Utahns\u27 Wellbeing and Mental Health by Rural-Urban Location

Many Utah residents experience poor mental health, with 1 in 5 Utah adults experiencing some form of mental illness and 1 in 20 experiencing serious mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder or schizophrenia). Using data from the Utah Wellbeing Survey, this fact sheet explores wellbeing and mental health in Utah by rural-urban location, specifically highlighting differences between rural, growing, and urban places in the state

Utahns\u27 Wellbeing and Mental Health: Insights From the Utah Wellbeing Survey

People in Utah face unique challenges today, including poor mental health. Using data from the Utah Wellbeing Survey, this fact sheet explores wellbeing and mental health in Utah, highlighting changes over time and emphasizing the increasing importance of mental health to overall personal wellbeing

Charting a Future Course for Development: Natural Resources, Conservation, and Community Character in Coastal Alaska

Dramatic social changes are occurring across rural America as traditional natural resource-based industries such as fishing and forestry decline, and amenity-driven development attracts new residents and visitors. These changes are altering not only the economies and cultural identities of rural communities, but also entire regions where seemingly similar towns respond to these social and economic shifts in distinct ways. Using survey data from 1,541 residents of Southeast Alaska, we examine individual views regarding the role of fishing, forestry, and tourism in this region’s economic future. We also assess beliefs about the importance of conserving natural resources and the preservation of the area’s cultural character within new development efforts. Findings show that social factors such as age, education, political party affiliation, and individuals’ economic well-being, along with place of residence explain diverging views. Given the changing demographics and the shifting interconnections between different communities within rural regions, these results illustrate the importance of designing investigations that capture broad regional trends while also highlighting the key place-specific factors that shape beliefs about natural resource-related industries and the priorities for future rural development activities

Electron interaction with domain walls in antiferromagnetically coupled multilayers

For antiferromagnetically coupled Fe/Cr multilayers the low field contribution to the resistivity, which is caused by the domain walls, is strongly enhanced at low temperatures. The low temperature resistivity varies according to a power law with the exponent about 0.7 to 1. This behavior can not be explained assuming ballistic electron transport through the domain walls. It is necessary to invoke the suppression of anti-localization effects (positive quantum correction to conductivity) by the nonuniform gauge fields caused by the domain walls.Comment: 5 pages with 3 figure

Removal of Spectro-Polarimetric Fringes by 2D Pattern Recognition

We present a pattern-recognition based approach to the problem of removal of polarized fringes from spectro-polarimetric data. We demonstrate that 2D Principal Component Analysis can be trained on a given spectro-polarimetric map in order to identify and isolate fringe structures from the spectra. This allows us in principle to reconstruct the data without the fringe component, providing an effective and clean solution to the problem. The results presented in this paper point in the direction of revising the way that science and calibration data should be planned for a typical spectro-polarimetric observing run.Comment: ApJ, in pres

An open source software for analysis of dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance images: UMMPerfusion revisited

Background: Perfusion imaging has become an important image based tool to derive the physiological information in various applications, like tumor diagnostics and therapy, stroke, (cardio-) vascular diseases, or functional assessment of organs. However, even after 20 years of intense research in this field, perfusion imaging still remains a research tool without a broad clinical usage. One problem is the lack of standardization in technical aspects which have to be considered for successful quantitative evaluation; the second problem is a lack of tools that allow a direct integration into the diagnostic workflow in radiology. Results: Five compartment models, namely, a one compartment model (1CP), a two compartment exchange (2CXM), a two compartment uptake model (2CUM), a two compartment filtration model (2FM) and eventually the extended Toft’s model (ETM) were implemented as plugin for the DICOM workstation OsiriX. Moreover, the plugin has a clean graphical user interface and provides means for quality management during the perfusion data analysis. Based on reference test data, the implementation was validated against a reference implementation. No differences were found in the calculated parameters. Conclusion: We developed open source software to analyse DCE-MRI perfusion data. The software is designed as plugin for the DICOM Workstation OsiriX. It features a clean GUI and provides a simple workflow for data analysis while it could also be seen as a toolbox providing an implementation of several recent compartment models to be applied in research tasks. Integration into the infrastructure of a radiology department is given via OsiriX. Results can be saved automatically and reports generated automatically during data analysis ensure certain quality control

Generation of annotated multimodal ground truth datasets for abdominal medical image registration

Sparsity of annotated data is a major limitation in medical image processing tasks such as registration. Registered multimodal image data are essential for the diagnosis of medical conditions and the success of interventional medical procedures. To overcome the shortage of data, we present a method that allows the generation of annotated multimodal 4D datasets. We use a CycleGAN network architecture to generate multimodal synthetic data from the 4D extended cardiac-torso (XCAT) phantom and real patient data. Organ masks are provided by the XCAT phantom, therefore the generated dataset can serve as ground truth for image segmentation and registration. Realistic simulation of respiration and heartbeat is possible within the XCAT framework. To underline the usability as a registration ground truth, a proof of principle registration is performed. Compared to real patient data, the synthetic data showed good agreement regarding the image voxel intensity distribution and the noise characteristics. The generated T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and cone beam CT (CBCT) images are inherently co-registered. Thus, the synthetic dataset allowed us to optimize registration parameters of a multimodal non-rigid registration, utilizing liver organ masks for evaluation. Our proposed framework provides not only annotated but also multimodal synthetic data which can serve as a ground truth for various tasks in medical imaging processing. We demonstrated the applicability of synthetic data for the development of multimodal medical image registration algorithms.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. This work has been published in the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery volum