CIDI-Lung-Seg: A Single-Click Annotation Tool for Automatic Delineation of Lungs from CT Scans

Accurate and fast extraction of lung volumes from computed tomography (CT) scans remains in a great demand in the clinical environment because the available methods fail to provide a generic solution due to wide anatomical variations of lungs and existence of pathologies. Manual annotation, current gold standard, is time consuming and often subject to human bias. On the other hand, current state-of-the-art fully automated lung segmentation methods fail to make their way into the clinical practice due to their inability to efficiently incorporate human input for handling misclassifications and praxis. This paper presents a lung annotation tool for CT images that is interactive, efficient, and robust. The proposed annotation tool produces an "as accurate as possible" initial annotation based on the fuzzy-connectedness image segmentation, followed by efficient manual fixation of the initial extraction if deemed necessary by the practitioner. To provide maximum flexibility to the users, our annotation tool is supported in three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, and the Mac OS X). The quantitative results comparing our free software with commercially available lung segmentation tools show higher degree of consistency and precision of our software with a considerable potential to enhance the performance of routine clinical tasks.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures; to appear in the proceedings of 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 2014

Imperial Lessons: Discourses of Domination and Dissent in the 1929 Kwangju Student Protests.

This dissertation examines the relationship between language, power, and public space in two different public student protest movements that began in colonial Korea under Japanese rule, both originating in the southwestern city of Kwangju. In Imperial Lessons, I combine retrospective personal narratives and contemporary documentary sources to analyze how colonial-era Korean student protest was enacted, witnessed, repressed, and remembered by differently-positioned actors. The 1929-1930 Kwangju Student Movement was the second-largest anti-Japanese protest movement of the colonial period, second only to the March First Movement. In this dissertation, I historicize 1929-1930 activism to reveal how colonial rule and student resistance evolved in complex and mutually constitutive ways throughout the colonial period. I argue that Japanese rule created new spatial conceptions on the Korean peninsula both by transforming local public spaces in Korea and by requiring Koreans to imagine themselves as members of a larger Japanese empire and that it was within this framework that the new subject position of the student protester emerged. Also, by contrasting 1929-1930 student activism to a second, smaller 1943 student movement, I trace how student protesters’ relationships to public space, language, and conceptions of their own identities all transformed along with wartime imperial mobilization. Colonial-era student protest provides a window into how both Korean and Japanese residents of colonial Korea not only envisioned Korea’s future, but also into how they used language as a tool to inscribe their own competing meanings onto contested public spaces.Ph.D.HistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64746/1/debsol_1.pd

Associations of body mass index, physical activity and sedentary time with blood pressure in primary school children from south-west England: a prospective study

Elevated blood pressure in children is a significant risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. We examined how children's body mass index (BMI), physical activity and sedentary time at ages 9 and 11 are associated with blood pressure at age 11. Data were from 1283 children from Bristol, UK, who participated in the study aged 11 years, 797 of whom also participated in the study aged 9 years. Child height, weight and blood pressure were measured, and children wore accelerometers for five days, from which moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity and sedentary minutes per day were derived. Multiple imputation of missing data and adjusted linear and logistic regression models were used to examine associations. Child BMI at 11 years was cross-sectionally associated with higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure (mean difference [95% confidence interval]: 0.91 [0.32 to 1.50] mm Hg and 1.08 [0.54 to 1.62] mm Hg, respectively, per standard deviation (SD) of BMI). BMI at age 9 was also positively associated with diastolic blood pressure at age 11 (1.16 mmHg per two years [0.49 to 1.84], per SD of BMI). For girls, sedentary time at age 9 years was associated with increased odds of having high systolic blood pressure at age 11 (odds ratio: 1.08 [1.01 to 1.16], per 10 minutes per day). There was no evidence of associations between sedentary time and blood pressure among boys. Similarly, there was little evidence that physical activity was associated with blood pressure in either cross-sectional or prospective analyses. Effective strategies are needed to prevent excess bodyweight among children in order to reduce cardiovascular disease risk

Headship Supervisory Practices as Predictors of Teachers' Job Effectiveness in Nigeria Schools

This study examined the supervisory practices of school heads in Nigeria schools. It investigated the influence of headship supervisory practices on teachers’ job effectiveness. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population for the study comprised all public schools heads and teachers in a state. The sample comprised 30 heads and 450 teachers. Using stratified random and purposive sampling methods, 5 schools were selected each from the 6 Local Government Areas in Ondo State. From each school, 15 teachers and their head teacher were randomly selected. Two validated instruments titled “Headship Supervisory Practices Questionnaire - (HSP-Q)” and “Teachers’ Job Effectiveness Questionnaire - (TJE-Q)” were used for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using percentage, mean and multiple regression analysis. The results showed that supervision of classroom instructions, teachers’ attendance during lessons, supervision of lesson notes, students’ academic progress, and teacher’s development and trainings were all performed by heads in Ondo State secondary schools. The results further showed that up to 72.4% variance in school effectiveness can be attributed to the variations in headships’ supervisory practices. The study concluded that the combination of the headship supervisory practices significantly influence teachers’ job effectiveness

Opioid Analgesics and the Risk of Fractures in Older Adults with Arthritis: OPIOIDS AND FRACTURES IN OLDER ADULTS

To compare the risk of fracture associated with initiating opioids vs. non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and the variation in risk by opioid dose, duration of action, and duration of use

ODAM Expression Inhibits Human Breast Cancer Tumorigenesis

We have posited that Odontogenic Ameloblast Associated Protein (ODAM) serves as a novel prognostic biomarker in breast cancer and now have investigated its potential role in regulating tumor growth and metastasis. Human breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells were transfected with a recombinant ODAM plasmid construct (or, as a control, the plasmid vector alone). ODAM expression increased adhesion and apoptosis of the transfected MDA-MB-231 cells and suppressed their growth rate, migratory activity, and capability to invade extracellular matrix-coated membranes. Implantation of such cells into mouse mammary fat pads resulted in significantly smaller tumors than occurred in animals that received control cells; furthermore, ODAM-expressing cells, when injected intravenously into mice, failed to metastasize, whereas the control-transfected counterparts produced extensive lung lesions. Our finding that induction of ODAM expression in human breast cancer cells markedly inhibited their neoplastic properties provides further evidence for the regulatory role of this molecule in tumorigenesis and, consequently, is of potential clinical import