242 research outputs found
Older Women with Psychoactive Medication Abuse
The older population of the United States has dramatically increased over the past few
decades; currently, approximately 13% of the nation’s population is categorized as older adults
(persons over 65 years old). Moreover, it is expected that both absolute number and percentage
of older people in the population will continue to increase. The number of persons over age 65 is
projected to reach more than 70 million by the year 2030 and to constitute approximately 21% of
the U.S. population (American Society on Aging, n.d.)
k-Space Deep Learning for Reference-free EPI Ghost Correction
Nyquist ghost artifacts in EPI are originated from phase mismatch between the
even and odd echoes. However, conventional correction methods using reference
scans often produce erroneous results especially in high-field MRI due to the
non-linear and time-varying local magnetic field changes. Recently, it was
shown that the problem of ghost correction can be reformulated as k-space
interpolation problem that can be solved using structured low-rank Hankel
matrix approaches. Another recent work showed that data driven Hankel matrix
decomposition can be reformulated to exhibit similar structures as deep
convolutional neural network. By synergistically combining these findings, we
propose a k-space deep learning approach that immediately corrects the phase
mismatch without a reference scan in both accelerated and non-accelerated EPI
acquisitions. To take advantage of the even and odd-phase directional
redundancy, the k-space data is divided into two channels configured with even
and odd phase encodings. The redundancies between coils are also exploited by
stacking the multi-coil k-space data into additional input channels. Then, our
k-space ghost correction network is trained to learn the interpolation kernel
to estimate the missing virtual k-space data. For the accelerated EPI data, the
same neural network is trained to directly estimate the interpolation kernels
for missing k-space data from both ghost and subsampling. Reconstruction
results using 3T and 7T in-vivo data showed that the proposed method
outperformed the image quality compared to the existing methods, and the
computing time is much faster.The proposed k-space deep learning for EPI ghost
correction is highly robust and fast, and can be combined with acceleration, so
that it can be used as a promising correction tool for high-field MRI without
changing the current acquisition protocol.Comment: To appear in Magnetic Resonance in Medicin
Trends of legionellosis reported in Jeju Province, Republic of Korea, 2015–2022
Objectives The number of reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease (LD) in the Republic of Korea surged nationally in 2016; however, in 2022, this number was higher in Jeju Province than the previous national peak. A descriptive epidemiological study was conducted to analyze trends in the incidence of reported LD cases in Jeju Island from 2015 to 2022. Methods The data for this study were obtained from case reports submitted to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency through its Disease and Health Integrated Management System. The selection criteria were cases or suspected cases of LD reported among Jeju residents between 2015 and 2022. The 95% confidence interval of the crude incidence rate was calculated using the Poisson distribution. Results Since 2020, the incidence rate of LD in Jeju has risen sharply, showing a statistically significant difference from the national incidence rate. A particular medical institution in Jeju reported a significant number of LD cases. Screening with the urine antigen test (UAT) also increased significantly. Conclusion Our findings indicate that the rapid increase in cases of LD in Jeju Province since 2020 was due to the characteristics of medical-care use among Jeju residents, which were focused on a specific medical institution. According to their clinical practice guidelines, this medical institution conducted UATs to screen patients suspected of pneumonia
Optical tweezers throw and catch single atoms
Single atoms movable from one place to another would enable a flying quantum
memory that can be used for quantum communication and quantum computing at the
same time. Guided atoms, e.g., by optical tweezers, provide a partial solution,
but the benefit of flying qubits could be lost if they still interact with the
guiding means. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate freely-flying
atoms that are not guided but are instead thrown and caught by optical
tweezers. In experiments, cold atoms at 40 micro Kelvin temperature are thrown
up to a free-flying speed of 0.65 m/s over a travel distance of 12.6 micrometer
at a transportation efficiency of 94(3)%, even in the presence of other optical
tweezers or atoms en route. This performance is not fundamentally limited but
by current settings of optical tweezers with limited potential depth and width.
We provide a set of proof-of-principle flying atom demonstrations, which
include atom transport through optical tweezers, atom arrangements by flying
atoms, and atom scattering off optical tweezers. Our study suggests possible
applications of flying atoms, not only in fundamental studies such as
single-atom low-energy collisions, but also non-photon quantum communication
and flying-qubit-based quantum computing.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Targeted and Reversible Blood-Retinal Barrier Disruption via Focused Ultrasound and Microbubbles
The blood-retinal barrier (BRB) prevents most systemically-administered drugs from reaching the retina. This study investigated whether burst ultrasound applied with a circulating microbubble agent can disrupt the BRB, providing a noninvasive method for the targeted delivery of systemically administered drugs to the retina. To demonstrate the efficacy and reversibility of such a procedure, five overlapping targets around the optic nerve head were sonicated through the cornea and lens in 20 healthy male Sprague-Dawley rats using a 690 kHz focused ultrasound transducer. For BRB disruption, 10 ms bursts were applied at 1 Hz for 60 s with different peak rarefactional pressure amplitudes (0.81, 0.88 and 1.1 MPa). Each sonication was combined with an IV injection of a microbubble ultrasound contrast agent (Definity). To evaluate BRB disruption, an MRI contrast agent (Magnevist) was injected IV immediately after the last sonication, and serial T1-weighted MR images were acquired up to 30 minutes. MRI contrast enhancement into the vitreous humor near targeted area was observed for all tested pressure amplitudes, with more signal enhancement evident at the highest pressure amplitude. At 0.81 MPa, BRB disruption was not detected 3 h post sonication, after an additional MRI contrast injection. A day after sonication, the eyes were processed for histology of the retina. At the two lower exposure levels (0.81 and 0.88 MPa), most of the sonicated regions were indistinguishable from the control eyes, although a few tiny clusters of extravasated erythrocytes (petechaie) were observed. More severe retinal damage was observed at 1.1 MPa. These results demonstrate that focused ultrasound and microbubbles can offer a noninvasive and targeted means to transiently disrupt the BRB for ocular drug delivery
Evaluation of Penalized and Nonpenalized Methods for Disease Prediction with Large-Scale Genetic Data
Owing to recent improvement of genotyping technology, large-scale genetic data can be utilized to identify disease susceptibility loci and this successful finding has substantially improved our understanding of complex diseases. However, in spite of these successes, most of the genetic effects for many complex diseases were found to be very small, which have been a big hurdle to build disease prediction model. Recently, many statistical methods based on penalized regressions have been proposed to tackle the so-called "large P and small N" problem. Penalized regressions including least absolute selection and shrinkage operator (LASSO) and ridge regression limit the space of parameters, and this constraint enables the estimation of effects for very large number of SNPs. Various extensions have been suggested, and, in this report, we compare their accuracy by applying them to several complex diseases. Our results show that penalized regressions are usually robust and provide better accuracy than the existing methods for at least diseases under consideration
Influence of Forest Therapy on Cardiovascular Relaxation in Young Adults
Background. Despite increasing attention toward forest therapy as an alternative medicine, very little evidence continues to be available on its therapeutic effects. Therefore, this study was focused on elucidating the health benefits of forest walking on cardiovascular reactivity. Methods. Within-group comparisons were used to examine the cardiovascular responses to walking in forest and urban environments. Forty-eight young adult males participated in the two-day field research. Changes in heart rate variability, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured to understand cardiovascular reactivity. Four different questionnaires were used to investigate the changes in psychological states after walking activities. Results. Forest walking significantly increased the values of ln(HF) and significantly decreased the values of ln(LF/HF) compared with the urban walking. Heart rate during forest walking was significantly lower than that in the control. Questionnaire results showed that negative mood states and anxiety levels decreased significantly by forest walking compared with urban walking. Conclusion. Walking in the forest environment may promote cardiovascular relaxation by facilitating the parasympathetic nervous system and by suppressing the sympathetic nervous system. In addition, forest therapy may be effective for reducing negative psychological symptoms
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