Lacunarity Analysis: A Promising Method for the Automated Assessment of Melanocytic Naevi and Melanoma

The early diagnosis of melanoma is critical to achieving reduced mortality and increased survival. Although clinical examination is currently the method of choice for melanocytic lesion assessment, there is a growing interest among clinicians regarding the potential diagnostic utility of computerised image analysis. Recognising that there exist significant shortcomings in currently available algorithms, we are motivated to investigate the utility of lacunarity, a simple statistical measure previously used in geology and other fields for the analysis of fractal and multi-scaled images, in the automated assessment of melanocytic naevi and melanoma. Digitised dermoscopic images of 111 benign melanocytic naevi, 99 dysplastic naevi and 102 melanomas were obtained over the period 2003 to 2008, and subject to lacunarity analysis. We found the lacunarity algorithm could accurately distinguish melanoma from benign melanocytic naevi or non-melanoma without introducing many of the limitations associated with other previously reported diagnostic algorithms. Lacunarity analysis suggests an ordering of irregularity in melanocytic lesions, and we suggest the clinical application of this ordering may have utility in the naked-eye dermoscopic diagnosis of early melanoma

The need for a conceptual understanding of the macro and meso commercial determinants of health inequalities.

We take the opportunity here to expand on why we think this greater visibility is crucial and overdue. In particular, we want to describe how a particular focus on harmful product manufacturers, as a subsection within commercial actors, is worthy of inclusion as a meso-level influence. This is an area in which clear policy lever points, evidence and public opinion combine and have the potential for significant public health benefits

Conceptualising commercial entities in public health:beyond unhealthy commodities and transnational corporations

Most public health research on the commercial determinants of health (CDOH) to date has focused on a narrow segment of commercial actors. These actors are generally the transnational corporations producing so-called unhealthy commodities such as tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods. Furthermore, as public health researchers, we often discuss the CDOH using sweeping terms such as private sector, industry, or business that lump together diverse entities whose only shared characteristic is their engagement in commerce. The absence of clear frameworks for differentiating among commercial entities, and for understanding how they might promote or harm health, hinders the governance of commercial interests in public health. Moving forward, it is necessary to develop a nuanced understanding of commercial entities that goes beyond this narrow focus, enabling the consideration of a fuller range of commercial entities and the features that characterise and distinguish them. In this paper, which is the second of three papers in a Series on commercial determinants of health, we develop a framework that enables meaningful distinctions among diverse commercial entities through consideration of their practices, portfolios, resources, organisation, and transparency. The framework that we develop permits fuller consideration of whether, how, and to what extent a commercial actor might influence health outcomes. We discuss possible applications for decision making about engagement; managing and mitigating conflicts of interest; investment and divestment; monitoring; and further research on the CDOH. Improved differentiation among commercial actors strengthens the capacity of practitioners, advocates, academics, regulators, and policy makers to make decisions about, to better understand, and to respond to the CDOH through research, engagement, disengagement, regulation, and strategic opposition

Bringing the commercial determinants of health out of the shadows : a review of how the commercial determinants are represented in conceptual frameworks

BACKGROUND: The term 'commercial determinants of health' (CDOH) is increasingly focussing attention upon the role of tobacco, alcohol and food and beverage companies and others-as important drivers of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). However, the CDOH do not seem to be clearly represented in the most common social determinants of health (SDOH) frameworks. We review a wide range of existing frameworks of the determinants of health to determine whether and how commercial determinants are incorporated into current SDOH thinking. METHODS: We searched for papers and non-academic reports published in English since 2000 describing influences on population health outcomes. We included documents with a formal conceptual framework or diagram, showing the integration of the different determinants. RESULTS: Forty-eight framework documents were identified. Only one explicitly included the CDOH in a conceptual diagram. Ten papers discussed the commercial determinants in some form in the text only and fourteen described negative impacts of commercial determinants in the text. Twelve discussed positive roles for the private sector in producing harmful commodities. Overall, descriptions of commercial determinants are frequently understated, not made explicit, or simply missing. The role of commercial actors as vectors of NCDs is largely absent or invisible in many of the most influential conceptual diagrams. CONCLUSIONS: Our current public health models may risk framing public health problems and solutions in ways that obscure the role that the private sector, in particular large transnational companies, play in shaping the broader environment and individual behaviours, and thus population health outcomes

The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Fifth Data Release (DR5) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). DR5 includes all survey quality data taken through June 2005 and represents the completion of the SDSS-I project (whose successor, SDSS-II will continue through mid-2008). It includes five-band photometric data for 217 million objects selected over 8000 square degrees, and 1,048,960 spectra of galaxies, quasars, and stars selected from 5713 square degrees of that imaging data. These numbers represent a roughly 20% increment over those of the Fourth Data Release; all the data from previous data releases are included in the present release. In addition to "standard" SDSS observations, DR5 includes repeat scans of the southern equatorial stripe, imaging scans across M31 and the core of the Perseus cluster of galaxies, and the first spectroscopic data from SEGUE, a survey to explore the kinematics and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. The catalog database incorporates several new features, including photometric redshifts of galaxies, tables of matched objects in overlap regions of the imaging survey, and tools that allow precise computations of survey geometry for statistical investigations.Comment: ApJ Supp, in press, October 2007. This paper describes DR5. The SDSS Sixth Data Release (DR6) is now public, available from http://www.sdss.or

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reye

Smoke, curtains and mirrors: the production of race through time and title registration

This article analyses the temporal effects of title registration and their relationship to race. It traces the move away from the retrospection of pre-registry common law conveyancing and toward the dynamic, future-oriented Torrens title registration system. The Torrens system, developed in early colonial Australia, enabled the production of ‘clean’, fresh titles that were independent of their predecessors. Through a process praised by legal commentators for ‘curing’ titles of their pasts, this system produces indefeasible titles behind its distinctive ‘curtain’ and ‘mirror’, which function similarly to magicians’ smoke and mirrors by blocking particular realities from view. In the case of title registries, those realities are particular histories of and relationships with land, which will not be protected by property law and are thus made precarious. Building on interdisciplinary work which theorises time as a social tool, I argue that Torrens title registration produces a temporal order which enables land market coordination by rendering some relationships with land temporary and making others indefeasible. This ordering of relationships with land in turn has consequences for the human subjects who have those relationships, cutting futures short for some and guaranteeing permanence to others. Engaging with Renisa Mawani and other critical race theorists, I argue that the categories produced by Torrens title registration systems materialise as race