The Phantom Urine: An Unexpected Finding during a Routine Cesarean Section.

We present here an atypical finding during an elective repeat cesarean section. Despite urine flow through an indwelling bladder catheter, bladder remains distended during the whole procedure. Unexpected anatomical variations and malformations can make routine surgery challenging. Urinary tract anomalies should be suspected in cases of unexpected difficult bladder catheterization

MHC-correlated preferences in diestrous female horses (Equus caballus).

Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) have been shown to influence communication in many vertebrates, possibly with context-specific MHC-correlated reactions. Here we test for MHC-linked female preferences in the polygynous horse (Equus caballus) by repeatedly exposing 19 mares to a group of seven sexually experienced stallions. Each mare was tested four times during two consecutive reproductive cycles, twice during estrus and twice during diestrus. Male plasma testosterone concentrations were determined from weekly blood samples, and equine leukocyte antigen (ELA) class I and II alleles were determined serologically at the end of the experiments. Perception of male attractiveness was strongly dependent on estrous cycle: mean preference scores did not correlate for mares in diestrus and estrus and varied more during estrus than during diestrus. We found elevated female interests for MHC-dissimilar stallions, but only during diestrus, not during estrus. Female preferences were not significantly predicted by mean male testosterone plasma concentrations. However, testosterone concentrations changed during the 11 weeks of the experiment. By the end of the experiment, average testosterone concentration was significantly correlated to the average number of MHC alleles the stallions shared with the mares. We conclude that the MHC affects female preferences for stallions, but non-MHC linked male characteristics can overshadow effects of the MHC during estrus

A literature study

In the Netherlands, the aliens’ identity chain is an identity management process, which is part of the migration chain. It relies on two types of personal data: biographic, such as date and place of birth, name and nationality, and biometric, such as fingerprints, face and irides. Biometric technology is used in the aliens’ identity chain to (quickly) achieve automated identity verification and identification of aliens (immigrant or resident, legal or illegal).This literature study focuses exclusively on the role of biometric data in the aliens’ identity chain. At present the fingerprint is the single biometric mode automated for this purpose. It aimed at understanding the capabilities and limits of the fingerprint made in the current operational biometric process and to make an inventory of what is known about the possibilities to improve and/or combine the use of fingerprints and other biometric modes in a multimodal approach. Eventually, the purpose is to improve the verification of identity and identification processes in the aliens’ identity chain as applied by the Netherlands. CONTENT: 1. Introduction 2. Current implementations 3. Properties of the biometrics modes 4. Discussion 5. Conclusion 6. Aknowledgements 7. Reference

Systematic Improvement of Empirical Energy Functions in the Era of Machine Learning

The impact of targeted replacement of individual terms in empirical force fields is quantitatively assessed for pure water, dichloromethane (DCM), and solvated K$^+$ and Cl$^-$ ions. For the electrostatics, point charges (PCs) and machine learning (ML)based minimally distributed charges (MDCM) fitted to the molecular electrostatic potential are evaluated together with electrostatics based on the Coulomb integral. The impact of explicitly including second-order terms is investigated by adding a fragment molecular orbital (FMO)-derived polarization energy to an existing force field, in this case CHARMM. It is demonstrated that anisotropic electrostatics reduce the RMSE for water (by 1.6 kcal/mol), DCM (by 0.8 kcal/mol) and for solvated Cl$^-$ clusters (by 0.4 kcal/mol). An additional polarization term can be neglected for DCM but notably improves errors in pure water (by 1.1 kcal/mol) and in Cl$^-$ clusters (by 0.4 kcal/mol) and is key to describing solvated K$^+$, reducing the RMSE by 2.3 kcal/mol. A 12-6 Lennard-Jones functional form is found to perform satisfactorily with PC and MDCM electrostatics, but is not appropriate for descriptions that account for the electrostatic penetration energy. The importance of many-body contributions is assessed by comparing a strictly 2-body approach with self-consistent reference data. DCM can be approximated well with a 2-body potential while water and solvated K$^+$ and Cl$^-$ ions require explicit many-body corrections. The present work systematically quantifies which terms improve the performance of an existing force field and what reference data to use for parametrizing these terms in a tractable fashion for ML fitting of pure and heterogeneous systems

Forensic image analysis – CCTV distortion and artefacts

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. As a result of the worldwide deployment of surveillance cameras, authorities have gained a powerful tool that captures footage of activities of people in public areas. Surveillance cameras allow continuous monitoring of the area and allow footage to be obtained for later use, if a criminal or other act of interest occurs. Following this, a forensic practitioner, or expert witness can be required to analyse the footage of the Person of Interest. The examination ultimately aims at evaluating the strength of evidence at source and activity levels. In this paper, both source and activity levels are inferred from the trace, obtained in the form of CCTV footage. The source level alludes to features observed within the anatomy and gait of an individual, whilst the activity level relates to activity undertaken by the individual within the footage. The strength of evidence depends on the value of the information recorded, where the activity level is robust, yet source level requires further development. It is therefore suggested that the camera and the associated distortions should be assessed first and foremost and, where possible, quantified, to determine the level of each type of distortion present within the footage. A review of the ‘forensic image analysis’ review is presented here. It will outline the image distortion types and detail the limitations of differing surveillance camera systems. The aim is to highlight various types of distortion present particularly from surveillance footage, as well as address gaps in current literature in relation to assessment of CCTV distortions in tandem with gait analysis. Future work will consider the anatomical assessment from surveillance footage

Forensic gait analysis — Morphometric assessment from surveillance footage

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. Following the technological rise of surveillance cameras and their subsequent proliferation in public places, the use of information gathered by such means for investigative and evaluative purposes sparked a large interest in the forensic community and within policing scenarios. In particular, it is suggested that analysis of the body, especially the assessment of gait characteristics, can provide useful information to aid the investigation. This paper discusses the influences upon gait to mitigate some of the limitations of surveillance footage, including those due to the varying anatomical differences between individuals. Furthermore, the differences between various techniques applied to assess gait are discussed, including biometric gait recognition, forensic gait analysis, tracking technology, and marker technology. This review article discusses the limitations of the current methods for assessment of gait; exposing gaps within the literature in regard to various influences impacting upon the gait cycle. Furthermore, it suggests a ‘morphometric’ technique to enhance the available procedures to potentially facilitate the development of standardised protocols with supporting statistics and database. This in turn will provide meaningful information to forensic investigation, intelligence-gathering processes, and potentially as an additional method of forensic evaluation of evidence

Ultracold collisions of oxygen molecules

Collision cross sections and rate constants between two ground- state oxygen molecules are investigated theoretically at translational energies below $\sim 1$K and in zero magnetic field. We present calculations for elastic and spin- changing inelastic collision rates for different isotopic combinations of oxygen atoms as a prelude to understanding their collisional stability in ultracold magnetic traps. A numerical analysis has been made in the framework of a rigid- rotor model that accounts fully for the singlet, triplet, and quintet potential energy surfaces in this system. The results offer insights into the effectiveness of evaporative cooling and the properties of molecular Bose- Einstein condensates, as well as estimates of collisional lifetimes in magnetic traps. Specifically, $^{17}O_{2}$ looks like a good candidate for ultracold studies, while $^{16}O_{2}$ is unlikely to survive evaporative cooling. Since $^{17}O_{2}$ is representative of a wide class of molecules that are paramagnetic in their ground state we conclude that many molecules can be successfully magnetically trapped at ultralow temperatures.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Losing your virginity safely? A Swiss national survey.

Good practice and knowledge in terms of contraception at first sexual intercourse may lead adolescents to a safer sexual life. To date, research studies have mostly focused on women when investigating contraception use or on condom use only when addressing both genders. The present study adds to the current knowledge by offering a more in-depth view of contraception use at first intercourse among youths. This is achieved through a large selection of variables, the fact that we address both males and females and that we have considered a wide range of contraceptive means. To determine the rate of contraception use at first intercourse by youth in Switzerland and its association with social and personal characteristics. Data were obtained from a self-administrated national survey on sexual behaviour among young adults (mean age 26 years). Participants (n = 4036) were divided into three groups based on the means of contraception used at first intercourse: condom, with or without contraceptive (86.4%), contraceptive only (8.3%) and non-use (5.3%). Only 5.3% did not use any contraception. Compared with the condom group, individuals in the non-use group were more likely to report a lower family socioeconomic status, to be foreign born, to have foreign-born parents, to have a non-intact family and to live in a Catholic canton. They were also more likely to have had their first intercourse in the context of a casual relationship, to have been intoxicated at the time and more likely to regret it. Participants in the contraceptive group reported a higher family socioeconomic status, had intact families, did not live in Catholic cantons, were older and in a steady relationship at first intercourse. Contraception is generally used at first intercourse in Switzerland. Improvements can still be made concerning contraception use in the most vulnerable social strata such as low income families or foreign status

Uncertainty Quantification for Predictions of Atomistic Neural Networks

The value of uncertainty quantification on predictions for trained neural networks (NNs) on quantum chemical reference data is quantitatively explored. For this, the architecture of the PhysNet NN was suitably modified and the resulting model (PhysNet-DER) was evaluated with different metrics to quantify its calibration, the quality of its predictions, and whether prediction error and the predicted uncertainty can be correlated. Training on the QM9 database and evaluating data in the test set within and outside the distribution indicate that error and uncertainty are not linearly related. However, the observed variance provides insight into the quality of the data used for training. Additionally, the influence of the chemical space covered by the training data set was studied by using a biased database. The results clarify that noise and redundancy complicate property prediction for molecules even in cases for which changes – such as double bond migration in two otherwise identical molecules – are small. The model was also applied to a real database of tautomerization reactions. Analysis of the distance between members in feature space in combination with other parameters shows that redundant information in the training dataset can lead to large variances and small errors whereas the presence of similar but unspecific information returns large errors but small variances. This was, e.g., observed for nitro-containing aliphatic chains for which predictions were difficult although the training set contained several examples for nitro groups bound to aromatic molecules. The finding underlines the importance of the composition of the training data and provides chemical insight into how this affects the prediction capabilities of a ML model. Finally, the presented method can be used for information-based improvement of chemical databases for target applications through active learning optimization