Optimizing multi-dimensional terahertz imaging analysis for colon cancer diagnosis

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Beyond the Marrakesh VIP Treaty: Typology of copyright access-enabling provisions for persons with disabilities

This paper builds upon the evidence drawn from a scoping study on access to copyright works by persons with disabilities. It identifies and discusses specific access‐enabling technologies for persons with aural, cognitive, physical, and visual disabilities and how they are affected by the exercise of exclusive rights. It shows how, and the extent to which states\u27 ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty) has enabled the making of accessible format of copyright works for persons with disabilities. To this end, the paper examines patterns and trends of accessible format enabling provisions in the copyright laws of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member states

Beyond the Marrakesh VIP Treaty: Typology of copyright access-enabling provisions for persons with disabilities

This paper builds upon the evidence drawn from a scoping study on access to copyright works by persons with disabilities. It identifies and discusses specific access‐enabling technologies for persons with aural, cognitive, physical, and visual disabilities and how they are affected by the exercise of exclusive rights. It shows how, and the extent to which states\u27 ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty) has enabled the making of accessible format of copyright works for persons with disabilities. To this end, the paper examines patterns and trends of accessible format enabling provisions in the copyright laws of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member states

Fire ecology and fire management for the conservation of plant species and vegetation communities in a National Park in northern NSW, Australia

Frequent fires have been suggested to result in a decline in plant species composition and structure in Australian plant communities. This is especially apparent in regions in northern NSW thought to have had a history of frequent low intensity fires, primarily due to accidental ignitions and ignited to promote grass for cattle grazing. The aim of this study was to investigate recent fire regimes and their impacts on the vegetation composition and structure to address future fire management planning. The study was undertaken in Guy Fawkes River National Park in northern NSW, through compiling a fire history by integrating hard-copy fire records and filling gaps with multi-temporal satellite imagery. The 25-year fire history provided the stratification variables for a survey of the current vegetation patterns in relation to a number of fire frequency attributes including number of fires, shortest inter-fire interval and time since last fire. The results from the vegetation study demonstrated that shrub and tree species richness declined with increasing number of fires and shorter inter-fire intervals. This was particularly evident in the Tablelands area of the study region where the fire history was more varied and the environmental variation more constrained. The study also revealed a sharp decline in the abundance of woody shrubs and an accompanying simplification of the structure of the vegetation community with increasing number of fires and shorter intervals between fires. Complementary soil seed bank studies were undertaken to compare the impacts of high and low fire frequency. A reduced abundance of shrub species was apparent in the seed bank of sites with a history of frequent fires. Shrub species, such as Acacia irrorata, were predominantly found in the seed bank of long unburnt sites. The information from these studies was used to develop a management framework based on fire thresholds for species and vegetation community conservation. Plant species data compiled from these plus other studies provided information on regenerative mechanisms following fire, the time to reproductive maturity and longevity. Fire thresholds were determined for the majority of communities in the study region, above and below which plant species were likely to decline. This framework of fire thresholds was used to identify areas where the minimum recommended time period between fires had been exceeded in the 2000/01 fire season. Five vegetation communities were identified with 80% or more of the total area exceeding the recommended fire threshold, indicating that a decline in plant species richness was possible due to recent fire regimes. The study provided the first fire ecology study in this region and a baseline on which to build future research. The integration of fire ecology information into spatially explicit fire management guidelines was demonstrated, providing the basis for future planning for the preservation of plant species and vegetation communities in large conservation areas

Physics of the Cosmos (PCOS) Program Technology Development 2018

We present a final report on our program to raise the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of enhanced chargecoupleddevice (CCD) detectors capable of meeting the requirements of Xray grating spectrometers (XGS) and widefield Xray imaging instruments for small, medium, and large missions. Because they are made of silicon, all Xray CCDs require blocking filters to prevent corruption of the Xray signal by outofband, mainly optical and nearinfrared (nearIR) radiation. Our primary objective is to demonstrate technology that can replace the fragile, extremely thin, freestanding blocking filter that has been standard practice with a much more robust filter deposited directly on the detector surface. Highperformance, backilluminated CCDs have flown with freestanding filters (e.g., one of our detectors on Suzaku), and other relatively lowperformance CCDs with directly deposited filters have flown (e.g., on the Xray Multimirror MissionNewton, XMMNewton Reflection Grating Spectrometer, RGS). At the inception of our program, a highperformance, backilluminated CCD with a directly deposited filter has not been demonstrated. Our effort will be the first to show such a filter can be deposited on an Xray CCD that meets the requirements of a variety of contemplated future instruments. Our principal results are as follows: i) we have demonstrated a process for direct deposition of aluminum optical blocking filters on backilluminated MIT Lincoln Laboratory CCDs. Filters ranging in thickness from 70 nm to 220 nm exhibit expected bulk visibleband and Xray transmission properties except in a small number (affecting 1% of detector area) of isolated detector pixels ("pinholes"), which show higherthanexpected visibleband transmission; ii) these filters produce no measurable degradation in softXray spectral resolution, demonstrating that direct filter deposition is compatible with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory backillumination process; iii) we have shown that under sufficiently intense visible and nearIR illumination, outofband light can enter the detector through its sidewalls and mounting surfaces, compromising detector performance. This 'sidewall leakage' has been observed, for example, by a previous experiment on the International Space Station during its orbitday operations. We have developed effective countermeasures for this sidewall leakage; iv) we developed an exceptionally productive collaboration with the Regolith Xray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) team. REXIS is a student instrument now flying on the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security - Regolith Explorer (OSIRISREx) mission. REXIS students participated in our filter development program, adopted our technology for their flight instrument, and raised the TRL of this technology beyond our initial goals. This Strategic Astrophysics Technology (SAT) project, a collaboration between the MKI and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, began July 1, 2012, and ended on June 30, 2018

Assessing the spectrum of germline variation in Fanconi anemia genes among patients with head and neck carcinoma before age 50

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138837/1/cncr30802.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138837/2/cncr30802_am.pd

Combined Inflammatory and Metabolic Defects Reflected by Reduced Serum Protein Levels in Patients with Buruli Ulcer Disease

Buruli ulcer is a skin disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans that is spreading in tropical countries, with major public health and economic implications in West Africa. Multi-analyte profiling of serum proteins in patients and endemic controls revealed that Buruli ulcer disease down-regulates the circulating levels of a large array of inflammatory mediators, without impacting on the leukocyte composition of peripheral blood. Notably, several proteins contributing to acute phase reaction, lipid metabolism, coagulation and tissue remodelling were also impacted. Their down-regulation was selective and persisted after the elimination of bacteria with antibiotic therapy. It involved proteins with various functions and origins, suggesting that M. ulcerans infection causes global and chronic defects in the host’s protein metabolism. Accordingly, patients had reduced levels of total serum proteins and blood urea, in the absence of signs of malnutrition, or functional failure of liver or kidney. Interestingly, slow healers had deeper metabolic and coagulation defects at the start of antibiotic therapy. In addition to providing novel insight into Buruli ulcer pathogenesis, our study therefore identifies a unique proteomic signature for this disease

Photochemistry of Furyl- and Thienyldiazomethanes: Spectroscopic Characterization of Triplet 3-Thienylcarbene

Photolysis (λ \u3e 543 nm) of 3-thienyldiazomethane (1), matrix isolated in Ar or N2 at 10 K, yields triplet 3-thienylcarbene (13) and α-thial-methylenecyclopropene (9). Carbene 13 was characterized by IR, UV/vis, and EPR spectroscopy. The conformational isomers of 3-thienylcarbene (s-E and s-Z) exhibit an unusually large difference in zero-field splitting parameters in the triplet EPR spectrum (|D/hc| = 0.508 cm–1, |E/hc| = 0.0554 cm–1; |D/hc| = 0.579 cm–1, |E/hc| = 0.0315 cm–1). Natural Bond Orbital (NBO) calculations reveal substantially differing spin densities in the 3-thienyl ring at the positions adjacent to the carbene center, which is one factor contributing to the large difference in D values. NBO calculations also reveal a stabilizing interaction between the sp orbital of the carbene carbon in the s-Z rotamer of 13 and the antibonding σ orbital between sulfur and the neighboring carbon—an interaction that is not observed in the s-E rotamer of 13. In contrast to the EPR spectra, the electronic absorption spectra of the rotamers of triplet 3-thienylcarbene (13) are indistinguishable under our experimental conditions. The carbene exhibits a weak electronic absorption in the visible spectrum (λmax = 467 nm) that is characteristic of triplet arylcarbenes. Although studies of 2-thienyldiazomethane (2), 3-furyldiazomethane (3), or 2-furyldiazomethane (4) provided further insight into the photochemical interconversions among C5H4S or C5H4O isomers, these studies did not lead to the spectroscopic detection of the corresponding triplet carbenes (2-thienylcarbene (11), 3-furylcarbene (23), or 2-furylcarbene (22), respectively)