S100B brain expression and plasma concentrations in a preeclampsia rat model

Objective: To assess brain damage using the neuroinflammation marker S100B in a preeclampsia rat model.Methods: Non-pregnant and pregnant rats were infused with saline or low-dose-endotoxin on day 14 of pregnancy. S100B expression in the brain (immunohistochemistry) and S100B plasma concentrations (ELISA) were studied.Results: No differences in S100B expression in brain tissue were observed between the four groups. Pregnant endotoxin treated animals did not show increased levels of plasma S100B levels as compared with control pregnant rats, while significantly higher plasma S100B levels were found in non-pregnant endotoxin versus pregnant endotoxin infused rats.Conclusion: Pregnancy nor experimental preeclampsia, alter S100B in rat brain, or in plasma. Increased plasma S100B in non-pregnant endotoxin-treated rats may indicate brain injury in these rats, whereas pregnancy might be protective.</p

Data synthesis methods for semantic segmentation in agriculture : A Capsicum annuum dataset

This paper provides synthesis methods for large-scale semantic image segmentation datasets of agricultural scenes with the objective to bridge the gap between state-of-the art computer vision performance and that of computer vision in the agricultural robotics domain. We propose a novel methodology to generate renders of random meshes of plants based on empirical measurements, including the automated generation per-pixel class and depth labels for multiple plant parts. A running example is given of Capsicum annuum (sweet or bell pepper) in a high-tech greenhouse. A synthetic dataset of 10,500 images was rendered through Blender, using scenes with 42 procedurally generated plant models with randomised plant parameters. These parameters were based on 21 empirically measured plant properties at 115 positions on 15 plant stems. Fruit models were obtained by 3D scanning and plant part textures were gathered photographically. As reference dataset for modelling and evaluate segmentation performance, 750 empirical images of 50 plants were collected in a greenhouse from multiple angles and distances using image acquisition hardware of a sweet pepper harvest robot prototype. We hypothesised high similarity between synthetic images and empirical images, which we showed by analysing and comparing both sets qualitatively and quantitatively. The sets and models are publicly released with the intention to allow performance comparisons between agricultural computer vision methods, to obtain feedback for modelling improvements and to gain further validations on usability of synthetic bootstrapping and empirical fine-tuning. Finally, we provide a brief perspective on our hypothesis that related synthetic dataset bootstrapping and empirical fine-tuning can be used for improved learning.</p

Balloon-Expandable TAVR Bioprostheses: Area or Perimeter Sizing? A Prospective Pilot Study.

OBJECTIVE: In TAVR, area sizing is used for balloon-expandable (BE) valves, whereas self-expanding valves are sized to annulus perimeter. For BE valves, this seems illogical: these frames force a circular shape even on an ellipsoid annulus. This can potentially lead to relative undersizing when area sizing is being applied. We developed a perimeter-based sizing algorithm to evaluate the safety and feasibility of perimeter sizing for the Myval BE valve. METHODS: In this prospective single-center study, 60 patients with severe aortic stenosis treated with the Myval BE valve were included. Perimeter sizing was used with limited oversizing of 3.7% ± 1.3% compared to the annulus perimeter. After TAVR, clinical outcomes were evaluated at 30 days and 1 year. An echocardiographic follow-up took place at 30 days. RESULTS: At 30 days, the need for PPI and stroke occurred in 2% and 3% of the patients, respectively. Moreover, cardiac death and moderate-severe PVL were absent. At 1-year, cardiac death and stroke were observed in 3% and 8% of the patients, respectively. In 33.3% of the patients, a larger valve size was implanted compared to the valve size calculated by area sizing. CONCLUSIONS: Perimeter sizing with the Myval BE valve leads to substantial use of larger valve sizes and favorable clinical outcomes, with low PPI and the absence of significant PVL. A randomized controlled trial is being planned to prove the superiority of this alternative sizing method

Synthetic bootstrapping of convolutional neural networks for semantic plant part segmentation

A current bottleneck of state-of-the-art machine learning methods for image segmentation in agriculture, e.g. convolutional neural networks (CNNs), is the requirement of large manually annotated datasets on a per-pixel level. In this paper, we investigated how related synthetic images can be used to bootstrap CNNs for successful learning as compared to other learning strategies. We hypothesise that a small manually annotated empirical dataset is sufficient for fine-tuning a synthetically bootstrapped CNN. Furthermore we investigated (i) multiple deep learning architectures, (ii) the correlation between synthetic and empirical dataset size on part segmentation performance, (iii) the effect of post-processing using conditional random fields (CRF) and (iv) the generalisation performance on other related datasets. For this we have performed 7 experiments using the Capsicum annuum (bell or sweet pepper) dataset containing 50 empirical and 10,500 synthetic images with 7 pixel-level annotated part classes. Results confirmed our hypothesis that only 30 empirical images were required to obtain the highest performance on all 7 classes (mean IOU = 0.40) when a CNN was bootstrapped on related synthetic data. Furthermore we found optimal empirical performance when a VGG-16 network was modified to include à trous spatial pyramid pooling. Adding CRF only improved performance on the synthetic data. Training binary classifiers did not improve results. We have found a positive correlation between dataset size and performance. For the synthetic dataset, learning stabilises around 3000 images. Generalisation to other related datasets proved possible

Building capacity without disrupting health services: public health education for Africa through distance learning

The human resources crisis in Africa is especially acute in the public health field. Through distance education, the School of Public Health of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, has provided access to master's level public health education for health professionals from more than 20 African countries while they remain in post. Since 2000, interest has increased overwhelmingly to a point where four times more applications are received than can be accommodated. This home-grown programme remains sensitive to the needs of the target learners while engaging them in high-quality learning applied in their own work contexts

DiSCount: computer vision for automated quantification of Striga seed germination

Microbial Biotechnolog

Combined optical coherence tomography morphologic and fractional flow reserve hemodynamic assessment of non- culprit lesions to better predict adverse event outcomes in diabetes mellitus patients: COMBINE (OCT–FFR) prospective study. Rationale and design

Contains fulltext : 172158.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is a widely used tool for the identification of ischaemia-generating stenoses and to guide decisions on coronary revascularisation. However, the safety of FFR-based decisions in high-risk subsets, such as patients with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) or vulnerable stenoses presenting thin-cap fibro-atheroma (TCFA), is unknown. This study will examine the impact of optical coherence tomography (OCT) plaque morphological assessment and the identification of TCFA, in combination with FFR to better predict clinical outcomes in DM patients. METHODS: COMBINE (OCT-FFR) is a prospective, multi-centre study investigating the natural history of DM patients with >/=1 angiographically intermediate target lesion in three subgroups of patients; patients with FFR negative lesions without TCFA (group A) and patients with FFR negative lesions with TCFA (group B) as detected by OCT and to compare these two groups with each other, as well as to a third group with FFR-positive, PCI-treated intermediate lesions (group C). The study hypothesis is that DM patients with TCFA (group B) have a worse outcome than those without TCFA (group A) and also when compared to those patients with lesions FFR </=0.80 who underwent complete revascularisation. The primary endpoint is the incidence of target lesion major adverse cardiac events (MACE); a composite of cardiac death, myocardial infarction or rehospitalisation for unstable/progressive angina in group B vs. group A. CONCLUSION: COMBINE (OCT-FFR) is the first prospective study to examine whether the addition of OCT plaque morphological evaluation to FFR haemodynamic assessment of intermediate lesions in DM patients will better predict MACE and possibly lead to new revascularisation strategies. Trial Registration Netherlands Trial Register: NTR5376

Current status and future prospects of epidemiology and public health training and research in the WHO African region

Background To date little has been published about epidemiology and public health capacity (training, research, funding, human resources) in WHO/AFRO to help guide future planning by various stakeholders. Methods A bibliometric analysis was performed to identify published epidemiological research. Information about epidemiology and public health training, current research and challenges was collected from key informants using a standardized questionnaire. Results From 1991 to 2010, epidemiology and public health research output in the WHO/AFRO region increased from 172 to 1086 peer-reviewed articles per annum [annual percentage change (APC) = 10.1%, P for trend 90%) reported that this increase is only rarely linked to regional post-graduate training programmes in epidemiology. South Africa leads in publications (1978/8835, 22.4%), followed by Kenya (851/8835, 9.6%), Nigeria (758/8835, 8.6%), Tanzania (549/8835, 6.2%) and Uganda (428/8835, 4.8%) (P < 0.001, each vs South Africa). Independent predictors of relevant research productivity were ‘in-country numbers of epidemiology or public health programmes' [incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 3.41; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.90-6.11; P = 0.03] and ‘number of HIV/AIDS patients' (IRR = 1.30; 95% CI 1.02-1.66; P < 0.001). Conclusions Since 1991, there has been increasing epidemiological research productivity in WHO/AFRO that is associated with the number of epidemiology programmes and burden of HIV/AIDS cases. More capacity building and training initiatives in epidemiology are required to promote research and address the public health challenges facing the continen

Exploring partnership: Reflections on an international collaboration.

yesThis article explores some of the challenges involved in a collaborative mental health partnership, drawing on the reflections of two project members from the Chainama College of Health Sciences in Zambia and the Leeds Metropolitan University in England. The aim of the project was to support the education and training of the mental health workforce in Zambia as services shift from institutional to community-based care. The discussion is located within Gray’s ‘three-pronged dilemma’ and debates concerning the internationalisation agenda in social work and higher education. The conclusion emphasises the benefits and tensions of partnership working between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries