A STUDY ON THE ADVANTAGES OF SHORT SEA SHIPPING AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN COMBINED TRANSPORT

Ulaştırma sistemlerinin gelişim süreci içerisinde karayolları, altyapısı kısa zamanda tamamlanan ve bu nedenle en çok tercih edilen taşımacılık şekli olurken, günümüzde bu taşımacılık şekli; ulaştırma kaynaklı hava kirliliği, ses ve görüntü kirliliği, ölümlü ve yaralanmalı kaza istatistikleri içerisinde en büyük paya sahiptir. Bu ulaştırma modunun sebep olduğu olumsuz etkileri en aza indirmek çoğu gelişmiş ve gelişmekte olan ülkelerin ulaştırma stratejilerinde yer almaktadır. Yapılan çalışmalarda, karayolundaki taşımacılık hacminin ve sebep olduğu olumsuz etkilerin, mevcut talebin diğer taşıma modlarına kaydırılarak azaltılabileceği konusunda görüş birliğine varılmıştır. Kombine taşımacılık, içinde bulunulan coğrafi koşullar da göz önünde bulundurularak, taşıma zincirinin büyük kısmı denizyolu ve demiryolunu içerdiği için modlar arası taşıma talebi aktarımında optimum çözüm şeklidir. Türkiye, yarımadaya benzer coğrafi yapısı ile kombine taşımacılık açısından avantajlı bir ülke konumundadır. Yatay taşıma rotalarında direkt olarak karayolu yerine deniz yolunu tercih edilebilir veya denizyolu ve demiryolu ağırlıklı kombine taşımacılık yapılması sağlanabilir. Türkiye'de kombine taşımacılık yeterince gelişememiş ve bahsi geçen avantajları iyi değerlendirilememiştir. Bu çalışmada, karayolu taşıma moduna alternatif olan kısa mesafe deniz taşıması ve kombine taşımacılık modu; emisyon, yakıt tüketimi, taşıma maliyetleri ve taşıma zamanı değişkenleri bazında karayolu taşıması ile karşılaştırılmış ve kombine taşımacılığın avantajlarının gösterilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Among the transportation modes, road has always been the most preferred form of transport mode due to having advantage of the time required for the infrastructure. However, it has the highest share in the percentage of transportation-related emissions, noise and visual pollution, fatalities and accidents with injuries. Minimizing the adverse effects that caused by the road is always on the transport strategy of most of the developed and developing countries. It was agreed in the studies that the current demand and the adverse effects caused by the volume of road transport can be reduced by shifting demands to the other modes of transportation. Combined transportation taking into consideration the geographical conditions that contains a large part of the sea and railway in transport chain is the optimum solution for the transfer of road transport demand to greener mode. Turkey is in an advantageous position with its peninsular structure in terms of combined transport. Combined transportation with sea, rail and road could be utilized even for parallel transportation of goods. Although it has potential in Turkey, combined transportation has not developed much yet. In this study, short haul sea transport and combined transport mode as an alternative to highway transport mode, is compared with road transportation in terms of emissions, fuel consumption, transportation time, transportation costs and the advantages of combined transport are highlighte

A foundation model for generalizable disease detection from retinal images

Medical artificial intelligence (AI) offers great potential for recognizing signs of health conditions in retinal images and expediting the diagnosis of eye diseases and systemic disorders 1. However, the development of AI models requires substantial annotation and models are usually task-specific with limited generalizability to different clinical applications 2. Here, we present RETFound, a foundation model for retinal images that learns generalizable representations from unlabelled retinal images and provides a basis for label-efficient model adaptation in several applications. Specifically, RETFound is trained on 1.6 million unlabelled retinal images by means of self-supervised learning and then adapted to disease detection tasks with explicit labels. We show that adapted RETFound consistently outperforms several comparison models in the diagnosis and prognosis of sight-threatening eye diseases, as well as incident prediction of complex systemic disorders such as heart failure and myocardial infarction with fewer labelled data. RETFound provides a generalizable solution to improve model performance and alleviate the annotation workload of experts to enable broad clinical AI applications from retinal imaging.</p

Abnormal behavior in mice mutant for the Disc1 binding partner, Dixdc1

Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) is a genetic susceptibility locus for major mental illness, including schizophrenia and depression. The Disc1 protein was recently shown to interact with the Wnt signaling protein, DIX domain containing 1 (Dixdc1). Both proteins participate in neural progenitor proliferation dependent on Wnt signaling, and in neural migration independently of Wnt signaling. Interestingly, their effect on neural progenitor proliferation is additive. By analogy to Disc1, mutations in Dixdc1 may lead to abnormal behavior in mice, and to schizophrenia or depression in humans. To explore this hypothesis further, we generated mice mutant at the Dixdc1 locus and analyzed their behavior. Dixdc1−/− mice had normal prepulse inhibition, but displayed decreased spontaneous locomotor activity, abnormal behavior in the elevated plus maze and deficits in startle reactivity. Our results suggest that Dixdc1−/− mice will be a useful tool to elucidate molecular pathophysiology involving Disc1 in major mental illnesses

A foundation model for generalizable disease detection from retinal images

Medical artificial intelligence (AI) offers great potential for recognizing signs of health conditions in retinal images and expediting the diagnosis of eye diseases and systemic disorders1. However, the development of AI models requires substantial annotation and models are usually task-specific with limited generalizability to different clinical applications2. Here, we present RETFound, a foundation model for retinal images that learns generalizable representations from unlabelled retinal images and provides a basis for label-efficient model adaptation in several applications. Specifically, RETFound is trained on 1.6 million unlabelled retinal images by means of self-supervised learning and then adapted to disease detection tasks with explicit labels. We show that adapted RETFound consistently outperforms several comparison models in the diagnosis and prognosis of sight-threatening eye diseases, as well as incident prediction of complex systemic disorders such as heart failure and myocardial infarction with fewer labelled data. RETFound provides a generalizable solution to improve model performance and alleviate the annotation workload of experts to enable broad clinical AI applications from retinal imaging

Diagnostic challenge for ovarian malignant melanoma in premenopausal women: Primary or metastatic?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In the ovary, metastatic malignant melanoma may be confused with primary malignant melanoma and presents a diagnosis challenge. Most cases are associated with disseminated diseases and poor prognosis. We present this case report of a metastatic ovarian malignant melanoma simulating primary ovarian cancer.</p> <p>Case report</p> <p>A 45-year-old premenopausal woman was incidentally found to have an abdominal mass, 3 years after removal of a cutaneous melanoma lesion. Ultrasound and CT scan revealed left two solid masses, which were found to be an ovarian tumor at laparotomy. Left oophorectomy was performed. Histopathology and immunohistochemistry showed melanoma metastasis to the ovary. Nine months later, the patient developed epilepsy and confusion. Magnetic Resonance Imaging showed unique Wright frontal lobe lesion. She underwent stereotactic radio surgery and dacarbazine monotherapy. For months later, the patient is died from disseminate disease progression.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Ovarian metastasis is an unusual presentation of cutaneous melanoma and the prognosis was dismal. As illustrated by this case report, a differential diagnosis of a metastatic malignant melanoma must be considered.</p

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Parental perceptions of children's oral health: The Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS)

BACKGROUND: Dental disease and treatment experience can negatively affect the oral health related quality of life (OHRQL) of preschool aged children and their caregivers. Currently no valid and reliable instrument is available to measure these negative influences in very young children. The objective of this research was to develop the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) to measure the OHRQL of preschool children and their families. METHODS: Twenty-two health professionals evaluated a pool of 45 items that assess the impact of oral health problems on 6-14-year-old children and their families. The health professionals identified 36 items as relevant to preschool children. Thirty parents rated the importance of these 36 items to preschool children; 13 (9 child and 4 family) items were considered important. The 13-item ECOHIS was administered to 295 parents of 5-year-old children to assess construct validity and internal consistency reliability (using Cronbach's alpha). Test-retest reliability was evaluated among another sample of parents (N = 46) using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). RESULTS: ECOHIS scores on the child and parent sections indicating worse quality of life were significantly associated with fair or poor parental ratings of their child's general and oral health, and the presence of dental disease in the child. Cronbach's alphas for the child and family sections were 0.91 and 0.95 respectively, and the ICC for test-retest reliability was 0.84. CONCLUSION: The ECOHIS performed well in assessing OHRQL among children and their families. Studies in other populations are needed to further establish the instrument's technical properties