Designing and building a teledermatology system

Background and purpose: Teledermatology means specialized skin care (diagnosis, treatment and follow-up) using information technology and telecommunications. This system facilitates communication between patients, doctors, nurses and primary care providers with dermatologists. The purpose of this study was to design and build a software for remote diagnosis of skin diseases. Materials and methods: In the first phase of study, based upon a literature review, a questionnaire was designed to determine the items needed for software design and was completed by dermatologists in Razi Hospital. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics in SPSS V.19. In next phase, according to the results of first phase, the prototype was designed and Think Aloud usability test was applied. Then, the final version of the software was designed. Results: In the section of patient's identity, the respondents listed all data elements except the National Identification Number, address, and weight. They also suggested patient's job as an essential item. All items for clinical data and functionality of the software were found necessary. Considering the results obtained from the questionnaires and usability test, the final version of the web-based store and forward software was created. Conclusion: This kind of platform could help dermatologists in providing rapid diagnosis and treatment plan for each patient since it enables electronic transmission of patient images and clinical history. Also, this system requires limited technical equipment and is cheap to run which could be applied with little training to nurses or referral physicians. © 2015, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Leaf Area, Fresh Weight and Dry Weight Prediction Models for Ornamental Plants Ficus benjamina (cv. Starlight)

Measurements of leaf growth indices namely leaf area, fresh weight and dry weight are of value in physiological studies and plant growth estimation. The use of prediction models to estimate leaf area, fresh weight and dry weight is simple, rapid and non-destructive. Several mathematical functions have been formulated for estimating leaf area, fresh weight and dry weight of various crops but almost there is no information for Ficus benjamina. This work was aimed to propose leaf area (LA), fresh weight (FW) and dry weight (DW) prediction models for Ficus benjamina (cv. Starlight) leafy ornamental pot plant using leaf length (L) and width (W). 1000 leaves were collected randomly from greenhouse grown plants and 700 of cuts were used for prediction models. LA was measured with a digital area meter (DELTA-T, Co. Durham, UK), related FW and DW also were weighted and leaf dimensions were determined by the ruler. For each studying growth index LA, FW and DW the predictive abilities of three regression equations (linear, polynomial and power) were compared with different independent variables for each equation. Leaf length × width provided a good estimation of leaf area and fresh weight of the leaves of Ficus benjamina. It was also concluded that leaves the dry weight of Ficus benjamina can be estimated or simulated as a power function of L×W or L+W with reasonable accuracy. Moreover, a reasonable relationship between leaf fresh weight and leaf area was found too

Integration of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi to Grape Vine (Vitis vinifera L.) in Nursery Stage

The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) association is being considered as the commonest Mycorrhizal type involved in grape community. Low population density of these useful fungi in vineyard soil suggests the need for manual inoculation of grapevine plantlets at the nursery stage. The influence of three commercial Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi strains (Glomus intraradious, G. mosseae, G. fasciculatus and a mixture of them) on growth and biochemical status of four grapevine varieties (Shahroodi, Asgari, Keshmeshi and Khalili) was investigated under greenhouse conditions. Rooted plantlets derived from hardwood cuttings were transplanted in pots containing leaf mold and sand (1:1) followed by inoculation with different fungal inoculums. Various physiological and biochemical parameters were measured at 30 days intervals. The percentage of root colonization was found to be slightly different amongst inoculated vines but it was found to be significantly different with non-inoculated, control plants. Most growth related parameters (vine length, shoot length and leaf area) were enhanced following Mycorrhization but root length and number of leaves were not significantly affected by any fungal intervention. Treated plants typically showed more obvious modifications in their biochemical status. The chlorophyll content (especially "b" and total), total root and shoot phenols were raised in treated plants. The chlorophyll "a" and total soluble sugars were not statistically different in inoculated and control plants. The overall results of the present study suggest that AM fungi can be manually applied, as an easy and economical approach during nursery production, to boost the physiological and biochemical status of the treated plants and production of high quality healthy plantlets

An experimental study of the intrinsic stability of random forest variable importance measures

BACKGROUND: The stability of Variable Importance Measures (VIMs) based on random forest has recently received increased attention. Despite the extensive attention on traditional stability of data perturbations or parameter variations, few studies include influences coming from the intrinsic randomness in generating VIMs, i.e. bagging, randomization and permutation. To address these influences, in this paper we introduce a new concept of intrinsic stability of VIMs, which is defined as the self-consistence among feature rankings in repeated runs of VIMs without data perturbations and parameter variations. Two widely used VIMs, i.e., Mean Decrease Accuracy (MDA) and Mean Decrease Gini (MDG) are comprehensively investigated. The motivation of this study is two-fold. First, we empirically verify the prevalence of intrinsic stability of VIMs over many real-world datasets to highlight that the instability of VIMs does not originate exclusively from data perturbations or parameter variations, but also stems from the intrinsic randomness of VIMs. Second, through Spearman and Pearson tests we comprehensively investigate how different factors influence the intrinsic stability. RESULTS: The experiments are carried out on 19 benchmark datasets with diverse characteristics, including 10 high-dimensional and small-sample gene expression datasets. Experimental results demonstrate the prevalence of intrinsic stability of VIMs. Spearman and Pearson tests on the correlations between intrinsic stability and different factors show that #feature (number of features) and #sample (size of sample) have a coupling effect on the intrinsic stability. The synthetic indictor, #feature/#sample, shows both negative monotonic correlation and negative linear correlation with the intrinsic stability, while OOB accuracy has monotonic correlations with intrinsic stability. This indicates that high-dimensional, small-sample and high complexity datasets may suffer more from intrinsic instability of VIMs. Furthermore, with respect to parameter settings of random forest, a large number of trees is preferred. No significant correlations can be seen between intrinsic stability and other factors. Finally, the magnitude of intrinsic stability is always smaller than that of traditional stability. CONCLUSION: First, the prevalence of intrinsic stability of VIMs demonstrates that the instability of VIMs not only comes from data perturbations or parameter variations, but also stems from the intrinsic randomness of VIMs. This finding gives a better understanding of VIM stability, and may help reduce the instability of VIMs. Second, by investigating the potential factors of intrinsic stability, users would be more aware of the risks and hence more careful when using VIMs, especially on high-dimensional, small-sample and high complexity datasets

A silviculture-oriented spatio-temporal model for germination in Pinus pinea L. in the Spanish Northern Plateau based on a direct seeding experiment

Natural regeneration in Pinus pinea stands commonly fails throughout the Spanish Northern Plateau under current intensive regeneration treatments. As a result, extensive direct seeding is commonly conducted to guarantee regeneration occurrence. In a period of rationalization of the resources devoted to forest management, this kind of techniques may become unaffordable. Given that the climatic and stand factors driving germination remain unknown, tools are required to understand the process and temper the use of direct seeding. In this study, the spatio-temporal pattern of germination of P. pinea was modelled with those purposes. The resulting findings will allow us to (1) determine the main ecological variables involved in germination in the species and (2) infer adequate silvicultural alternatives. The modelling approach focuses on covariates which are readily available to forest managers. A two-step nonlinear mixed model was fitted to predict germination occurrence and abundance in P. pinea under varying climatic, environmental and stand conditions, based on a germination data set covering a 5-year period. The results obtained reveal that the process is primarily driven by climate variables. Favourable conditions for germination commonly occur in fall although the optimum window is often narrow and may not occur at all in some years. At spatial level, it would appear that germination is facilitated by high stand densities, suggesting that current felling intensity should be reduced. In accordance with other studies on P. pinea dispersal, it seems that denser stands during the regeneration period will reduce the present dependence on direct seeding

Can understanding reward help illuminate anhedonia?

Purpose of review: The goal of this paper is to examine how reward processing might help us understand the symptom of anhedonia. Recent findings: There are extensive reviews exploring the relationship between responses to rewarding stimuli and depression. These often include a discussion on anhedonia and how this might be underpinned in particular by dysfunctional reward processing. However, there is no specific consensus on whether studies to date have adequately examined the various sub-components of reward processing or how these might relate in turn to various aspects of anhedonia symptoms. Summary: The approach to understanding the symptom of anhedonia should be to examine all the sub-components of reward processing at the subjective and objective behavioural and neural level, with well validated tasks that can be replicated. Investigating real life experiences of anhedonia and how theses might be predicted by objective lab measures is also needed in future research