Fisher's information and the class of f-divergences based on extended Arimoto's entropies

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Helioseismic Ring Analysis of CME Source Regions

We apply the ring diagram technique to source regions of halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to study changes in acoustic mode parameters before, during, and after the onset of CMEs. We find that CME regions associated with a low value of magnetic flux have line widths smaller than the quiet regions implying a longer life-time for the oscillation modes. We suggest that this criterion may be used to forecast the active regions which may trigger CMEs.Comment: Accepted for publication in J. Astrophys. Astr. Also available at http://www2.nso.edu/staff/sushant/paper.htm

ENT from afar : opportunities for remote patient assessment, clinical management, teaching and learning

Remote communication in ENT has been expanding, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Conferences and teaching have moved online, enabling easier participation and reducing financial and environmental costs. Online multi-disciplinary meetings have recently been instigated in Africa to discuss management of cases in head and neck cancer, or cochlear implantation, expanding access and enhancing patient care. Remote patient consultation has also seen an explosion, but existing literature suggests some caution, particularly because many patients in ENT need an examination to enable definitive diagnosis. Ongoing experience will help us to better understand how remote communication will fit into our future working lives, and also where face-to-face interaction may still be preferable.http://www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/coahj2022Speech-Language Pathology and Audiolog

Evaluation of Formant-Like Features for ASR

This paper investigates possibilities to automatically find a low-dimensional, formant-related physical representation of the speech signal, which is suitable for automatic speech recognition (ASR). This aim is motivated by the fact that formants have been shown to be discriminant features for ASR. Combinations of automatically extracted formant-like features and `conventional', noise-robust, state-of-the-art features (such as MFCCs including spectral subtraction and cepstral mean subtraction) have previously been shown to be more robust in adverse conditions than state-of-the-art features alone. However, it is not clear how these automatically extracted formant-like features behave in comparison with true formants. The purpose of this paper is to investigate two methods to automatically extract formant-like features, and to compare these features to hand-labeled formant tracks as well as to standard MFCCs in terms of their performance on a vowel classification task

Clinical and pathological features of acral melanoma in a South African population: A retrospective study

Background. Acral melanoma (AM) is a rare subtype of cutaneous melanoma (CM) that disproportionately affects skin of colour and carries a poorer prognosis than other melanoma subtypes. The poor prognosis is attributed to late diagnosis and subsequent relatively high Breslow thickness, but also to an intrinsic biological aggressiveness. Scientific data on AM from the developing world are limited and a need exists to characterise the disease further in the South African (SA) population.Objectives. To describe the clinical and pathological features of AM in an SA population.Methodology. A retrospective chart review characterised the demographics, clinical features and histological data of 66 patients diagnosed with AM between January 2010 and June 2016 at Tygerberg Academic Hospital, Cape Town, SA.Results. Sixty-six patients with AM were identified from 335 patients diagnosed with CM during the set time frame. The mean age (standard deviation (SD)) was 61.5 (12.5) years. Forty-two (63.6%) of the patients were female (male/female ratio 1:1.75). The majority of patients diagnosed with AM were black (48.5%), and the proportion of AM in black patients with CM was 80.0%. Fifty-six AMs (84.8%) were located on the foot and 10 (15.2%) on the hand. The median duration of the lesion before diagnosis was 10 months (range 2 - 84) and the mean (SD) tumour size was 3.8 (2.2) cm at diagnosis. The mean Breslow thickness of all AMs at diagnosis was 5.2 mm (median 4.2  mm, range 0 - 22). Stage of disease was known in 41 patients, 23 (56.1%) of whom had at least stage III disease at diagnosis. Mean Breslow thickness for foot and hand melanomas was 4.9 mm (range 0 - 22) and 6.9 mm (range 0 - 13.3), respectively (p=0.2552). The mean Breslow thickness in the black population was 6.3 mm compared with 4.2 mm and 4.3 mm, respectively, in the white and coloured populations (p=0.178). Patients from outside the Western Cape Province (WC) presented with a mean Breslow thickness of 6.6 mm (range 0 - 14.5) and patients from the WC with a mean Breslow thickness of 4.9 mm (range 0 - 22) (p=0.3602).Conclusions. AMs accounted for a significant proportion of all CMs diagnosed. Patients presented with an advanced stage of disease at diagnosis, and further studies are needed to further investigate the reasons for delayed diagnosis.

Atypical presentation of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever: Lessons learned

An atypical case of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever is presented. The diagnosis of the case in the presence of several comorbidities was complicated and illustrates the importance of maintaining a high index of suspicion for viral haemorrhagic fever in cases presenting with multisystem disease and an epidemiological history that could present opportunities for exposure to a haemorrhagic fever virus

An analysis of biopsies for suspected skin cancer at a tertiary care dermatology clinic in the Western Cape province of South Africa

CITATION: De Wet, J. et al. 2020. An analysis of biopsies for suspected skin cancer at a tertiary care dermatology clinic in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Journal of Skin Cancer, 2020:9061532, doi:10.1155/2020/9061532.The original publication is available at https://www.hindawi.comBackground. Skin cancer is a growing health concern worldwide. It is the most common malignancy in South Africa and places a large burden on the public healthcare sector. There is a paucity of published scientific data on skin cancer in South Africa. Objectives. To report the findings of biopsies performed in patients with suspected skin cancer attending the Tygerberg Academic Hospital (TAH) Dermatology outpatient department (OPD) in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Methodology: A retrospective chart review identified all patients who underwent a biopsy for a suspected skin cancer diagnosis between September 2015 and August 2016 at the TAH dermatology OPD. Results. A total number of 696 biopsies from 390 participants were identified, of which 460 were histologically confirmed as malignant lesions. The proportion of clinically suspected skin cancers that were histologically confirmed as cancer was 68%. The most commonly occurring malignancies were basal cell carcinoma (BCC) (54.8%), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) (18.9%), squamous cell carcinoma in-situ (SCCI) (8.0%), Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) (6.7%), malignant melanoma (MM) (6.1%), and keratoacanthoma (KA) (4.6%). The number needed to treat (NTT) for all cancers diagnosed and for MM was 1.5 and 4 respectively. BCC (89.3%) and KS (67.7%) was the most common skin cancer in the white and black population respectively. The ratio of BCC to SCC was 2.03. Conclusion. This study provides valuable scientific data on the accuracy of skin cancer diagnosis, distribution and patient demographics in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, on which further research can be based. The study highlights the burden of skin cancer on this specific population group and calls for standardised reporting methods and increased surveillance of skin cancers.https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jsc/2020/9061532/Publisher's versio