Tissue resonance interaction accurately detects colon lesions: a double-blind pilot study

AIM: To investigated the performance of the tissue resonance interaction method (TRIM) for the non-invasive detection of colon lesions. METHODS: We performed a prospective single-center blinded pilot study of consecutive adults undergoing colonoscopy at the University Hospital in Sassari, Italy. Before patients underwent colonoscopy, they were examined by the TRIMprobe which detects differences in electromagnetic properties between pathological and normal tissues. All patients had completed the polyethylene glycol-containing bowel prep for the colonoscopy procedure before being screened. During the procedure the subjects remained fully dressed. A hand-held probe was moved over the abdomen and variations in electromagnetic signals were recorded for 3 spectral lines (462-465 MHz, 930 MHz, and 1395 MHz). A single investigator, blind to any clinical information, performed the test using the TRIMprob system. Abnormal signals were identified and recorded as malignant or benign (adenoma or hyperplastic polyps). Findings were compared with those from colonoscopy with histologic confirmation. Statistical analysis was performed by χ2 test. RESULTS: A total of 305 consecutive patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria were enrolled over a period of 12 months. The most frequent indication for colonoscopy was abdominal pain (33%). The TRIMprob was well accepted by all patients; none spontaneously complained about the procedure, and no adverse effects were observed. TRIM proved inaccurate for polyp detection in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and they were excluded leaving 281 subjects (mean age 59 ± 13 years; 107 males). The TRIM detected and accurately characterized all 12 adenocarcinomas and 135/137 polyps (98.5%) including 64 adenomatous (100%) found. The method identified cancers and polyps with 98.7% sensitivity, 96.2% specificity, and 97.5% diagnostic accuracy, compared to colonoscopy and histology analyses. The positive predictive value was 96.7% and the negative predictive value 98.4%. Among the 281 non-IBD subjects, there were 7 cases with discordant results (2.5%) between TRIMprob and the reference standard including 5 false positive results (1.8%) and 2 false negative (0.7%) results. The main limitation of the TRIMprob system is the need for trained operators. CONCLUSION: The study confirmed that TRIM provides rapid, accurate, convenient and noninvasive means to identify individuals most likely to benefit from colonoscopy

China's great migration: the impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty

We analyze the effect of China's integration into the world economy on workers in the country and show that one important channel of impact has been internal migration. Specifically, we study the changes in internal migration rates triggered by the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters in the U.S. This reduction is characterized by plausibly exogenous variation across sectors, which we use to construct a local measure of treatment, at the level of a Chinese prefecture, following Bartik (1991). This allows us to estimate a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We find that prefectures facing the average decline in trade policy uncertainty experience an 18 percent increase in their internal in-migration rate this result is driven by migrants who are "non-hukou", skilled, and in their prime working age. Finally, in those prefectures, working hours of "native" unskilled workers significantly increase - while the employment rates of neither native workers nor internal migrants change

China's great migration: the impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty

We analyze the effect of China's integration into the world economy on workers in the country and show that one important channel of impact has been internal migration. Specifically, we study the changes in internal migration rates triggered by the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters in the U.S. This reduction is characterized by plausibly exogenous variation across sectors, which we use to construct a local measure of treatment, at the level of a Chinese prefecture, following Bartik (1991). This allows us to estimate a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We find that prefectures facing the average decline in trade policy uncertainty experience an 18 percent increase in their internal in-migration rate this result is driven by migrants who are "non-hukou", skilled, and in their prime working age. Finally, in those prefectures, working hours of "native" unskilled workers significantly increase - while the employment rates of neither native workers nor internal migrants change

China's "Great Migration": the impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty

We analyze the effect of China's integration into the world economy on workers in the country and show that one important channel of impact has been internal migration. Specifically, we study the changes in internal migration rates triggered by the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters in the U.S. This reduction is characterized by plausibly exogenous variation across products, which we use to construct a local measure of treatment, at the level of a Chinese prefecture, following Bartik (1991). This allows us to estimate a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We find that prefectures facing the average decline in trade policy uncertainty experienced a 24 percent increase in their internal in-migration rate - this result is driven by migrants who are “non-hukou", skilled, and in their prime working age. Finally, in those prefectures, working hours of \native" unskilled workers significantly increased, and internal migrants found employment in the places they migrated to

Food/Non-food Image Classification and Food Categorization using Pre-Trained GoogLeNet Model

Recent past has seen a lot of developments in the field of image-based dietary assessment. Food image classification and recognition are crucial steps for dietary assessment. In the last couple of years, advancements in the deep learning and convolutional neural networks proved to be a boon for the image classification and recognition tasks, specifically for food recognition because of the wide variety of food items. In this paper, we report experiments on food/non-food classification and food recognition using a GoogLeNet model based on deep convolutional neural network. The experiments were conducted on two image datasets created by our own, where the images were collected from existing image datasets, social media, and imaging devices such as smart phone and wearable cameras. Experimental results show a high accuracy of 99.2% on the food/non-food classification and 83.6% on the food category recognition

Involuntary Thumb Flexion on Neurological Examination: An Unusual Form of Upper Limb Dystonia in the Faroe Islands

Background: The prevalence of dystonia varies worldwide. A prior report suggested a high prevalence of focal dystonia in the Faroese population, possibly reflecting a founder effect. During standardized neurological examination as part of an ongoing neuroepidemiologic study in the Faroe Islands, we noted an unusual phenomenon of thumb flexion during repetitive hand movements in a subset of subjects and sought to define its phenomenology. Methods: We requested commentary from a panel of dystonia experts regarding the phenomenology of the movements. These experts reviewed the videotaped neurological examination. Results: Among the experts, dystonia was the leading diagnosis. Alternate causes were considered, but deemed less likely. Discussion: Diagnosis of dystonia requires careful clinical assessment and consideration of associated features. We report a novel form of dystonia, not previously described to our knowledge, in this isolated population. Further studies of dystonia prevalence in the Faroe Islands are merited to characterize its burden in this population and its specific clinical characteristics. Keywords: Dystonia, focal dystonia, Faroe Islands, thumb flexion, phenomenolog

China's "Great Migration": the impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty

We analyze the effect of China's integration into the world economy on workers in the country and show that one important channel of impact has been internal migration. Specifically, we study the changes in internal migration rates triggered by the reduction in trade policy uncertainty faced by Chinese exporters in the U.S. This reduction is characterized by plausibly exogenous variation across sectors, which we use to construct a local measure of treatment, at the level of a Chinese prefecture, following Bartik (1991). This allows us to estimate a difference-in-difference empirical specification based on variation across Chinese prefectures before and after 2001. We find that prefectures facing the average decline in trade policy uncertainty experience an 18 percent increase in their internal in-migration rate this result is driven by migrants who are "non-hukou", skilled, and in their prime working age. Finally, in those prefectures, working hours of "native" unskilled workers significantly increase - while the employment rates of neither native workers nor internal migrants change

Identifying jumps in financial assets: A comparison between nonparametric jump tests

We perform a comprehensive Monte Carlo comparison between nine alternative procedures available in the literature to detect jumps in financial assets using high-frequency data. We evaluate size and power properties of the procedures under alternative sampling frequencies, persistence in volatility, jump size and intensity, and degree of contamination with microstructure noise. The overall best performance is shown by the Andersen, Bollerslev, and Dobrev (2007) and Lee and Mykland (2008) intraday procedures (ABD-LM), provided the price process is not very volatile. We propose two extensions to the existing battery of tests. The first regards the finite sample improvements based on simulated critical values for the ABD-LM procedure. The second regards a procedure that combines frequencies and tests able to reduce the number of spurious jumps. Finally, we report an empirical analysis using real high frequency data on five stocks listed in the New York Stock Exchange

Electrospun amplified fiber optics

A lot of research is focused on all-optical signal processing, aiming to obtain effective alternatives to existing data transmission platforms. Amplification of light in fiber optics, such as in Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers, is especially important for an efficient signal transmission. However, the complex fabrication methods, involving high-temperature processes performed in highly pure environment, slow down the fabrication and make amplified components expensive with respect to an ideal, high-throughput and room temperature production. Here, we report on near infrared polymer fiber amplifiers, working over a band of about 20 nm. The fibers are cheap, spun with a process entirely carried out at room temperature, and show amplified spontaneous emission with good gain coefficients as well as low optical losses (a few cm^-1). The amplification process is favoured by the high fiber quality and low self-absorption. The found performance metrics promise to be suitable for short-distance operation, and the large variety of commercially-available doping dyes might allow for effective multi-wavelength operation by electrospun amplified fiber optics.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure

Contribution of common and rare variants to bipolar disorder susceptibility in extended pedigrees from population isolates.

Current evidence from case/control studies indicates that genetic risk for psychiatric disorders derives primarily from numerous common variants, each with a small phenotypic impact. The literature describing apparent segregation of bipolar disorder (BP) in numerous multigenerational pedigrees suggests that, in such families, large-effect inherited variants might play a greater role. To identify roles of rare and common variants on BP, we conducted genetic analyses in 26 Colombia and Costa Rica pedigrees ascertained for bipolar disorder 1 (BP1), the most severe and heritable form of BP. In these pedigrees, we performed microarray SNP genotyping of 838 individuals and high-coverage whole-genome sequencing of 449 individuals. We compared polygenic risk scores (PRS), estimated using the latest BP1 genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics, between BP1 individuals and related controls. We also evaluated whether BP1 individuals had a higher burden of rare deleterious single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and rare copy number variants (CNVs) in a set of genes related to BP1. We found that compared with unaffected relatives, BP1 individuals had higher PRS estimated from BP1 GWAS statistics (P = 0.001 ~ 0.007) and displayed modest increase in burdens of rare deleterious SNVs (P = 0.047) and rare CNVs (P = 0.002 ~ 0.033) in genes related to BP1. We did not observe rare variants segregating in the pedigrees. These results suggest that small-to-moderate effect rare and common variants are more likely to contribute to BP1 risk in these extended pedigrees than a few large-effect rare variants