Preterm white matter injury : ultrasound diagnosis and classification

White matter injury (WMI) is the most frequent form of preterm brain injury. Cranial ultrasound (CUS) remains the preferred modality for initial and sequential neuroimaging in preterm infants, and is reliable for the diagnosis of cystic periventricular leukomalacia. Although magnetic resonance imaging is superior to CUS in detecting the diffuse and more subtle forms of WMI that prevail in very premature infants surviving nowadays, recent improvement in the quality of neonatal CUS imaging has broadened the spectrum of preterm white matter abnormalities that can be detected with this technique. We propose a structured CUS assessment of WMI of prematurity that seeks to account for both cystic and non-cystic changes, as well as signs of white matter loss and impaired brain growth and maturation, at or near term equivalent age. This novel assessment system aims to improve disease description in both routine clinical practice and clinical research. Whether this systematic assessment will improve prediction of outcome in preterm infants with WMI still needs to be evaluated in prospective studies

The physics of dynamical atomic charges: the case of ABO3 compounds

Based on recent first-principles computations in perovskite compounds, especially BaTiO3, we examine the significance of the Born effective charge concept and contrast it with other atomic charge definitions, either static (Mulliken, Bader...) or dynamical (Callen, Szigeti...). It is shown that static and dynamical charges are not driven by the same underlying parameters. A unified treatment of dynamical charges in periodic solids and large clusters is proposed. The origin of the difference between static and dynamical charges is discussed in terms of local polarizability and delocalized transfers of charge: local models succeed in reproducing anomalous effective charges thanks to large atomic polarizabilities but, in ABO3 compounds, ab initio calculations favor the physical picture based upon transfer of charges. Various results concerning barium and strontium titanates are presented. The origin of anomalous Born effective charges is discussed thanks to a band-by-band decomposition which allows to identify the displacement of the Wannier center of separated bands induced by an atomic displacement. The sensitivity of the Born effective charges to microscopic and macroscopic strains is examined. Finally, we estimate the spontaneous polarization in the four phases of barium titanate.Comment: 25 pages, 6 Figures, 10 Tables, LaTe

Computational Approaches to Explainable Artificial Intelligence:Advances in Theory, Applications and Trends

Deep Learning (DL), a groundbreaking branch of Machine Learning (ML), has emerged as a driving force in both theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). DL algorithms, rooted in complex and non-linear artificial neural systems, excel at extracting high-level features from data. DL has demonstrated human-level performance in real-world tasks, including clinical diagnostics, and has unlocked solutions to previously intractable problems in virtual agent design, robotics, genomics, neuroimaging, computer vision, and industrial automation. In this paper, the most relevant advances from the last few years in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and several applications to neuroscience, neuroimaging, computer vision, and robotics are presented, reviewed and discussed. In this way, we summarize the state-of-the-art in AI methods, models and applications within a collection of works presented at the 9 International Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation (IWINAC). The works presented in this paper are excellent examples of new scientific discoveries made in laboratories that have successfully transitioned to real-life applications

Early cranial ultrasound findings among infants with neonatal encephalopathy in Uganda: an observational study.

BACKGROUND: In sub-Saharan Africa, the timing and nature of brain injury and their relation to mortality in neonatal encephalopathy (NE) are unknown. We evaluated cranial ultrasound (cUS) scans from term Ugandan infants with and without NE for evidence of brain injury. METHODS: Infants were recruited from a national referral hospital in Kampala. Cases (184) had NE and controls (100) were systematically selected unaffected term infants. All had cUS scans <36 h reported blind to NE status. RESULTS: Scans were performed at median age 11.5 (interquartile range (IQR): 5.2-20.2) and 8.4 (IQR: 3.6-13.5) hours, in cases and controls respectively. None had established antepartum injury. Major evolving injury was reported in 21.2% of the cases vs. 1.0% controls (P < 0.001). White matter injury was not significantly associated with bacteremia in encephalopathic infants (odds ratios (OR): 3.06 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.98-9.60). Major cUS abnormality significantly increased the risk of neonatal death (case fatality 53.9% with brain injury vs. 25.9% without; OR: 3.34 (95% CI: 1.61-6.95)). CONCLUSION: In this low-resource setting, there was no evidence of established antepartum insult, but a high proportion of encephalopathic infants had evidence of major recent and evolving brain injury on early cUS imaging, suggesting prolonged or severe acute exposure to hypoxia-ischemia (HI). Early abnormalities were a significant predictor of death

A Brief Note on the Approach to the Conic Sections of a Right Circular Cone from Dynamic Geometry

Nowadays there are different powerful 3D dynamic geometry systems (DGS) such as GeoGebra 5, Calques 3D and Cabri Geometry 3D. An obvious application of this software that has been addressed by several authors is obtaining the conic sections of a right circular cone: the dynamic capabilities of 3D DGS allows to slowly vary the angle of the plane w.r.t. the axis of the cone, thus obtaining the different types of conics. In all the approaches we have found, a cone is firstly constructed and it is cut through variable planes. We propose to perform the construction the other way round: the plane is fixed (in fact it is a very convenient plane: z = 0) and the cone is the moving object. This way the conic is expressed as a function of x and y (instead of as a function of x, y and z). Moreover, if the 3D DGS has algebraic capabilities, it is possible to obtain the implicitequation of the conic

Band-by-band decompositions of the Born effective charges

The Born effective charge, Z*, that describes the polarization created by collective atomic displacements, can be computed from first principles following different techniques. We establish the connections existing between these different formulations, and analyse the related band-by-band decompositions. We show that unlike for the full Z*, the different band-by-band values are not equal, and emphasize that one of them has a natural physical meaning in terms of Wannier functions

Mixed columns made to order in gas chromatography. IV. Isothermal selective separation of alcoholic and acetic fermentation products

The FORTRAN program described In Part I of this series has been modified so that it may either find the best combined phases made up from two, three, or four simple phases, for the isothermal separation of all the solutes contained in a mixture, or else it may find the best combined phases for the separation of only a group of selected mixture components. The program has been applied to the separation by direct injection of the 20 more important components (b.p. up to 145°C) found in alcoholic and acetic fermentation samples. A couple of mixed bed columns have been found that achieve the separation of the 20 components plus four proposed internal standards In samples containing up to 40% ethanol. Comparison with other analytical procedures found in the literature shows that the couple of columns found by the computer represents the best choice for the detection and quantitative determination of volatile components of wine and distillates, as well as cognac, brandy, rum, whisky, beer, and vinegar. Chromatograms showing the capabilities of the two columns are included