HYDROTHERMAL SYNTHESIS OF ORGANICALLY-LINKED POLYOXOMETALATES

One of the thrust areas of our research deals with exploratory synthesis of new inorganic-organic hybrid materials for energy storage. It is well-known that relevant to the research described later in this thesis, inorganic-organic hybrid solids studied thus far are largely made of coordination complexes where the organic molecules are acting like a ligand to coordinate around metal cations. In this research, we will employ polyoxometalate (POM) anions as an inorganic building block to replace otherwise oppositely charged metal cations in hopes to synthesize extended hybrid frameworks with rich redox chemistry. POM clusters are made of aggregates of transition-metal (TM) oxide units and can be employed as a charge reservoir during multi-electron chemical reactions involving multiple TM cations. These inorganic clusters possess an unmatched range of physical (such as magnetism) and chemical properties, acting as a set of transferable building blocks that can reliably be utilized in the formation of new materials with desired functionalities associated with versatile electronic structures.15,16 One of the challenges is of course to imagine how these anionic clusters could interact with organic molecules that are necessary for the formation of new hybrids. We anticipate, therefore, that the \u27coordination\u27 chemistry between POM anions and organic molecules is going to be different than that observed in the conventional hybrids based on metal cations. This thesis study will take an initial step to explore this new chemistry and to illustrate the structure and bonding of resulting solids for our continued research development in POM-based hybrids. The major focus of my study is about the synthesis and characterization of new extended solids made of, more specifically, polyoxovanadate (POV) and 4,4\u27-bipyridine (bpy) organic molecules through self-assembl

An improved dense V-network for fast and precise segmentation of left atrium

Knowledge of the underlying anatomy of the left atrium can promote improved diagnostic protocols and clinical interventions; therefore, automatic segmentation of the left atrium on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can support diagnosis, treatment and surgery planning of the heart. Due to the small size of the left atrium with respect to the whole MRI volume, most of the current deep learning approaches are based on cropping or cascading networks. Dense V-Network is an encoder-decoder model designed for volumetric images by introducing a specialised dense feature stack to the standard V-Net model. A minor manipulation in parameters of the Dense V-Network can make it suitable for the fast and efficient segmentation of the left atrium. We present a brief review showing the ability of the Dense V-Network to deal with the issue of class imbalance and the unavailability of a large dataset of left atrium segmentation. We conclude that Dense V-Network can be tailored to left atrium MRI segmentation showing the accuracy that can surpass current methods, potentially supporting cardiac diagnosis and surgery

A systematic literature review looking for the definition of treatment burden

Background: Treatment burden is an emerging concept in health care literature. It can complicate the patients' condition and perhaps result in poor adherence to treatment, which is linked to worse clinical outcomes. However, until now there is no definition for treatment burden recognized by all stakeholders. This review was prepared in order to find what available definitions for treatment burden are present in the literature.Methods: A systematic review of the literature was prepared looking for definitions of treatment burden in adult patients. Articles about adults aged 18 years or older from both genders with one or more medical conditions that contained a (new) definition of treatment burden were included. The search approach consisted of conventional systematic review database searching of multiple resources including Embase, Medline, PsycINFO, and CINAHL. Two independent reviewers screened the titles and abstracts, and full papers.Results: The searches resulted in 8045 records, of which 16 articles were included. Based on quality appraisal criteria, we decided that two definitions had better evaluations than the rest of the definitions, the first one defining it as the impact of the 'work of being a patient' on functioning and well-being, the second as the actions and resources they devote to their healthcare.Conclusion: We consider the definition concentrating on actions and resources patients devote to their healthcare, including difficulty, time, and out-of-pocket costs dedicated to the healthcare tasks such as adhering to medications, dietary recommendations, and self-monitoring as the one probably comprising most domains of Treatment Burden that we have found in our search in the existing literature. However, adding even more domains to this definition and differentiating explicitly between patient's perception and caregiver's perception in the definition could in our opinion result in an improved definition. Also patients' evaluation of this definition is commendable.</p

Reply to Alsarwani, R.M. Comment on &ldquo;Alghnam et al. The Association between Obesity and Chronic Conditions: Results from a Large Electronic Health Records System in Saudi Arabia. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 12361&rdquo;

We genuinely thank Dr. Alsarwani for his insights [...