Impact of pulsed-wave-Doppler velocity-envelope tracing techniques on classification of complete fetal cardiac cycles

Fetal echocardiography is an operator-dependent examination technique requiring a high level of expertise. Pulsed-wave Doppler (PWD) is often used as a reference for the mechanical activity of the heart, from which several quantitative parameters can be extracted. These aspects suggest the development of software tools that can reliably identify complete and clinically meaningful fetal cardiac cycles that can enable their automatic measurement. Several scientific works have addressed the tracing of the PWD velocity envelope. In this work, we assess the different steps involved in the signal processing chains that enable PWD envelope tracing. We apply a supervised classifier trained on envelopes traced by different signal processing chains for distinguishing complete and measurable PWD heartbeats from incomplete or malformed ones, which makes it possible to determine the impact of each of the different processing steps on the detection accuracy. In this study, we collected 43 images and labeled 174,319 PWD segments from 25 pregnant women volunteers. By considering seven envelope tracing techniques and the 23 different processing steps involved in their implementation, the results of our study reveal that, compared to the steps investigated in most other works, those that achieve binarisation and envelope extraction are significantly more important (p < 0.05). The best approaches among those studied enabled greater than 98% accuracy on our large manually annotated dataset

A New Monitor and Control Power Supply PCB for Biasing LNAs of Large Radio Telescopes Receivers

The biasing of low noise amplifiers (LNA) is of paramount importance for the receivers of large radio telescopes. High stability, optimal trade-off between gain and noise figure, remote control, and mitigation of the radio frequency interferences (RFIs) are all desirable features in the choice of the electronic board devoted to power supply the LNAs. In this paper, we propose the design and characterization of a multilayer printed circuit board (PCB), named GAIA, able to meet all the aforementioned requirements. The GAIA board is a 3-Unit, four-layer, rack-mountable, programmable PCB for the remote biasing of the LNAs, with monitor and control capabilities, specifically designed to operate in the receivers of the 64-m diameter Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT). We describe the architecture, layout, and measurements of the GAIA board. Our results show that the GAIA power supply provides high stability of the output bias voltages and, in comparison with the old analogic biasing board used so far in the SRT receivers, it shows comparable or better frequency stability, other than a remarkable mitigation of the RFIs

Gender-related factors affecting health seeking for neglected tropical diseases: findings from a qualitative study in Ethiopia

Background Despite known gender-specific differences in terms of prevalence, transmission and exposure to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), there is limited discussion of the influence of gender in NTD programmes and interventions. There is a paucity of research on how gender interacts with NTD service provision and uptake. This study, part of broader implementation research in Ethiopia, applied a gender lens to health seeking for five NTDs: lymphatic filariasis, podoconiosis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminth infection and trachoma. Methodology/principal findings The study was conducted in a district of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia where the five NTDs are prevalent. A qualitative methodology was adopted to explore participants’ perspectives and experiences. Data generation methods included 20 interviews and four focus group discussions. Community members, volunteer Health Development Army leaders, Health Extension Workers and a range of health workers at the health post, health centre and hospital level (n = 59) were purposively sampled. Interviews and focus group discussions were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim into English then analysed through open coding, drawing on constant comparative methods. Gender related factors affected care seeking for NTDs and were described as reasons for not seeking care, delayed care seeking and treating NTDs with natural remedies. Women faced additional challenges in seeking health care due to gender inequalities and power dynamics in their domestic partnerships. Participants recommended raising community awareness about NTDs, however this remains problematic due to gender and social norms around appropriate discourse with members of the opposite gender. Conclusions/significance The findings from this study provide crucial insights into how gender interacts with accessing health services, at different levels of the health system. If we are committed to leaving no one behind and achieving universal health coverage, it is essential to address gender disparities to access and utilisation of interventions delivered by national NTD programmes

Arsonists or firefighters? Affectiveness in agile software development

In this paper, we present an analysis of more than 500K comments from open-source repositories of software systems developed using agile methodologies. Our aim is to empirically determine how developers interact with each other under certain psychological conditions generated by politeness, sentiment and emotion expressed within developers' comments. Developers involved in an open-source projects do not usually know each other; they mainly communicate through mailing lists, chat, and tools such as issue tracking systems. The way in which they communicate a ects the development process and the productivity of the people involved in the project. We evaluated politeness, sentiment and emotions of comments posted by agile developers and studied the communication ow to understand how they interacted in the presence of impolite and negative comments (and vice versa). Our analysis shows that \ re ghters" prevail. When in presence of impolite or negative comments, the probability of the next comment being impolite or negative is 13% and 25%, respectively; ANGER however, has a probability of 40% of being followed by a further ANGER comment. The result could help managers take control the development phases of a system, since social aspects can seriously a ect a developer's productivity. In a distributed agile environment this may have a particular resonance

Space Debris Detection in Low Earth Orbit with the Sardinia Radio Telescope

Space debris are orbiting objects that represent a major threat for space operations. The most used countermeasure to face this threat is, by far, collision avoidance, namely the set of maneuvers that allow to avoid a collision with the space debris. Since collision avoidance is tightly related to the knowledge of the debris state (position and speed), the observation of the orbital debris is the key of the problem. In this work a bistatic radar configuration named BIRALET (BIstatic RAdar for LEO Tracking) is used to detect a set of space debris at 410 MHz, using the Sardinia Radio Telescope as the receiver antenna. The signal-to-noise ratio, the Doppler shift and the frequency spectrum for each debris are reported

Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing under fixed and proportional transaction costs

We show that the lack of arbitrage in a model with both fixed and proportional transaction costs is equivalent to the existence of a family of absolutely continuous single-step probability measures, together with an adapted process with values between the bid-ask spreads that satisfies the martingale property with respect to each of the measures. This extends Harrison and Pliska's classical Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing to the case of combined fixed and proportional transaction costs

A Preliminary Analysis of Software Metrics in Decentralised Applications

This study examines software metrics in decentralized applications (dApps) to analyze their structural and behavioral characteristics as they grow in complexity. Sixty dApps were categorized into Small (3 to 29 contracts), Medium (30 to 46 contracts), and Large (47 to 206 contracts) based on their contract count. Initial analysis showed a non-normal data distribution, leading to the use of Spearman's correlation method. Findings revealed that Medium dApps have strong correlations between metrics like 'Average Local Variables' and 'Maximum Local Variables', while Large dApps show higher correlations between 'Number of Functions' and 'State Variable Count', indicating more complex contract structures. The higher Coupling Between Objects (CBO) in large dApps suggests increased interactions with other contracts or libraries, potentially elevating security risks. These insights are valuable for developers and stakeholders in the blockchain and IoT sectors, aiding in understanding how dApps evolve with increasing complexity and the implications on software metric relationships.Ethereum Foundation grant FY23-1048