Evaluation of CNN architectures for gait recognition based on optical flow maps

This work targets people identification in video based on the way they walk (\ie gait) by using deep learning architectures. We explore the use of convolutional neural networks (CNN) for learning high-level descriptors from low-level motion features (\ie optical flow components). The low number of training samples for each subject and the use of a test set containing subjects different from the training ones makes the search of a good CNN architecture a challenging task.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Screening of the quantum-confined Stark effect in AlN/GaN nanowire superlattices by Germanium doping

We report on electrostatic screening of polarization-induced internal electric fields in AlN/GaN nanowire heterostructures with Germanium-doped GaN nanodiscs embedded between AlN barriers. The incorporation of Germanium at concentrations above $10^{20}\,\text{cm}^{-3}$ shifts the photoluminescence emission energy of GaN nanodiscs to higher energies accompanied by a decrease of the photoluminescence decay time. At the same time, the thickness-dependent shift in emission energy is significantly reduced. In spite of the high donor concentration a degradation of the photoluminescence properties is not observed.Comment: Manuscript including Supplemental material (15 pages, 5 figures

Electronic health records and patient registries in medical oncology departments in Spain

We aimed to evaluate the current situation of electronic health records (EHRs) and patient registries in the oncology departments of hospitals in Spain. This was a cross-sectional study conducted from December 2018 to September 2019. The survey was designed ad hoc by the Outcomes Evaluation and Clinical Practice Section of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) and was distributed to all head of medical oncology department members of SEOM. We invited 148 heads of oncology departments, and 81 (54.7%) questionnaires were completed, with representation from all 17 Spanish autonomous communities. Seventy-seven (95%) of the respondents had EHRs implemented at their hospitals; of them, over 80% considered EHRs to have a positive impact on work organization and clinical practice, and 73% considered that EHRs improve the quality of patient care. In contrast, 27 (35.1%) of these respondents felt that EHRs worsened the physician-patient relationship and conveyed an additional workload (n = 29; 37.6%). Several drawbacks in the implementation of EHRs were identified, including the limited inclusion of information on both outpatients and inpatients, information recorded in free text data fields, and the availability of specific informed consent. Forty-six (56.7%) respondents had patient registries where they recorded information from all patients seen in the department. Our study indicates that EHRs are almost universally implemented in the hospitals surveyed and are considered to have a positive impact on work organization and clinical practice. However, EHRs currently have several drawbacks that limit their use for investigational purposes. Not applicable The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12094-021-02614-9

A Mediterranean lifestyle reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in the “Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra” (SUN) cohort

Background and aims: A healthy lifestyle is essential to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, beyond dietary habits, there is a scarcity of studies comprehensively assessing the typical traditional Mediterranean lifestyle with a multi-dimensional index. We assessed the association between the Mediterranean lifestyle (measured with the MEDLIFE index including diet, physical activity, and other lifestyle factors) and the incidence of CVD. Methods and results: The “Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra” (SUN) project is a prospective, dynamic and multipurpose cohort of Spanish university graduates. We calculated a MEDLIFE score, composed of 28 items on food consumption, dietary habits, physical activity, rest, social habits, and conviviality, for 18,631 participants by assigning 1 point for each typical Mediterra- nean lifestyle factor achieved, for a theoretically possible final score ranging from 0 to 28 points. During an average follow-up of 11.5 years, 172 CVD cases (myocardial infarction, stroke or cardio- vascular death) were observed. An inverse association between the MEDLIFE score and the risk of primary cardiovascular events was observed, with multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio (HR) Z 0.50; (95% confidence interval, 0.31e0.81) for the highest MEDLIFE scores (14e23 points) compared to the lowest scores (0e9 points), p (trend) Z 0.004. Conclusion: A higher level of adherence to the Mediterranean lifestyle was significantly associ- ated with a lower risk of CVD in a Spanish cohort. Public health strategies should promote the Mediterranean lifestyle to preserve cardiovascular health

Scientific exploitation of PAZ products in coastal surveillance and monitoring tasks

Revista oficial de la Asociación Española de Teledetección[EN] PAZ mission appears due to the need of a Spanish SAR satellite able to provide radar image products for security and defense, civil and scientific users. INTA is responsible for the technical direction of the Ground Segment, as well as the development of the Calibration and Validation Centre and the scientific exploitation. The ‘Demonstrator of Maritime SAR Applications’ is proposed as an answer to detection tasks in maritime synthetic aperture radar imagery, which are not completely solved yet. DeMSAR has been developed in the framework of a contract between the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) and the University of Alcalá. It is intended to be used as a demonstrator of the capabilities of the airborne SAR prototypes of INTA as well as for PAZ, the Spanish SAR satellite. With two operation modes, an automatic ship detector and a toolboxes mode, DeMSAR offers the user a high flexibility in SAR data processing tasks such as speckle filtering, coastline detection, land mask estimation and ship detection and characterization.[ES] La misión PAZ surge ante la necesidad de un satélite SAR español que pueda proporcionar productos imagen radar para usuarios de seguridad y defensa, civiles y científicos. INTA es el responsable de la dirección técnica del Segmento Terreno, así como del desarrollo y operación del Centro de Calibración y Validación y de la Explotación Científica. Dentro de este ámbito de explotación, se desarrolla un demostrador de aplicaciones SAR marítimas (DeMSAR) como herramienta robusta capaz de llevar a cabo tareas de detección sobre la superficie marina, empleando las imágenes adquiridas por radares de apertura sintética. Se desarrolla bajo un marco de colaboración entre el INTA y la Universidad de Alcalá con el fin de convertirse en un demostrador de las capacidades de los sistemas aerotransportados de INTA y, en el futuro, para procesar los datos adquiridos por el sensor PAZ. Con capacidad de operar en modo automático de detección de barcos o mediante librerías de procesado SAR, DeMSAR ofrece una gran versatilidad al usuario en tareas de procesado tales como filtrado de ruido speckle, detección de líneas de costa, estimación de máscaras de tierra y detección y caracterización de barcos.Jarabo, M.; González, M.; De La Mata, D.; Martín De Nicolás, J.; Del Rey, N.; Bárcena, J.; Peláez, V. (2014). Explotación científica de productos PAZ en tareas de vigilancia y monitorización costera. Revista de Teledetección. (41):97-109. doi:10.4995/raet.2014.2287.SWORD9710941Comaniciu, D., & Meer, P. (2002). Mean shift: a robust approach toward feature space analysis. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 24(5), 603-619. doi:10.1109/34.1000236Duda, R. O. & Hart, P. E., 1973. Pattern classification and scene analysis. Wiley.Mallat, S., 2008. A wavelet tour of signal processing. 3rd Edition. Academic Press

Trapped in the prison of the mind: notions of climate-induced (im)mobility decision-making and wellbeing from an urban informal settlement in Bangladesh

The concept of Trapped Populations has until date mainly referred to people ‘trapped’ in environmentally high-risk rural areas due to economic constraints. This article attempts to widen our understanding of the concept by investigating climate-induced socio-psychological immobility and its link to Internally Displaced People’s (IDPs) wellbeing in a slum of Dhaka. People migrated here due to environmental changes back on Bhola Island and named the settlement Bhola Slum after their home. In this way, many found themselves ‘immobile’ after having been mobile—unable to move back home, and unable to move to other parts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, or beyond. The analysis incorporates the emotional and psychosocial aspects of the diverse immobility states. Mind and emotion are vital to better understand people’s (im)mobility decision-making and wellbeing status. The study applies an innovative and interdisciplinary methodological approach combining Q-methodology and discourse analysis (DA). This mixed-method illustrates a replicable approach to capture the complex state of climate-induced (im)mobility and its interlinkages to people’s wellbeing. People reported facing non-economic losses due to the move, such as identity, honour, sense of belonging and mental health. These psychosocial processes helped explain why some people ended up ‘trapped’ or immobile. The psychosocial constraints paralysed them mentally, as well as geographically. More empirical evidence on how climate change influences people’s wellbeing and mental health will be important to provide us with insights in how to best support vulnerable people having faced climatic impacts, and build more sustainable climate policy frameworks

The impact of VEGF signalling pathway inhibitors and/or immune checkpoint inhibitors on kidney function over time: a single centre retrospective analysis

Background: Drugs targeting angiogenesis and immunotherapy have transformed outcomes in renal cancer but may contribute to progressive kidney disease. Methods: We linked healthcare databases in the West of Scotland (spanning 2010–2020) to identify adults with renal cancer who received one or both classes of drugs. Over two years following initiation, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) slope was modelled using linear mixed-effects models. Additional renal outcomes used competing risk regression considering the competing risk of death. Results: Amongst 357 adults (62.5% male; median age 63.0 years, IQI 55.0–71.0), there was no significant change in eGFR (annual eGFR change +1.03 mL/min/1.73 m²/year, 95%CI −1.64 to +3.70), nor in subgroups of patients who had nephrectomy, metastatic cancer or an eGFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m² prior to systemic therapy. A ≥ 40% decline in eGFR occurred in 82 people (23.0%) within one year of starting systemic therapy and was associated with pre-existing diabetes (subhazard ratio 1.89, 95%CI 1.05–3.41). Discussion: Anti-angiogenic and immune therapy had no substantial impact on the average change in eGFR but people with diabetes are at higher risk of clinically significant renal events. With appropriate monitoring, more widespread use of these agents in patients with renal impairment may be warranted

Phonon engineering in isotopically disordered silicon nanowires

The introduction of stable isotopes in the fabrication of semiconductor nanowires provides an additional degree of freedom to manipulate their basic properties, design an entirely new class of devices, and highlight subtle but important nanoscale and quantum phenomena. With this perspective, we report on phonon engineering in metal-catalyzed silicon nanowires with tailor-made isotopic compositions grown using isotopically enriched silane precursors ²⁸SiH, ²⁹SiH, and ³⁰SiH with purity better than 99.9%. More specifically, isotopically mixed nanowires ²⁸Si ³⁰Si with a composition close to the highest mass disorder (x ∼ 0.5) were investigated. The effect of mass disorder on the phonon behavior was elucidated and compared to that in isotopically pure Si nanowires having a similar reduced mass. We found that the disorder-induced enhancement in phonon scattering in isotopically mixed nanowires is unexpectedly much more significant than in bulk crystals of close isotopic compositions. This effect is explained by a nonuniform distribution of ²⁸Si and ³⁰Si isotopes in the grown isotopically mixed nanowires with local compositions ranging from x = ∼0.25 to 0.70. Moreover, we also observed that upon heating, phonons in ²⁸Si ³⁰Si nanowires behave remarkably differently from those in ²⁹Si nanowires suggesting a reduced thermal conductivity induced by mass disorder. Using Raman nanothermometry, we found that the thermal conductivity of isotopically mixed ²⁸Si Si nanowires is ∼30% lower than that of isotopically pure ²⁹Si nanowires in agreement with theoretical predictions. (Figure Presented)

Connections between Alternative Transcription and Alternative Splicing in Mammals

The majority of mammalian genes produce multiple transcripts resulting from alternative splicing (AS) and/or alternative transcription initiation (ATI) and alternative transcription termination (ATT). Comparative analysis of the number of alternative nucleotides, isoforms, and introns per locus in genes with different types of alternative events suggests that ATI and ATT contribute to the diversity of human and mouse transcriptome even more than AS. There is a strong negative correlation between AS and ATI in 5′ untranslated regions (UTRs) and AS in coding sequences (CDSs) but an even stronger positive correlation between AS in CDSs and ATT in 3′ UTRs. These observations could reflect preferential regulation of distinct, large groups of genes by different mechanisms: 1) regulation at the level of transcription initiation and initiation of translation resulting from ATI and AS in 5′ UTRs and 2) posttranslational regulation by different protein isoforms. The tight linkage between AS in CDSs and ATT in 3′ UTRs suggests that variability of 3′ UTRs mediates differential translational regulation of alternative protein forms. Together, the results imply coordinate evolution of AS and alternative transcription, processes that occur concomitantly within gene expression factories