Identity and acculturation : the case for Africa

Abstract: Despite the multicultural nature of African societies, there is still very little knowledge about acculturation and its association with identity on this continent Acculturation processes and outcomes are strongly associated with identity The objective of this article is to relate different models of acculturation (unidimensional, bi-dimensional, multidimensional) with the tri-dimensional model of identity (personal, relational, and social) Social identity components, such as ethnicity, religion, and culture, suggest a need for modification of Western models of acculturation to embrace the multifaceted realities of non-Western multicultural societies The social complexity and the continuous transition within African societies provides unique opportunities to examine and further develop the multidimensional acculturation models to take into account the social complexity which informs identity issues both within and across different African nations

The INCF Digital Atlasing Program: Report on Digital Atlasing Standards in the Rodent Brain

The goal of the INCF Digital Atlasing Program is to provide the vision and direction necessary to make the rapidly growing collection of multidimensional data of the rodent brain (images, gene expression, etc.) widely accessible and usable to the international research community. This Digital Brain Atlasing Standards Task Force was formed in May 2008 to investigate the state of rodent brain digital atlasing, and formulate standards, guidelines, and policy recommendations.

Our first objective has been the preparation of a detailed document that includes the vision and specific description of an infrastructure, systems and methods capable of serving the scientific goals of the community, as well as practical issues for achieving
the goals. This report builds on the 1st INCF Workshop on Mouse and Rat Brain Digital Atlasing Systems (Boline et al., 2007, _Nature Preceedings_, doi:10.1038/npre.2007.1046.1) and includes a more detailed analysis of both the current state and desired state of digital atlasing along with specific recommendations for achieving these goals

Sex-biased differences in the effects of host individual, host population and environmental traits driving tick parasitism in red deer

The interactions between host individual, host population, and environmental factors modulate parasite abundance in a given host population. Since adult exophilic ticks are highly aggregated in red deer (Cervus elaphus) and this ungulate exhibits significant sexual size dimorphism, life history traits and segregation, we hypothesized that tick parasitism on males and hinds would be differentially influenced by each of these factors. To test the hypothesis, ticks from 306 red deer-182 males and 124 females-were collected during 7 years in a red deer population in south-central Spain. By using generalized linear models, with a negative binomial error distribution and a logarithmic link function, we modeled tick abundance on deer with 20 potential predictors. Three models were developed: one for red deer males, another for hinds, and one combining data for males and females and including >sex> as factor. Our rationale was that if tick burdens on males and hinds relate to the explanatory factors in a differential way, it is not possible to precisely and accurately predict the tick burden on one sex using the model fitted on the other sex, or with the model that combines data from both sexes. Our results showed that deer males were the primary target for ticks, the weight of each factor differed between sexes, and each sex specific model was not able to accurately predict burdens on the animals of the other sex. That is, results support for sex-biased differences. The higher weight of host individual and population factors in the model for males show that intrinsic deer factors more strongly explain tick burden than environmental host-seeking tick abundance. In contrast, environmental variables predominated in the models explaining tick burdens in hinds.This study was supported by project AGL2010-20730-C02 (Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness) and EU FP7 grant ANTIGONE (278976). F. Ruiz-Fons is supported by a Juan de la Cierva contract from the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness. P. Acevedo is funded from the SFRH/BPD/90320/2012 post-doctoral grant by Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and European Social Fund.Peer Reviewe

The effects of host and environmental factors on tick parasitism in red deer are modulated by sex

Póster presentado al Joint 8th International Ticks and Tick-borne Pathogens and 12th Biennial Society for Tropical Veterinary Medicine Conference, celebradas en Cape Town (Sudafrica) del 24 al 29 de agosto de 2014.[Objectives]: Host individual, host population and environmental factors interact to modulate parasite abundance in hosts. Since size dimorphism, life history traits and segregation observed in red deer (Cervus elaphus) are linked to sex and this ungulate species constitutes a highly relevant host for adult exophilic ticks, it was hypothesized that tick parasitism on stags and hinds would be differentially influenced by each of these factors. [Method]: Ticks from 306 red deer were collected during 7 years in a red deer population. By generalized linear models we modelled tick abundance on deer with 20 potential predictors. Three models were developed: one for stags, another for hinds, and one combining data from both sexes and including >sex> as factor. Our rationale was that if tick burdens on males and hinds relate to the explanatory factors in a differential way, it is not possible to precisely and accurately predict the tick burden on one sex using the model fitted on the other sex, or with the model that combines data from both sexes. Our results showed that deer males were the primary target for ticks, the weight of each factor differed between sexes, and each sex specific model was not able to accurately predict burdens on the animals of the other sex. [Conclusions]: Results support for sex-biased differences in tick parasitism in red deer. The higher weight of host individual and population factors in the model for stags show that intrinsic deer factors more strongly explain tick burden than environmental host-seeking tick abundance. In contrast, environmental variables better explained tick burdens in hinds.We thank gamekeepers, project AGL2010‐20730‐C02 (Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness‐MINECO) and EU FP7 grant ANTIGONE (278976). F. Ruiz‐Fons & P. Acevedo are supported by MINECO.Peer Reviewe

Sex-biased differences in the effects of host individual, host population and environmental traits driving tick parasitism in red deer

The interactions between host individual, host population, and environmental factors modulate parasite abundance in a given host population. Since adult exophilic ticks are highly aggregated in red deer (Cervus elaphus) and this ungulate exhibits significant sexual size dimorphism, life history traits and segregation, we hypothesized that tick parasitism on males and hinds would be differentially influenced by each of these factors. To test the hypothesis, ticks from 306 red deer-182 males and 124 females-were collected during 7 years in a red deer population in south-central Spain. By using generalized linear models, with a negative binomial error distribution and a logarithmic link function, we modeled tick abundance on deer with 20 potential predictors. Three models were developed: one for red deer males, another for hinds, and one combining data for males and females and including "sex" as factor. Our rationale was that if tick burdens on males and hinds relate to the explanatory factors in a differential way, it is not possible to precisely and accurately predict the tick burden on one sex using the model fitted on the other sex, or with the model that combines data from both sexes. Our results showed that deer males were the primary target for ticks, the weight of each factor differed between sexes, and each sex specific model was not able to accurately predict burdens on the animals of the other sex. That is, results support for sex-biased differences. The higher weight of host individual and population factors in the model for males show that intrinsic deer factors more strongly explain tick burden than environmental host-seeking tick abundance. In contrast, environmental variables predominated in the models explaining tick burdens in hinds

Towards real-time 6D pose estimation of objects in single-view cone-beam X-ray

Deep learning-based pose estimation algorithms can successfully estimate the pose of objects in an image, especially in the field of color images. 6D Object pose estimation based on deep learning models for X-ray images often use custom architectures that employ extensive CAD models and simulated data for training purposes. Recent RGB-based methods opt to solve pose estimation problems using small datasets, making them more attractive for the X-ray domain where medical data is scarcely available. We refine an existing RGB-based model (SingleShotPose) to estimate the 6D pose of a marked cube from grayscale X-ray images by creating a generic solution trained on only real X-ray data and adjusted for X-ray acquisition geometry. The model regresses 2D control points and calculates the pose through 2D/3D correspondences using Perspective-n-Point(PnP), allowing a single trained model to be used across all supporting cone-beam-based X-ray geometries. Since modern X-ray systems continuously adjust acquisition parameters during a procedure, it is essential for such a pose estimation network to consider these parameters in order to be deployed successfully and find a real use case. With a 5-cm/5-degree accuracy of 93% and an average 3D rotation error of 2.2 degrees, the results of the proposed approach are comparable with state-of-the-art alternatives, while requiring significantly less real training examples and being applicable in real-time applications.Comment: Published at SPIE Medical Imaging 202

Investigating and Improving Latent Density Segmentation Models for Aleatoric Uncertainty Quantification in Medical Imaging

Data uncertainties, such as sensor noise or occlusions, can introduce irreducible ambiguities in images, which result in varying, yet plausible, semantic hypotheses. In Machine Learning, this ambiguity is commonly referred to as aleatoric uncertainty. Latent density models can be utilized to address this problem in image segmentation. The most popular approach is the Probabilistic U-Net (PU-Net), which uses latent Normal densities to optimize the conditional data log-likelihood Evidence Lower Bound. In this work, we demonstrate that the PU- Net latent space is severely inhomogenous. As a result, the effectiveness of gradient descent is inhibited and the model becomes extremely sensitive to the localization of the latent space samples, resulting in defective predictions. To address this, we present the Sinkhorn PU-Net (SPU-Net), which uses the Sinkhorn Divergence to promote homogeneity across all latent dimensions, effectively improving gradient-descent updates and model robustness. Our results show that by applying this on public datasets of various clinical segmentation problems, the SPU-Net receives up to 11% performance gains compared against preceding latent variable models for probabilistic segmentation on the Hungarian-Matched metric. The results indicate that by encouraging a homogeneous latent space, one can significantly improve latent density modeling for medical image segmentation.Comment: 12 pages incl. references, 11 figure

Spotted Fever Group Rickettsiae in Questing Ticks, Central Spain

These results demonstrate that SFG rickettsiae with public health relevance are found in ticks in central Spain as in other regions in Spain. In central Spain, the widespread distribution of tick vectors and possible wildlife hosts, the presence of persons in tick-infested recreational and hunting areas, and the transstadial and transovarial transmission of the pathogen in ticks may favor transmission to humans.Fil: Fernandez de Mera, Isabel G.. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: Ruiz-Fons, Francisco. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: de la Fuente, Gabriela. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: Mangold, Atilio Jose. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Santa Fe. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria, Rafaela; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina;Fil: Gortázar, Christian. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos; España;Fil: de la Fuente, José. Oklahoma State University; Estados Unidos de América

Spotted fever group rickettsiaein questing ticks, central Spain

Letter to the Editor.F. R.-F. and I.G.F.M. are supported by a Juan de la Cierva contract from the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness. Research supported by POII09-0141-8176 and European Union FP7 ANTIGONE (Anticipating the Global Onset of Novel Epidemics) project number 278976.Peer Reviewe