Automated description and workflow analysis of fetal echocardiography in first-trimester ultrasound video scans

This paper presents a novel, fully-automatic framework for fetal echocardiography analysis of full-length routine firsttrimester fetal ultrasound scan video. In this study, a new deep learning architecture, which considers spatio-temporal information and spatial attention, is designed to temporally partition ultrasound video into semantically meaningful segments. The resulting automated semantic annotation is used to analyse cardiac examination workflow. The proposed 2D+t convolution neural network architecture achieves an A1 accuracy of 96.37%, F1 of 95.61%, and precision of 96.18% with 21.49% fewer parameters than the smallest ResNet-based architecture. Automated deep-learning based semantic annotation of unlabelled video scans (n=250) shows a high correlation with expert cardiac annotations (ρ = 0.96, p = 0.0004), thereby demonstrating the applicability of the proposed annotation model for echocardiography workflow analysis

Integrating Telepsychiatry Based Care in Rural Acute Community Mental Health Services? A systematic literature review

BACKGROUND:There is limited local literature specific to emergency department assessment and subsequent telepsychiatry follow up in the community and most literature on telepsychiatry does not cover the case of urgent assessment and crisis follow up in the community. AIM:This literature review explores the use of videoconferencing technology to overcome the burden of distance and access to tertiary mental health services in regional and remote areas of Australia.METHODS:A systematic search in Medline, CINAHL, Psychiatry Online, Google Scholar, and the NSW Health Clinical Info Access Program (CIAP) was conducted. A combination of key terms: “Telepsychiatry” OR “Mental Health Telemedicine” OR “Telemedicine” OR “Telehealth” OR “Videoconferencing” OR “Mental Health Videoconferencing” OR “Telepsychiatry Ethics” AND “Acute Community” AND “Emergency Assessment” were used. Based on the screening and eligibility criteria, 21 peer-reviewed articles published in English between 2005 and 2020 were included in the review.RESULTS:Key themes were found which support the use of remote telepsychiatry. Common in the literature were themes of equivalence to in-person review, as well as themes of convenience, overcoming remoteness and timely access to specialist assessment. Ethical and technical considerations was also commonly cited. The literature search found no direct examples of an acute psychiatric assessment in the emergency department with a subsequent follow-up in the community using videoconferencing technology.CONCLUSION:Telepsychiatry in both the home and emergency department areas had merit and equivalence to face to face review, with the added benefit of wider access and timeliness to specialist assessment and treatment

COMFormer: classification of maternal-fetal and brain anatomy using a residual cross-covariance attention guided transformer in ultrasound

Monitoring the healthy development of a fetus requires accurate and timely identification of different maternal-fetal structures as they grow. To facilitate this objective in an automated fashion, we propose a deep-learning-based image classification architecture called the COMFormer to classify maternal-fetal and brain anatomical structures present in two-dimensional fetal ultrasound images. The proposed architecture classifies the two subcategories separately: maternal-fetal (abdomen, brain, femur, thorax, mother's cervix, and others) and brain anatomical structures (trans-thalamic, trans-cerebellum, trans-ventricular, and non-brain). Our proposed architecture relies on a transformer-based approach that leverages spatial and global features by using a newly designed residual cross-variance attention (R-XCA) block. This block introduces an advanced cross-covariance attention mechanism to capture a long-range representation from the input using spatial (e.g., shape, texture, intensity) and global features. To build COMFormer, we used a large publicly available dataset (BCNatal) consisting of 12, 400 images from 1,792 subjects. Experimental results prove that COMFormer outperforms the recent CNN and transformer-based models by achieving 95.64% and 96.33% classification accuracy on maternal-fetal and brain anatomy, respectively

Adult brain tumour research in 2024: Status, challenges and recommendations

In 2015, a groundswell of brain tumour patient, carer and charity activism compelled the UK Minister for Life Sciences to form a brain tumour research task and finish group. This resulted, in 2018, with the UK government pledging £20m of funding, to be paralleled with £25m from Cancer Research UK, specifically for neuro-oncology research over the subsequent 5 years. Herein, we review if and how the adult brain tumour research landscape in the United Kingdom has changed over that time and what challenges and bottlenecks remain. We have identified seven universal brain tumour research priorities and three cross-cutting themes, which span the research spectrum from bench to bedside and back again. We discuss the status, challenges and recommendations for each one, specific to the United Kingdom

Hsp90 orchestrates transcriptional regulation by Hsf1 and cell wall remodelling by MAPK signalling during thermal adaptation in a pathogenic yeast

Acknowledgments We thank Rebecca Shapiro for creating CaLC1819, CaLC1855 and CaLC1875, Gillian Milne for help with EM, Aaron Mitchell for generously providing the transposon insertion mutant library, Jesus Pla for generously providing the hog1 hst7 mutant, and Cathy Collins for technical assistance.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The emerging structure of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: where does Evo-Devo fit in?

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) debate is gaining ground in contemporary evolutionary biology. In parallel, a number of philosophical standpoints have emerged in an attempt to clarify what exactly is represented by the EES. For Massimo Pigliucci, we are in the wake of the newest instantiation of a persisting Kuhnian paradigm; in contrast, Telmo Pievani has contended that the transition to an EES could be best represented as a progressive reformation of a prior Lakatosian scientific research program, with the extension of its Neo-Darwinian core and the addition of a brand-new protective belt of assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses. Here, we argue that those philosophical vantage points are not the only ways to interpret what current proposals to ‘extend’ the Modern Synthesis-derived ‘standard evolutionary theory’ (SET) entail in terms of theoretical change in evolutionary biology. We specifically propose the image of the emergent EES as a vast network of models and interweaved representations that, instantiated in diverse practices, are connected and related in multiple ways. Under that assumption, the EES could be articulated around a paraconsistent network of evolutionary theories (including some elements of the SET), as well as models, practices and representation systems of contemporary evolutionary biology, with edges and nodes that change their position and centrality as a consequence of the co-construction and stabilization of facts and historical discussions revolving around the epistemic goals of this area of the life sciences. We then critically examine the purported structure of the EES—published by Laland and collaborators in 2015—in light of our own network-based proposal. Finally, we consider which epistemic units of Evo-Devo are present or still missing from the EES, in preparation for further analyses of the topic of explanatory integration in this conceptual framework

Influences of polymorphic variants of DRD2 and SLC6A3 genes, and their combinations on smoking in Polish population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Polymorphisms in dopaminergic genes may influence cigarette smoking by their potential impact on dopamine reward pathway function. <it>A1 </it>allele of <it>DRD2 </it>gene is associated with a reduced dopamine D2 receptor density, and it has been hypothesised that <it>A1 </it>carriers are more vulnerable to smoking. In turn, the 9-repeat allele of dopamine transporter gene (<it>SLC6A3</it>) has been associated with a substantial reduction in dopamine transporter, what might result in the higher level of dopamine in the synaptic cleft, and thereby protective role of this allele from smoking. In the present study we investigated whether polymorphic variants of <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A3 </it>genes and their combinations are associated with the smoking habit in the Polish population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Genotyping for <it>Taq</it>I<it>A </it>polymorphism of <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A3 </it>VNTR polymorphism was performed in 150 ever-smokers and 158 never-smokers. The association between the smoking status and smoking phenotypes (related to the number of cigarettes smoked daily and age of starting regular smoking), and genotype/genotype combinations was expressed by ORs together with 95% CI. Alpha level of 0.05, with Bonferroni correction whenever appropriate, was used for statistical significance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>At the used alpha levels no association between <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A</it>3 genotypes and smoking status was found. However, <it>A1 </it>allele carriers reported longer abstinence periods on quitting attempts than non-carriers (p = 0.049). The ORs for heavier smoking were 0.38 (0.17-0.88), p = 0.023, and 0.39 (0.17-0.88), p = 0.021 in carriers compared to non-carriers of <it>A1 </it>or <it>*9 </it>allele, respectively, and the OR for this smoking phenotype was 8.68 (2.47-30.46), p = 0.0005 for the <it>A1</it>-/<it>9</it>- genotype combination, relatively to the <it>A1</it>+/<it>9</it>+. Carriers of <it>*9 </it>allele of <it>SLC6A3 </it>had over twice a lower risk to start smoking before the age of 20 years compared to non-carriers (sex-adjusted OR = 0.44; 95% CI: 0.22-0.89; p = 0.0017), and subjects with <it>A1-/9- </it>genotype combination had a higher risk for staring regular smoking before the age of 20 years in comparison to subjects with <it>A1+/9+ </it>genotype combination (sex-adjusted OR = 3.79; 95% CI:1.03-13.90; p = 0.003).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Polymorphic variants of <it>DRD2 </it>and <it>SLC6A3 </it>genes may influence some aspects of the smoking behavior, including age of starting regular smoking, the level of cigarette consumption, and periods of abstinence. Further large sample studies are needed to verify this hypothesis.</p

CO2-brine injectivity tests in high co2 content carbonate field, sarawak basin, offshore east Malaysia

We conducted relatively long duration core-flooding tests on three representative core samples under reservoir conditions to quantify the potential impact of flow rates on fines production/permeability change. Supercritical CO2 was injected cyclically with incremental increases in flow rate (2─14 ml/min) with live brine until a total of 7 cycles were completed. To avoid unwanted fluid-rock reaction when live brine was injected into the sample, and to mimic the in-situ geochemical conditions of the reservoir, a packed column was installed on the inflow accumulator line to pre-equilibrate the fluid before entering the core sample. The change in the gas porosity and permeability of the tested plug samples due to different mechanisms (dissolution and/or precipitation) that may occur during scCO2/live brine injection was investigated. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) T2 determination, X-ray CT scans and chemical analyses of the produced brine were also conducted. Results of pre- and post-test analyses (poroperm, NMR, X-ray CT) showed no clear evidence of formation damage even after long testing cycles and only minor or no dissolution (after large injected pore volumes (PVs) ~ 200). The critical flow rates (if there is one) were higher than the maximum rates applied. Chemical analyses of the core effluent showed that the rock samples for which a pre-column was installed do not experience carbonate dissolution

Characterizing genomic alterations in cancer by complementary functional associations.

Systematic efforts to sequence the cancer genome have identified large numbers of mutations and copy number alterations in human cancers. However, elucidating the functional consequences of these variants, and their interactions to drive or maintain oncogenic states, remains a challenge in cancer research. We developed REVEALER, a computational method that identifies combinations of mutually exclusive genomic alterations correlated with functional phenotypes, such as the activation or gene dependency of oncogenic pathways or sensitivity to a drug treatment. We used REVEALER to uncover complementary genomic alterations associated with the transcriptional activation of β-catenin and NRF2, MEK-inhibitor sensitivity, and KRAS dependency. REVEALER successfully identified both known and new associations, demonstrating the power of combining functional profiles with extensive characterization of genomic alterations in cancer genomes