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Comparison of breath-hold, respiratory navigated and free-breathing MR elastography of the liver
Hepatic magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is currently a breath-hold imaging technique. Patients with chronic liver disease can have comorbidities that limit their ability to breath-hold (BH) for the required acquisition time. Our aim was to evaluate whether stiffness measurements obtained from a navigator-triggered MRE acquisition are comparable to standard expiratory breath-hold, inspiratory breath-hold or free-breathing in healthy participants.
Twelve healthy participants were imaged using the four methods on a clinical 1.5 T MR system equipped with a product MRE system. Mean liver stiffness, and measurable area of stiffness (with a confidence threshold >95%) were compared between sequences using the concordance correlation coefficient. Repeatability of each sequence between two acquisitions was also assessed.
The standard BH expiratory technique had high concordance with the navigated technique (r = 0.716), and low concordance with the BH inspiration (r = 0.165) and free-breathing (r = 0.105) techniques. The navigator-triggered technique showed no statistical difference in measurable area of liver or in repeatability compared with the standard expiratory acquisition (p = 0.997 and p = 0.407 respectively). The free-breathing technique produced less measurable liver area and was less repeatable than the alternative techniques. The increase in acquisition time for navigator techniques was 3 min 6 s compared to standard expiratory breath-hold.
Navigator-based hepatic MRE measurements are comparable to the reference standard expiratory breath-hold acquisition in healthy participants.This work was supported by the Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust and the NIHR Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre award to Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the University of Cambridge
Effect of various dopant elements on primary graphite growth
Five spheroidal graphite cast irons were investigated, a usual ferritic grade and four pearlitic alloys containing Cu and doped with Sb, Sn and Ti. These alloys were remelted in a graphite crucible, leading to volatilization of the magnesium added for spheroidization and to carbon saturation of the liquid. The alloys were then cooled down and maintained at a temperature above the eutectic temperature. During this step, primary graphite could develop showing various features depending on the doping elements added. The largest effects were that of Ti which greatly reduces graphite nucleation and growth, and that of Sb which leads to rounded agglomerates instead of lamellar graphite. The samples have been investigated with secondary ion mass spectrometry to enlighten distribution of elements in primary graphite. SIMS analysis showed almost even distribution of elements, including Mg and Al (from the inoculant) in the ferritic grade, while uneven distribution was evident in all doped alloys. Investigations are going on to clarify if the uneven distribution is associated with structural defects in the graphite precipitates
SMaSH: A Benchmarking Toolkit for Human Genome Variant Calling
Motivation: Computational methods are essential to extract actionable
information from raw sequencing data, and to thus fulfill the promise of
next-generation sequencing technology. Unfortunately, computational tools
developed to call variants from human sequencing data disagree on many of their
predictions, and current methods to evaluate accuracy and computational
performance are ad-hoc and incomplete. Agreement on benchmarking variant
calling methods would stimulate development of genomic processing tools and
facilitate communication among researchers.
Results: We propose SMaSH, a benchmarking methodology for evaluating human
genome variant calling algorithms. We generate synthetic datasets, organize and
interpret a wide range of existing benchmarking data for real genomes, and
propose a set of accuracy and computational performance metrics for evaluating
variant calling methods on this benchmarking data. Moreover, we illustrate the
utility of SMaSH to evaluate the performance of some leading single nucleotide
polymorphism (SNP), indel, and structural variant calling algorithms.
Availability: We provide free and open access online to the SMaSH toolkit,
along with detailed documentation, at smash.cs.berkeley.edu
A Knowledge-Driven Approach to Predicting Technology Adoption among Persons with Dementia
As the demographics of many countries shift towards an ageing population it is predicted that the prevalence of diseases affecting cognitive capabilities will continually increase. One approach to enabling individuals with cognitive decline to remain in their own homes is through the use of cognitive pros-thetics such as reminding technology. However, the benefit of such technologies is intuitively predicated upon their successful adoption and subsequent use. Within this paper we present a knowledge-based feature set which may be utilized to predict technology adoption amongst Persons with Dementia (PwD). The chosen feature set is readily obtainable during a clinical visit, is based upon real data and grounded in established research. We present results demonstrating 86% accuracy in successfully predicting adopters/non-adopters amongst PwD
The Effect of Early vs. Normal Calf Weaning on Feedlot Performance and Herd Management: A Cross-Discipline Case Study
A study of early vs. normal weaning of calves concludes that early weaning improves feedlot production efficiency, reducing per day and per pound feedlot production costs. Early weaned steers finished higher thus feedlot profitability was not affected. Early weaning has a positive affect on cow health and pasture utilization rates.Livestock Production/Industries,
Cyclic brightening in the short-period WZ Sge-type cataclysmic variable SDSS J080434.20+510349.2
We have observed a new cataclysmic variable (CV) SDSS J080434.20+510349.2 and
study the origin of a long-term variability found in its light curve.
Multi-longitude time-resolved photometric observations were carried out to
analyze the uncommon behavior also found recently in two newly discovered CVs.
This study of SDSS J080434.20+510349.2 mainly concerns the understanding of the
nature of the observed double-humped light curve and its relation to a cyclic
brightening occurring during quiescence. The observations were obtained early
in 2007, when the object was at about V~17.1, 0.4 mag brighter than the
pre-outburst magnitude. The light curve shows a sinusoidal variability with an
amplitude of about 0.07 mag and a periodicity of 42.48 min, which is half of
the orbital period of the system. In addition, we have observed two
"mini-outbursts" of the system up to 0.6 mag, with a duration of about 4 days
each. The "mini-outburst" had a symmetric profile and repeated in about 32
days. Subsequent monitoring of the system shows a cyclical behaviour of such
"mini-outbursts" with a similar recurrence period. The origin of the
double-humped light curve and the periodic brightening is discussed in the
light of the evolutionary state of SDSS J080434.20+510349.2.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by A&A, typos added, figure correcte
White dwarfs as test objects of Lorentz violations
In the present work the thermodynamical properties of bosonic and fermionic
gases are analyzed under the condition that a modified dispersion relation is
present. This last condition implies a breakdown of Lorentz symmetry. The
implications upon the condensation temperature will be studied, as well, as
upon other thermodynamical variables such as specific heat, entropy, etc.
Moreover, it will be argued that those cases entailing a violation of time
reversal symmetry of the motion equations could lead to problems with the
concept of entropy. Concerning the fermionic case it will be shown that Fermi
temperature suffers a modification due to the breakdown of Lorentz symmetry.
The results will be applied to white dwarfs and the consequences upon the
Chandrasekhar mass--radius relation will be shown. The possibility of resorting
to white dwarfs for the testing of modified dispersion relations is also
addressed. It will be shown that the comparison of the current observations
against the predictions of our model allows us to discard some values of one of
the parameters appearing in the modifications of the dispersion relation.Comment: Accepted in Classical and Quantum Gravitatio
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