195 research outputs found
ATS Core Curriculum 2021. Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine: Pulmonary Infections
The following is a concise review of the Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine Core reviewing pediatric pulmonary infections, diagnostic assays, and imaging techniques presented at the 2021 American Thoracic Society Core Curriculum. Molecular methods have revolutionized microbiology. We highlight the need to collect appropriate samples for detection of specific pathogens or for panels and understand the limitations of the assays. Considerable progress has been made in imaging modalities for detecting pediatric pulmonary infections. Specifically, lung ultrasound and lung magnetic resonance imaging are promising radiation-free diagnostic tools, with results comparable with their radiation-exposing counterparts, for the evaluation and management of pulmonary infections. Clinicians caring for children with pulmonary disease should ensure that patients at risk for nontuberculous mycobacteria disease are identified and receive appropriate nontuberculous mycobacteria screening, monitoring, and treatment. Children with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) typically present with mild symptoms, but some may develop severe disease. Treatment is mainly supportive care, and most patients make a full recovery. Anticipatory guidance and appropriate counseling from pediatricians on social distancing and diagnostic testing remain vital to curbing the pandemic. The pediatric immunocompromised patient is at risk for invasive and opportunistic pulmonary infections. Prompt recognition of predisposing risk factors, combined with knowledge of clinical characteristics of microbial pathogens, can assist in the diagnosis and treatment of specific bacterial, viral, or fungal diseases
Domain Adaptation using Silver Standard Labels for Ki-67 Scoring in Digital Pathology: A Step Closer to Widescale Deployment
Deep learning systems have been proposed to improve the objectivity and
efficiency of Ki- 67 PI scoring. The challenge is that while very accurate,
deep learning techniques suffer from reduced performance when applied to
out-of-domain data. This is a critical challenge for clinical translation, as
models are typically trained using data available to the vendor, which is not
from the target domain. To address this challenge, this study proposes a domain
adaptation pipeline that employs an unsupervised framework to generate silver
standard (pseudo) labels in the target domain, which is used to augment the
gold standard (GS) source domain data. Five training regimes were tested on two
validated Ki-67 scoring architectures (UV-Net and piNET), (1) SS Only: trained
on target silver standard (SS) labels, (2) GS Only: trained on source GS
labels, (3) Mixed: trained on target SS and source GS labels, (4) GS+SS:
trained on source GS labels and fine-tuned on target SS labels, and our
proposed method (5) SS+GS: trained on source SS labels and fine-tuned on source
GS labels. The SS+GS method yielded significantly (p < 0.05) higher PI accuracy
(95.9%) and more consistent results compared to the GS Only model on target
data. Analysis of t-SNE plots showed features learned by the SS+GS models are
more aligned for source and target data, resulting in improved generalization.
The proposed pipeline provides an efficient method for learning the target
distribution without manual annotations, which are time-consuming and costly to
generate for medical images. This framework can be applied to any target site
as a per-laboratory calibration method, for widescale deployment.Comment: Editors: Accepted for publication at MIDL 202
Diseleno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]selenophene-containing high-mobility conjugated polymer for organic field-effect transistors
KGaA, Weinheim The synthesis of a diseleno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]selenophene (DSS) composed of three fused selenophenes is reported and it is used as a building block for the preparation of a high hole mobility conjugated polymer (PDSSTV). The polymer demonstrates strong intermolecular interactions even in solution, despite steric repulsion between the large Se atom in DSS and adjacent (C β )–H atoms which leads to a partially twisted confirmation PDSSTV. Nevertheless, 2D grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (2D-GIXD) analysis reveals that the polymer tends to align in a highly ordered edge-on orientation after thermal annealing. The polymer demonstrates promising performance in a field-effect transistor device with saturated hole mobility up to 2 cm 2 V −1 s −1 obtained under relatively low gate voltages of −30 V. The ultilization of a Se-containing fused aromatic system, therefore, appears to be a promising avenue for the development of high-performance conjugated polymers
ANKRD26 and Its Interacting Partners TRIO, GPS2, HMMR and DIPA Regulate Adipogenesis in 3T3-L1 Cells
Partial inactivation of the Ankyrin repeat domain 26 (Ankrd26) gene causes obesity and diabetes in mice and increases spontaneous and induced adipogenesis in mouse embryonic fibroblasts. However, it is not yet known how the Ankrd26 protein carries out its biological functions. We identified by yeast two-hybrid and immunoprecipitation assays the triple functional domain protein (TRIO), the G protein pathway suppressor 2 (GPS2), the delta-interacting protein A (DIPA) and the hyaluronan-mediated motility receptor (HMMR) as ANKRD26 interacting partners. Adipogenesis of 3T3-L1 cells was increased by selective down-regulation of Ankrd26, Trio, Gps2, Hmmr and Dipa. Furthermore, GPS2 and DIPA, which are normally located in the nucleus, were translocated to the cytoplasm, when the C-terminus of ANKRD26 was introduced into these cells. These findings provide biochemical evidence that ANKRD26, TRIO, GPS2 and HMMR are novel and important regulators of adipogenisis and identify new targets for the modulation of adipogenesis
Shape similarity, better than semantic membership, accounts for the structure of visual object representations in a population of monkey inferotemporal neurons
The anterior inferotemporal cortex (IT) is the highest stage along the hierarchy of visual areas that, in primates, processes visual objects. Although several lines of evidence suggest that IT primarily represents visual shape information, some recent studies have argued that neuronal ensembles in IT code the semantic membership of visual objects (i.e., represent conceptual classes such as animate and inanimate objects). In this study, we investigated to what extent semantic, rather than purely visual information, is represented in IT by performing a multivariate analysis of IT responses to a set of visual objects. By relying on a variety of machine-learning approaches (including a cutting-edge clustering algorithm that has been recently developed in the domain of statistical physics), we found that, in most instances, IT representation of visual objects is accounted for by their similarity at the level of shape or, more surprisingly, low-level visual properties. Only in a few cases we observed IT representations of semantic classes that were not explainable by the visual similarity of their members. Overall, these findings reassert the primary function of IT as a conveyor of explicit visual shape information, and reveal that low-level visual properties are represented in IT to a greater extent than previously appreciated. In addition, our work demonstrates how combining a variety of state-of-the-art multivariate approaches, and carefully estimating the contribution of shape similarity to the representation of object categories, can substantially advance our understanding of neuronal coding of visual objects in cortex
Heat transfer flow of Maxwell hybrid nanofluids due to pressure gradient into rectangular region
In this work, infuence of hybrid nanofuids (Cu and Al2O3) on MHD Maxwell fuid due to pressure gradient are discussed. By introducing dimensionless variables the governing equations with all levied
initial and boundary conditions are converted into dimensionless form. Fractional model for Maxwell fuid is established by Caputo time fractional diferential operator. The dimensionless expression for concentration, temperature and velocity are found using Laplace transform. As a result, it is found that fuid properties show dual behavior for small and large time and by increasing volumetric fraction temperature increases and velocity decreases respectively. Further, we compared the Maxwell, Casson and Newtonian fuids and found that Newtonian fuid has greater velocity due to less viscosity. Draw the graphs of temperature and velocity by Mathcad software and discuss the behavior of fow parameters and the efect of fractional parameters
Mechanism of Dinitrochlorobenzene-Induced Dermatitis in Mice: Role of Specific Antibodies in Pathogenesis
Dinitrochlorobenzene-induced contact hypersensitivity is widely considered as a cell-mediated rather than antibody-mediated immune response. At present, very little is known about the role of antigen-specific antibodies and B cells in the development of dinitrochlorobenzene-induced hypersensitivity reactions, and this is the subject of the present investigation.Data obtained from multiple lines of experiments unequivocally showed that the formation of dinitrochlorobenzene-specific Abs played an important role in the development of dinitrochlorobenzene-induced contact hypersensitivity. The appearance of dinitrochlorobenzene-induced skin dermatitis matched in timing the appearance of the circulating dinitrochlorobenzene-specific antibodies. Adoptive transfer of sera containing dinitrochlorobenzene-specific antibodies from dinitrochlorobenzene-treated mice elicited a much stronger hypersensitivity reaction than the adoptive transfer of lymphocytes from the same donors. Moreover, dinitrochlorobenzene-induced contact hypersensitivity was strongly suppressed in B cell-deficient mice with no DNCB-specific antibodies. It was also observed that treatment of animals with dinitrochlorobenzene polarized Th cells into Th2 differentiation by increasing the production of Th2 cytokines while decreasing the production of Th1 cytokines.In striking contrast to the long-held belief that dinitrochlorobenzene-induced contact hypersensitivity is a cell-mediated immune response, the results of our present study demonstrated that the production of dinitrochlorobenzene-specific antibodies by activated B cells played an indispensible role in the pathogenesis of dinitrochlorobenzene-induced CHS. These findings may provide new possibilities in the treatment of human contact hypersensitivity conditions
MiR-136 modulates glioma cell sensitivity to temozolomide by targeting astrocyte elevated gene-1
Vacancy and Doping States in Monolayer and bulk Black Phosphorus.
The atomic geometries and transition levels of point defects and substitutional dopants in few-layer and bulk black phosphorus are calculated. The vacancy is found to reconstruct in monolayer P to leave a single dangling bond, giving a negative U defect with a +/- transition level at 0.24 eV above the valence band edge. The V(-) state forms an unusual 4-fold coordinated site. In few-layer and bulk black P, the defect becomes a positive U site. The divacancy is much more stable than the monovacancy, and it reconstructs to give no deep gap states. Substitutional dopants such as C, Si, O or S do not give rise to shallow donor or acceptor states but instead reconstruct to form non-doping sites analogous to DX or AX centers in GaAs. Impurities on black P adopt the 8-N rule of bonding, as in amorphous semiconductors, rather than simple substitutional geometries seen in tetrahedral semiconductors
Monsoon versus Uplift in Southwestern China–Late Pliocene Climate in Yuanmou Basin, Yunnan
Yuanmou Basin of Yunnan, SW China, is a famous locality with hominids, hominoids, mammals and plant fossils. Based on the published megaflora and palynoflora data from Yuanmou Basin, the climate of Late Pliocene is reconstructed using the Coexistence Approach. The results indicate a warm and humid subtropical climate with a mean annual temperature of ca. 16–17°C and a mean annual precipitation of ca. 1500–1600 mm in the Late Pliocene rather than a dry, hot climate today, which may be due to the local tectonic change and gradual intensification of India monsoon. The comparison of Late Pliocene climate in Eryuan, Yangyi, Longling, and Yuanmou Basin of Yunnan Province suggests that the mean annual temperatures generally show a latitudinal gradient and fit well with their geographic position, while the mean annual precipitations seem to be related to the different geometries of the valleys under the same monsoon system
- …