494 research outputs found
Diabetic eye screening in multi ethnic population of Malaysia: epidemiological risk factors for development of diabetic retinopathy
Background:The objective of this study is to evaluate epidemiological risk factors for development of diabetic retinopathy.Methods:The cases of type-2 diabetes mellitus attending Melaka Manipal medical college, Malaysia were retrospectively reviewed. The epidemiological characteristics of diabetic retinopathy were estimated. The cases were graded according to degree of retinopathy in to: non-diabetic retinopathy group and diabetic retinopathy. Clinical and biochemical studies were used for studying the risk factors associated with development of retinopathy.Results:The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in the population was 21% in known diabetic subjects and was significantly higher in men than in women (21.3% vs. 14.6%) with increasing age and duration of diabetes. Ethnicity is a complex, independent risk factor for diabetic retinopathy. Sight threatening diabetic retinopathy, and clinically significant macular edema was higher in people of Malaysia (20%) when compared with Chinese (16%) and Indonesians (12%). In all, 55 percent of patients with known diabetes mellitus had never undergone an eye examination. Among patients who had undergone eye examinations, 32.8 percent had the last examination within the last one year, 49.8 percent within the last one to two years, and 17.4 percent more than two years ago.Conclusion:Diabetic retinopathy is highly prevalent in the patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus in Malaysia. Besides blood glucose, many factors are associated with the present and development of diabetic retinopathy.
A PDE Method to Segment Image Linear Objects with Application to Lens Distortion Removal
In this paper, we propose a partial differential equation based method to segment image objects, which have a given parametric shape based on energy functional. The energy functional is composed of a term that detects object boundaries and a term that constrains the contour to find a shape compatible with the parametric shape. While the shape constraints guiding the PDE may be determined from object's shape statistical models, we demonstrate the proposed approach on the extraction of objects with explicit shape parameterization, such as linear image segments. Several experiments are reported on synthetic and real images to evaluate our approach. We also demonstrate the successful application of the proposed method to the problem of removing camera lens distortion, which can be significant in medium to wide-angle lenses
A user-system interface agent
Agent-based technologies answer to several challenges posed by additional information processing requirements in today's computing environments. In particular, (1) users desire interaction with computing devices in a mode which is similar to that used between people, (2) the efficiency and successful completion of information processing tasks often require a high-level of expertise in complex and multiple domains, (3) information processing tasks often require handling of large volumes of data and, therefore, continuous and endless processing activities. The concept of an agent is an attempt to address these new challenges by introducing information processing environments in which (1) users can communicate with a system in a natural way, (2) an agent is a specialist and a self-learner and, therefore, it qualifies to be trusted to perform tasks independent of the human user, and (3) an agent is an entity that is continuously active performing tasks that are either delegated to it or self-imposed. The work described in this paper focuses on the development of an interface agent for users of a complex information processing environment (IPE). This activity is part of an on-going effort to build a model for developing agent-based information systems. Such systems will be highly applicable to environments which require a high degree of automation, such as, flight control operations and/or processing of large volumes of data in complex domains, such as the EOSDIS environment and other multidisciplinary, scientific data systems. The concept of an agent as an information processing entity is fully described with emphasis on characteristics of special interest to the User-System Interface Agent (USIA). Issues such as agent 'existence' and 'qualification' are discussed in this paper. Based on a definition of an agent and its main characteristics, we propose an architecture for the development of interface agents for users of an IPE that is agent-oriented and whose resources are likely to be distributed and heterogeneous in nature. The architecture of USIA is outlined in two main components: (1) the user interface which is concerned with issues as user dialog and interaction, user modeling, and adaptation to user profile, and (2) the system interface part which deals with identification of IPE capabilities, task understanding and feasibility assessment, and task delegation and coordination of assistant agents
Dynamic role of the codon 72 p53 single-nucleotide polymorphism in mammary tumorigenesis in a humanized mouse model
Female breast cancer (BrCa) is the most common noncutaneous cancer among women in the United States. Human epidemiological studies reveal that a p53 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at codon 72, encoding proline (P72) or arginine (R72), is associated with differential risk of several cancers, including BrCa. However, the molecular mechanisms by which these variants affect mammary tumorigenesis remain unresolved. To investigate the effects of this polymorphism on susceptibility to mammary cancer, we used a humanized p53 mouse model, homozygous for either P72 or R72. Our studies revealed that R72 mice had a significantly higher mammary tumor incidence and reduced latency in both DMBAinduced and MMTV-Erbb2/Neu mouse mammary tumor models compared to P72 mice. Analyses showed that susceptible mammary glands from E-R72 (R72 x MMTV-Erbb2/Neu) mice developed a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) with influx of proinflammatory macrophages, ultimately resulting in chronic, protumorigenic inflammation. Mammary tumors arising in E-R72 mice also had an increased influx of tumor-associated macrophages, contributing to angiogenesis and elevated tumor growth rates. These results demonstrate that the p53 R72 variant increased susceptibility to mammary tumorigenesis through chronic inflammation.This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health grant R01MD006228 (to RF-Y)
Observation of Ground-State Two-Neutron Decay
Neutron decay spectroscopy has become a successful tool to explore nuclear
properties of nuclei with the largest neutron-to-proton ratios. Resonances in
nuclei located beyond the neutron dripline are accessible by kinematic
reconstruction of the decay products. The development of two-neutron detection
capabilities of the Modular Neutron Array (MoNA) at NSCL has opened up the
possibility to search for unbound nuclei which decay by the emission of two
neutrons. Specifically this exotic decay mode was observed in 16Be and 26O.Comment: To be published in Acta Physica Polonica
Exploring the neutron dripline two neutrons at a time: The first observations of the 26O and 16Be ground state resonances
The two-neutron unbound ground state resonances of O and Be
were populated using one-proton knockout reactions from F and B
beams. A coincidence measurement of 3-body system (fragment + n + n) allowed
for the decay energy of the unbound nuclei to be reconstructed. A low energy
resonance, 200 keV, was observed for the first time in the O + n + n
system and assigned to the ground state of O. The Be ground state
resonance was observed at 1.35 MeV. The 3-body correlations of the Be +
n + n system were compared to simulations of a phase-space, sequential, and
dineutron decay. The strong correlations in the n-n system from the
experimental data could only be reproduced by the dineutron decay simulation
providing the first evidence for a dineutron-like decay.Comment: Invited Talk given at the 11th International Conference on
Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1,
2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference
Series (JPCS
Exploring the Low- Shore of the Island of Inversion at
The technique of invariant mass spectroscopy has been used to measure, for
the first time, the ground state energy of neutron-unbound
determined to be a resonance in the continuum at
keV. States in were
populated by the reactions of a 62 MeV/u beam impinging on a
288 beryllium target. The measured ground
state energy is in good agreement with USDA/USDB shell model predictions,
indicating that shell intruder configurations play only a small role in
the ground state structure of and establishing a low-
boundary of the island of inversion for N=19 isotones.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let
Combined potential and spin impurity scattering in cuprates
We present a theory of combined nonmagnetic and magnetic impurity scattering
in anisotropic superconductors accounting for the momentum-dependent impurity
potential. Applying the model to the d-wave superconducting state, we obtain a
quantitative agreement with the initial suppression of the critical temperature
due to Zn and Ni substitutions as well as electron irradiation defects in the
cuprates. We suggest, that the unequal pair-breaking effect of Zn and Ni may be
related to a different nature of the magnetic moments induced by these
impurities.Comment: 5 pages, 3 tables, RevTex, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Role of anisotropic impurity scattering in anisotropic superconductors
A theory of nonmagnetic impurities in an anisotropic superconductor including
the effect of anisotropic (momentum-dependent) impurity scattering is given. It
is shown that for a strongly anisotropic scattering the reduction of the
pair-breaking effect of the impurities is large. For a significant overlap
between the anisotropy functions of the scattering potential and that of the
pair potential and for a large amount of anisotropic scattering rate in
impurity potential the superconductivity becomes robust vis a vis impurity
concentration. The implications of our result for YBCO high-temperature
superconductor are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, RevTeX, 5 PostScript figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
B (December 1, 1996
Effect of anisotropic impurity scattering in superconductors
We discuss the weak-coupling BCS theory of a superconductor with the
impurities, accounting for their anisotropic momentum-dependent potential. The
impurity scattering process is considered in the t-matrix approximation and its
influence on the superconducting critical temperature is studied in the Born
and unitary limit for a d- and (d+s)-wave superconductors. We observe a
significant dependence of the pair-breaking strength on the symmetry of the
scattering potential and classify the impurity potentials according to their
ability to alter T_c. A good agreement with the experimental data for Zn doping
and oxygen irradiation in the overdoped cuprates is found.Comment: 31 pages, RevTex, 15 PostScript figure
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