Presurgical language fMRI: Clinical practices and patient outcomes in epilepsy surgical planning

The goal of this study was to document current clinical practice and report patient outcomes in presurgical language functional MRI (fMRI) for epilepsy surgery. Epilepsy surgical programs worldwide were surveyed as to the utility, implementation, and efficacy of language fMRI in the clinic; 82 programs responded. Respondents were predominantly US (61%) academic programs (85%), and evaluated adults (44%), adults and children (40%), or children only (16%). Nearly all (96%) reported using language fMRI. Surprisingly, fMRI is used to guide surgical margins (44% of programs) as well as lateralize language (100%). Sites using fMRI for localization most often use a distance margin around activation of 10mm. While considered useful, 56% of programs reported at least one instance of disagreement with other measures. Direct brain stimulation typically confirmed fMRI findings (74%) when guiding margins, but instances of unpredicted decline were reported by 17% of programs and 54% reported unexpected preservation of function. Programs reporting unexpected decline did not clearly differ from those which did not. Clinicians using fMRI to guide surgical margins do not typically map known language-critical areas beyond Broca's and Wernicke's. This initial data shows many clinical teams are confident using fMRI not only for language lateralization but also to guide surgical margins. Reported cases of unexpected language preservation when fMRI activation is resected, and cases of language decline when it is not, emphasize a critical need for further validation. Comprehensive studies comparing commonly-used fMRI paradigms to predict stimulation mapping and post-surgical language decline remain of high importance

Digital relief generation from 3D models

It is difficult to extend image-based relief generation to high-relief generation, as the images contain insufficient height information. To generate reliefs from three-dimensional (3D) models, it is necessary to extract the height fields from the model, but this can only generate bas-reliefs. To overcome this problem, an efficient method is proposed to generate bas-reliefs and high-reliefs directly from 3D meshes. To produce relief features that are visually appropriate, the 3D meshes are first scaled. 3D unsharp masking is used to enhance the visual features in the 3D mesh, and average smoothing and Laplacian smoothing are implemented to achieve better smoothing results. A nonlinear variable scaling scheme is then employed to generate the final bas-reliefs and high-reliefs. Using the proposed method, relief models can be generated from arbitrary viewing positions with different gestures and combinations of multiple 3D models. The generated relief models can be printed by 3D printers. The proposed method provides a means of generating both high-reliefs and bas-reliefs in an efficient and effective way under the appropriate scaling factors

Extensive Copy-Number Variation of Young Genes across Stickleback Populations

MM received funding from the Max Planck innovation funds for this project. PGDF was supported by a Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant (proposal nr 270891). CE was supported by German Science Foundation grants (DFG, EI 841/4-1 and EI 841/6-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

The Bits of Silence : Redundant Traffic in VoIP

Human conversation is characterized by brief pauses and so-called turn-taking behavior between the speakers. In the context of VoIP, this means that there are frequent periods where the microphone captures only background noise – or even silence whenever the microphone is muted. The bits transmitted from such silence periods introduce overhead in terms of data usage, energy consumption, and network infrastructure costs. In this paper, we contribute by shedding light on these costs for VoIP applications. We systematically measure the performance of six popular mobile VoIP applications with controlled human conversation and acoustic setup. Our analysis demonstrates that significant savings can indeed be achievable - with the best performing silence suppression technique being effective on 75% of silent pauses in the conversation in a quiet place. This results in 2-5 times data savings, and 50-90% lower energy consumption compared to the next better alternative. Even then, the effectiveness of silence suppression can be sensitive to the amount of background noise, underlying speech codec, and the device being used. The codec characteristics and performance do not depend on the network type. However, silence suppression makes VoIP traffic network friendly as much as VoLTE traffic. Our results provide new insights into VoIP performance and offer a motivation for further enhancements, such as performance-aware codec selection, that can significantly benefit a wide variety of voice assisted applications, as such intelligent home assistants and other speech codec enabled IoT devices.Peer reviewe

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT