Topological Susceptibility under Gradient Flow

We study the impact of the Gradient Flow on the topology in various models of lattice field theory. The topological susceptibility $\chi_{\rm t}$ is measured directly, and by the slab method, which is based on the topological content of sub-volumes ("slabs") and estimates $\chi_{\rm t}$ even when the system remains trapped in a fixed topological sector. The results obtained by both methods are essentially consistent, but the impact of the Gradient Flow on the characteristic quantity of the slab method seems to be different in 2-flavour QCD and in the 2d O(3) model. In the latter model, we further address the question whether or not the Gradient Flow leads to a finite continuum limit of the topological susceptibility (rescaled by the correlation length squared, $\xi^{2}$). This ongoing study is based on direct measurements of $\chi_{\rm t}$ in $L \times L$ lattices, at $L/\xi \simeq 6$.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex, 5 figures, talk presented at the 35th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 18-24, 2017, Granada, Spai

Peripheral arterial occlusive disease: Global gene expression analyses suggest a major role for immune and inflammatory responses

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Peripheral arterial disease (PAD), a major manifestation of atherosclerosis, is associated with significant cardiovascular morbidity, limb loss and death. However, mechanisms underlying the genesis and progression of the disease are far from clear. Genome-wide gene expression profiling of clinical samples may represent an effective approach to gain relevant information.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>After histological classification, a total of 30 femoral artery samples, including 11 intermediate lesions, 14 advanced lesions and 5 normal femoral arteries, were profiled using Affymetrix microarray platform. Following real-time RT-PCR validation, different algorithms of gene selection and clustering were applied to identify differentially expressed genes. Under a stringent cutoff, i.e., a false discovery rate (FDR) <0.5%, we found 366 genes were differentially regulated in intermediate lesions and 447 in advanced lesions. Of these, 116 genes were overlapped between intermediate and advanced lesions, including 68 up-regulated genes and 48 down-regulated ones. In these differentially regulated genes, immune/inflammatory genes were significantly up-regulated in different stages of PAD, (85/230 in intermediate lesions, 37/172 in advanced lesions). Through literature mining and pathway analysis using different databases such as Gene Ontology (GO), and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genomics (KEGG), genes involved in immune/inflammatory responses were significantly enriched in up-regulated genes at different stages of PAD(p < 0.05), revealing a significant correlation between immune/inflammatory responses and disease progression. Moreover, immune-related pathways such as Toll-like receptor signaling and natural killer cell mediated cytotoxicity were particularly enriched in intermediate and advanced lesions (P < 0.05), highlighting their pathogenic significance during disease progression.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Lines of evidence revealed in this study not only support previous hypotheses, primarily based on studies of animal models and other types of arterial disease, that inflammatory responses may influence the development of PAD, but also permit the recognition of a wide spectrum of immune/inflammatory genes that can serve as signatures for disease progression in PAD. Further studies of these signature molecules may eventually allow us to develop more sophisticated protocols for pharmaceutical interventions.</p

Lateral approach for insertional Achilles tendinitis with Haglund deformity

ObjectiveThe study aims to investigate the functional outcome of the lateral approach for insertional Achilles tendinitis (IAT) with Haglund deformity.MethodsFrom January 2016 to September 2019, 14 cases of IAT with Haglund deformity that resisted conservative treatment received surgery in our department. A lateral approach was used to debride the bony and soft tissue and reattach the insertion of the Achilles tendon. The Visual Analog Scale (VAS), American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Score (AOFAS), and Victorian Institute of Sport Tendon Study Group-Achilles Tendinopathy score (VISA-A) were used to evaluate clinical outcomes.ResultThe mean patient age was 39.57 years at the time of surgery. The mean follow-up was 14.74 months. The mean VAS score significantly decreased from 4.86 ± 0.86 preoperatively to 1.21 ± 1.58 postoperatively (P &lt; 0.001). The mean AOFAS score significantly improved from 66.64 ± 6.23 preoperatively to 90.21 ± 11.50 postoperatively (P &lt; 0.001). The mean preoperative and the last follow-up VISA-A were 66 (range 56.75–69.25) and 86 (range 75.75–97.00) points, respectively (P &lt; 0.05).ConclusionThe lateral approach was effective and safe for IAT with Haglund deformity. Moreover, the mid-term functional outcome was promising.Level of Clinical EvidenceI

Genetic diversity fuels gene discovery for tobacco and alcohol use

Tobacco and alcohol use are heritable behaviours associated with 15% and 5.3% of worldwide deaths, respectively, due largely to broad increased risk for disease and injury(1-4). These substances are used across the globe, yet genome-wide association studies have focused largely on individuals of European ancestries(5). Here we leveraged global genetic diversity across 3.4 million individuals from four major clines of global ancestry (approximately 21% non-European) to power the discovery and fine-mapping of genomic loci associated with tobacco and alcohol use, to inform function of these loci via ancestry-aware transcriptome-wide association studies, and to evaluate the genetic architecture and predictive power of polygenic risk within and across populations. We found that increases in sample size and genetic diversity improved locus identification and fine-mapping resolution, and that a large majority of the 3,823 associated variants (from 2,143 loci) showed consistent effect sizes across ancestry dimensions. However, polygenic risk scores developed in one ancestry performed poorly in others, highlighting the continued need to increase sample sizes of diverse ancestries to realize any potential benefit of polygenic prediction.Peer reviewe

Real-time goat face recognition using convolutional neural network

Automatic identification of individual animals is an important step towards achieving accurate breeding histories, significant contributions to breeding and genetic management programmers. Currently, a different type of tags, tattoos, paint brands and microchips are used to uniquely identify livestock animals. However, the manual identification system is time-consuming, expensive and unreliable. In this paper, we present a deep learning approach that aims to fully automated pipeline for face detection and recognition of goats. Due to the high similarity and the lack of adequate dataset this problem is more complex than human face recognition. We composed two different publicly available datasets for detection and recognition. State-of-the-art convolutional neural networks (CNN) model are trained on this dataset. To evaluate the robustness of our approach, we compared it with different face recognition methods. The results show better performance with an accuracy of 96.4%. Furthermore, this paper reports 93%, 83%, 92% and 85% detection accuracy (average precision) for face, eye, nose and ear, respectively. The findings of this research could be helpful to improve animal health and welfare, individual monitoring, activity monitoring and phenotypic data collection. All the dataset and the related outcome are publicly available (https://doi.org/10.17632/4skwhnrscr.2)

Exploring temporal trends and burden of traumatic shoulder dislocation: a global perspective

ObjectiveTo explore the geographical and temporal trends of traumatic shoulder dislocation, describe the association between the social and demographic factors and the health burden due to traumatic shoulder dislocation, and further investigate its causes.MethodsData on traumatic shoulder dislocation was collected from the Global Burden of Disease 2019, spanning the years 1990 to 2019. The epidemiology and disease burden were examined at global, regional, and national levels. Additionally, the age and gender patterns were analyzed, followed by an investigation into the primary causes. Lastly, the study studied the correlation between age-standardized rates and the socio-demographic index (SDI).ResultsOver a span of 30 years, both the crude and age-standardized rates of incidence and years lived with disability (YLDs) rates for all genders displayed a slight fluctuating downward trend. The incidence and YLDs rates in males were consistently higher than those in females. The study analyzed both incidence and YLDs rates of the global, regional, and national of traumatic shoulder dislocations from 1990 to 2019, as well as the temporal trends. Among males, the highest incidence rate was observed in young adulthood, while females exhibited the highest incidence rate in old age. This pattern was mirrored in the YLDs rate. Falls were identified as the main cause contributing to the disease burden related to traumatic shoulder dislocations. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between the age-standardized rates and SDI.ConclusionThe disease burden of traumatic shoulder dislocation has not significantly decreased from 1990 to 2019. The incidence and YLD rates are associated with age, gender, and SDI. A thorough examination of the disease burden contributes to the efficient allocation and utilization of resources, as well as the development of targeted and effective intervention strategies

Development of bioluminescence tomography

The bioluminescence tomography (BLT) emerges as a novel molecular imaging technology for small animal studies. BLT is an ill-posed inverse source problem subject to Cauchy data of the diffusion model. Several algorithms were developed to regularize this problem. Although those algorithms produce encouraging results, they theoretically require the completely measured data on the external surface. In practice, the observed data is often incomplete due to physical limitations. The BLT problem in this situation is similar to limited angle X-ray CT although the imaging model is more complicated with BLT. In this work, we formulate a mathematical model for BLT from partial data and generalize our previous results on the solution uniqueness to the partial data case. Also, we extend our previous methods to handle incomplete data. The first method is a variant of the well-known EM algorithm. The second one is based on the Landweber scheme. Both methods allow incorporation of knowledge-based constraints. Numerical and physical phantoms are used to evaluate and validate the proposed algorithms.EICPCI-S(ISTP)