Early Detection of Alzheimer\u27s Disease with Blood Plasma Proteins Using Support Vector Machines

\ua9 2013 IEEE. The successful development of amyloid-based biomarkers and tests for Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) represents an important milestone in AD diagnosis. However, two major limitations remain. Amyloid-based diagnostic biomarkers and tests provide limited information about the disease process and they are unable to identify individuals with the disease before significant amyloid-beta accumulation in the brain develops. The objective in this study is to develop a method to identify potential blood-based non-amyloid biomarkers for early AD detection. The use of blood is attractive because it is accessible and relatively inexpensive. Our method is mainly based on machine learning (ML) techniques (support vector machines in particular) because of their ability to create multivariable models by learning patterns from complex data. Using novel feature selection and evaluation modalities, we identified 5 novel panels of non-amyloid proteins with the potential to serve as biomarkers of early AD. In particular, we found that the combination of A2M, ApoE, BNP, Eot3, RAGE and SGOT may be a key biomarker profile of early disease. Disease detection models based on the identified panels achieved sensitivity (SN) > 80%, specificity (SP) > 70%, and area under receiver operating curve (AUC) of at least 0.80 at prodromal stage (with higher performance at later stages) of the disease. Existing ML models performed poorly in comparison at this stage of the disease, suggesting that the underlying protein panels may not be suitable for early disease detection. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of early detection of AD using non-amyloid based biomarkers

The inevitable youthfulness of known high-redshift radio galaxies

Radio galaxies can be seen out to very high redshifts, where in principle they can serve as probes of the early evolution of the Universe. Here we show that for any model of radio-galaxy evolution in which the luminosity decreases with time after an initial rapid increase (that is, essentially all reasonable models), all observable high-redshift radio-galaxies must be seen when the lobes are less than 10^7 years old. This means that high-redshift radio galaxies can be used as a high-time-resolution probe of evolution in the early Universe. Moreover, this result helps to explain many observed trends of radio-galaxy properties with redshift [(i) the `alignment effect' of optical emission along radio-jet axes, (ii) the increased distortion in radio structure, (iii) the decrease in physical sizes, (iv) the increase in radio depolarisation, and (v) the increase in dust emission] without needing to invoke explanations based on cosmology or strong evolution of the surrounding intergalactic medium with cosmic time, thereby avoiding conflict with current theories of structure formation.Comment: To appear in Nature. 4 pages, 2 colour figures available on request. Also available at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~km

Robust EEG Based Biomarkers to Detect Alzheimer’s Disease

Biomarkers to detect Alzheimer’s disease (AD) would enable patients to gain access to appropriate services and may facilitate the development of new therapies. Given the large numbers of people affected by AD, there is a need for a low-cost, easy to use method to detect AD patients. Potentially, the electroencephalogram (EEG) can play a valuable role in this, but at present no single EEG biomarker is robust enough for use in practice. This study aims to provide a methodological framework for the development of robust EEG biomarkers to detect AD with a clinically acceptable performance by exploiting the combined strengths of key biomarkers. A large number of existing and novel EEG biomarkers associated with slowing of EEG, reduction in EEG complexity and decrease in EEG connectivity were investigated. Support vector machine and linear discriminate analysis methods were used to find the best combination of the EEG biomarkers to detect AD with significant performance. A total of 325,567 EEG biomarkers were investigated, and a panel of six biomarkers was identified and used to create a diagnostic model with high performance (≥85% for sensitivity and 100% for specificity).</jats:p

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the halo mass of galaxy groups from maximum-likelihood weak lensing

We present a maximum-likelihood weak lensing analysis of the mass distribution in optically selected spectroscopic Galaxy Groups (G3Cv5) in the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, using background Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) pho-tometric galaxies. The scaling of halo mass, Mh, with various group observables is investigated. Our main results are: 1) the measured relations of halo mass with group luminosity, virial volume and central galaxy stellar mass,M⋆, agree very well with predictions from mock group catalogues constructed from a GALFORM semi-analytical galaxy formation model implemented in the Millennium _CDM N-body simulation; 2) the measured relations of halo mass with velocity dispersion and projected half-abundance radius show weak tension with mock predictions, hinting at problems in the mock galaxy dynamics and their small scale distribution; 3) the median Mh|M⋆ measured from weak lensing depends more sensitively on the lognormal dispersion in M⋆ at fixed Mh than it does on the median M⋆|Mh. Our measurements suggest an intrinsic dispersion of σlog(M⋆) _ 0.15; 4) Comparing our mass estimates with those in the catalogue, we find that the G3Cv5 mass can give biased results when used to select subsets of the group sample. Of the various new halo mass estimators that we calibrate using our weak lensing measurements, group luminosity is the best single-proxy estimator of group mass

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the halo mass of galaxy groups from maximum-likelihood weak lensing

We present a maximum-likelihood weak lensing analysis of the mass distribution in optically selected spectroscopic Galaxy Groups (G3Cv5) in the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, using background Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) pho-tometric galaxies. The scaling of halo mass, Mh, with various group observables is investigated. Our main results are: 1) the measured relations of halo mass with group luminosity, virial volume and central galaxy stellar mass,M⋆, agree very well with predictions from mock group catalogues constructed from a GALFORM semi-analytical galaxy formation model implemented in the Millennium _CDM N-body simulation; 2) the measured relations of halo mass with velocity dispersion and projected half-abundance radius show weak tension with mock predictions, hinting at problems in the mock galaxy dynamics and their small scale distribution; 3) the median Mh|M⋆ measured from weak lensing depends more sensitively on the lognormal dispersion in M⋆ at fixed Mh than it does on the median M⋆|Mh. Our measurements suggest an intrinsic dispersion of σlog(M⋆) _ 0.15; 4) Comparing our mass estimates with those in the catalogue, we find that the G3Cv5 mass can give biased results when used to select subsets of the group sample. Of the various new halo mass estimators that we calibrate using our weak lensing measurements, group luminosity is the best single-proxy estimator of group mass

Wetlands for wastewater treatment and subsequent recycling of treated effluent : a review

Due to water scarcity challenges around the world, it is essential to think about non-conventional water resources to address the increased demand in clean freshwater. Environmental and public health problems may result from insufficient provision of sanitation and wastewater disposal facilities. Because of this, wastewater treatment and recycling methods will be vital to provide sufficient freshwater in the coming decades, since water resources are limited and more than 70% of water are consumed for irrigation purposes. Therefore, the application of treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation has much potential, especially when incorporating the reuse of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous, which are essential for plant production. Among the current treatment technologies applied in urban wastewater reuse for irrigation, wetlands were concluded to be the one of the most suitable ones in terms of pollutant removal and have advantages due to both low maintenance costs and required energy. Wetland behavior and efficiency concerning wastewater treatment is mainly linked to macrophyte composition, substrate, hydrology, surface loading rate, influent feeding mode, microorganism availability, and temperature. Constructed wetlands are very effective in removing organics and suspended solids, whereas the removal of nitrogen is relatively low, but could be improved by using a combination of various types of constructed wetlands meeting the irrigation reuse standards. The removal of phosphorus is usually low, unless special media with high sorption capacity are used. Pathogen removal from wetland effluent to meet irrigation reuse standards is a challenge unless supplementary lagoons or hybrid wetland systems are used

Large vessel vasculitis

Takayasu arteritis is a chronic granulomatous disease of the aorta and its major branches that usually affects women during the second and third decades of life, but it has been reported in young children. This review details the clinical, pathological and radiological features, differential diagnoses and management of the condition, focusing chiefly on the disease in children. The recent definition of Takayasu arteritis is discussed. The condition should be considered in patients with unexplained arterial hypertension or unexplained inflammatory syndromes without signs of localization. Since the disease may be life-threatening and progressive, early recognition is necessary to initiate appropriate therapy. Patients with persistent ischaemic symptoms including hypertension might benefit from revascularization procedures