Challenges for Women Department Chairs

Presenters will discuss issues specific to women in a leadership position, primarily as a department chair and work with participants for ideas on how to succeed as a female administrator

Capacity challenges in water quality monitoring: understanding the role of human development

Monitoring the qualitative status of freshwaters is an important goal of the international community, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) indicator 6.3.2 on good ambient water quality. Monitoring data are, however, lacking in many countries, allegedly because of capacity challenges of less-developed countries. So far, however, the relationship between human development and capacity challenges for water quality monitoring have not been analysed systematically. This hinders the implementation of fine-tuned capacity development programmes for water quality monitoring. Against this background, this study takes a global perspective in analysing the link between human development and the capacity challenges countries face in their national water quality monitoring programmes. The analysis is based on the latest data on the human development index and an international online survey amongst experts from science and practice. Results provide evidence of a negative relationship between human development and the capacity challenges to meet SDG 6.3.2 monitoring requirements. This negative relationship increases along the course of the monitoring process, from defining the enabling environment, choosing parameters for the collection of field data, to the analytics and analysis of five commonly used parameters (DO, EC, pH, TP and TN). Our assessment can be used to help practitioners improve technical capacity development activities and to identify and target investment in capacity development for monitoring

Reconstruction of the Corticospinal Tract in Patients with Motor-Eloquent High-Grade Gliomas Using Multilevel Fiber Tractography Combined with Functional Motor Cortex Mapping

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Tractography of the corticospinal tract is paramount to presurgical planning and guidance of intraoperative resection in patients with motor-eloquent gliomas. It is well-known that DTI-based tractography as the most frequently used technique has relevant shortcomings, particularly for resolving complex fiber architecture. The purpose of this study was to evaluate multilevel fiber tractography combined with functional motor cortex mapping in comparison with conventional deterministic tractography algorithms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-one patients (mean age, 61.5 [SD, 12.2] years) with motor-eloquent high-grade gliomas underwent MR imaging with DWI (TR/TE ¼ 5000/78 ms, voxel size ¼ 2 × 2 × 2 mm3, 1 volume at b ¼ 0 s/mm2, 32 volumes at b ¼ 1000 s/mm2). DTI, constrained spherical deconvolution, and multilevel fiber tractography–based reconstruction of the corticospinal tract within the tumor-affected hemispheres were performed. The functional motor cortex was enclosed by navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation motor mapping before tumor resection and used for seeding. A range of angular deviation and fractional anisotropy thresholds (for DTI) was tested. RESULTS: For all investigated thresholds, multilevel fiber tractography achieved the highest mean coverage of the motor maps (eg, angular threshold = 60°; multilevel/constrained spherical deconvolution/DTI, 25% anisotropy threshold ¼ 71.8%, 22.6%, and 11.7%) and the most extensive corticospinal tract reconstructions (eg, angular threshold ¼ 60°; multilevel/constrained spherical deconvolution/DTI, 25% anisotropy threshold ¼ 26,485 mm3, 6308 mm3, and 4270 mm3). CONCLUSIONS: Multilevel fiber tractography may improve the coverage of the motor cortex by corticospinal tract fibers compared with conventional deterministic algorithms. Thus, it could provide a more detailed and complete visualization of corticospinal tract architecture, particularly by visualizing fiber trajectories with acute angles that might be of high relevance in patients with gliomas and distorted anatomy.</p

T2-Weighted Dixon Turbo Spin Echo for Accelerated Simultaneous Grading of Whole-Body Skeletal Muscle Fat Infiltration and Edema in Patients With Neuromuscular Diseases

Objective The assessment of fatty infiltration and edema in the musculature of patients with neuromuscular diseases (NMDs) typically requires the separate performance of T-1-weighted and fat-suppressed T-2-weighted sequences. T-2-weighted Dixon turbo spin echo (TSE) enables the generation of T-2-weighted fat- and water-separated images, which can be used to assess both pathologies simultaneously. The present study examines the diagnostic performance of T-2-weighted Dixon TSE compared with the standard sequences in 10 patients with NMDs and 10 healthy subjects. Methods Whole-body magnetic resonance imaging was performed including T-1-weighted Dixon fast field echo, T-2-weighted short-tau inversion recovery, and T-2-weighted Dixon TSE. Fatty infiltration and intramuscular edema were rated by 2 radiologists using visual semiquantitative rating scales. To assess intermethod and interrater agreement, weighted Cohen's coefficients were calculated. Results The ratings of fatty infiltration showed high intermethod and high interrater agreement (T-1-weighted Dixon fast field echo vs T-2-weighted Dixon TSE fat image). The evaluation of edematous changes showed high intermethod and good interrater agreement (T-2-weighted short-tau inversion recovery vs T-2-weighted Dixon TSE water image). Conclusions T-2-weighted Dixon TSE imaging is an alternative for accelerated simultaneous grading of whole-body skeletal muscle fat infiltration and edema in patients with NMDs

Opportunistic osteoporosis screening in multi-detector CT images via local classification of textures.

Our study proposed an automatic pipeline for opportunistic osteoporosis screening using 3D texture features and regional vBMD using multi-detector CT images. A combination of different local and global texture features outperformed the global vBMD and showed high discriminative power to identify patients with vertebral fractures. INTRODUCTION Many patients at risk for osteoporosis undergo computed tomography (CT) scans, usable for opportunistic (non-dedicated) screening. We compared the performance of global volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD) with a random forest classifier based on regional vBMD and 3D texture features to separate patients with and without osteoporotic fractures. METHODS In total, 154 patients (mean age 64 ± 8.5, male; n = 103) were included in this retrospective single-center analysis, who underwent contrast-enhanced CT for other reasons than osteoporosis screening. Patients were dichotomized regarding prevalent vertebral osteoporotic fractures (noFX, n = 101; FX, n = 53). Vertebral bodies were automatically segmented, and trabecular vBMD was calculated with a dedicated phantom. For 3D texture analysis, we extracted gray-level co-occurrence matrix Haralick features (HAR), histogram of gradients (HoG), local binary patterns (LBP), and wavelets (WL). Fractured vertebrae were excluded for texture-feature and vBMD data extraction. The performance to identify patients with prevalent osteoporotic vertebral fractures was evaluated in a fourfold cross-validation. RESULTS The random forest classifier showed a high discriminatory power (AUC = 0.88). Parameters of all vertebral levels significantly contributed to this classification. Importantly, the AUC of the proposed algorithm was significantly higher than that of volumetric global BMD alone (AUC = 0.64). CONCLUSION The presented classifier combining 3D texture features and regional vBMD including the complete thoracolumbar spine showed high discriminatory power to identify patients with vertebral fractures and had a better diagnostic performance than vBMD alone

Mapping interactions with the chaperone network reveals factors that protect against tau aggregation.

A network of molecular chaperones is known to bind proteins ('clients') and balance their folding, function and turnover. However, it is often unclear which chaperones are critical for selective recognition of individual clients. It is also not clear why these key chaperones might fail in protein-aggregation diseases. Here, we utilized human microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT or tau) as a model client to survey interactions between ~30 purified chaperones and ~20 disease-associated tau variants (~600 combinations). From this large-scale analysis, we identified human DnaJA2 as an unexpected, but potent, inhibitor of tau aggregation. DnaJA2 levels were correlated with tau pathology in human brains, supporting the idea that it is an important regulator of tau homeostasis. Of note, we found that some disease-associated tau variants were relatively immune to interactions with chaperones, suggesting a model in which avoiding physical recognition by chaperone networks may contribute to disease