“As long as they behave themselves”: Heterosexual recuperation in South Africans’ talk about homosexuality

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CSC-GAN:Cycle and Semantic Consistency for Dataset Augmentation

Image-to-image translation is a computer vision problem where a task learns a mapping from a source domain A to a target domain B using a training set. However, this translation is not always accurate, and during the translation process, relevant semantic information can deteriorate. To handle this problem, we propose a new cycle-consistent, adversarially trained image-to-image translation with a loss function that is constrained by semantic segmentation. This formulation encourages the model to preserve semantic information during the translation process. For this purpose, our loss function evaluates the accuracy of the synthetically generated image against a semantic segmentation model, previously trained. Reported results show that our proposed method can significantly increase the level of details in the synthetic images. We further demonstrate our method’s effectiveness by applying it as a dataset augmentation technique, for a minimal dataset, showing that it can improve the semantic segmentation accuracy

Image-level harmonization of multi-site data using image-and-spatial transformer networks

We investigate the use of image-and-spatial transformer networks (ISTNs) to tackle domain shift in multi-site medical imaging data. Commonly, domain adaptation (DA) is performed with little regard for explainability of the inter-domain transformation and is often conducted at the feature-level in the latent space. We employ ISTNs for DA at the image-level which constrains transformations to explainable appearance and shape changes. As proof-of-concept we demonstrate that ISTNs can be trained adversarially on a classification problem with simulated 2D data. For real-data validation, we construct two 3D brain MRI datasets from the Cam-CAN and UK Biobank studies to investigate domain shift due to acquisition and population differences. We show that age regression and sex classification models trained on ISTN output improve generalization when training on data from one and testing on the other site

Children’s Gender Identity in Lesbian and Heterosexual Two-Parent Families

This study compared gender identity, anticipated future heterosexual romantic involvement, and psychosocial adjustment of children in lesbian and heterosexual families; it was furthermore assessed whether associations between these aspects differed between family types. Data were obtained in the Netherlands from children in 63 lesbian families and 68 heterosexual families. All children were between 8 and 12 years old. Children in lesbian families felt less parental pressure to conform to gender stereotypes, were less likely to experience their own gender as superior and were more likely to be uncertain about future heterosexual romantic involvement. No differences were found on psychosocial adjustment. Gender typicality, gender contentedness and anticipated future heterosexual romantic involvement were significant predictors of psychosocial adjustment in both family types

Histories of forced sex and health outcomes among Southern African lesbian and bisexual women: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Experiences of forced sex have been shown to be prevalent in Southern Africa. Negative outcomes of forced sex have been documented in general populations of women and men and include alcohol abuse, drug use, mental health problems, mental distress, sexual health problems and poor overall health. This study is the first to examine experiences of forced sex and associated health problems among lesbian and bisexual women in Southern Africa. METHODS: This study is based on data collected as part of a collaborative endeavor involving various Southern African community-based organizations. Lesbian and bisexual women in four Southern African countries participated in a cross-sectional survey, for a total study sample of 591. RESULTS: Nearly one-third of participants had been forced to have sex at some time in their lives. Thirty-one percent of all women reported to have experienced forced sex at least once in their life: 14.9% reported forced sex by men only; 6.6% reported forced sex by women only; 9.6% had had forced sexual experiences with both men and women. Participants experienced forced sex by men as more serious than forced sex by women; forced sex by women was more likely to involve intimate partners compared to forced sex by men. Participants who experienced forced sex by men were more likely to report drug problems, mental distress and lower sense of belonging. Forced sex by women was associated with drinking problems and mental distress. Having experienced forced sex by both men and women was associated with lower sense of belonging to the LGBT community, drug use problem and mental distress. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that forced sex among Southern African women is a serious issue that needs further exploration. Clinicians should be made aware of the prevalence and possible consequences of forced sex among lesbian and bisexual women. Policies and community interventions should be designed to address this problem

PINCH is an independent prognostic factor in rectal cancer patients without preoperative radiotherapy - a study in a Swedish rectal cancer trial of preoperative radiotherapy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The clinical significance between particularly interesting new cysteine-histidine rich protein (PINCH) expression and radiotherapy (RT) in tumours is not known. In this study, the expression of PINCH and its relationship to RT, clinical, pathological and biological factors were studied in rectal cancer patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>PINCH expression determined by immunohistochemistry was analysed at the invasive margin and inner tumour area in 137 primary rectal adenocarcinomas (72 cases without RT and 65 cases with RT). PINCH expression in colon fibroblast cell line (CCD-18 Co) was determined by western blot.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In patients without RT, strong PINCH expression at the invasive margin of primary tumours was related to worse survival, compared to patients with weak expression, independent of TNM stage and differentiation (<it>P </it>= 0.03). No survival relationship in patients with RT was observed (<it>P </it>= 0.64). Comparing the non-RT with RT subgroup, there was no difference in PINCH expression in primary tumours (invasive margin (<it>P </it>= 0.68)/inner tumour area (<it>P </it>= 0.49). In patients with RT, strong PINCH expression was related to a higher grade of LVD (lymphatic vessel density) (<it>P </it>= 0.01)</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>PINCH expression at the invasive margin was an independent prognostic factor in patients without RT. RT does not seem to directly affect the PINCH expression.</p

Comparison of bioinspired algorithms applied to cancer database

Cancer is not just a disease; it is a set of diseases. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide after lung cancer, and it represents the most frequent cause of cancer death in women (Thurtle et al. in: PLoS Med 16(3):e1002758, 2019, 1]). If it is diagnosed at an early age, the chances of survival are greater. The objective of this research is to compare the performance of method predictions: (i) Logistic Regression, (ii) K-Nearest Neighbor, (iii) K-means, (iv) Random Forest, (v) Support Vector Machine, (vi) Linear Discriminant Analysis, (vii) Gaussian Naive Bayes, and (viii) Multilayer Perceptron within a cancer database