Edge atoms effects on the perpendicular anisotropy of ultrathin magnetic layers

The present work reports experimental and theoretical results for electrodeposited Co/Au(111) ultrathin layers with very specific magnetic behavior. We show that the observed two peaks in the out-of-plane magnetization versus deposition time variation could be explained by the remarkably high perpendicular anisotropy of the perimeter atoms of low- dimensional islands formed during the layer-by-layer growth, as compared to that of the surface atoms. Our results indicate that it is possible to sustain high anisotropy in very small grains without coming across the superparamagnetic limit, opening excellent opportunities for materials engineering

Klinische Betrachtung der Hyperthermen Intrathorakalen Chemotherapieperfusion (HITHOC) bei verschiedenen thorakalen Erkrankungen

In dieser Arbeit wurde eine operative Zytoreduktion mit anschließender Hyperthermer Intrathorakaler Chemotherapieperfusion durchgeführt. Es folgt eine klinische Evaluation dieses Verfahrens. Im Zeitraum von 11/2014 bis 7/2017 wurden 20 Patienten retrospektiv analysiert (5x Malignes Pleuramesotheliom, 3x Thymuskarzinom, 7xt Sarkom, 5x Pleurakarzinose). Es wurden Mortalität, Morbidität, das mittlere Überleben, Krankenhaus- und ITS- bzw. IMC-Aufenthaltsdauer dokumentiert. Sämtliche Patienten erhielten eine operative Zytoreduktion (Pleurektomie / Dekortikation oder Extrapleurale Pneumonektomie) und HITHOC sowie gegebenenfalls weitere (neo-)adjuvante Maßnahmen. Dabei erfolgte die Perfusion für 30-60min bei 41,5-42°C. Angewandte Chemotherapeutika waren Cisplatin (100-200mg/m²), Ifosfamid (3-5g/m²) oder Anthrazykline (20mg/m²). Der postoperative Krankenhausaufenthalt betrug im Durchschnitt 15,3 Tage mit einem durchschnittlichen ITS- bzw. IMC-Aufenthalt von. 5,6 Tagen. Die 30-Tages-Überlebensrate betrug 80%. Am Ende der Studienperiode (8/2017) waren 12 Patienten (12/20, 60%) am Leben. 3 Patienten (3/20, 15%) verstarben direkt postoperativ, kein Exitus in tabula. Somit ergab sich bei einem durchschnittlichen Follow-Up von 21,4 Monaten ein mittleres Überleben von 14,1 Monaten. Bei der HITHOC handelt es sich um ein hoch komplexes Verfahren, welches mit einer relativ hohen Mortalität einhergehen kann. Zugleich ist es jedoch bei entsprechender klinischer und paraklinischer Diagnostik sowie interdisziplinärer Evaluierung und Indikationsstellung ein innovativer kurativer Therapieansatz für pleurale Malignitäten. Voraussetzung für ein vorteilhaftes Outcome ist dabei stets ein multimodales Setting, inklusive makroskopisch kompletter Zytoreduktion

Deep Learning-based Anonymization of Chest Radiographs: A Utility-preserving Measure for Patient Privacy

Robust and reliable anonymization of chest radiographs constitutes an essential step before publishing large datasets of such for research purposes. The conventional anonymization process is carried out by obscuring personal information in the images with black boxes and removing or replacing meta-information. However, such simple measures retain biometric information in the chest radiographs, allowing patients to be re-identified by a linkage attack. Therefore, there is an urgent need to obfuscate the biometric information appearing in the images. We propose the first deep learning-based approach (PriCheXy-Net) to targetedly anonymize chest radiographs while maintaining data utility for diagnostic and machine learning purposes. Our model architecture is a composition of three independent neural networks that, when collectively used, allow for learning a deformation field that is able to impede patient re-identification. Quantitative results on the ChestX-ray14 dataset show a reduction of patient re-identification from 81.8% to 57.7% (AUC) after re-training with little impact on the abnormality classification performance. This indicates the ability to preserve underlying abnormality patterns while increasing patient privacy. Lastly, we compare our proposed anonymization approach with two other obfuscation-based methods (Privacy-Net, DP-Pix) and demonstrate the superiority of our method towards resolving the privacy-utility trade-off for chest radiographs.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 202

Effects of Five Substances with Different Modes of Action on Cathepsin H, C and L Activities in Zebrafish Embryos

Cathepsins have been proposed as biomarkers of chemical exposure in the zebrafish embryo model but it is unclear whether they can also be used to detect sublethal stress. The present study evaluates three cathepsin types as candidate biomarkers in zebrafish embryos. In addition to other functions, cathepsins are also involved in yolk lysosomal processes for the internal nutrition of embryos of oviparous animals until external feeding starts. The baseline enzyme activity of cathepsin types H, C and L during the embryonic development of zebrafish in the first 96 h post fertilisation was studied. Secondly, the effect of leupeptin, a known cathepsin inhibitor, and four embryotoxic xenobiotic compounds with different modes of action (phenanthrene—baseline toxicity; rotenone—an inhibitor of electron transport chain in mitochondria; DNOC (Dinitro-ortho-cresol)—an inhibitor of ATP synthesis; and tebuconazole—a sterol biosynthesis inhibitor) on in vivo cathepsin H, C and L total activities have been tested. The positive control leupeptin showed effects on cathepsin L at a 20-fold lower concentration compared to the respective LC50 (0.4 mM) of the zebrafish embryo assay (FET). The observed effects on the enzyme activity of the four other xenobiotics were not or just slightly more sensitive (factor of 1.5 to 3), but the differences did not reach statistical significance. Results of this study indicate that the analysed cathepsins are not susceptible to toxins other than the known peptide-like inhibitors. However, specific cathepsin inhibitors might be identified using the zebrafish embryo

Survey on the Necessity, Sensibility, and Timing of Psycho-Oncological Counseling and the Willingness to Discuss Various Topics During the Inpatient Stay in the Case of Breast Cancer

After the diagnosis of cancer patients require a lot of information because the disease affects all aspects of life. Some important issues regarding optimal counseling remain to be determined. This includes the time-related relevance of various topics and questions regarding who and when to consult on the topics. We analyzed the answers of 155 women with non-metastatic breast cancer undergoing primary surgery, primary chemotherapy, and having completed adjuvant treatment regarding the above-mentioned issues. We found that counseling must consider the treatment situation. Breast cancer patients in the follow-up phase reported that they preferred being counseled by female consultants. Our results largely support a counseling concept which puts the breast care nurse at the center of interest rather than psychologists and social service workers. A breast care nurse centered counseling system for women with non-metastatic breast cancer appears to meet patients’ needs best

Deep Learning-based Patient Re-identification Is able to Exploit the Biometric Nature of Medical Chest X-ray Data

With the rise and ever-increasing potential of deep learning techniques in recent years, publicly available medical datasets became a key factor to enable reproducible development of diagnostic algorithms in the medical domain. Medical data contains sensitive patient-related information and is therefore usually anonymized by removing patient identifiers, e.g., patient names before publication. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to show that a well-trained deep learning system is able to recover the patient identity from chest X-ray data. We demonstrate this using the publicly available large-scale ChestX-ray14 dataset, a collection of 112,120 frontal-view chest X-ray images from 30,805 unique patients. Our verification system is able to identify whether two frontal chest X-ray images are from the same person with an AUC of 0.9940 and a classification accuracy of 95.55%. We further highlight that the proposed system is able to reveal the same person even ten and more years after the initial scan. When pursuing a retrieval approach, we observe an mAP@R of 0.9748 and a precision@1 of 0.9963. Furthermore, we achieve an AUC of up to 0.9870 and a precision@1 of up to 0.9444 when evaluating our trained networks on external datasets such as CheXpert and the COVID-19 Image Data Collection. Based on this high identification rate, a potential attacker may leak patient-related information and additionally cross-reference images to obtain more information. Thus, there is a great risk of sensitive content falling into unauthorized hands or being disseminated against the will of the concerned patients. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous chest X-ray datasets have been published to advance research. Therefore, such data may be vulnerable to potential attacks by deep learning-based re-identification algorithms.Comment: Published in Scientific Report

OS EFEITOS CONTÁBEIS E TRIBUTÁRIOS NAS RELAÇÕES JURÍDICAS DOS CONTRATOS AGRÁRIOS

Com a constante atualização da legislação contábil e tributária relacionada à atividade rural e da pouca ênfase que é dada à contabilidade tributária nesta atividade. O presente artigo propõe algumas análises de critérios que devem ser adotados nos contratos de atividade rural, bem como os efeitos contábeis e tributários nas relações jurídicas estabelecidas nos contratos agrários tanto das pessoas físicas como jurídicas, identificando os benefícios fiscais estabelecidos pela legislação para as diferentes relações

Effects of a Health Promotion Program Based on a Train-the-Trainer Approach on Quality of Life and Mental Health of Long-Term Unemployed Persons

Background. Long-term unemployment is associated with poorer mental health. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a health promotion program using the train-the-trainer approach on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and mental health of long-term unemployed persons. Methods. A prospective parallel-group study was conducted among 365 long-term unemployed persons. 287 participants (179 members of the intervention group IG and 108 members of the control group) were reassessed after three months. The intervention comprised both individual sessions based on Motivational Interviewing and participatory group sessions;no health promotion program was administered in the control group. The endpoints were HRQoL (SF-12),depression, and anxiety. The effect size of the change across time in the IG and CG was measured by Cohen's d. To assess the significance of group differences in the change across time, a random effects model was used. Results. Within three months HRQoL improved and anxiety and depression decreased significantly in the IG. A significant intervention effect was observed for anxiety (p = 0.012). Effect sizes in the IG were small to moderate in terms of Cohen's d (anxiety: d = -0.33; SF-12 mental: d = 0.31; depression: d = -0.25; SF-12 physical: d = 0.19). Conclusions. The health promotion program, based on a train-the-trainer approach, showed positive effects on HRQoL and mental health, especially anxiety, of long-term unemployed persons, a highly burdened target group where an improvement in mental health is a crucial prerequisite to social participation and successful reintegration into the job market