GIFTed Demons: deformable image registration with local structure-preserving regularization using supervoxels for liver applications.

Deformable image registration, a key component of motion correction in medical imaging, needs to be efficient and provides plausible spatial transformations that reliably approximate biological aspects of complex human organ motion. Standard approaches, such as Demons registration, mostly use Gaussian regularization for organ motion, which, though computationally efficient, rule out their application to intrinsically more complex organ motions, such as sliding interfaces. We propose regularization of motion based on supervoxels, which provides an integrated discontinuity preserving prior for motions, such as sliding. More precisely, we replace Gaussian smoothing by fast, structure-preserving, guided filtering to provide efficient, locally adaptive regularization of the estimated displacement field. We illustrate the approach by applying it to estimate sliding motions at lung and liver interfaces on challenging four-dimensional computed tomography (CT) and dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging datasets. The results show that guided filter-based regularization improves the accuracy of lung and liver motion correction as compared to Gaussian smoothing. Furthermore, our framework achieves state-of-the-art results on a publicly available CT liver dataset

Effect of B-vitamin supplementation on nursery pig growth performance

A 35-d growth assay was conducted to determine the effect of added dietary B-vitamins on growth performance of nursery pigs (12.9 lb initial BW). The basal diet (Phase I, 1.5% lysine; Phase II, 1.3% lysine) was formulated to contain no added Bvitamins. The other treatment diets were formed by adding a B-vitamin premix (biotin, folacin, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, thiamin, B6, and B12) to the basal diet with the vitamins added at 1, 2, or 4 times NRC (1998) recommendations. In phase I (d 0 to 14) and for the overall trial, pigs fed increasing Bvitamins had increased (linear, P<0.04) ADFI and improved (quadratic, P<0.04) feed efficiency. Feed efficiency was best for pigs fed the diet with B-vitamins added at the NRC requirement. There was no effect of B-vitamin level (P>0.09) on growth performance in phase II (d 14 to 35). These results suggest that B-vitamin supplementation is necessary to maximize growth performance of earlyweaned pigs; however, typical margins of safety for B-vitamins can be lowered without affecting growth performance

Influence of dietary niacin on starter pig performance

Two experiments were conducted using 415 weanling pigs (175 in Exp. 1, 240 in Exp. 2) to determine the influence of dietary niacin inclusion on starter pig performance. Pigs were fed a control diet with no added niacin or the control diet with 25, 50, 75 or 100 g/ton of added niacin. From d 0 to 8, increasing dietary niacin increased ADG and ADFI up to 50 g/ton of added niacin. Overall, pigs fed increasing levels of niacin tended to have improved ADG. These results suggest feeding 50 g/ton of added dietary niacin to complex nursery pig diets to improve growth performance

The pH of spray-dried blood meal does not influence nursery pig performance

Two studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of spray-dried blood meal and its pH on nursery pig performance. Spray-dried blood meal pH decreases as storage time increases prior to spray drying. In Exp. 1, addition of 2.5% spray-dried blood meal to the diet improved ADG and ADFI in nursery pigs (15.4 lb to 35.9 lb), but did not influence feed efficiency. In Exp. 2, the inclusion of 5% spray-dried blood meal improved feed efficiency without affecting ADG or ADFI. The pH (7.4 to 5.9 in Exp. 1 and 7.6 to 5.9 in Exp. 2) of the blood meal did not influence growth performance

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): detection of low-surface-brightness galaxies from SDSS data

We report on a search for new low-surface-brightness galaxies (LSBGs) using Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data within the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) equatorial fields. The search method consisted of masking objects detected with SDSS PHOTO, combining gri images weighted to maximize the expected signal-to-noise ratio, and smoothing the images. The processed images were then run through a detection algorithm that finds all pixels above a set threshold and groups them based on their proximity to one another. The list of detections was cleaned of contaminants such as diffraction spikes and the faint wings of masked objects. From these, selecting potentially the brightest in terms of total flux, a list of 343 LSBGs was produced having been confirmed using VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy Survey (VIKING) imaging. The photometry of this sample was refined using the deeper VIKING Z band as the aperture-defining band. Measuring their g − i and J − K colours shows that most are consistent with being at redshifts less than 0.2. The photometry is carried out using an AUTO aperture for each detection giving surface brightnesses of μr ≳ 25 mag arcsec−2 and magnitudes of r > 19.8 mag. None of these galaxies are bright enough to be within the GAMA main survey limit but could be part of future deeper surveys to measure the low-mass end of the galaxy stellar mass function

Classical Logical versus Quantum Conceptual Thought: Examples in Economics, Decision theory and Concept Theory

Inspired by a quantum mechanical formalism to model concepts and their disjunctions and conjunctions, we put forward in this paper a specific hypothesis. Namely that within human thought two superposed layers can be distinguished: (i) a layer given form by an underlying classical deterministic process, incorporating essentially logical thought and its indeterministic version modeled by classical probability theory; (ii) a layer given form under influence of the totality of the surrounding conceptual landscape, where the different concepts figure as individual entities rather than (logical) combinations of others, with measurable quantities such as 'typicality', 'membership', 'representativeness', 'similarity', 'applicability', 'preference' or 'utility' carrying the influences. We call the process in this second layer 'quantum conceptual thought', which is indeterministic in essence, and contains holistic aspects, but is equally well, although very differently, organized than logical thought. A substantial part of the 'quantum conceptual thought process' can be modeled by quantum mechanical probabilistic and mathematical structures. We consider examples of three specific domains of research where the effects of the presence of quantum conceptual thought and its deviations from classical logical thought have been noticed and studied, i.e. economics, decision theory, and concept theories and which provide experimental evidence for our hypothesis.Comment: 14 page

13 C-, 15 N- and 31 P-NMR studies of oxidized and reduced low molecular mass thioredoxin reductase and some mutant proteins

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65853/1/j.1432-1033.2004.04043.x.pd

Murchison Widefield Array rapid-response observations of the short GRB 180805A

Abstract Here we present stringent low-frequency (185 MHz) limits on coherent radio emission associated with a short-duration gamma-ray burst (SGRB). Our observations of the short gamma-ray burst (GRB) 180805A were taken with the upgraded Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) rapid-response system, which triggered within 20s of receiving the transient alert from the Swift Burst Alert Telescope, corresponding to 83.7 s post-burst. The SGRB was observed for a total of 30 min, resulting in a $3\sigma$ persistent flux density upper limit of 40.2 mJy beam–1. Transient searches were conducted at the Swift position of this GRB on 0.5 s, 5 s, 30 s and 2 min timescales, resulting in $3\sigma$ limits of 570–1 830, 270–630, 200–420, and 100–200 mJy beam–1, respectively. We also performed a dedispersion search for prompt signals at the position of the SGRB with a temporal and spectral resolution of 0.5 s and 1.28 MHz, respectively, resulting in a $6\sigma$ fluence upper-limit range from 570 Jy ms at DM $=3\,000$ pc cm–3 ( $z\sim 2.5$ ) to 1 750 Jy ms at DM $=200$ pc cm–3 ( $z\sim 0.1)$ , corresponding to the known redshift range of SGRBs. We compare the fluence prompt emission limit and the persistent upper limit to SGRB coherent emission models assuming the merger resulted in a stable magnetar remnant. Our observations were not sensitive enough to detect prompt emission associated with the alignment of magnetic fields of a binary neutron star just prior to the merger, from the interaction between the relativistic jet and the interstellar medium (ISM) or persistent pulsar-like emission from the spin-down of the magnetar. However, in the case of a more powerful SGRB (a gamma-ray fluence an order of magnitude higher than GRB 180805A and/or a brighter X-ray counterpart), our MWA observations may be sensitive enough to detect coherent radio emission from the jet-ISM interaction and/or the magnetar remnant. Finally, we demonstrate that of all current low- frequency radio telescopes, only the MWA has the sensitivity and response times capable of probing prompt emission models associated with the initial SGRB merger event.</jats:p