the bridge between farmers and customers in order to increase farmers income and customer benefits. Moreover, based on the IS success model of DeLone and McLean, by using qualitative methodology we expect this model will be able to provide system developers with the knowledge to improve the success of their systems

Regulations to Respond to the Potential Benefits and Perils of SelfDriving Cars Analysis and Recommendations for Advancing Equity and Environmental Sustainability

The mobility system in the United States is unsafe, inequitable, and environmentally destructive. Most Americans rely on personally owned, individually occupied, and gas-powered cars—a status quo that leads to tens of thousands of people dying each year in collisions, creates barriers to employment and other opportunities for people of color and people with low incomes, and maintains a resource intensive transportation system that contributes to climate change and spurs sprawling land uses that destroy ecologies. Autonomous vehicles (AVs)—self-driving cars that can travel along publicly accessible streets some or all of the time without human involvement—could help mitigate these problems, if they are implemented in a thoughtful, well-regulated manner. However, if deployed haphazardly with inadequate oversight and regulation, they could produce even worse inequities than those caused by the current system.To evaluate the current landscape for AV deployment and use in the United States, we conducted a study focusing on automobile-sized AVs designed for passenger use as opposed to other types of AVs that could be used for public transit service or freight. Through a scholarship review, a scan of legislation nationwide, and interviews with stakeholders, we examine key potential benefits that AVs could generate, as well as the problems they could exacerbate. Carefully designed regulations could help ensure that these new technologies improve access to mobility and reduce pollution

High plasma leptin levels confer increased risk of atherosclerosis in women with systemic lupus erythematosus, and are associated with inflammatory oxidised lipids.

BackgroundPatients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are at increased risk of atherosclerosis, even after accounting for traditional risk factors. High levels of leptin and low levels of adiponectin are associated with both atherosclerosis and immunomodulatory functions in the general population.ObjectiveTo examine the association between these adipokines and subclinical atherosclerosis in SLE, and also with other known inflammatory biomarkers of atherosclerosis.MethodsCarotid ultrasonography was performed in 250 women with SLE and 122 controls. Plasma leptin and adiponectin levels were measured. Lipoprotein a (Lp(a)), oxidised phospholipids on apoB100 (OxPL/apoB100), paraoxonase, apoA-1 and inflammatory high-density lipoprotein (HDL) function were also assessed.ResultsLeptin levels were significantly higher in patients with SLE than in controls (23.7±28.0 vs 13.3±12.9 ng/ml, p<0.001). Leptin was also higher in the 43 patients with SLE with plaque than without plaque (36.4±32.3 vs 20.9±26.4 ng/ml, p=0.002). After multivariate analysis, the only significant factors associated with plaque in SLE were leptin levels in the highest quartile (≥29.5 ng/ml) (OR=2.8, p=0.03), proinflammatory HDL (piHDL) (OR=12.8, p<0.001), age (OR=1.1, p<0.001), tobacco use (OR=7.7, p=0.03) and hypertension (OR=3.0, p=0.01). Adiponectin levels were not significantly associated with plaque in our cohort. A significant correlation between leptin and piHDL function (p<0.001), Lp(a) (p=0.01) and OxPL/apoB100 (p=0.02) was also present.ConclusionsHigh leptin levels greatly increase the risk of subclinical atherosclerosis in SLE, and are also associated with an increase in inflammatory biomarkers of atherosclerosis such as piHDL, Lp(a) and OxPL/apoB100. High leptin levels may help to identify patients with SLE at risk of atherosclerosis

Down regulation of acrolein on corticosterone secretion in male rats

Acrolein is a small unsaturated aldehyde and can be found in a wide range of resources including all types of smoke and exhaust gases from gasoline engines. Although the toxicity and damage of acrolein have been recognized, the action mechanisms of acrolein, especially that of acrolein on the response of stresshormones are still unclear. The present study hypothesized that administration of acrolein altered the secretion of both adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) and corticosterone via the regulation of steroid biosynthetic pathway in rat zona fasciculata-reticularis (ZFR) cells. Both in vivo and in vitro approaches were uased. In the in vivo study, intraperitonal injection of acrolein (2 mg/ml/kg) once daily for 1 or 3 days resulted in a reduction of plasma levels of ACTH and corticosterone as well as the intracellular cAMP and ACTH-induced secretion of corticosterone. The protein expression of ACTH receptor (ACTHR) in rat ZFR cells was also reduced by 40-60% after treatment of acrolein for 1 day and 3 days, respectively. In the in vitro study, rat ZFR cells were prepared and chanllenged with ACTH (10-9 M), forskolin (an adenylyl cyclase activitior, 10-5 M), 8-Br-cAMP (a permeable synthetic cAMP, 5x10-5 M), 25-OH-cholesterol (10-5 M) ± trilostane (an inhibitor of 3?-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, 3?-HSD, 10-5 M). The evoked release of corticosterone by ACTH, forskolin, 8-Br-cAMP and the induced release of pregnenolone in response to 25-OH-cholesterol plus triolostane were decreased. Since the accumulation of pregnenolone after blocking 3?-HSD by trilostane represents the activity of P450scc, therate-limiting step of steroid biosynthesis, we suggest that not only the cAMP pathway was inhibited, but also the enzyme activity of P450scc was attenuated following administration of acrolein. Although insignificant, the protein expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) was decreased by 40% in ZFR cells after treatment of acrolein in vivo. Incubation of ZFR cells with acrolein (10-9~10-7 M) also decreased the in vitro release of corticosterone. These results suggest that administration of acrolein inhibited corticosterone production via the attenuation of cAMP pathway, StAR protein expression, and the enzyme activity of P450scc. The attenuation of protein expression of ACTHR (also named melanocortin 2 receptor, MC2R) and reduced secrection of ACTH indicated that the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (H-P-A) axis was also down- regulated by the administration of acrolein

COVID-19 printable project

We are seeing hundreds of people being assessed for COVID-19. Only some of them will be tested. Everyone can do their part to help with self-management, social distancing and self-isolation. As physicians, we want to support patients to self-manage at home. With OCADU's Health Design Studio, we developed the following tools. Adapt, use, share. Drop us a line. Keep well. Current resources updated: 04/08/202

Improving primary care identification of familial breast cancer risk using proactive invitation and decision support

Family history of breast cancer is a key risk factor, accounting for up to 10% of cancers. We evaluated the proactive assessment of familial breast cancer (FBC) risk in primary care. Eligible women (30 to 60 years) were recruited from eight English general practices. Practices were trained on familial breast cancer risk assessment. In four randomly-assigned practices, women were invited to complete a validated, postal family history questionnaire, which practice staff inputted into decision support software to determine cancer risk. Those with increased risk were offered specialist referral. Usual care was observed in the other four practices. In intervention practices, 1127/7012 women (16.1%) returned family history questionnaires, comprising 1105 (98%) self-reported white ethnicity and 446 (39.6%) educated to University undergraduate or equivalent qualification, with 119 (10.6%) identified at increased breast cancer risk and offered referral. Sixty-seven (56%) women recommended referral were less than 50 years old. From 66 women attending specialists, 26 (39.4%) were confirmed to have high risk and recommended annual surveillance (40-60 years) and surgical prevention; while 30 (45.5%) were confirmed at moderate risk, with 19 offered annual surveillance (40–50 years). The remaining 10 (15.2%) managed in primary care. None were recommended chemoprevention. In usual care practices, only ten women consulted with concerns about breast cancer family history. This study demonstrated proactive risk assessment in primary care enables accurate identification of women, including many younger women, at increased risk of breast cancer. To improve generalisability across the population, more active methods of engagement need to be explored

Defining a Minimum Set of Standardized Patient-centered Outcome Measures for Macular Degeneration

Purpose To define a minimum set of outcome measures for tracking, comparing, and improving macular degeneration care. Design Recommendations from a working group of international experts in macular degeneration outcomes registry development and patient advocates, facilitated by the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM). Methods Modified Delphi technique, supported by structured teleconferences, followed by online surveys to drive consensus decisions. Potential outcomes were identified through literature review of outcomes collected in existing registries and reported in major clinical trials. Outcomes were refined by the working group and selected based on impact on patients, relationship to good clinical care, and feasibility of measurement in routine clinical practice. Results Standardized measurement of the following outcomes is recommended: visual functioning and quality of life (distance visual acuity, mobility and independence, emotional well-being, reading and accessing information); number of treatments; complications of treatment; and disease control. Proposed data collection sources include administrative data, clinical data during routine clinical visits, and patient-reported sources annually. Recording the following clinical characteristics is recommended to enable risk adjustment: age; sex; ethnicity; smoking status; baseline visual acuity in both eyes; type of macular degeneration; presence of geographic atrophy, subretinal fibrosis, or pigment epithelial detachment; previous macular degeneration treatment; ocular comorbidities. Conclusions The recommended minimum outcomes and pragmatic reporting standards should enable standardized, meaningful assessments and comparisons of macular degeneration treatment outcomes. Adoption could accelerate global improvements in standardized data gathering and reporting of patient-centered outcomes. This can facilitate informed decisions by patients and health care providers, plus allow long-term monitoring of aggregate data, ultimately improving understanding of disease progression and treatment responses

ELIXR: Towards a general purpose X-ray artificial intelligence system through alignment of large language models and radiology vision encoders

Our approach, which we call Embeddings for Language/Image-aligned X-Rays, or ELIXR, leverages a language-aligned image encoder combined or grafted onto a fixed LLM, PaLM 2, to perform a broad range of tasks. We train this lightweight adapter architecture using images paired with corresponding free-text radiology reports from the MIMIC-CXR dataset. ELIXR achieved state-of-the-art performance on zero-shot chest X-ray (CXR) classification (mean AUC of 0.850 across 13 findings), data-efficient CXR classification (mean AUCs of 0.893 and 0.898 across five findings (atelectasis, cardiomegaly, consolidation, pleural effusion, and pulmonary edema) for 1% (~2,200 images) and 10% (~22,000 images) training data), and semantic search (0.76 normalized discounted cumulative gain (NDCG) across nineteen queries, including perfect retrieval on twelve of them). Compared to existing data-efficient methods including supervised contrastive learning (SupCon), ELIXR required two orders of magnitude less data to reach similar performance. ELIXR also showed promise on CXR vision-language tasks, demonstrating overall accuracies of 58.7% and 62.5% on visual question answering and report quality assurance tasks, respectively. These results suggest that ELIXR is a robust and versatile approach to CXR AI

Unraveling the Design Principle for Motif Organization in Signaling Networks

Cellular signaling networks display complex architecture. Defining the design principle of this architecture is crucial for our understanding of various biological processes. Using a mathematical model for three-node feed-forward loops, we identify that the organization of motifs in specific manner within the network serves as an important regulator of signal processing. Further, incorporating a systemic stochastic perturbation to the model we could propose a possible design principle, for higher-order organization of motifs into larger networks in order to achieve specific biological output. The design principle was then verified in a large, complex human cancer signaling network. Further analysis permitted us to classify signaling nodes of the network into robust and vulnerable nodes as a result of higher order motif organization. We show that distribution of these nodes within the network at strategic locations then provides for the range of features displayed by the signaling network

Comparison of blood and synovial fluid Th17 and novel peptidase inhibitor 16 Treg cell subsets in juvenile idiopathic arthritis

Objective. Early recognition and treatment of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) can prevent joint damage and minimize side effects of medication. The balance between proinflammatory and antiinflammatory mechanisms is known to be important in JIA, and we therefore investigated T cell subsets including Th cells, autoaggressive Th17 cells, and regulatory T cells (Treg), including a novel Treg subset in peripheral blood (PB) and synovial fluid (SF) of patients with JIA. Methods. Fifty children with JIA were enrolled in our study. Frequency, phenotype, and function of T lymphocytes in PB and SF were characterized using flow cytometry. Migration capabilities of PB and SF cells were compared. Results. Synovial T cells showed different phenotype and function compared with PB T cells, with an increased proportion of memory T cells, expression of CCR4, CCR5, CXCR3, interleukin 23R, and an increased ratio of Th17 to Treg. Although Treg were increased in SF compared with the PB, we found a significant decrease in the numbers of peptidase inhibitor 16 (PI16)+ Treg in active joints compared with peripheral blood. Coexpression of CCR4 and CCR6 was reduced on PI16+ Treg in PB and SF of patients with JIA compared with healthy children, however the ability of these cells to migrate toward their ligands was unaffected. Conclusion. This is a comprehensive characterization of novel PI16+ Treg and Th17 cells in matched blood and synovial fluid samples of patients with JIA. Despite an increased number of Treg within the inflamed joint, lower numbers of PI16+ Treg but high numbers of Th17 cells might contribute to the inability to control disease.Randall H. Grose, Deborah J. Millard, Chris Mavrangelos, Simon C. Barry, Heddy Zola, Ian C. Nicholson, Weng Tarng Cham, Christina A. Boros and Doreen Krumbiege