Astrocronología y evolución de la sedimentación marina del margen Atlántico del Corredor Bético y su relación con la crisis de salinidad del Mesiniense

[EN] This thesis gives an overview in understanding the Late Miocene evolution of Mediterranean-Atlantic gateways in general and new results and insights for the Betic Corridor in particular. Betic Corridor research was done in two ways: • By constructing a high-resolution age model for the Atlantic side of the corridor and linking changes in depositional environment to basin or corridor evolution and events in the Late Miocene Atlantic or Mediterranean region. • By improving the chronostratigraphic framework of Upper Miocene sediments in the western Betics and relating changes in depositional environment to corridor evolution. During the Late Miocene, when the strait of Gibraltar probably did not exist yet, the Betic Corridor through southern Spain formed, together with the Rifian corridor through northern Morocco, the marine connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Progressive restriction and finally closure of these marine gateways led to catastrophic changes in both Mediterranean sea-level and salinity. This event is known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC). Despite decades of research, the exact timing of closure, the geometry of the corridors, and the patterns of exchange through them still remain uncertain.[ES] Esta Tesis Doctoral brinda una visión general y plantea nuevas consideraciones para entender la evolución de los canales interoceánicos Atlántico-Mediterráneo durante el Mioceno tardío, se enfoca particularmente en la evolución del corredor Bético. La investigación se adelantó en dos etapas: • Inicialmente, se construyó un modelo de edad de alta resolución para el margen Atlántico del corredor Bético y se relacionaron los cambios en el ambiente de sedimentación de la cuenca del Guadalquivir con la evolución del corredor, y con los eventos regionales ocurridos durante el Mioceno tardío en el Atlántico Norte y en el Mediterráneo. • Adicionalmente, se mejoró el marco cronoestratigráfico para los sedimentos acumulados durante el Mioceno tardío en la región Bética occidental, y se correlacionaron los cambios en el ambiente de depósito con la evolución del corredor. Durante el Mioceno tardío, cuando el Estrecho de Gibraltar posiblemente aún no existía, la conexión entre el océano Atlántico y el mar Mediterráneo se estableció a través de dos canales: el corredor Bético a lo largo del sur de España, y el corredor Rifeño en el norte de Marruecos. La restricción progresiva y finalmente el cierre de dichos canales interoceánicos produjo importantes cambios tanto en la salinidad como en el nivel del Mediterráneo. Este evento se conoce como la Crisis de Salinidad del Mesiniense (CSM). A pesar de décadas de investigación enfocadas en entender la evolución geológica de los corredores, el momento exacto del cierre, su geometría y los patrones de interconexión de aguas aún son inciertos

Anton Engelbrecht 1487-1556 : eine Biografie und eine vollständige Edition der 'Acten des sunderlichen Sinodums die Oberkeit belangend (1533)'

Over Anton Engelbrecht is in de geschiedschrijving een overwegend negatief oordeel geveld. In deze biografische studie wordt speciale aandacht gegeven aan zijn humanisme en kritiek op de kerk van Rome, vervolgens op zijn oppositie tegen de ontwikkeling van de kerk in de Reformatie en zijn verdediging van de geloofsvrijheid. Engelbrecht, opgeklommen tot wijbisschop, moest in 1524 wegens lutherse sympathieën zijn positie opgeven, werd predikant in Straatsburg, maar werd in 1534 uit zijn functie gezet. Hij keerde terug naar de kerk van Rome, bij gebrek aan beter. De dissertatie berust op een uitgebreid literatuuronderzoek en onuitgegeven bronnen uit diverse archieven. Het gaat om historisch materiaal, dat voor verreweg het grootste deel niet eerder voor geschiedschrijving benut is. De beschikbare bronnen beperken het onderzoek en de evaluatie in hoge mate tot het vierde en vijfde decennium van Engelbrechts leven. In de Acten des sunderlichen sinodums die oberkeit belangend (1533) heeft Anton Engelbrecht zijn verdediging van de geloofsvrijheid op papier gezet. In het aanhangsel is de volledige tekst van deze Acten voor het eerst gepubliceerd, met annotaties

Accelerated respiratory-resolved 4D-MRI with separable spatio-temporal neural networks

Background: Respiratory-resolved four-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (4D-MRI) provides essential motion information for accurate radiation treatments of mobile tumors. However, obtaining high-quality 4D-MRI suffers from long acquisition and reconstruction times. Purpose: To develop a deep learning architecture to quickly acquire and reconstruct high-quality 4D-MRI, enabling accurate motion quantification for MRI-guided radiotherapy. Methods: A small convolutional neural network called MODEST is proposed to reconstruct 4D-MRI by performing a spatial and temporal decomposition, omitting the need for 4D convolutions to use all the spatio-temporal information present in 4D-MRI. This network is trained on undersampled 4D-MRI after respiratory binning to reconstruct high-quality 4D-MRI obtained by compressed sensing reconstruction. The network is trained, validated, and tested on 4D-MRI of 28 lung cancer patients acquired with a T1-weighted golden-angle radial stack-of-stars sequence. The 4D-MRI of 18, 5, and 5 patients were used for training, validation, and testing. Network performances are evaluated on image quality measured by the structural similarity index (SSIM) and motion consistency by comparing the position of the lung-liver interface on undersampled 4D-MRI before and after respiratory binning. The network is compared to conventional architectures such as a U-Net, which has 30 times more trainable parameters. Results: MODEST can reconstruct high-quality 4D-MRI with higher image quality than a U-Net, despite a thirty-fold reduction in trainable parameters. High-quality 4D-MRI can be obtained using MODEST in approximately 2.5 minutes, including acquisition, processing, and reconstruction. Conclusion: High-quality accelerated 4D-MRI can be obtained using MODEST, which is particularly interesting for MRI-guided radiotherapy.Comment: Code available at https://gitlab.com/computational-imaging-lab/modes

Exploring contrast generalisation in deep learning-based brain MRI-to-CT synthesis

Background: Synthetic computed tomography (sCT) has been proposed and increasingly clinically adopted to enable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based radiotherapy. Deep learning (DL) has recently demonstrated the ability to generate accurate sCT from fixed MRI acquisitions. However, MRI protocols may change over time or differ between centres resulting in low-quality sCT due to poor model generalisation. Purpose: investigating domain randomisation (DR) to increase the generalisation of a DL model for brain sCT generation. Methods: CT and corresponding T1-weighted MRI with/without contrast, T2-weighted, and FLAIR MRI from 95 patients undergoing RT were collected, considering FLAIR the unseen sequence where to investigate generalisation. A ``Baseline'' generative adversarial network was trained with/without the FLAIR sequence to test how a model performs without DR. Image similarity and accuracy of sCT-based dose plans were assessed against CT to select the best-performing DR approach against the Baseline. Results: The Baseline model had the poorest performance on FLAIR, with mean absolute error (MAE)=106$\pm$20.7 HU (mean$\pm\sigma$). Performance on FLAIR significantly improved for the DR model with MAE=99.0$\pm$14.9 HU, but still inferior to the performance of the Baseline+FLAIR model (MAE=72.6$\pm$10.1 HU). Similarly, an improvement in $\gamma$-pass rate was obtained for DR vs Baseline. Conclusions: DR improved image similarity and dose accuracy on the unseen sequence compared to training only on acquired MRI. DR makes the model more robust, reducing the need for re-training when applying a model on sequences unseen and unavailable for retraining.Comment: Preprint submitted to Physica Medica on 2023-02-16 for review. Also published in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.774264

Facilitating and hindering factors of personal recovery in the context of Soteria—A qualitative study among people with (early episode) psychosis

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to gain insight into patients' experiences of how personal recovery (PR) is facilitated or hindered in the context of an early episode psychosis setting (Soteria). We thereby aimed to contribute to the understanding of how care settings may promote or hinder the process of PR in people with (acute) psychosis. METHOD: This study used a qualitative method, consisting of semi-structured in-depth interviews with people who had been admitted to a Soteria house in the Netherlands. Interview transcripts were analyzed following the Grounded Theory approach. RESULTS: Five themes emerged from the data illustrating how Soteria facilitated or impeded PR. The experience of togetherness in contact with staff and peers, feeling at home, and being active facilitated PR, while the emphasis put on medication by staff was experienced as hindering, and attention to spirituality was missed. CONCLUSION: In addition to the literature that identified factors associated with PR in psychosis, the current study gives a sense of how this can be put into practice. By offering treatment within a normalizing, holding environment, with emphasis on equality, close contact, optimism, active structured days, open-mindedness toward spirituality, and the role of medication, PR can be facilitated without detracting from guideline-based treatment aimed at symptomatic recovery. Similarities with existing concepts are discussed