1,084 research outputs found
A weed monitoring system using UAV-imagery and the Hough transform
Usually, crops require the use of herbicides as a useful manner of controlling the
quality and quantity of crop production. Although there are weed-free areas, the most
common approach is to broadcast herbicides entirely over crop fields, resulting in a
reduction of profits and increase in environmental risks. Recently, patch spraying has
allowed the use of site-specific weed management, allowing precise and timely weed maps at
very early phenological stage, either by ground sampling or remote analysis. Remote imagery
from piloted planes and satellites are not suitable for this purpose given their low spatial and
temporal resolutions, however, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) represent an excellent
alternative. This paper presents a new classification framework for weed monitoring via UAV
showing promising results and accurate generalisation in different scenariosLos cultivos precisan del uso de herbicidas para controlar la calidad y cantidad
de producción. A pesar de que las malas hierbas se distribuyen en rodales, la práctica más
extendida es la fumigación de herbicidas en todo el cultivo, resultando en un aumento del
coste y de riesgos mediambientales. La pulvericación por parches ha dado lugar al auge de
otras técnicas de manejo de malas hierbas, permitiendo su tratamiento en un estado
fenológico temprano. Las imágenes remotas de aviones pilotados o satélites no son útiles en
este caso debido a su baja resolución espacial y temporal. Sin embargo, este no es el caso de
los vehículos aéreos no tripulados. Este artículo presenta un nuevo método para
monitorización de malas hierbas usando este tipo de vehículos, mostrando resultados
prometedore
Neck circumference is associated with nutritional status in elderly nursing home residents
Objectives: Anthropometry is an easy and noninvasive method to evaluate nutritional status in institutionalized elderly people who are often bedridden. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the neck circumference (NC) and nutritional status of elderly nursing home residents and to find cutoff points for NC size to identify individuals at risk of malnutrition.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was developed with data collected from 352 elderly people living in five public nursing homes. Different anthropometric measures and the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) were used to determine nutritional status. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were built for each anthropometric variable to determine their sensitivity and specificity for predicting the risk of malnutrition according to the MNA.
Results: The mean age of the participants (59% females) was 83 years old. In total, 48.3% of women and 45.5% of men were at risk of malnutrition according to their MNA scores. All anthropometric measurements were highly intercorrelated in both men and women, indicating a high degree of collinearity. Bootstrapped linear regression was used to assess the strength of the association between an individuals’ nutritional status and their anthropometric parameters. Calf circumference and NC presented the best predictive value with the highest sensitivity for diagnosing the risk of malnutrition in both institutionalized elderly men and women. The best cutoff points of NC to identify elderly nursing home residents at risk of malnutrition were 35.2 cm for females and 37.8 cm for males.
Conclusions: NC is associated with other classical anthropometric parameters and malnutrition status in elderly people living in nursing homes
Weed mapping in early-season sunflower fields using images from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
Revista oficial de la Asociación Española de Teledetección[EN] Weed mapping in early season requires of very high spatial resolution images (pixels <5 cm). Currently only Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) can take such images. The aim of this work was to evaluate the optimal flight altitude for mapping weeds in an early season sunflower field using a low-cost camera that took images in the visible spectrum at several flight altitudes (40, 60, 80 and 100 m). The object based image analysis procedure used for weed mapping was divided in two main phases: 1) crop-row identification, and 2) crop, weed and bare soil classification. The algorithm identified the crop rows with 100% accuracy at every flight altitude (phase 1) and it detected weed-free zones with 100% accuracy in the images captured at 40 and 60 m flight altitude. In weed-infested zones, the classification algorithm obtained the best results in the images captured at low altitude (40 m), reporting 71% of correctly classified sampling frames (phase 2). Most of errors committed (incorrectly classified frames) were produced by non-detection of weeds (negative false). Subsequent studies would consist in a multi-temporal study aiming to detect weeds are at a more advance growth stage. It could reduce the percentage of negative false in the classification.[ES] La discriminación de malas hierbas en fase temprana con técnicas de teledetección requiere imágenes re-motas de muy elevada resolución espacial (píxeles <5 cm). Actualmente, sólo los vehículos aéreos no tripulados (UAV) pueden generar este tipo de imágenes. El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar imágenes UAV tomadas con una cámara visible a diferentes alturas de vuelo (40, 60, 80 y 100 m) y cuantificar la influencia de la resolución espacial en la discrimi-nación de malas hierbas en fase temprana en un cultivo de girasol. Se aplicó un algoritmo de clasificación de imágenes basado en objetos, el cual se divide en dos fases principales: 1) detección de líneas de cultivo y 2) clasificación de cultivo, malas hierbas y suelo desnudo. El algoritmo resultó 100% eficaz en la detección de las líneas de cultivo en todos los ca-sos (fase 1), así como en la detección de zonas libres de mala hierba en las imágenes tomadas a 40 y 60 m de altura. En las zonas con presencia de malas hierbas, los mejores resultados se obtuvieron en las imágenes tomadas a baja altura (40 m), con un 71% de marcos de muestreo clasificados correctamente (fase 2). La mayoría de los fallos de clasificación cometidos en todas las imágenes fueron falsos negativos, es decir, malas hierbas no detectadas debido a su pequeño tamaño en el momento de la captura de las imágenes. Por tanto, el siguiente paso sería desarrollar un estudio multi-temporal para estudiar la detección de las malas hierbas en estados fenológicos más avanzados. Esto podría facilitar su discriminación en las imágenes y, por tanto, disminuir el porcentaje de falsos negativos en las clasificacionesEste trabajo fue financiado por el proyecto Recupera 2020 (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad y Fondos FEDER de la Unión Europea). La investigación de Jorge Torres Sánchez fue financiada por el programa FPI (CSIC y fondos FEDER).Peña, J.; Torres-Sánchez, J.; Serrano-Pérez, A.; López-Granados, F. (2014). Detección de malas hierbas en girasol en fase temprana mediante imágenes tomadas con un vehículo aéreo no tripulado (UAV). Revista de Teledetección. (42):39-48. doi:10.4995/raet.2014.3148SWORD39484
Clasificación de cultivos y de sus medidas agroambientales mediante segmentación de imágenes QuickBird
En la últimas décadas han ido creciendo considerablemente
los conocimientos y la sensibilización
sobre la protección al medioambiente en
muy diversas áreas, entre las que se encuentra la
Agricultura. El uso intensivo del laboreo ocasiona
graves daños medioambientales como la
erosión del suelo, la contaminación de las aguas
superficiales (escorrentía y colmatación de embalses),
el descenso del contenido de la materia
orgánica y de la biodiversidad de los suelos labrados,
y el aumento de la emisión de CO2 del
suelo a la atmósfera. Actualmente, la Unión Europea
sólo subvenciona a los agricultores que
cumplen lo que se conoce como “Medidas Agroambientales
o de Condicionalidad” cuyo diseño
ha estado dentro de las competencias de las Políticas
Agrarias Autonómicas, Nacionales y Europeas.
Estas medidas consisten en alterar el
perfil y la estructura del suelo lo menos posible,
dejando éste sin labrar y permanentemente protegido
por cubiertas vegetales (rastrojo) en el
caso de cultivos herbáceos (ej. trigo, maíz, girasol),
o por cubiertas vegetales vivas o inertes
(restos de poda) en el caso de cultivos leñosos
(principalmente cítricos y olivar). El seguimiento
del cumplimiento de estas medidas se realiza a través de visitas presenciales a un 1% de
los campos susceptibles de recibir ayudas. Este
método es ineficiente y provoca muchos errores
con la consiguiente presentación de un ingente
número de reclamaciones. Para subsanar esta
problemática, en este artículo presentamos los resultados
obtenidos en la clasificación de los cultivos
y las medidas agroambientales asociadas a
éstos en una imagen multiespectral QuickBird tomada
a principios de Julio de una zona típica de
cultivos en régimen de secano de Andalucía. Se
aplicaron 5 métodos de clasificación (Paralelepípedos,
P; Mínima Distancia, MD; Distancia de
Mahalanobis, MC; Mapeo del Ángulo Espectral,
SAM; y Máxima Probabilidad, ML) para la discriminación
de rastrojo de trigo quemado y sin
quemar, arbolado, carreteras, olivar, cultivos herbáceos
de siembra primaveral y suelo desnudo.
Además, la imagen es segmentada en objetos
para comparar la fiabilidad obtenida aplicando
los métodos anteriores partiendo tanto de píxeles
como de objetos como Unidades Mínimas de
Información (MIU). El análisis de los resultados
permite concluir que las clasificaciones de todos
los usos de suelo basadas en objetos claramente
mejoraron las basadas en píxeles, obteniéndose
precisiones (overall accuracy) mayores al 85%.
La elección de un método de clasificación u otro
influye en gran medida en la precisión de los
mapas obtenidos.
Debido a que la precisión del mapa temático
que necesitamos obtener ha de ser muy elevada
para tomar decisiones sobre Conceder / No conceder
las ayudas, sería interesante estudiar si el
incremento de la resolución espacial que se obtenga
gracias a la fusión de imágenes multiespectral
y pancromática de QuickBird para
obtener una imagen fusionada con resolución espacial
de la pancromática (0.7 m) y espectral de
la multiespectral (4 bandas) mejora la precisión
de cualquiera de los métodos de clasificación estudiadosSoil management in crops is mainly based on
intensive tillage operations, which have a great
relevancy in terms of increase of atmospheric
CO2, desertification, erosion and land degradation.
Due to these negative environmental impacts,
the European Union only subsidizes
cropping systems which require the implementation
of certain no-tillage systems and agro-environmental
measures, such as keeping the
winter cereal residues and non-burning of stubble
to reduce erosion, and to increase the organic
matter, the fertility of soils and the crop production.
Nowadays, the follow-up of these agrarian
policy actions is achieved by ground visits to
sample targeted farms; however, this procedure is
time-consuming and very expensive. To improve
this control procedure, a study of the accuracy
performance of several classification methods
has been examined to verify if remote sensing
can offer the ability to efficiently identify crops
and their agro-environmental measures in a typical
agricultural Mediterranean area of dry conditions.
Five supervised classification methods
based on different decision rule routines, Parallelepiped
(P), Minimum Distance (MD), Mahalanobis
Classifier Distance (MC), Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), and Maximum Likelihood
(ML), were examined to determine the most suitable
classification algorithm for the identification
of agro-environmental measures such as
winter cereal stubble and burnt stubble areas and
other land uses such as river side trees, vineyard,
olive orchards, spring sown crops, roads and bare
soil. An object segmentation of the satellite information
was also added to compare the accuracy
of the classification results of pixel and
object as Minimum Information Unit (MIU). A
multispectral QuickBird image taken in early
summer was used to test these MIU and classification
methods. The resulting classified images
indicated that object-based analyses clearly outperformed
pixel ones, yielding overall accuracies
higher than 85% in most of the classifications.
The choice of a classification method can markedly
influence the accuracy of classification
maps
Agreement between a simple dyspnea-guided treatment algorithm for stable COPD and the GOLD guidelines: A pilot study
Introduction: Guidelines recommendations for the treatment of COPD are poorly followed. This could be related to the complexity of classification and treatment algorithms. The purpose of this study was to validate a simpler dyspnea-based treatment algorithm for inhaled pharmacotherapy in stable COPD, comparing its concordance with the current Global Initiative for Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) guideline. Methods: We enrolled patients who had been diagnosed with COPD in three primary care facilities and two tertiary hospitals in Spain. We determined anthropometric data, forced expiratory volume in the 1st second (percent), exacerbations, and dyspnea based on the modified Medical Research Council scale. We evaluated the new algorithm based on dyspnea and exacerbations and calculated the concordance with the current GOLD recommendations. Results: We enrolled 100 patients in primary care and 150 attending specialized care in a respiratory clinic. There were differences in the sample distribution between cohorts with 41% vs 26% in grade A, 16% vs 12% in grade B, 16% vs 22% in grade C, and 27% vs 40% in grade D for primary and respiratory care, respectively (P=0.005). The coincidence of the algorithm with the GOLD recommendations in primary care was 93% and 91.8% in the respiratory care cohort. Conclusion: A simple dyspnea-based treatment algorithm for inhaled pharmacotherapy of COPD could be useful in the management of COPD patients and concurs very well with the recommended schema suggested by the GOLD initiative
Monolithic crystals for PET devices: optical coupling optimization
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A [Volume 731, 11 December 2013, Pages 288–294]
DOI 10.1016/j.nima.2013.05.049[EN] In this work we present a method to efficiently collect scintillation light when using monolithic
scintillator crystals. The acceptance angle of the scintillation light has been reduced by means of optical
devices reducing the border effect which typically affects continuous crystals. We have applied this
procedure on gamma detectors for PET systems using both position sensitive PMTs and arrays of SiPMs.
In the case of using SiPMs, this approach also helps to reduce the photosensor active area.
We evaluated the method using PMTs with a variety of different crystals with thicknesses ranging
from 10 to 24 mm. We found that our design allows the use of crystal blocks with a thickness of up to
18 mm without degrading the spatial resolution caused by edge effects and without a significant
detriment to the energy resolution. These results were compared with simulated data. The first results of
monolithic LYSO crystals coupled to an array of 256 SiPMs by means of individual optical light guides are
also presented.This work was supported by the Centre for Industrial Technological Development co-funded by FEDER through the Technology Fund (DREAM Project, IDI-20110718), the Spanish Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica (I+D +I) under Grant no. FIS2010-21216-CO2-01 and the Valencian Local Government under Grant PROMETEO 2008/114.González Martínez, AJ.; Peiró, A.; Conde, P.; Hernández Hernández, L.; Moliner Martínez, L.; Orero Palomares, A.; Rodríguez-Álvarez, M.... (2013). Monolithic crystals for PET devices: optical coupling optimization. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 731:288-294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2013.05.049S28829473
BNCT research activities at the Granada group and the project NeMeSis: Neutrons for medicine and sciences, towards an accelerator-based facility for new BNCT therapies, medical isotope production and other scientific neutron applications
The Granada group in BNCT research is currently performing studies on: nuclear and radiobiological data for BNCT, new boron compounds and a new design for a neutron source for BNCT and other applications, including the production of medical radioisotopes. All these activities are described in this report.Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC)
PS16163811PORRSpanish MINECO
FIS2015-69941-C2-1-PJunta de Andalucía P11-FQM-8229Campus of International Excellence BioTic
P-BS-64Spanish Fundacion ACSAsociación Capitán AntonioLa Kuadrilla de IznallozSonriendo se Puede Gana
Determinants and Differences in Satisfaction with the Inhaler Among Patients with Asthma or COPD
Satisfaction with the inhaler is an important determinant of treatment adherence in patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, few studies have compared these 2 groups to identify the factors associated with satisfaction with the inhaler. To assess and compare satisfaction with the inhaler in patients with asthma or COPD and to determine the variables associated with high inhaler satisfaction. A multicenter, cross-sectional study of 816 patients (406 with asthma and 410 with COPD) was conducted. Satisfaction was assessed with the Feeling of Satisfaction with Inhaler (FSI-10) questionnaire. All participants completed the Test of Adherence to Inhalers and either the Asthma Control Test (ACT) or the COPD Assessment Test (CAT). Overall, the asthma group was significantly more satisfied with the inhaler (mean [standard deviation] FSI-10 scores: 44.1 [6.5] vs 42.0 [7.7]; P <.001) and more satisfied on most (7 of 10; 70%) items. Patients with asthma were significantly more satisfied with the inhaler regardless of the adherence level or the type of nonadherence pattern. Younger age, good disease control (ACT ≥20 or CAT ≤10), previous inhaler training, and absence of unwitting nonadherence were all independently and significantly associated with high inhaler satisfaction. Age, disease control, and training in inhalation technique all play a more significant role than the specific diagnosis in explaining satisfaction with the device in patients with asthma and COPD. These findings underscore the need to provide better training and more active monitoring of the inhalation technique to improve patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, and clinical outcomes
Activation of pro- and anti-inflammatory responses in lung tissue injury during the acute phase of PRRSV-1 infection with the virulent strain Lena
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) plays a key role in porcine respiratory disease complex modulating the host immune response and favouring secondary bacterial infections. Pulmonary alveolar macrophages (PAMs) are the main cells supporting PRRSV replication, with CD163 as the essential receptor for viral infection. Although interstitial pneumonia is by far the representative lung lesion, suppurative bronchopneumonia is described for PRRSV virulent strains. This research explores the role of several immune markers potentially involved in the regulation of the inflammatory response and sensitisation of lung to secondary bacterial infections by PRRSV-1 strains of different virulence. Conventional pigs were intranasally inoculated with the virulent subtype 3 Lena strain or the low virulent subtype 1 3249 strain and euthanised at 1, 3, 6 and 8 dpi. Lena-infected pigs exhibited more severe clinical signs, macroscopic lung score and viraemia associated with an increase of IL-6 and IFN-γ in sera compared to 3249-infected pigs. Extensive areas of lung consolidation corresponding with suppurative bronchopneumonia were observed in Lena-infected pigs. Lung viral load and PRRSV-N-protein+ cells were always higher in Lena-infected animals. PRRSV-N-protein+ cells were linked to a marked drop of CD163+ macrophages. The number of CD14+ and iNOS+ cells gradually increased along PRRSV-1 infection, being more evident in Lena-infected pigs. The frequency of CD200R1+ and FoxP3+ cells peaked late in both PRRSV-1 strains, with a strong correlation between CD200R1+ cells and lung injury in Lena-infected pigs. These results highlight the role of molecules involved in the earlier and higher extent of lung lesions in piglets infected with the virulent Lena strain, pointing out the activation of routes potentially involved in the restraint of the local inflammatory response.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
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