The impacts of EU accession on the agriculture of the Visegrad Countries

The Visegrad Countries (VC)2 joined the European Union in 2004, which has offered several possibilities and challenges for their agriculture. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the status of the sector in the light of latest available data as well as to identify the factors lying behind different country performances. Results suggest that EU accession has had a diverse impact on the Visegrad Countries’ agriculture and member states capitalised their possibilities in a different manner, due to initial conditions and pre- and post-accession policies

Tournament leave-pair-out cross-validation for receiver operating characteristic analysis

Receiver operating characteristic analysis is widely used for evaluating diagnostic systems. Recent studies have shown that estimating an area under receiver operating characteristic curve with standard cross-validation methods suffers from a large bias. The leave-pair-out cross-validation has been shown to correct this bias. However, while leave-pair-out produces an almost unbiased estimate of area under receiver operating characteristic curve, it does not provide a ranking of the data needed for plotting and analyzing the receiver operating characteristic curve. In this study, we propose a new method called tournament leave-pair-out cross-validation. This method extends leave-pair-out by creating a tournament from pair comparisons to produce a ranking for the data. Tournament leave-pair-out preserves the advantage of leave-pair-out for estimating area under receiver operating characteristic curve, while it also allows performing receiver operating characteristic analyses. We have shown using both synthetic and real-world data that tournament leave-pair-out is as reliable as leave-pair-out for area under receiver operating characteristic curve estimation and confirmed the bias in leave-one-out cross-validation on low-dimensional data. As a case study on receiver operating characteristic analysis, we also evaluate how reliably sensitivity and specificity can be estimated from tournament leave-pair-out receiver operating characteristic curves.</p

Evidence of random magnetic anisotropy in ferrihydrite nanoparticles based on analysis of statistical distributions

We show that the magnetic anisotropy energy of antiferromagnetic ferrihydrite depends on the square root of the nanoparticles volume, using a method based on the analysis of statistical distributions. The size distribution was obtained by transmission electron microscopy, and the anisotropy energy distributions were obtained from ac magnetic susceptibility and magnetic relaxation. The square root dependence corresponds to random local anisotropy, whose average is given by its variance, and can be understood in terms of the recently proposed single phase homogeneous structure of ferrihydrite.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Parameter Estimation Error Dependency on the Acquisition Protocol in Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging

Mono-exponential kurtosis model is routinely fitted on diffusion weighted, magnetic resonance imaging data to describe non-Gaussian diffusion. Here, the purpose was to optimize acquisitions for this model to minimize the errors in estimating diffusion coefficient and kurtosis. Similar to a previous study, covariance matrix calculations were used, and coefficients of variation in estimating each parameter of this model were calculated. The acquisition parameter, b values, varied in discrete grids to find the optimum ones that minimize the coefficient of variation in estimating the two non-Gaussian parameters. Also, the effect of variation of the target values on the optimized values was investigated. Additionally, the results were benchmarked with Monte Carlo noise simulations. Simple correlations were found between the optimized b values and target values of diffusion and kurtosis. For small target values of the two parameters, there is higher chance of having significant errors; this is caused by maximum b value limits imposed by the scanner than the mathematical bounds. The results here, cover a wide range of parameters D and K so that they could be used in many directionally averaged diffusion weighted cases such as head and neck, prostate, etc

A genome-wide resource for the analysis of protein localisation in Drosophila

The Drosophila genome contains >13000 protein-coding genes, the majority of which remain poorly investigated. Important reasons include the lack of antibodies or reporter constructs to visualise these proteins. Here, we present a genome-wide fosmid library of 10000 GFP-tagged clones, comprising tagged genes and most of their regulatory information. For 880 tagged proteins, we created transgenic lines, and for a total of 207 lines, we assessed protein expression and localisation in ovaries, embryos, pupae or adults by stainings and live imaging approaches. Importantly, we visualised many proteins at endogenous expression levels and found a large fraction of them localising to subcellular compartments. By applying genetic complementation tests, we estimate that about two-thirds of the tagged proteins are functional. Moreover, these tagged proteins enable interaction proteomics from developing pupae and adult flies. Taken together, this resource will boost systematic analysis of protein expression and localisation in various cellular and developmental contexts

Comparison of reprojected bone SPECT/CT and planar bone scintigraphy for the detection of bone metastases in breast and prostate cancer

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare reprojected bone SPECT/CT (RBS) against planar bone scintigraphy (BS) in the detection of bone metastases in breast and prostate cancer patients.Methods: Twenty-six breast and 105 prostate cancer patients with high risk for bone metastases underwent 99mTc-HMDP BS and whole-body SPECT/CT, 1.5-T whole-body diffusion-weighted MRI and 18F-NaF or 18F-PSMA-1007 PET/CT within two prospective clinical trials (NCT01339780 and NCT03537391). Consensus reading of all imaging modalities and follow-up data were used to define the reference standard diagnosis. The SPECT/CT data were reprojected into anterior and posterior views to produce RBS images. Both BS and RBS images were independently double read by two pairs of experienced nuclear medicine physicians. The findings were validated against the reference standard diagnosis and compared between BS and RBS on the patient, region and lesion levels.Results: All metastatic patients detected by BS were also detected by RBS. In addition, three metastatic patients were missed by BS but detected by RBS. The average patient-level sensitivity of two readers for metastases was 75% for BS and 87% for RBS, and the corresponding specificity was 79% for BS and 39% for RBS. The average region-level sensitivity of two readers was 64% for BS and 69% for RBS, and the corresponding specificity was 96% for BS and 87% for RBS.Conclusion: Whole-body bone SPECT/CT can be reprojected into more familiar anterior and posterior planar images with excellent sensitivity for bone metastases, making additional acquisition of planar BS unnecessary.</p

Uterine Epithelial Cell Regulation of DC-SIGN Expression Inhibits Transmitted/Founder HIV-1 Trans Infection by Immature Dendritic Cells

Sexual transmission accounts for the majority of HIV-1 infections. In over 75% of cases, infection is initiated by a single variant (transmitted/founder virus). However, the determinants of virus selection during transmission are unknown. Host cell-cell interactions in the mucosa may be critical in regulating susceptibility to infection. We hypothesized in this study that specific immune modulators secreted by uterine epithelial cells modulate susceptibility of dendritic cells (DC) to infection with HIV-1.Here we report that uterine epithelial cell secretions (i.e. conditioned medium, CM) decreased DC-SIGN expression on immature dendritic cells via a transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) mechanism. Further, CM inhibited dendritic cell-mediated trans infection of HIV-1 expressing envelope proteins of prototypic reference. Similarly, CM inhibited trans infection of HIV-1 constructs expressing envelopes of transmitted/founder viruses, variants that are selected during sexual transmission. In contrast, whereas recombinant TGF- β1 inhibited trans infection of prototypic reference HIV-1 by dendritic cells, TGF-β1 had a minimal effect on trans infection of transmitted/founder variants irrespective of the reporter system used to measure trans infection.Our results provide the first direct evidence for uterine epithelial cell regulation of dendritic cell transmission of infection with reference and transmitted/founder HIV-1 variants. These findings have immediate implications for designing strategies to prevent sexual transmission of HIV-1