Case Report: Successful Treatment of a Child With COVID-19 Reinfection-Induced Fulminant Myocarditis by Cytokine-Adsorbing oXiris® Hemofilter Continuous Veno-Venous Hemofiltration and Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

BACKGROUND: Indirect cardiomyocyte damage-related hyperinflammatory response is one of the key mechanisms in COVID-19-induced fulminant myocarditis. In addition to the clinical benefit of using cytokines absorption hemofiltration, the effectiveness of instituting veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) support for cardiac compromise has been reported. However, current literature enunciates a paucity of available data on the effectiveness of these novel modalities. CASE PRESENTATION: We reported a 9-year-old boy with recurrent COVID-19 infection-causing fulminant myocarditis, who was treated successfully by using novel modalities of CONCLUSION: We conclude that the novel highly-absorptive hemofilter CVVH and VA-ECMO may be effective treatment modalities in managing SARS-CoV-2-induced fulminant myocarditis. Our report highlights the need for further well-designed investigations to confirm this extrapolation

Morphometrics allometry changes and sexual dimorphism in Caragobius urolepis (Gobiiformes: Gobiidae)

The present study reported an alternative way of sex-determining for scaleless worm goby Caragobius urolepis based on the regression relationship of some morphological parameters. A total of 328 samples were collected at the trawl nets in two coastal regions in Bac Lieu and Ca Mau from April to August 2022. After collection, the samples were transported to the laboratory in order to measure the total length (TL), body height (BD), head length (HL), the distance of eye (DE), and mouth width (MD) before surgery for accurate sex determination based on gonads. Regression analysis results of TL-BD (growth pattern A+ in females and I in males), TL-HL (growth pattern A+ in females and A- in males), and TL- MD (growth pattern A- in females and A+ in males) could be used to determine the sex of this fish. Moreover, TL-DE and TL-BD could be used to estimate when the samples were collected, e.g , in the dry or wet season, because DE and BD displayed A+ in the wet season but A- in the dry one. The findings could be used as an alternative way to determine fish sex and catching season for this species and others in the Mekong Delta

Multifunctional nanocarriers of Fe3O4@PLA-PEG/curcumin for MRI, magnetic hyperthermia and drug delivery

Background: Despite medicinal advances, cancer is still a big problem requiring better diagnostic and treatment tools. Magnetic nanoparticle (MNP)-based nanosystems for multiple-purpose applications were developed for these unmet needs. Methods: This study fabricated novel trifunctional MNPs of Fe3O4@PLA-PEG for drug release, MRI and magnetic fluid hyperthermia. Result: The MNPs provided a significant loading of curcumin (∼11%) with controllable release ability, a high specific absorption rate of 82.2 W/g and significantly increased transverse relaxivity (r2 = 364.75 mM-1 s-1). The in vivo study confirmed that the MNPs enhanced MRI contrast in tumor observation and low-field magnetic fluid hyperthermia could effectively reduce the tumor size in mice bearing sarcoma 180. Conclusion: The nanocarrier has potential for drug release, cancer treatment monitoring and therapy.The authors are grateful for the financial support by AOARD under award FA2386-17-1-4042. The Spanish government is acknowledged for the “Nanotechnology in translational hyperthermia (HIPERNANO)” research network (RED2018102626-T) and for funding under the project number MAT2017-83631-C3. NTK Thanh thanks EPSRC (EP/M015157/1). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed

Population and fertility by age and sex for 195 countries and territories, 1950–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Background: Population estimates underpin demographic and epidemiological research and are used to track progress on numerous international indicators of health and development. To date, internationally available estimates of population and fertility, although useful, have not been produced with transparent and replicable methods and do not use standardised estimates of mortality. We present single-calendar year and single-year of age estimates of fertility and population by sex with standardised and replicable methods. Methods: We estimated population in 195 locations by single year of age and single calendar year from 1950 to 2017 with standardised and replicable methods. We based the estimates on the demographic balancing equation, with inputs of fertility, mortality, population, and migration data. Fertility data came from 7817 location-years of vital registration data, 429 surveys reporting complete birth histories, and 977 surveys and censuses reporting summary birth histories. We estimated age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs; the annual number of livebirths to women of a specified age group per 1000 women in that age group) by use of spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression and used the ASFRs to estimate total fertility rates (TFRs; the average number of children a woman would bear if she survived through the end of the reproductive age span [age 10–54 years] and experienced at each age a particular set of ASFRs observed in the year of interest). Because of sparse data, fertility at ages 10–14 years and 50–54 years was estimated from data on fertility in women aged 15–19 years and 45–49 years, through use of linear regression. Age-specific mortality data came from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017 estimates. Data on population came from 1257 censuses and 761 population registry location-years and were adjusted for underenumeration and age misreporting with standard demographic methods. Migration was estimated with the GBD Bayesian demographic balancing model, after incorporating information about refugee migration into the model prior. Final population estimates used the cohort-component method of population projection, with inputs of fertility, mortality, and migration data. Population uncertainty was estimated by use of out-of-sample predictive validity testing. With these data, we estimated the trends in population by age and sex and in fertility by age between 1950 and 2017 in 195 countries and territories. Findings: From 1950 to 2017, TFRs decreased by 49·4% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 46·4–52·0). The TFR decreased from 4·7 livebirths (4·5–4·9) to 2·4 livebirths (2·2–2·5), and the ASFR of mothers aged 10–19 years decreased from 37 livebirths (34–40) to 22 livebirths (19–24) per 1000 women. Despite reductions in the TFR, the global population has been increasing by an average of 83·8 million people per year since 1985. The global population increased by 197·2% (193·3–200·8) since 1950, from 2·6 billion (2·5–2·6) to 7·6 billion (7·4–7·9) people in 2017; much of this increase was in the proportion of the global population in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The global annual rate of population growth increased between 1950 and 1964, when it peaked at 2·0%; this rate then remained nearly constant until 1970 and then decreased to 1·1% in 2017. Population growth rates in the southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania GBD super-region decreased from 2·5% in 1963 to 0·7% in 2017, whereas in sub-Saharan Africa, population growth rates were almost at the highest reported levels ever in 2017, when they were at 2·7%. The global average age increased from 26·6 years in 1950 to 32·1 years in 2017, and the proportion of the population that is of working age (age 15–64 years) increased from 59·9% to 65·3%. At the national level, the TFR decreased in all countries and territories between 1950 and 2017; in 2017, TFRs ranged from a low of 1·0 livebirths (95% UI 0·9–1·2) in Cyprus to a high of 7·1 livebirths (6·8–7·4) in Niger. The TFR under age 25 years (TFU25; number of livebirths expected by age 25 years for a hypothetical woman who survived the age group and was exposed to current ASFRs) in 2017 ranged from 0·08 livebirths (0·07–0·09) in South Korea to 2·4 livebirths (2·2–2·6) in Niger, and the TFR over age 30 years (TFO30; number of livebirths expected for a hypothetical woman ageing from 30 to 54 years who survived the age group and was exposed to current ASFRs) ranged from a low of 0·3 livebirths (0·3–0·4) in Puerto Rico to a high of 3·1 livebirths (3·0–3·2) in Niger. TFO30 was higher than TFU25 in 145 countries and territories in 2017. 33 countries had a negative population growth rate from 2010 to 2017, most of which were located in central, eastern, and western Europe, whereas population growth rates of more than 2·0% were seen in 33 of 46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2017, less than 65% of the national population was of working age in 12 of 34 high-income countries, and less than 50% of the national population was of working age in Mali, Chad, and Niger. Interpretation: Population trends create demographic dividends and headwinds (ie, economic benefits and detriments) that affect national economies and determine national planning needs. Although TFRs are decreasing, the global population continues to grow as mortality declines, with diverse patterns at the national level and across age groups. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide transparent and replicable estimates of population and fertility, which can be used to inform decision making and to monitor progress

Population and fertility by age and sex for 195 countries and territories, 1950-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

BACKGROUND: Population estimates underpin demographic and epidemiological research and are used to track progress on numerous international indicators of health and development. To date, internationally available estimates of population and fertility, although useful, have not been produced with transparent and replicable methods and do not use standardised estimates of mortality. We present single-calendar year and single-year of age estimates of fertility and population by sex with standardised and replicable methods. METHODS: We estimated population in 195 locations by single year of age and single calendar year from 1950 to 2017 with standardised and replicable methods. We based the estimates on the demographic balancing equation, with inputs of fertility, mortality, population, and migration data. Fertility data came from 7817 location-years of vital registration data, 429 surveys reporting complete birth histories, and 977 surveys and censuses reporting summary birth histories. We estimated age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs; the annual number of livebirths to women of a specified age group per 1000 women in that age group) by use of spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression and used the ASFRs to estimate total fertility rates (TFRs; the average number of children a woman would bear if she survived through the end of the reproductive age span [age 10-54 years] and experienced at each age a particular set of ASFRs observed in the year of interest). Because of sparse data, fertility at ages 10-14 years and 50-54 years was estimated from data on fertility in women aged 15-19 years and 45-49 years, through use of linear regression. Age-specific mortality data came from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017 estimates. Data on population came from 1257 censuses and 761 population registry location-years and were adjusted for underenumeration and age misreporting with standard demographic methods. Migration was estimated with the GBD Bayesian demographic balancing model, after incorporating information about refugee migration into the model prior. Final population estimates used the cohort-component method of population projection, with inputs of fertility, mortality, and migration data. Population uncertainty was estimated by use of out-of-sample predictive validity testing. With these data, we estimated the trends in population by age and sex and in fertility by age between 1950 and 2017 in 195 countries and territories

Coherent potential vorticity maxima and their relationship to extreme summer rainfall and tropical cyclone genesis

Extreme rainfall and tropical cyclones (TCs) are of great interest to the meteorological community. Their influences extend to many different industries such as agriculture, airlines and insurance, and they keep challenging forecasters in making their decisions. A great deal of effort has been put into improving our understanding of the extreme rainfall and tropical cyclone genesis, as well as increasing the forecast accuracy in the numerical weather prediction models and operational forecast systems. The research presented here examines extreme rain events and tropical cyclone genesis from a potettial vorticity (PV) viewpoint using mainly European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim (ERAI) reanalysis. PV is used as a diagnostic of the atmospheric flow in this research and the main meteorological field to investigate the synoptic conditions during extreme rain events and the formation of tropical cyclones. The objective tracking technique introduced by Berry et al. (2012) is used to track cyclonic PV centres on three isentropic surfaces (315 K, 330 K, and 350 K) and construct a global climatology of the coherent cyclonic PV centres density and motion. It is found that the coherent cyclonic PV centres lie predominantly on the equatorward flank and commonly travel around the periphery of the mean subtropical anticyclones. This motion implies the transport of cyclonic PV centres from the midlatitudes to the tropics on the eastern side of the anticyclones. One area in which the meridional transport of the PV from the extratropics toward the tropics is large is the east coast of Australia during December-January-February (DJF). Extreme rainfall is defined by the 95th percentile of the daily rainfall time series for particular season from 1997 to 2009 from Global Precipitation Climate Project (GPCP). It is shown that 95% and 82% of the extreme rain days in the Australian and north African tropics, respectively, are associated with a cyclonic PV centre. The composites based on extreme rain days in the two regions also show a coherent cyclonic PV centre upstream of the precipitating region. The vertical structures are broadly the same, although the amplitude is a little larger in the Australian tropics. The vertical wind structures reveal that the synoptic pattern in the Australian tropics is similar to a mesoscale convective system (MCS), whereas in the north African tropics it is closer to an easterly wave. It is also shown that after extreme rain events in the Australian tropics, the large-scale circulation dramatically changes with the positive rainfall anomaly regions and the monsoon trough moving far southward, and with rainfall over west Australia and monsoon trough frequency in the extratropics increasing significantly. Tropical cyclones are usually associated with coherent cyclonic PV centres in the lower and mid-troposphere. It is found that there are approximately 3 - 4 TCs per year in North Atlantic which have associated coherent cyclonic PV centres originating in the extratropics (i.e. poleward of 23.5◦), whereas in South Pacific, approximately 10 TCs are found over 30 years (1980 - 2009) with associated coherent cyclonic PV centres originating in the extratropics. Tropical cyclone Larry (March 2006) formed in the Coral Sea and was associated with a 330 K isentropic coherent cyclonic PV centre originating in the extratropics is investigated here. PV filamentation along the east coast of Australia plays a role in the generation of TC Larry, and Larry is the only TC in March-April-May season that has an associated coherent PV maximum detected first in the extratropics. It is also found that Rossby waves breaking (RWB) characterised by an elongated upper-level PV trough over the Coral Sea intensifies a tropical disturbance into a tropical depression before a second RWB event associated with a cold surge, combines with small vertical wind shear, to intensify the low-level vorticity eventually forming TC Larry

A Transfer Learning Approach to Breast Cancer Classification in a Federated Learning Framework

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have seen strong development. Many applications now use AI to diagnose breast cancer. However, most new research has only been conducted in centralized learning (CL) environments, which entails the risk of privacy breaches. Moreover, the accurate identification and localization of lesions and tumor prediction using AI technologies is expected to increase patients’ likelihood of survival. To address these difficulties, we developed a federated learning (FL) facility that extracts features from participating environments rather than a CL facility. This study’s novel contributions include (i) the application of transfer learning to extract data features from the region of interest (ROI) in an image, which aims to enable careful pre-processing and data enhancement for data training purposes; (ii) the use of synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) to process data, which aims to more uniformly classify data and improve diagnostic prediction performance for diseases; (iii) the application of FeAvg-CNN + MobileNet in an FL framework to ensure customer privacy and personal security; and (iv) the presentation of experimental results from different deep learning, transfer learning and FL models with balanced and imbalanced mammography datasets, which demonstrate that our solution leads to much higher classification performance than other approaches and is viable for use in AI healthcare applications

Thunderstorm Activity and Extremes in Vietnam for the Period 2015–2019

Within a meteorological capacity building project in Vietnam, lightning location data and manual (human-observed) thunderstorm day observations were analyzed for the period 2015–2019. The lightning location dataset, based on the global lightning detection system Vaisala GLD360, consists of a total of 315,522,761 lightning strokes. The results indicate that, on average, 6.9 million lightning flashes per year occur in the land areas of Vietnam; this equals a lightning flash density of 20 flashes km−2 yr−1. The largest average annual flash density values occur in three regions in North, Central and South Vietnam. The majority of lightning occurs in the monsoon season (April–September), peaking in May, while in October–March, the lightning activity is very modest. During individual intense thunderstorm days, the flash density may exceed 12 flashes km−2 day−1. Thunderstorms in Central Vietnam are generally more intense, i.e., more lightning is expected on average per one thunderstorm day in Central Vietnam than in other regions. This study is a continuation of several years of meteorological capacity building in Vietnam, and the results suggest that large socio-economic benefits can be received by understanding the local thunderstorm climatology in high detail, especially in a country such as Vietnam, where lightning causes substantial socio-economic losses annually