S100B as a biomarker of brain injury in premature neonates. A prospective case – control longitudinal study

Background: Neonatal brain injury (NBI) is a serious adverse outcome in premature neonates. We sought to determine the levels and prognostic value of serum S100B during the first three days of life in premature neonates (<34 weeks) that later developed NBI in the form of either intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) or periventricular leukomalacia (PVL). Methods: This is a prospective case – control longitudinal study. Each case (n = 29) was matched according to birthweight and gestational age to one neonate with normal head ultrasound scans. Results: Neonates with NBI, had significantly higher S100B concentration during the first three days of life. In both groups S100B was significantly higher on the first day when compared to the next two days of life showing a downwards trend. Serum S100B on the first day was the best predictor for adverse neonatal outcome such as death or II–IV IVH grade. A cut-off value of 10.51 ng/ml serum S100B performed a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 93.9% to predict adverse neonatal outcome. Conclusion: Further research on the predictive value of serum S100B regarding NBI in premature neonates is of great interest and may provide the first clinically useful biomarker for early detection of neonates at high risk. © 2020 Elsevier B.V

GridNews: A distributed automatic Greek broadcast transcription system

In this paper, a distributed system storing and retrieving Broadcast News data recorded from the Greek television is presented. These multimodal data are processed in a grid computational environment interconnecting distributed data storage and processing subsystems. The innovative element of this system is the implementation of the signal processing algorithms in this grid environment, offering additional flexibility and computational power. Among the developed signal processing modules are: the Segmentor, cutting up the original videos into shorter ones, the Classifier, recognizing whether these short videos contain speech or not, the Greek largevocabulary speech Recognizer, transcribing speech into written text, and finally the text Search engine and the video Retriever. All the processed data are stored and retrieved in geographically distributed storage elements. A user-friendly, web-based interface is developed, facilitating the transparent import and storage of new multimodal data, their off-line processing and finally, their search and retrieval. Index Terms — Computer architecture, distributed database systems, multimedia systems, speech recognition, user interface 1

Serum activin a as brain injury biomarker in the first three days of life. A prospective case—control longitudinal study in human premature neonates

Disruption of normal intrauterine brain development is a significant consequence of premature birth and may lead to serious complications, such as neonatal brain injury (NBI). This prospective case-control longitudinal study aimed at determining the levels and prognostic value of serum activin A during the first three days of life in human premature neonates which later developed NBI. It was conducted in a single tertiary hospital and eligible participants were live-born premature (<34 weeks) neonates. Each case (n = 29) developed NBI in the form of an intraventricular haemorrhage, or periventricular leukomalacia, and was matched according to birth weight and gestational age to one neonate with normal head ultrasound scans. Serum activin A levels in both groups showed a stable concentration during the first three days of life as no difference was observed within the two groups from the first to the third day. Neonates diagnosed with NBI had significantly higher activin A levels during the first two days of life compared to control neonates and its levels correlated to the severity of NBI during the second and third day of life. Although serum activin A on the second day was the best predictor for neonates at risk to develop NBI, the overall predictive value was marginally fair (area under the ROC-curve 69.2%). Activin A, in combination with other biomarkers, may provide the first clinically useful panel for the early detection of premature neonates at high risk of NBI. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Models of Solar Wind Structures and Their Interaction with the Earth's Space Environment

The discipline of "Space Weather" is built on the scientific foundation of solar-terrestrial physics but with a strong orientation toward applied research. Models describing the solar-terrestrial environment are therefore at the heart of this discipline, for both physical understanding of the processes involved and establishing predictive capabilities of the consequences of these processes. Depending on the requirements, purely physical models, semi-empirical or empirical models are considered to be the most appropriate. This review focuses on the interaction of solar wind disturbances with geospace. We cover interplanetary space, the Earth's magnetosphere (with the exception of radiation belt physics), the ionosphere (with the exception of radio science), the neutral atmosphere and the ground (via electromagnetic induction fields). Space weather relevant state-of-the-art physical and semi-empirical models of the various regions are reviewed. They include models for interplanetary space, its quiet state and the evolution of recurrent and transient solar perturbations (corotating interaction regions, coronal mass ejections, their interplanetary remnants, and solar energetic particle fluxes). Models of coupled large-scale solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere processes (global magnetohydrodynamic descriptions) and of inner magnetosphere processes (ring current dynamics) are discussed. Achievements in modeling the coupling between magnetospheric processes and the neutral and ionized upper and middle atmospheres are described. Finally we mention efforts to compile comprehensive and flexible models from selections of existing modules applicable to particular regions and conditions in interplanetary space and geospace

Endemic diversification in the mountains: genetic, morphological, and geographical differentiation of the Hemidactylus geckos in southwestern Arabia

In this study, we provide genetic, morphological, and geographical comparisons for 11 species of the southwestern Arabian radiation of Hemidactylus geckos, nine of which are endemic to the region. By using a coalescence-based species-tree reconstruction in combination with divergence time estimations and speciation probability testing, we show that most of the speciation events occurred in the Pliocene, which is more recent than previously thought based on calibrations of concatenated data sets. The current dating indicates that the changing climate at the beginning of the Pliocene, from hot and dry to cold and wet, is likely responsible for increased speciation in Hemidactylus. Analyses of geographic and altitudinal overlap of the species and their morphological differentiation show that most species do not occur in sympatry. Those that overlap geographically are usually differentiated by their altitudinal preference, head shape, body size, or their combination. Our results indicate that the topographically complex mountains of southwestern Arabia support a significant radiation of Hemidactylus geckos by allowing multiple allopatric speciation events to occur in a relatively small area. Consequently, we describe two new species endemic to the Asir Mountains of Saudi Arabia, H. alfarraji sp. n. and H. asirensis sp. n., and elevate two former subspecies of H. yerburii to a species level, H. montanus and H. pauciporosus.We are thankful to the Deanship of academic research at the Taif University for funding and issuing collection permit for sampling in Saudi Arabia (Grant No. 1–433–2108). This work was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic under grant DKRVO 2016/15, National Museum, 00023272 (JŠ), and grant CGL2015-70390-P (MINECO-FEDER) (SC).Peer reviewe