The Relationship of the Clinical Disc Margin and Bruch's Membrane Opening in Normal and Glaucoma Subjects.

PurposeWe tested the hypotheses that the mismatch between the clinical disc margin (CDM) and Bruch's membrane opening (BMO) is a function of BMO area (BMOA) and is affected by the presence of glaucoma.MethodsA total of 45 normal eyes (45 subjects) and 53 glaucomatous eyes (53 patients) were enrolled and underwent radial optic nerve head (ONH) imaging with spectral domain optical coherence tomography. The inner tip of the Bruch's membrane (BM) and the clinical disc margin were marked on radial scans and optic disc photographs, and were coregistered with custom software. The main outcome measure was the difference between the clinical disc area (CDA) and BMOA, or CDA-BMOA mismatch, as a function of BMOA and diagnosis. Multivariate regression analyses were used to explore the influence of glaucoma and BMOA on the mismatch.ResultsGlobal CDA was larger than BMOA in both groups but the difference was statistically significant only in the normal group (1.98 ± 0.37 vs. 1.85 ± 0.45 mm2, P = 0.02 in the normal group; 1.96 ± 0.38 vs. 1.89 ± 0.56 mm2, P = 0.08 in the glaucoma group). The sectoral CDA-BMOA mismatch was smaller in superotemporal (P = 0.04) and superonasal (P = 0.05) sectors in the glaucoma group. The normalized CDA-BMOA difference decreased with increasing BMOA in both groups (P < 0.001). Presence or severity of glaucoma did not affect the CDA-BMOA difference (P > 0.14).ConclusionsClinical disc area was larger than BMOA in normal and glaucoma eyes but reached statistical significance only in the former group. The CDA-BMOA mismatch diminished with increasing BMOA but was not affected by presence of glaucoma. These findings have important clinical implications regarding clinical evaluation of the ONH

Differentially Private Synthetic Data Using KD-Trees

Creation of a synthetic dataset that faithfully represents the data distribution and simultaneously preserves privacy is a major research challenge. Many space partitioning based approaches have emerged in recent years for answering statistical queries in a differentially private manner. However, for synthetic data generation problem, recent research has been mainly focused on deep generative models. In contrast, we exploit space partitioning techniques together with noise perturbation and thus achieve intuitive and transparent algorithms. We propose both data independent and data dependent algorithms for $\epsilon$-differentially private synthetic data generation whose kernel density resembles that of the real dataset. Additionally, we provide theoretical results on the utility-privacy trade-offs and show how our data dependent approach overcomes the curse of dimensionality and leads to a scalable algorithm. We show empirical utility improvements over the prior work, and discuss performance of our algorithm on a downstream classification task on a real dataset

Effect of public interventions through dialogue with officials and training of civil service personnel on improving the condition of collecting, transportation and rubbish repelling in Semnan (2004-2005)

زمینه و هدف: زباله اصطلاحاً به فضولات جامد، نیمه جامد یا مایعی گفته می شود که ظاهراً به درد نخور بوده و دور ریخته می شوند. زباله ها به سه دسته زباله های خانگی، بیمارستانی و صنعتی تقسیم می شوند که قسمت اعظم مواد زائد شهری را زباله های خانگی تشکیل می دهند. مدیریت حل مشکل زباله اصولاَ شامل سه قسمت جمع آوری، حمل و نقل و دفع زباله می باشد. چگونگی برنامه ریزی و مدیریت حل مشکل زباله های خانگی امروزه یکی از مسائل و معضلات مهم بهداشتی جوامع شهری می باشد. طی بررسی که توسط گروه مردمی آزاد پایگاه تحقیقات جمعیتی سمنان در سال 1383 از وضعیت مدیریت زباله های خانگی شهر سمنان به عمل آمد، متاسفانه هر سه مرحله جمع آوری، حمل و نقل و دفع زباله های خانگی از نظر رعایت نکات بهداشتی و استاندارد های مربوطه دچار مشکل بود. یافته های تحقیقات قبلی نشان داده است که این گونه مشکلات چند بعدی، بدون جلب مشارکت فعال تمامی طرفهای درگیر قابل حل نمی باشد. لذا با توجه به ساختار مناسب پایگاه های تحقیقات جمعیتی در انجام پژوهش های مشارکتی مبتنی بر جامعه، این مطالعه با هدف بهبود وضعیت زباله شهر سمنان از طریق گفتگو و تعامل با مسئولین مربوطه اجرا گردید. روش بررسی: برای انجام مداخلات مردمی در زمینه بهبود وضعیت زباله شهر سمنان، ابتدا با تشکیل جلسات گروهی مردمی، نیازهای مورد مداخله از طریق بحث متمرکز گروهی شناسائی گردید و نیز با کمک مردم از طریق مشاهده و جمع آوری مستندات محیطی ازقبیل تهیه فیلم و عکس از معضلات جمع آوری، حمل و نقل و دفع زباله شهری اقدام شد. سپس مطابق مشکلات موجود، مداخلات بر دو محور گفتگو و تعامل با مسئولین ذیربط و آموزش کارکنان خدمات شهری، طراحی و اجرا شد. در محور اول با دعوت از مسئولین سازمان های ذیربط طی جلسات متعدد، مشکلات موجود بصورت منطقی و مستدل با مشارکت جمعی (مردم، مسئولین، نیروهای دانشگاهی و افراد کارشناس و ذینفع) در محیطی دوستانه از طریق بحث متمرکز گروهی مورد بحث و بررسی قرار گرفت و تا رسیدن به نتایج ملموس تشکیل جلسات مورد پیگیری مستمر قرار گرفت. در محور دوم، نکات بهداشتی به تمامی کارکنان خدمات شهری سمنان آموزش داده شد. یافته ها: قبل از مداخلات، موارد جمع آوری، حمل و نقل و دفع زباله در شهر سمنان، از نظر بهداشتی مشکل داشت. پس از مداخلات، نتایج نشان داد رعایت نکات بهداشتی در حمل و نقل و دفع زباله تغییر و بهبود یافته است. نتیجه گیری: گفتگو و تعامل نیروهای مردمی با مسئولین شهری می تواند نتایج پر باری در بهبود وضعیت بهداشتی شهر و سلامت جامعه داشته باشد

Profile of Immune Cells in Axillary Lymph Nodes Predicts Disease-Free Survival in Breast Cancer

BACKGROUND: While lymph node metastasis is among the strongest predictors of disease-free and overall survival for patients with breast cancer, the immunological nature of tumor-draining lymph nodes is often ignored, and may provide additional prognostic information on clinical outcome. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We performed immunohistochemical analysis of 47 sentinel and 104 axillary (nonsentinel) nodes from 77 breast cancer patients with 5 y of follow-up to determine if alterations in CD4, CD8, and CD1a cell populations predict nodal metastasis or disease-free survival. Sentinel and axillary node CD4 and CD8 T cells were decreased in breast cancer patients compared to control nodes. CD1a dendritic cells were also diminished in sentinel and tumor-involved axillary nodes, but increased in tumor-free axillary nodes. Axillary node, but not sentinel node, CD4 T cell and dendritic cell populations were highly correlated with disease-free survival, independent of axillary metastasis. Immune profiling of ALN from a test set of 48 patients, applying CD4 T cell and CD1a dendritic cell population thresholds of CD4 ≥ 7.0% and CD1a ≥ 0.6%, determined from analysis of a learning set of 29 patients, provided significant risk stratification into favorable and unfavorable prognostic groups superior to clinicopathologic characteristics including tumor size, extent or size of nodal metastasis (CD4, p < 0.001 and CD1a, p < 0.001). Moreover, axillary node CD4 T cell and CD1a dendritic cell populations allowed more significant stratification of disease-free survival of patients with T1 (primary tumor size 2 cm or less) and T2 (5 cm or larger) tumors than all other patient characteristics. Finally, sentinel node immune profiles correlated primarily with the presence of infiltrating tumor cells, while axillary node immune profiles appeared largely independent of nodal metastases, raising the possibility that, within axillary lymph nodes, immune profile changes and nodal metastases represent independent processes. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that the immune profile of tumor-draining lymph nodes is of novel biologic and clinical importance for patients with early stage breast cancer

Modeling of heat transfer for interlock knitted fabric using finite element method

415-419This study focuses on the applicability of finite element method (FEM) to analyze the heat transfer behavior of plain interlock weft knitted fabrics. An interlock weft knitted fabric model is developed and analyzed using FEM software. A comparison of the experimental measurements with the numerical solutions shows that the FEM model developed for the heat transfer measurement including interlock knitted fabric produces promising results. </span