Longitudinal visualization for exploratory analysis of multiple sclerosis lesions

In multiple sclerosis (MS), the amount of brain damage, anatomical location, shape, and changes are important aspects that help medical researchers and clinicians to understand the temporal patterns of the disease. Interactive visualization for longitudinal MS data can support studies aimed at exploratory analysis of lesion and healthy tissue topology. Existing visualizations in this context comprise bar charts and summary measures, such as absolute numbers and volumes to summarize lesion trajectories over time, as well as summary measures such as volume changes. These techniques can work well for datasets having dual time point comparisons. For frequent follow-up scans, understanding patterns from multimodal data is difficult without suitable visualization approaches. As a solution, we propose a visualization application, wherein we present lesion exploration tools through interactive visualizations that are suitable for large time-series data. In addition to various volumetric and temporal exploration facilities, we include an interactive stacked area graph with other integrated features that enable comparison of lesion features, such as intensity or volume change. We derive the input data for the longitudinal visualizations from automated lesion tracking. For cases with a larger number of follow-ups, our visualization design can provide useful summary information while allowing medical researchers and clinicians to study features at lower granularities. We demonstrate the utility of our visualization on simulated datasets through an evaluation with domain experts.publishedVersio

Online sea ice data platform: www.seaiceportal.de

There is an increasing public interest in sea ice information from both Polar Regions, which requires up-to-date background information and data sets at different levels for various target groups. In order to serve this interest and need, seaiceportal.de (originally: meereisportal.de) was developed as a comprehensive German knowledge platform on sea ice and its snow cover in the Arctic and Antarctic. It was launched in April 2013. Since then, the content and selection of data sets increased and the data portal received increasing attention, also from the international science community. Meanwhile, we are providing near-real time and archive data of many key parameters of sea ice and its snow cover. The data sets result from measurements acquired by various platforms as well as numerical simulations. Satellite observations of sea ice concentration, freeboard, thickness and drift are available as gridded data sets. Sea ice and snow temperatures and thickness as well as atmospheric parameters are available from autonomous platforms (buoys). Additional ship observations, ice station measurements, and mooring time series are compiled as data collections over the last decade. In parallel, we are continuously extending our meta-data and uncertainty information for all data sets. In addition to the data portal, seaiceportal.de provides general comprehensive background information on sea ice and snow as well as expert statements on recent observations and developments. This content is mostly in German in order to complement the various existing international sites for the German speaking public. We will present the portal, its content and function, but we are also asking for direct user feedback

The German National Registry of Primary Immunodeficiencies (2012-2017)

Introduction: The German PID-NET registry was founded in 2009, serving as the first national registry of patients with primary immunodeficiencies (PID) in Germany. It is part of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies (ESID) registry. The primary purpose of the registry is to gather data on the epidemiology, diagnostic delay, diagnosis, and treatment of PIDs. Methods: Clinical and laboratory data was collected from 2,453 patients from 36 German PID centres in an online registry. Data was analysed with the software Stata® and Excel. Results: The minimum prevalence of PID in Germany is 2.72 per 100,000 inhabitants. Among patients aged 1–25, there was a clear predominance of males. The median age of living patients ranged between 7 and 40 years, depending on the respective PID. Predominantly antibody disorders were the most prevalent group with 57% of all 2,453 PID patients (including 728 CVID patients). A gene defect was identified in 36% of patients. Familial cases were observed in 21% of patients. The age of onset for presenting symptoms ranged from birth to late adulthood (range 0–88 years). Presenting symptoms comprised infections (74%) and immune dysregulation (22%). Ninety-three patients were diagnosed without prior clinical symptoms. Regarding the general and clinical diagnostic delay, no PID had undergone a slight decrease within the last decade. However, both, SCID and hyper IgE- syndrome showed a substantial improvement in shortening the time between onset of symptoms and genetic diagnosis. Regarding treatment, 49% of all patients received immunoglobulin G (IgG) substitution (70%—subcutaneous; 29%—intravenous; 1%—unknown). Three-hundred patients underwent at least one hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Five patients had gene therapy. Conclusion: The German PID-NET registry is a precious tool for physicians, researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, politicians, and ultimately the patients, for whom the outcomes will eventually lead to a more timely diagnosis and better treatment

The Role of Consciousness and Intentionality in Perception, Semantics, Representations, and Rules

This paper discusses the role of consciousness in the distinctions between reception and perception, between a purely causal and a referential or denotational semantics, and between linguistic ability and linguistic analysis, including representations and rules. The first two topics are treated by designing several thought experiments based on the phenomenon of blindsight. It is argued that reception, causal semantics, and linguistic ability do not require consciousness, while a denotational semantics, a notion of truth and reality, linguistic analysis, forming representations and rules, and following these require consciousness and imagination, like any design activity does. They presuppose a linguistic or a picturing medium in which they are formed. The medium is interpreted, i.e. connected to the world, via a neural network background established in training as our linguistic ability, which does not contain symbolic or picturing representations. Rather it functions as a system of dispositions in the ability to interpret pictorial and linguistic representations and rules. Dispositions are potential neural activation patterns and themselves are not language-like or picture-like representations. It is further pointed out that rules and representations can only indirectly function in changing or forming linguistic ability by serving in consciously constructing series of examples, which in learning processes can be a basis, a training set, on which linguistic abilities then are formed or reformed. Table of Contents 1. Consciousness is necessary for denotational semantics. ....................................... 4 2. Consciousness is necessary for knowledge-relevant structural semantics..............14 3. Consciousness is necessary for creation and improvement of language...

Concept Formation, Remembering, and Understanding: Dynamic Conceptual Semantics and Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu

In the second chapter, the memory of episodes and facts is presented as a capacity for construing remembrances. Remembrances are not stored as ready-made representations or images in a kind of large library or box. Rather they are generated. In order to generate remembrances with the right situational constituent structure, the specific memory must consist of groups of neurones that function as indices for specific episodes and individuals, and that direct the construction of the remembrance. It is shown in a model how the specific memory can work as a capacity for constructing remembrances by connecting from out the indices and in a structured fashion to the general memory ii (consisting of conceptual indicators and their inter-connections) and to emotional, sensorial, and motor fields. The specific memory works in an unconscious mode as long as the circuit activation between conceptual indicators initiated and directed by the memory indices does not involve the sensorial and moto