Spinal cord gray matter segmentation using deep dilated convolutions

Gray matter (GM) tissue changes have been associated with a wide range of neurological disorders and was also recently found relevant as a biomarker for disability in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The ability to automatically segment the GM is, therefore, an important task for modern studies of the spinal cord. In this work, we devise a modern, simple and end-to-end fully automated human spinal cord gray matter segmentation method using Deep Learning, that works both on in vivo and ex vivo MRI acquisitions. We evaluate our method against six independently developed methods on a GM segmentation challenge and report state-of-the-art results in 8 out of 10 different evaluation metrics as well as major network parameter reduction when compared to the traditional medical imaging architectures such as U-Nets.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

On the Infinite Dual Goldie Dimension

We analyze how the properties of Goldie dimension continue to hold or not in the infinite case, with particular interest for the dual Goldie dimension of the lattice of right ideals of a ring R. In this setting we underline the important role played by maximal ideals and we compute the dual Goldie dimension of any Boolean ring and of any endomorphism ring of an infinite dimensional vector space over a division ring

Nonparametric Inference For Density Modes

We derive nonparametric confidence intervals for the eigenvalues of the Hessian at modes of a density estimate. This provides information about the strength and shape of modes and can also be used as a significance test. We use a data-splitting approach in which potential modes are identified using the first half of the data and inference is done with the second half of the data. To get valid confidence sets for the eigenvalues, we use a bootstrap based on an elementary-symmetric-polynomial (ESP) transformation. This leads to valid bootstrap confidence sets regardless of any multiplicities in the eigenvalues. We also suggest a new method for bandwidth selection, namely, choosing the bandwidth to maximize the number of significant modes. We show by example that this method works well. Even when the true distribution is singular, and hence does not have a density, (in which case cross validation chooses a zero bandwidth), our method chooses a reasonable bandwidth

The determinants of COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR) in the Italian regions and provinces: an analysis of environmental, demographic, and healthcare factors

The Italian government has been one of the most responsive to COVID-19 emergency, through the adoption of quick and increasingly stringent measures to contain the outbreak. Despite this, Italy has suffered a huge human and social cost, especially in Lombardy. The aim of this paper is dual: i) first, to investigate the reasons of the case fatality rate (CFR) differences across Italian 20 regions and 107 provinces, using a multivariate OLS regression approach; and ii) second, to build a taxonomy of provinces with similar mortality risk of COVID-19, by using the Ward hierarchical agglomerative clustering method. I considered health system metrics, environmental pollution, climatic conditions, demographic variables, and three ad hoc indexes that represent the health system saturation. The results showed that overall health care efficiency, physician density, and average temperature helped to reduce the CFR. By the contrary, population aged 70 and above, car and firm density, level of air pollutants (NO2, O3, PM10, and PM2.5), relative average humidity, COVID-19 prevalence, and all three indexes of health system saturation were positively associated with the CFR. Population density, social vertical integration, and altitude were not statistically significant. In particular, the risk of dying increases with age, as 90 years old and above had a three-fold greater risk than the 80 to 89 years old and four-fold greater risk than 70 to 79 years old. Moreover, the cluster analysis showed that the highest mortality risk was concentrated in the north of the country, while the lowest risk was associated with southern provinces. Finally, since prevalence and health system saturation indexes played the most important role in explaining the CFR variability, a significant part of the latter may have been caused by the massive stress of the Italian health system.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 6 table

Unchain My Heart: Slavery as a Defense to the Dismantling of the Violence Against Women Act

When Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act ( VAWA ), it aimed to address pervasive problems associated with gender-motivated violence. Through inclusion of a section entitled Civil Rights for Women, Congress specifically created a federal civil rights remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence. Nevertheless, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the civil rights remedy provision of the VAWA, claiming that Congress lacked authority to pass this provision under the Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment. This Note argues that Congress has authority under the 13th Amendment to reinvigorate the civil rights remedy in the VAWA. This Note compares antebellum slavery to domestic violence to demonstrate how the 13th Amendment\u27s prohibition of slavery provides a source of congressional authority for the VAWA\u27s civil rights remed