A Compact Representation of Histopathology Images using Digital Stain Separation & Frequency-Based Encoded Local Projections

In recent years, histopathology images have been increasingly used as a diagnostic tool in the medical field. The process of accurately diagnosing a biopsy sample requires significant expertise in the field, and as such can be time-consuming and is prone to uncertainty and error. With the advent of digital pathology, using image recognition systems to highlight problem areas or locate similar images can aid pathologists in making quick and accurate diagnoses. In this paper, we specifically consider the encoded local projections (ELP) algorithm, which has previously shown some success as a tool for classification and recognition of histopathology images. We build on the success of the ELP algorithm as a means for image classification and recognition by proposing a modified algorithm which captures the local frequency information of the image. The proposed algorithm estimates local frequencies by quantifying the changes in multiple projections in local windows of greyscale images. By doing so we remove the need to store the full projections, thus significantly reducing the histogram size, and decreasing computation time for image retrieval and classification tasks. Furthermore, we investigate the effectiveness of applying our method to histopathology images which have been digitally separated into their hematoxylin and eosin stain components. The proposed algorithm is tested on the publicly available invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) data set. The histograms are used to train an SVM to classify the data. The experiments showed that the proposed method outperforms the original ELP algorithm in image retrieval tasks. On classification tasks, the results are found to be comparable to state-of-the-art deep learning methods and better than many handcrafted features from the literature.Comment: Accepted for publication in the International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition (ICIAR 2019

A New LCA Methodology of Technology Evolution (TE-LCA) and its Application to the Production of Ammonia (1950-2000) (8 pp)

Goal, Scope and Background: This paper presents a new LCA method of technology evolution (TE-LCA), and its application to the production of ammonia, the second largest chemical product in the world, over the last fifty years. The TE-LCA of a chemical process is the procedure in which historical information on a process, mainly the evolution of technical parameters, is translated by simulation to mass and energy balances as a function of time. These mass and energy balances are then transformed into environmental impact indicators using common LCA approaches. Finally, the evolution of environmental impact resulting from the investigated process can be related to its technical and other, i.e. legislative, developments. Methods: The technological evolution of the production of ammonia was compiled according to three basic sources of information: patents, publications and industry data. From these sources in a first step, the major technological advances of the process were identified as a function of time delivering different process variants that were modelled using the simulation software Aspen Plus®. In a second step, the evolution of environmental regulations is studied. For those energy related emissions that were regulated, e.g. SOx and NOx, it was assumed that threshold values defined in legislation were realized immediately. The aggregation of both steps allows the calculation of the emissions resulting from the production (cradle to gate view) of the investigated chemical as a function of time. Results and Discussion: The application of the TE-LCA to the production of ammonia revealed when and to which extent technological and legislative developments resulted in the reduction of energy related emissions in the production of this chemical compound. Overall, the reduction of emissions from ammonia production was highly influenced by the technological development and only to a lower extent by environmental regulations. Conclusion: The results obtained from the TE-LCA method is useful to reveal how the environmental performance of a process developed in the past and to identify the reasons for this development. The investigated case study of ammonia production shows that investment in technological development also paid off in terms of being ahead of tightened environmental legislation that might bear potential cost consequences such as carbon dioxide tax. Outlook: The presented method can be easily extended by including an economic analysis, which provides additional information on why certain technological developments were enforced and which the economic consequences of changes in environmental legislation were. The new methodology has to be applied to additional case studies, i.e. to other chemical sectors than basic chemicals and to other branches than chemicals. In other chemical sectors, toxic emissions from the production process might have to be considered and trade-offs between these and the overall energy consumption might resul

Invariance of the normalized Minkowski content with respect to the ambient space

It is easy to show that the lower and the upper box dimensions of a bounded set in Euclidean space are invariant with respect to the ambient space. In this article we show that the Minkowski content of a Minkowski measurable set is also invariant with respect to the ambient space when normalized by an appropriate constant. In other words, the value of the normalized Minkowski content of a bounded, Minkowski measurable set is intrinsic to the set.Comment: 11 pages, 0 figure

Prevención del Síndrome de Burnout en estudiantes de enfermería: intervenciones y rasgos de personalidad.

[ES] Introducción: El Síndrome de Burnout (SB) se origina por una respuesta prolongada al estrés en el trabajo. Y hay evidencia de la presencia de este síndrome psicológico durante la educación de enfermería, ya que esta conlleva una alta exigencia académica tanto teórica como práctica. Se produce cuando el alumnado no consigue dirigir estrategias de afrontamiento adecuadas, lo que se traduce en síntomas físicos y mentales, pudiendo generar el temprano padecimiento del agotamiento, y obstaculizar la función de las estudiantes en el futuro desarrollo de la profesión. Objetivo: Identificar factores de personalidad relacionados con el Síndrome de Burnout en estudiantes de enfermería, y evaluar intervenciones dirigidas a prevenirlo. Método: Se realizaron 2 estrategias de búsquedas conforme a las bases de datos utilizadas, Pubmed, Science Direct, Science Database y Psychology Database, además se seleccionaron varias investigaciones por búsqueda inversa. Para la realización de la revisión bibliográfica se seleccionaron 11 artículos. Resultados: Las terapias psicosociales estudiadas, entre ellas Mindfulness, Compromiso y Aceptación y el entrenamiento de Resistencia, han conseguido la disminución estadísticamente significativa del nivel de estrés percibido y/o del síndrome de burnout, así como mejorar diferentes rasgos de la personalidad, que a su vez son relevantes en la prevención del agotamiento. Conclusión: Las intervenciones podrían tener el potencial adecuado para contribuir a prevenir el desarrollo del estrés y Síndrome de Burnout durante la educación de enfermería. Por lo tanto, es un imperativo la disminución del estrés, para que no dé lugar a la presencia del síndrome de burnout en las estudiantes, y de esta manera conseguir una enfermería sana en el futuro

"Desarrollo del Sistema de Mensajería de Texto para Telefonía Fija"

Proyecto de Graduación (Licenciatura en Ingeniería Electrónica) Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Escuela de Ingeniería Electrónica, 2006.The technological innovation and search of new services is an ideal of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), which makes the necessity to offer and to enlarge the communication services among its clients. The phone communication is divided in the cellular telephony and fixed telephony. At the moment, the main income of ICE it is given by means of the fixed telephony services. The cellular telephony is taking preference among the clients, therefore it’s necessary to offer new services for fixed telephony. The objective of the project is to develop a new service for the clients of the fixed telephony network, which consists in providing the short text message service (SMS) for fixed lines. In order to standardize the service, in the development of the system, protocols and norms defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) have been taken as a reference. The importance of using an international standard resides in the possibility of using commercial terminals (telephones) designed for the SMS. This way, the project is focused in developing the center of messages (SM-SC) and to create the application that manages the protocol. The center of messages was developed in an APEX platform of added value, under a Windows 2000 environment. This platform is connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) through a channel E1 with signaling ISDN. In the future, one of ICE’s goal is to allow the integration of the different services in all technologies (mobile and fixed telephony). With this project the SMS is allowed between fixed telephones, the use of the standard leaves a door open to be able to develop the exchange of text messages with the cellular telephony.Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Escuela de Ingeniería en Electrónica

Young Hispanics at risk of type 2 diabetes display endothelial activation, subclinical inflammation and alterations of coagulation and fibrinolysis

Background: Hispanics have a high rate of diabetes that exposes them to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. We hypothesized that many of the pathophysiological mechanisms that cause atherosclerotic disease may be present in young Hispanics who do not have clinical diabetes but are at increased risk of developing it. Methods: We studied 36 young Hispanic adults without diabetes (ages 18–40). Seventeen participants were at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes given by overweight and a family history of diabetes on one or both parents (at risk group). Nineteen participants with normal body-mass index and no parental history of diabetes constituted the control group. We measured and compared plasma markers of endothelial dysfunction, disturbed coagulation and fibrinolysis, subclinical inflammation and adipose tissue dysfunction in the at risk and control groups. Results: Participants at risk of diabetes were more insulin-resistant according to different indicators, and had significantly higher levels of soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1), tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), inhibitor of plasminogen activator-1 (PAi-1), high sensitivity C-reactive protein and free fatty acids, signaling the presence of multiple proatherogenic alterations despite the absence of overt diabetes. Levels of the prothrombotic molecule PAi-1 were most elevated in participants who were not only at risk of diabetes by the study definition, but also abdominally obese. Conclusions: Young adult Hispanics at risk of type 2 diabetes but without overt disease already bear considerably high levels of markers reflecting processes that lead to the development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease

Palladium(II) complexes with a phosphino-oxime ligand: synthesis, structure and applications to the catalytic rearrangement and dehydration of aldoximes

The treatment of [PdCl2(COD)] (COD = 1,5-cyclooctadiene) with 1 and 2 equivalents of 2-(diphenylphosphino)benzaldehyde oxime in dichloromethane at room temperature led to the selective formation of [PdCl2{κ2-(P,N)-2-Ph2PC6H4CH[double bond, length as m-dash]NOH}] (1) and [Pd{κ2-(P,N)-2-Ph2PC6H4CH[double bond, length as m-dash]NOH}2][Cl]2 (2), respectively, which represent the first examples of Pd(II) complexes containing a phosphino-oxime ligand. These compounds, whose structures were fully confirmed by X-ray diffraction methods, were active in the catalytic rearrangement of aldoximes. In particular, using 5 mol% complex 1, a large variety of aldoximes could be cleanly converted into the corresponding primary amides at 100 °C, employing water as solvent and without the assistance of any cocatalyst. Palladium nanoparticles are the active species in the rearrangement process. In addition, when the same reactions were performed employing acetonitrile as solvent, selective dehydration of the aldoximes to form the respective nitriles was observed. For comparative purposes, the catalytic behaviour of an oxime-derived palladacyclic complex has also been briefly evaluated.This work was supported by Spanish MINECO (projects CTQ2013-40591-P, CTQ2013-43446-P and CTQ2014-51912-REDC) and Gobierno del Principado de Asturias (project GRUPIN14-006). L.M.-R. and E.T.-M. thank MINECO, MECD and ESF for the award of FPI and FPU fellowships, respectively