Managing Chronic Low Back Pain

Chronic Low Back Pain remains a leading reason for ambulatory care visits, a leading primary diagnosis for ambulatory care visits, a leading cause of global burden, and the leading cause of lost workdays in the US. US Health expenditures for adults with chronic low back pain total over 102 billion. Chronic low back pain increases the risk of unemployment, poverty, obesity, smoking, and depression. Physical therapy (PT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have been proven to reduce chronic low back pain intensity and duration, improve function, reduce healthcare utilization and cost, and reduce sick time. This project investigated community resources to promote patient education and participation in PT and CBT, with an emphasis on low cost at home options.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1673/thumbnail.jp

Segmentation and classification of leukocytes using neural networks: a generalization direction

In image digital processing, as in other fields, it is commonly difficult to simultaneously achieve a generalizing system and a specialistic system. The segmentation and classification of leukocytes is an application where this fact is evident. First an exclusively supervised approach to segmentation and classification of blood white cells images is shown. As this method produces some drawbacks related to the specialistic/generalized problems, another process formed by two neural networks is proposed. One is an unsupervised network and the other one is a supervised neural network. The goal is to achieve a better generalizing system while still doing well the role of a specialistic system. We will compare the performance of the two approaches

The TW Hya Rosetta Stone Project IV: A Hydrocarbon-rich Disk Atmosphere

Connecting the composition of planet-forming disks with that of gas giant exoplanet atmospheres, in particular through C/O ratios, is one of the key goals of disk chemistry. Small hydrocarbons like C2H and C3H2 have been identified as tracers of C/O, as they form abundantly under high C/O conditions. We present resolved c–C3H2 observations from the TW Hya Rosetta Stone Project, a program designed to map the chemistry of common molecules at 15–20 au resolution in the TW Hya disk. Augmented by archival data, these observations comprise the most extensive multi-line set for disks of both ortho and para spin isomers spanning a wide range of energies, Eu = 29–97 K. We find the ortho-to-para ratio of c–C3H2 is consistent with 3 throughout extent of the emission, and the total abundance of both c–C3H2 isomers is (7.5–10) × 10−11 per H atom, or 1%–10% of the previously published C2H abundance in the same source. We find c–C3H2 comes from a layer near the surface that extends no deeper than z/r = 0.25. Our observations are consistent with substantial radial variation in gas-phase C/O in TW Hya, with a sharp increase outside ~30 au. Even if we are not directly tracing the midplane, if planets accrete from the surface via, e.g., meridional flows, then such a change should be imprinted on forming planets. Perhaps interestingly, the HR 8799 planetary system also shows an increasing gradient in its giant planets' atmospheric C/O ratios. While these stars are quite different, hydrocarbon rings in disks are common, and therefore our results are consistent with the young planets of HR 8799 still bearing the imprint of their parent disk's volatile chemistry

The TW Hya Rosetta Stone Project. II. Spatially Resolved Emission of Formaldehyde Hints at Low-temperature Gas-phase Formation

Formaldehyde (H2CO) is an important precursor to organics like methanol (CH3OH). It is important to understand the conditions that produce H2CO and prebiotic molecules during star and planet formation. H2CO possesses both gas-phase and solid-state formation pathways, involving either UV-produced radical precursors or CO ice and cold (lesssim20 K) dust grains. To understand which pathway dominates, gaseous H2CO's ortho-to-para ratio (OPR) has been used as a probe, with a value of 3 indicating "warm" conditions and <3 linked to cold formation in the solid state. We present spatially resolved Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of multiple ortho- and para-H2CO transitions in the TW Hya protoplanetary disk to test H2CO formation theories during planet formation. We find disk-averaged rotational temperatures and column densities of 33 ± 2 K, (1.1 ± 0.1) × 1012 cm−2 and 25 ± 2 K, (4.4 ± 0.3) × 1011 cm−2 for ortho- and para-H2CO, respectively, and an OPR of 2.49 ± 0.23. A radially resolved analysis shows that the observed H2CO emits mostly at rotational temperatures of 30–40 K, corresponding to a layer with z/R ≥ 0.25. The OPR is consistent with 3 within 60 au, the extent of the pebble disk, and decreases beyond 60 au to 2.0 ± 0.5. The latter corresponds to a spin temperature of 12 K, well below the rotational temperature. The combination of relatively uniform emitting conditions, a radial gradient in the OPR, and recent laboratory experiments and theory on OPR ratios after sublimation, led us to speculate that gas-phase formation is responsible for the observed H2CO across the TW Hya disk

Extraction of Knowledge Rules for the Retrieval of Mesoscale Oceanic Structures in Ocean Satellite Images

The processing of ocean satellite images has as goal the detection of phenomena related with ocean dynamics. In this context, Mesoscale Oceanic Structures (MOS) play an essential role. In this chapter we will present the tool developed in our group in order to extract knowledge rules for the retrieval of MOS in ocean satellite images. We will describe the implementation of the tool: the workflow associated with the tool, the user interface, the class structure, and the database of the tool. Additionally, the experimental results obtained with the tool in terms of fuzzy knowledge rules as well as labeled structures with these rules are shown. These results have been obtained with the tool analyzing chlorophyll and temperature images of the Canary Islands and North West African coast captured by the SeaWiFS and MODIS-Aqua sensors

The driver landscape of sporadic chordoma

Chordoma is a malignant, often incurable bone tumour showing notochordal differentiation. Here, we defined the somatic driver landscape of 104 cases of sporadic chordoma. We reveal somatic duplications of the notochordal transcription factor brachyury (T) in up to 27% of cases. These variants recapitulate the rearrangement architecture of the pathogenic germline duplications of T that underlie familial chordoma. In addition, we find potentially clinically actionable PI3K signalling mutations in 16% of cases. Intriguingly, one of the most frequently altered genes, mutated exclusively by inactivating mutation, was LYST (10%), which may represent a novel cancer gene in chordoma

Uncovering novel mutational signatures by de novo extraction with SigProfilerExtractor

Mutational signature analysis is commonly performed in cancer genomic studies. Here, we present SigProfilerExtractor, an automated tool for de novo extraction of mutational signatures, and benchmark it against another 13 bioinformatics tools by using 34 scenarios encompassing 2,500 simulated signatures found in 60,000 synthetic genomes and 20,000 synthetic exomes. For simulations with 5% noise, reflecting high-quality datasets, SigProfilerExtractor outperforms other approaches by elucidating between 20% and 50% more true-positive signatures while yielding 5-fold less false-positive signatures. Applying SigProfilerExtractor to 4,643 whole-genome- and 19,184 whole-exome-sequenced cancers reveals four novel signatures. Two of the signatures are confirmed in independent cohorts, and one of these signatures is associated with tobacco smoking. In summary, this report provides a reference tool for analysis of mutational signatures, a comprehensive benchmarking of bioinformatics tools for extracting signatures, and several novel mutational signatures, including one putatively attributed to direct tobacco smoking mutagenesis in bladder tissues

Circumstellar discs: What will be next?

This prospective chapter gives our view on the evolution of the study of circumstellar discs within the next 20 years from both observational and theoretical sides. We first present the expected improvements in our knowledge of protoplanetary discs as for their masses, sizes, chemistry, the presence of planets as well as the evolutionary processes shaping these discs. We then explore the older debris disc stage and explain what will be learnt concerning their birth, the intrinsic links between these discs and planets, the hot dust and the gas detected around main sequence stars as well as discs around white dwarfs.Comment: invited review; comments welcome (32 pages

Shape recognition through multi-level fusion of features and classifiers

Shape recognition is a fundamental problem and a special type of image classification, where each shape is considered as a class. Current approaches to shape recognition mainly focus on designing low-level shape descriptors, and classify them using some machine learning approaches. In order to achieve effective learning of shape features, it is essential to ensure that a comprehensive set of high quality features can be extracted from the original shape data. Thus we have been motivated to develop methods of fusion of features and classifiers for advancing the classification performance. In this paper, we propose a multi-level framework for fusion of features and classifiers in the setting of gran-ular computing. The proposed framework involves creation of diversity among classifiers, through adopting feature selection and fusion to create diverse feature sets and to train diverse classifiers using different learn-Xinming Wang algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed multi-level framework can effectively create diversity among classifiers leading to considerable advances in the classification performance

The Shedding of CD62L (L-Selectin) Regulates the Acquisition of Lytic Activity in Human Tumor Reactive T Lymphocytes

CD62L/L-selectin is a marker found on naïve T cells and further distinguishes central memory (Tcm, CD62L+) from effector memory (Tem, CD62L−) T cells. The regulation of CD62L plays a pivotal role in controlling the traffic of T lymphocytes to and from peripheral lymph nodes. CD62L is shed from the cell membrane following T cell activation, however, the physiological significance of this event remains to be elucidated. In this study, we utilized in vitro generated anti-tumor antigen T cells and melanoma lines as a model to evaluate the dynamics of CD62L shedding and expression of CD107a as a marker of lytic activity. Upon encounter, with matched tumor lines, antigen reactive T cells rapidly lose CD62L expression and this was associated with the acquisition of CD107a. By CD62L ELISA, we confirmed that this transition was mediated by the shedding of CD62L when T cells encountered specific tumor antigen. The introduction of a shedding resistant mutant of CD62L into the tumor antigen-reactive T cell line JKF6 impaired CD107a acquisition following antigen recognition and this was correlated with decreased lytic activity as measured by 51Cr release assays. The linkage of the shedding of CD62L from the surface of anti-tumor T cells and acquisition of lytic activity, suggests a new function for CD62L in T cell effector functions and anti-tumor activity