Stability effects on results of diffusion tensor imaging analysis by reduction of the number of gradient directions due to motion artifacts: an application to presymptomatic Huntington's disease.

In diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), an improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the fractional anisotropy (FA) maps can be obtained when the number of recorded gradient directions (GD) is increased. Vice versa, elimination of motion-corrupted or noisy GD leads to a more accurate characterization of the diffusion tensor. We previously suggest a slice-wise method for artifact detection in FA maps. This current study applies this approach to a cohort of 18 premanifest Huntington's disease (pHD) subjects and 23 controls. By 2-D voxelwise statistical comparison of original FA-maps and FA-maps with a reduced number of GD, the effect of eliminating GD that were affected by motion was demonstrated.We present an evaluation metric that allows to test if the computed FA-maps (with a reduced number of GD) still reflect a "true" FA-map, as defined by simulations in the control sample. Furthermore, we investigated if omitting data volumes affected by motion in the pHD cohort could lead to an increased SNR in the resulting FA-maps.A high agreement between original FA maps (with all GD) and corrected FA maps (i.e. without GD corrupted by motion) were observed even for numbers of eliminated GD up to 13. Even in one data set in which 46 GD had to be eliminated, the results showed a moderate agreement

Price-and-verify: a new algorithm for recursive circle packing using Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record Packing rings into a minimum number of rectangles is an optimization problem which appears naturally in the logistics operations of the tube industry. It encompasses two major difficulties, namely the positioning of rings in rectangles and the recursive packing of rings into other rings. This problem is known as the Recursive Circle Packing Problem (RCPP). We present the first dedicated method for solving RCPP that provides strong dual bounds based on an exact Dantzig–Wolfe reformulation of a nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programming formulation. The key idea of this reformulation is to break symmetry on each recursion level by enumerating one-level packings, i.e., packings of circles into other circles, and by dynamically generating packings of circles into rectangles. We use column generation techniques to design a “price-and-verify” algorithm that solves this reformulation to global optimality. Extensive computational experiments on a large test set show that our method not only computes tight dual bounds, but often produces primal solutions better than those computed by heuristics from the literature.Federal Ministry of Education and Researc

Recht auf Bildung als Voraussetzung für das Recht auf Entwicklung. Bildungspolitik zwischen globaler und lokaler Kultur

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Weltweite Migrationen und globale Entwicklungszusammenarbeit. Überlegungen zur Notwendigkeit und zu einer Politik langfristiger Migrations- und Fluchtursachenbekämpfung

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Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information

Attending where others gaze is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of social cognition. The present study is the first to examine the impact of the attribution of mind to others on gaze-guided attentional orienting and its ERP correlates. Using a paradigm in which attention was guided to a location by the gaze of a centrally presented face, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the gazer: gaze behavior was believed to result either from operations of a mind or from a machine. In Experiment 1, beliefs were manipulated by cue identity (human or robot), while in Experiment 2, cue identity (robot) remained identical across conditions and beliefs were manipulated solely via instruction, which was irrelevant to the task. ERP results and behavior showed that participants' attention was guided by gaze only when gaze was believed to be controlled by a human. Specifically, the P1 was more enhanced for validly, relative to invalidly, cued targets only when participants believed the gaze behavior was the result of a mind, rather than of a machine. This shows that sensory gain control can be influenced by higher-order (task-irrelevant) beliefs about the observed scene. We propose a new interdisciplinary model of social attention, which integrates ideas from cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as philosophy in order to provide a framework for understanding a crucial aspect of how humans' beliefs about the observed scene influence sensory processing

N=2 Conformal Superspace in Four Dimensions

We develop the geometry of four dimensional N=2 superspace where the entire conformal algebra of SU(2,2|2) is realized linearly in the structure group rather than just the SL(2,C) x U(2)_R subgroup of Lorentz and R-symmetries, extending to N=2 our prior result for N=1 superspace. This formulation explicitly lifts to superspace the existing methods of the N=2 superconformal tensor calculus; at the same time the geometry, when degauged to SL(2,C) x U(2)_R, reproduces the existing formulation of N=2 conformal supergravity constructed by Howe.Comment: 43 pages; v2 references added, acknowledgments update

Crystallization at Solvent Interfaces Enables Access to a Variety of Cocrystal Polymorphs and Hydrates

A crystal growth technique, interfacial cocrystallization, is demonstrated to be a simple and effective method for preparing multicomponent crystal forms. The technique is based on the generation of a liquid–liquid interface between two immiscible solutions of cocrystal-forming compounds, and its utility is demonstrated through the preparation of polymorphs and hydrates of caffeine cocrystals, involving three different hydroxy-2-naphthoic acids, including the formation of some with unexpected compositions

Quantifying the Detrimental Impacts of Land-Use and Management Change on European Forest Bird Populations

The ecological impacts of changing forest management practices in Europe are poorly understood despite European forests being highly managed. Furthermore, the effects of potential drivers of forest biodiversity decline are rarely considered in concert, thus limiting effective conservation or sustainable forest management. We present a trait-based framework that we use to assess the detrimental impact of multiple land-use and management changes in forests on bird populations across Europe. Major changes to forest habitats occurring in recent decades, and their impact on resource availability for birds were identified. Risk associated with these changes for 52 species of forest birds, defined as the proportion of each species' key resources detrimentally affected through changes in abundance and/or availability, was quantified and compared to their pan-European population growth rates between 1980 and 2009. Relationships between risk and population growth were found to be significantly negative, indicating that resource loss in European forests is an important driver of decline for both resident and migrant birds. Our results demonstrate that coarse quantification of resource use and ecological change can be valuable in understanding causes of biodiversity decline, and thus in informing conservation strategy and policy. Such an approach has good potential to be extended for predictive use in assessing the impact of possible future changes to forest management and to develop more precise indicators of forest health

Estimating the incidence of acute infectious intestinal disease in the community in the UK:A retrospective telephone survey

Objectives: To estimate the burden of intestinal infectious disease (IID) in the UK and determine whether disease burden estimations using a retrospective study design differ from those using a prospective study design. Design/Setting: A retrospective telephone survey undertaken in each of the four countries comprising the United Kingdom. Participants were randomly asked about illness either in the past 7 or 28 days. Participants: 14,813 individuals for all of whom we had a legible recording of their agreement to participate Outcomes: Self-reported IID, defined as loose stools or clinically significant vomiting lasting less than two weeks, in the absence of a known non-infectious cause. Results: The rate of self-reported IID varied substantially depending on whether asked for illness in the previous 7 or 28 days. After standardising for age and sex, and adjusting for the number of interviews completed each month and the relative size of each UK country, the estimated rate of IID in the 7-day recall group was 1,530 cases per 1,000 person-years (95% CI: 1135 – 2113), while in the 28-day recall group it was 533 cases per 1,000 person-years (95% CI: 377 – 778). There was no significant variation in rates between the four countries. Rates in this study were also higher than in a related prospective study undertaken at the same time. Conclusions: The estimated burden of disease from IID varied dramatically depending on study design. Retrospective studies of IID give higher estimates of disease burden than prospective studies. Of retrospective studies longer recall periods give lower estimated rates than studies with short recall periods. Caution needs to be exercised when comparing studies of self-reported IID as small changes in study design or case definition can markedly affect estimated rates