A Case of Highly Aggressive Extraskeletal Myxoid Chondrosarcoma

Extraskeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma (EMC) is a soft tissue malignancy characterized by specific chromosomal abnormalities involving the TEC gene. This disease has historically been considered largely indolent both histologically and clinically. Rarer subsets of EMC exist that demonstrate aggressive histopathologic features and clinical behavior, though it remains unclear whether or not aggressive histopathology is predictive of outcome. Herein we present a case of EMC with aggressive histopathologic features that underwent rapid clinical progression despite initial treatment with curative intent. This case provides the context for a discussion of the existing literature regarding treatment, prognosis, pathology, and genetic/molecular features of EMC in general and aggressive EMC specifically

Välikeskustelumalli ja asiakkaan kuuleminen : tutkimus Ensi- ja turvakotien liiton tapaamispaikkatoiminnasta

Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan asiakkaan kuulemista ja sitä tukevia menetelmiä Ensi- ja turvakotien liiton tapaamispaikkatoiminnassa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on saada ajankohtainen käsitys asiakkaan kuulemisen mahdollisuuksista ja niiden riittävyydestä tapaamispaikoissa. Lisäksi tavoitteena on selvittää välikeskustelumallia ja sen soveltuvuutta tapaamispaikkatoimintaan. Tutkimuksen viitekehyksenä ovat tapaamispaikkatoiminta, asiakkaan kuuleminen ja välikeskustelumalli. Kokonaisuutena tutkimuksen teoria pohjautuu asiakastyön menetelmiin, sillä ne toimivat välineinä asiakkaan kuulemisessa ja antavat siihen erilaisia mahdollisuuksia. Tutkimuksessa kiinnitetään erityistä huomiota lapsen kuulemiseen. Tutkimus toteutettiin kvalitatiivisen tutkimuksen menetelmin. Aineisto koostuu viidentoista tapaamispaikan kyselyvastauksesta ja neljän tapaamispaikkatyöntekijän haastatteluista. Kysely ja haastattelut toteutettiin vuoden 2014 tammi-maaliskuun aikana. Aineiston käsittelyyn käytettiin sisällönanalyysiä. Tutkimustulosten mukaan asiakkaan kuulemiseen on erilaisia mahdollisuuksia Ensi- ja turvakotien liiton tapaamispaikkatoiminnassa. Tuloksista käy ilmi, että osassa tapaamispaikkoja koetaan asiakkaan kuulemisen mahdollisuudet hyvänä ja osassa koetaan lisäämisen tarvetta. Tulosten perusteella suunnitelmallinen välikeskustelu on osoittautunut tarpeelliseksi alkuhaastattelun jälkeen, erityisesti pitkäkestoisissa asiakassuhteissa ja lapsen kuulemisessa. Tutkimus osoitti, että välikeskustelumalli soveltuu tapaamispaikkatoimintaan ja voi toimia yhtenä menetelmänä asiakkaan kuulemisessa.The present study examines the process of hearing clients and the methods to support that process at the child contact centre for the Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters. The purpose of the study is to obtain current understanding of the possibilities of hearing clients and the adequacy of those possibilities at the child contact centres. The purpose is also to investigate the interim discussion method and its feasibility in the activities at the child contact centres. The frame of reference in the study is the activities at the child contact centres, hearing the client and the interim discussion model. The theory as a whole in the study is based on methods because they work as tools in hearing clients and offer various opportunities for it. Particular attention is given to the hearing of children. The study was carried out with qualitative research methods. The research data comprises questionnaire responses from 15 visitation places and 4 employee interviews. The questionnaire and interviews were carried out between January and March 2014. Content analysis was utilized to examine the data. The results of the study reveal that there are various possibilities for hearing clients at the child contact centre for the Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters. The possibilities for hearing clients at some of the places are good, while at others there is a need for more. According to the results, planned interim discussions have proven necessary after the initial interview especially in long-term client relationships and when hearing a child. The study suggests that the interim discussion model is appropriate to use in the activities at the child contact centres and may be used as a method for hearing clients

Historical trophic ecology of some divergent shark and skate species in the Dutch coastal North Sea zone

Over the last century the fish community of the Dutch coastal North Sea zone has lost most its shark and skate species. Whether their disappearance has changed the trophic structure of these shallow waters has not been properly investigated. In this study historical dietary data of sharks and skates, being in the past (near)-residents, juvenile marine migrants and marine seasonal visitors of the Dutch coastal North Sea zone were analyzed for the period 1946–1954. Near-resident and juvenile marine migrant species were demersal while all marine seasonal visitors species were pelagic. Based on stomach content composition, the trophic position of four of the various shark and skate species could be reconstructed. The (near)-resident species, the lesser spotted dogfish, the marine juvenile migrant, the starry smooth hound, and the benthopelagic marine seasonal visitor, the thornback ray, had a benthic/demersal diet (polychaetes, molluscs and crustaceans), while the pelagic marine seasonal visitor, the tope shark, fed dominantly on cephalopods and fishes. Diet overlap occurred for fish (tope shark and lesser spotted dogfish), for hermit crabs (lesser spotted dogfish and starry smooth hound) and for shrimps (thornback ray and starry smooth hound). Trophic position ranged from 3.2 for thornback ray preying exclusively on crustaceans to 4.6 for the tope shark consuming higher trophic prey (crustaceans and fish). The analysis indicates that most of the shark and skate species were generalist predators. The calculated trophic positions of shark and skate species indicate that those species were not necessarily at the top of the marine ecosystem food web, but they might have been the top predators of their particular ecological assemblage.</p

Counting using deep learning regression gives value to ecological surveys

Many ecological studies rely on count data and involve manual counting of objects of interest, which is time-consuming and especially disadvantageous when time in the field or lab is limited. However, an increasing number of works uses digital imagery, which opens opportunities to automatise counting tasks. In this study, we use machine learning to automate counting objects of interest without the need to label individual objects. By leveraging already existing image-level annotations, this approach can also give value to historical data that were collected and annotated over longer time series (typical for many ecological studies), without the aim of deep learning applications. We demonstrate deep learning regression on two fundamentally different counting tasks: (i) daily growth rings from microscopic images of fish otolith (i.e., hearing stone) and (ii) hauled out seals from highly variable aerial imagery. In the otolith images, our deep learning-based regressor yields an RMSE of 3.40 day-rings and an [Formula: see text] of 0.92. Initial performance in the seal images is lower (RMSE of 23.46 seals and [Formula: see text] of 0.72), which can be attributed to a lack of images with a high number of seals in the initial training set, compared to the test set. We then show how to improve performance substantially (RMSE of 19.03 seals and [Formula: see text] of 0.77) by carefully selecting and relabelling just 100 additional training images based on initial model prediction discrepancy. The regression-based approach used here returns accurate counts ([Formula: see text] of 0.92 and 0.77 for the rings and seals, respectively), directly usable in ecological research