Statistical methods in ultrasonic tissue characterization

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-93).by Luis Carlos Maas III.M.S

Processing strategies for functional magnetic resonance imaging data sets

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard--Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-118).by Luis Carlos Maas, III.Ph.D

The Integrated Mental Health Atlas of South Western Sydney

Partners in Recovery South Western Sydne

The Integrated Mental Health Atlas of South Western Sydney

Partners in Recovery South Western Sydne

The Integrated Mental Health Atlas of Western Sydney

The Integrated Mental Health Atlas of Western Sydney LHD provides a tool for evidence-informed planning, and critical analysis of the pattern of adult mental health care. The Atlas provided an updated description of the Mental Health service availability, workforce capacity and placement capacity in different sectors including health care, social care, employment, education, crime and justice, and housing. It also allowed comparisons of the Mental Health provisions with local areas in other countries. The Atlas revealed four possible gaps in mental health care in Western Sydney LHD: (i) a lack of acute and sub-acute community residential care; (ii) an absence of services providing acute day care and non-acute day care; (iii) low availability of specific employment services for people with a lived experience of mental ill-health; and (iv) a lack of comprehensive data on the availability of supported housing.Western Sydney Partners in Recover

The Integrated Mental Health Atlas of the Far West

Mental Health Commission of New South Wale

Migratory zooplankton excreta and its influence on prokaryotic communities

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Maas, A. E., Liu, S., Bolanos, L. M., Widner, B., Parsons, R., Kujawinski, E. B., Blanco-Bercial, L., & Carlson, C. A. Migratory zooplankton excreta and its influence on prokaryotic communities. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, (2020): 573268, doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.573268.Particulate organic matter (POM) (fecal pellets) from zooplankton has been demonstrated to be an important nutrient source for the pelagic prokaryotic community. Significantly less is known about the chemical composition of the dissolved organic matter (DOM) produced by these eukaryotes and its influence on pelagic ecosystem structure. Zooplankton migrators, which daily transport surface-derived compounds to depth, may act as important vectors of limiting nutrients for mesopelagic microbial communities. In this role, zooplankton may increase the DOM remineralization rate by heterotrophic prokaryotes through the creation of nutrient rich “hot spots” that could potentially increase niche diversity. To explore these interactions, we collected the migratory copepod Pleuromamma xiphias from the northwestern Sargasso Sea and sampled its excreta after 12–16 h of incubation. We measured bulk dissolved organic carbon (DOC), dissolved free amino acids (DFAA) via high performance liquid chromatography and dissolved targeted metabolites via quantitative mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-MSMS) to quantify organic zooplankton excreta production and characterize its composition. We observed production of labile DOM, including amino acids, vitamins, and nucleosides. Additionally, we harvested a portion of the excreta and subsequently used it as the growth medium for mesopelagic (200 m) bacterioplankton dilution cultures. In zooplankton excreta treatments we observed a four-fold increase in bacterioplankton cell densities that reached stationary growth phase after five days of dark incubation. Analyses of 16S rRNA gene amplicons suggested a shift from oligotrophs typical of open ocean and mesopelagic prokaryotic communities to more copiotrophic bacterial lineages in the presence of zooplankton excreta. These results support the hypothesis that zooplankton and prokaryotes are engaged in complex and indirect ecological interactions, broadening our understanding of the microbial loop.Funding for this research was provided by Simons Foundation International as part of the BIOS-SCOPE project to AM, LB-B, CC, and EK

Differential Temporal Dynamics of Axial and Appendicular Ataxia in SCA3

Background: Disease severity in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3) is commonly defined by the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) sum score, but little is known about the contributions and progression patterns of individual items. Objectives: To investigate the temporal dynamics of SARA item scores in SCA3 patients and evaluate if clinical and demographic factors are differentially associated with evolution of axial and appendicular ataxia. Methods: In a prospective, multinational cohort study involving 11 European and 2 US sites, SARA scores were determined longitudinally in 223 SCA3 patients with a follow-up assessment after 1 year. Results: An increase in SARA score from 10 to 20 points was mainly driven by axial and speech items, with a markedly smaller contribution of appendicular items. Finger chase and nose-finger test scores not only showed the lowest variability at baseline, but also the least deterioration at follow-up. Compared with the full set of SARA items, omission of both tests would result in lower sample size requirements for therapeutic trials. Sex was associated with change in SARA sum score and appendicular, but not axial, subscore, with a significantly faster progression in men. Despite considerable interindividual variability, the average annual progression rate of SARA score was approximately three times higher in subjects with a disease duration over 10 years than in those within 10 years from onset. Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence for a difference in temporal dynamics between axial and appendicular ataxia in SCA3 patients, which will help inform the design of clinical trials and development of new (etiology-specific) outcome measures. © 2022 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.Funding agencies: This publication is an outcome of ESMI, an EU Joint Programme — Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) Project (www.jpnd.eu). The project is supported through the following funding organizations under the aegis of JPND: Germany, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; funding codes 01ED1602A/B); Netherlands, The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development; Portugal, Foundation for Science and Technology and Regional Fund for Science and Technology of the Azores; United Kingdom, Medical Research Council. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 643417. At the United States sites this work was in part supported by the National Ataxia Foundation.Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3Natural historyScale for the Assessment and Rating of AtaxiaDisease progressio

Does Time Since Immigration Modify Neighborhood Deprivation Gradients in Preterm Birth? A Multilevel Analysis

Immigrants’ health is jointly influenced by their pre- and post-migration exposures, but how these two influences operate with increasing duration of residence has not been well-researched. We aimed to examine how the influence of maternal country of birth and neighborhood deprivation effects, if any, change over time since migration and how neighborhood effects among immigrants compare with those observed in the Canadian-born population. Birth data from Ontario hospital records (2002–2007) were linked with an official Canadian immigration database (1985–2000). The outcome measure was preterm birth. Neighborhoods were ranked according to a neighborhood deprivation index developed for Canadian urban areas and collapsed into tertiles of approximately equal size. Time since immigration was measured from the date of arrival to Canada to the date of delivery, ranging from 1 to 22 years. We used cross-classified random effect models to simultaneously account for the membership of births (N = 83,233) to urban neighborhoods (N = 1,801) and maternal countries of birth (N = 168). There were no differences in preterm birth between neighborhood deprivation tertiles among immigrants with less than 15 years of residence. Among immigrants with 15 years of stay or more, the adjusted absolute risk difference (ARD%, 95% confidence interval) between high-deprived (tertile 3) and low-deprived (tertile 1) neighborhoods was 1.86 (0.68, 2.98), while the ARD% observed among the Canadian-born (N = 314,237) was 1.34 (1.11, 1.57). Time since migration modifies the neighborhood deprivation gradient in preterm birth among immigrants living in Ontario cities. Immigrants reached the level of inequalities in preterm birth observed at the neighborhood level among the Canadian-born after 14 years of stay, but neighborhoods did not influence preterm birth among more recent immigrants, for whom the maternal country of birth was more predictive of preterm birth

A Benchmark of Simple Measurement Systems for Direct Irradiance

Accurate direct normal irradiance (DNI) measurements are essential for the design and the operation of concentrating solar power systems. Several measurement systems for DNI are available to users, but all commonly used systems still have drawbacks. Sun trackers with pyranometers and a pyrheliometer are expensive and require permanent checks and maintenance by qualified personnel, for example due to tracking errors and soiling effects. Simpler, i.e. more economic and robust sensors may have shortcomings regarding accuracy under various atmospheric conditions and might not be significantly less susceptible to soiling and user errors. Validations and benchmarking of simple radiometers for solar energy applications have been presented. To the best of our knowledge, no benchmarking study is available which evaluates some more recent simple measurement systems which are relevant for solar applications in 2023. Furthermore, most previous benchmarking studies did not measure atmospheric parameters like circumsolar irradiance which may directly influence the measurements of these sensors. We close this gap by benchmarking relevant measurement systems (Rotating Shadowband Irradiometer RSI and Rotating Shadowband Pyranometer RSP 4G; Delta-T SPN1, EKO MS-90, PyranoCam, Sunto CaptPro) at multiple sites. We also evaluate the influence of relevant atmospheric parameters which we measure with dedicated instruments at one site. We include the PyranoCam system in our benchmarking, a novel radiometer system suitable for all solar irradiance components including DNI. It consists of a pyranometer and a fisheye camera that takes photos of the whole sky and employs a combined physical and machine-learning model. The results of the study provide improved estimates of the sensors’ accuracies for a specific application and climatic condition and can assist in the development of corrections for the sensor technologies