Blanket Method Research Articles

PLASTIC BLANKETS AS TEMPERATURE STABILIZER FOR PREMATURE LOW BIRTH WEIGHT (LBW) BABY

Introduction: Low birth weight (LBW) babies born via deep transperitoneal cesarean section (SCTP) with a gestational age of less than 34 weeks are highly susceptible to hypothermia. Hypothermia poses a significant risk of neonatal mortality, with LBW being one of the contributing factors. Thus, it is crucial to implement strategies to minimize heat loss and provide warmth, such as using plastic blankets. This case study aims to present the outcomes of implementing plastic blankets to manage hypothermia in LBW babies post-SCTP in the IBS Room at RSUP Dr. Kariadi Semarang. Methods: The study employs a descriptive design with a nursing care approach. The subjects included premature babies born via SCTP < 34 weeks. Three infant patients according to the criteria were included in the study. The measurement tool used was an observation sheet to monitor axillary temperature. The intervention plan involved providing plastic blankets to all three subjects to prevent hypothermia. Following birth, the infants were placed in an infant warmer, cleaned of mucus, wrapped in a plastic bag with a cloth cap on the head, underwent neonate resuscitation, and then covered with cloth while awaiting transfer to the room. Results: The findings indicate that the plastic blanket intervention increased the post-SCTP LBW temperature by an average of 0.50°C based on thermometer measurements and an average increase of 0.48°C based on infant warmer measurements. Conclusions: Therefore, it is recommended that healthcare professionals, particularly perinatology nurses, consider employing the plastic blanket method in managing hypothermia in LBW babies post-SCTP to maintain thermoregulation.

Effects of Porosity on CFRP Repair Performance with Aerospace Applications

On-site repairs of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites, wet layup repairs with heat blanket method play a critical and practical role for the composite defects that occur in production and assembly. The porosity level should be controlled for the repair parts with heat blanket method since the pressure value, which enables ply consolidation, reduce the risk of delamination in the composite layers, is less or zero with the wet layup repaired parts with heat blanket compared to repair parts with autoclave pressure.
 In this experimental study, an investigation was conducted regarding the tensile strength change of prepreg structures using wet lay-up repair techniques with heat blanket based on the porosity, with a specific focus on stepped-repaired carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminates.
 This work aims to understand the strength and the associated failure mechanisms of on-site repaired woven carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminates through experiments. The Automatic Ultrasonic Pulse Echo Inspection Method was utilized to see whether porosity level of each repaired samples is within allowable design limits for this purpose. Prepreg structure's repairs using wet lay-up produced according to standardized aerospace procedures were tested under uniaxial tension per ASTM 3039D. The relationship between attenuation difference (ΔdB) and tensile fracture values has been explored, with a focus on investigating the associated failure mechanisms. Initially, a 60% strength recovery was observed for repairs with an 8-decibel difference. However, as the decibel difference increased, the strength recovery gradually decreased, ultimately reaching 45.2%.

CRIMINAL LIABILITY FOR SMUGGLING IN UKRAINE: SOME ISSUES OF THEORY AND PRACTICE

The article highlights certain problematic aspects related to the legal assessment of certain features of crimes provided for in Articles 201, 201-1, 305 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Attention has been drawn to the high level of scientific study of this issue. The content of the social danger of smuggling has been analyzed; the negative impact of the researched crimes on the relations of the market economy in Ukraine has been shown. The features of the object and the subject of the respective encroachments have also been clarified, and the special legal status of certain objects moving across the customs border of Ukraine has been emphasized. Attention has been also focused on the importance of taking into account the blanket method of describing dispositions of “contraband” prohibitions. It has been emphasized on the importance of taking into account the provisions of the Customs Code of Ukraine, as well as by-laws, which detail the procedure for moving certain items across the customs border of Ukraine, when qualifying the crimes investigated in the article. Finally, the controversy in criminal law science and the inconsistency of judicial practice in determining the moment of the end of smuggling have been demonstrated.

Fractal Dimension Analysis of Pixel Dynamic Contrast Enhanced-Magnetic Resonance Imaging Pharmacokinetic Parameters for Discrimination of Benign and Malignant Breast Lesions

Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women worldwide. However, its diagnosis mostly depends on visual examination of radiologic images, leading to an overdiagnosis with substantial costs. Therefore, a quantitative approach such as dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) through pharmacokinetic (PK) modeling is required for reliable analysis. As PK parameters lack information on parameter heterogeneity, texture-based analysis is required to quantify PK parameter heterogeneity. Therefore, this study focused on determining the usefulness of fractal dimension (FD) as a potential imaging biomarker of tumor heterogeneity for discriminating benign and malignant breast lesions. Parametric maps for PK parameters, extravasation rate of contrast agent from blood plasma to extravascular extracellular space (Ktrans) and volume fraction of extravascular extracellular space (ve), were generated for the regions of interest (ROIs) under the standard model using 18 lesions. Then, tumor ROI and pixel DCE-MRI time-course data were analyzed to extract pixel values of Ktrans and ve. For each ROI, FD values of Ktrans and ve were computed using the blanket method. The FD values of Ktrans for benign and malignant lesions varied from 2.96 to 3.49 and from 2.37 to 3.16, respectively, whereas FD values of ve for benign and malignant lesions varied from 3.01 to 5.15 and 2.42 to 3.44, respectively. There were significant differences in FD values derived from Ktrans parametric maps (P = .0053) and ve parametric maps (P = .0271) between benign and malignant lesions according to the statistical analysis. Incorporating texture heterogeneity changes in breast lesions captured by FD with quantitative DCE-MRI parameters generated under the standard model is a potential marker for prediction of malignant lesions.

Experimental investigation of flow pattern over a fully developed bed at a 60° river confluence in large floods

River confluences have a complex flow and sedimentation pattern that have vital influences on the hydraulic and bed morphology of river reach and the surrounding area. Confluences can be observed in waterways with various situations such as live bed conditions. This condition is a hydro-morphological situation with a high densimetric Froude number, i.e., bed load transport is supplied from upstream. According to the literature review, most of the experimental studies investigate the flow pattern on the flatbed and not on the developed riverbed, or/and in the low densimetric Froude number, or/and without supplying the sediment from upstream. Therefore, in the present study for the quantification of the flow pattern under these conditions, each developed bed was fixed with the cement blanket method in the laboratory. Then, the 3D velocity was measured at specific points at the confluence. The current study was designed to understand the flow pattern corresponding to the river bed behavior in the case of large floods. It is expected that the morphological features downstream of the confluence have a different pattern than the ones in the condition described in other literature. Thus, this paper describes briefly what are the different bed features and investigates the corresponding flow pattern. The results of the flow pattern on the developed bed show that all zones at the river confluence can be observed except the point bar due to the approximate equality of the mean longitudinal velocity of the separation zone and the main channel upstream of the confluence. Moreover, results show that by increasing the bedload ratio (sediment discharge to water discharge of the main channel of upstream of the confluence) from 0 to 3 × 10−4, flow deflection to the outer bank of the channel decreased down to 45%, the stagnation equivalent area decreased down to 2.5 times, and bed shear stress decreased down to 40%. Hence, the momentum of lateral flow decreased with increasing bedload. Besides, the recovery zone occurred at a longer distance after the confluence compared to the case without bedload. Hence, the location of the maximum velocity zone, vortices, and secondary flows changed downstream of the confluence, by changing the bed load value.

Detection of Target Genes for Drug Repurposing to Treat Skeletal Muscle Atrophy in Mice Flown in Spaceflight.

Skeletal muscle atrophy is a common condition in aging, diabetes, and in long duration spaceflights due to microgravity. This article investigates multi-modal gene disease and disease drug networks via link prediction algorithms to select drugs for repurposing to treat skeletal muscle atrophy. Key target genes that cause muscle atrophy in the left and right extensor digitorum longus muscle tissue, gastrocnemius, quadriceps, and the left and right soleus muscles are detected using graph theoretic network analysis, by mining the transcriptomic datasets collected from mice flown in spaceflight made available by GeneLab. We identified the top muscle atrophy gene regulators by the Pearson correlation and Bayesian Markov blanket method. The gene disease knowledge graph was constructed using the scalable precision medicine knowledge engine. We computed node embeddings, random walk measures from the networks. Graph convolutional networks, graph neural networks, random forest, and gradient boosting methods were trained using the embeddings, network features for predicting links and ranking top gene-disease associations for skeletal muscle atrophy. Drugs were selected and a disease drug knowledge graph was constructed. Link prediction methods were applied to the disease drug networks to identify top ranked drugs for therapeutic treatment of skeletal muscle atrophy. The graph convolution network performs best in link prediction based on receiver operating characteristic curves and prediction accuracies. The key genes involved in skeletal muscle atrophy are associated with metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. The drugs selected for repurposing using the graph convolution network method were nutrients, corticosteroids, anti-inflammatory medications, and others related to insulin.

Construction simulation of large-spacing-two-well salt cavern with gas blanket and stability evaluation of cavern for gas storage

The single well or small-spacing two-well technologies with oil blanket has been gradually applied to construct salt cavern storage in recent years. In order to solve the problems of low efficiency, oil blanket sealing failure, cavern deformity, roof collapses, small volume and brine pollution in salt cavern construction. In this study, a large-spacing two-well (Wellhead spacing is greater than 20 m) with gas blanket (LSTW-GB) method was proposed to construct salt cavern. Firstly, through indoor physical simulation experiment, the feasibility of the LSTW-GB to construct cavern is verified and discussed. The experimental results show that increasing the two-well-spacing effectively increases the effective cavern volume, improve the cavern construction rate and obtain clear brine, but the increase of two-well-spacing will also increase the difficulty of connecting the two wells, so more attention should focus on the technology improvement on connecting the two wells. Secondly, combined with the experimental observations and field geological data in Jintan bedded salt rock of China, the stability of the LSTW-cavern for gas storage under different ratios of long axis to height (RLH) was analyzed by numerical simulations. The simulation results show that as the RLH increasing, the stability of the LSTW-cavern gradually decreases. In addition, under low-internal-pressure operation, the cavern is most likely to lose its stability, so much more attention should be paid to designing the value and duration of minimum operating internal pressure (Pmin). Finally, the working conditions of the LSTW-cavern gas storage are optimized, and it is proposed that the Pmin of the gas storage in the LSTW-cavern should be 33% ∼ 38% of the gravity stress at the casing shoe when RLH varies from 1.60 to 3.10. Comprehensive research results show that the LSTW-cavern has a good application prospect in the construction of gas storage of salt rock in China.

An Integrative Network Science and Artificial Intelligence Drug Repurposing Approach for Muscle Atrophy in Spaceflight Microgravity.

Muscle atrophy is a side effect of several terrestrial diseases which also affects astronauts severely in space missions due to the reduced gravity in spaceflight. An integrative graph-theoretic network-based drug repurposing methodology quantifying the interplay of key gene regulations and protein–protein interactions in muscle atrophy conditions is presented. Transcriptomic datasets from mice in spaceflight from GeneLab have been extensively mined to extract the key genes that cause muscle atrophy in organ muscle tissues such as the thymus, liver, and spleen. Top muscle atrophy gene regulators are selected by Bayesian Markov blanket method and gene–disease knowledge graph is constructed using the scalable precision medicine knowledge engine. A deep graph neural network is trained for predicting links in the network. The top ranked diseases are identified and drugs are selected for repurposing using drug bank resource. A disease drug knowledge graph is constructed and the graph neural network is trained for predicting new drugs. The results are compared with machine learning methods such as random forest, and gradient boosting classifiers. Network measure based methods shows that preferential attachment has good performance for link prediction in both the gene–disease and disease–drug graphs. The receiver operating characteristic curves, and prediction accuracies for each method show that the random walk similarity measure and deep graph neural network outperforms the other methods. Several key target genes identified by the graph neural network are associated with diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and neural disorders. The novel link prediction approach applied to the disease drug knowledge graph identifies the Monoclonal Antibodies drug therapy as suitable candidate for drug repurposing for spaceflight induced microgravity. There are a total of 21 drugs identified as possible candidates for treating muscle atrophy. Graph neural network is a promising deep learning architecture for link prediction from gene–disease, and disease–drug networks.

Detection of Genes in Arabidopsis thaliana L. Responding to DNA Damage from Radiation and Other Stressors in Spaceflight

Ionizing radiation present in extraterrestrial environment is an important factor that affects plants grown in spaceflight. Pearson correlation-based gene regulatory network inferencing from transcriptional responses of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana L. grown in real and simulated spaceflight conditions acquired by GeneLab, followed by topological and spectral analysis of the networks is performed. Gene regulatory subnetworks are extracted for DNA damage response processes. Analysis of radiation-induced ATR/ATM protein–protein interactions in Arabidopsis reveals interaction profile similarities under low radiation doses suggesting novel mechanisms of DNA damage response involving non-radiation-induced genes regulating other stress responses in spaceflight. The Jaccard similarity index shows that the genes AT2G31320, AT4G21070, AT2G46610, and AT3G27060 perform similar functions under low doses of radiation. The incremental association Markov blanket method reveals non-radiation-induced genes linking DNA damage response to root growth and plant development. Eighteen radiation-induced genes and sixteen non-radiation-induced gene players have been identified from the ATR/ATM protein interaction complexes involved in heat, salt, water, osmotic stress responses, and plant organogenesis. Network analysis and logistic regression ranking detected AT3G27060, AT1G07500, AT5G66140, and AT3G21280 as key gene players involved in DNA repair processes. High atomic weight, high energy, and gamma photon radiation result in higher intensity of DNA damage response in the plant resulting in elevated values for several network measures such as spectral gap and girth. Nineteen flavonoid and carotenoid pigment activations involved in pigment biosynthesis processes are identified in low radiation dose total light spaceflight environment but are not found to have significant regulations under very high radiation dose environment.

ON THE ISSUE OF THE BLANKET METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING CRIMINAL LAW PROHIBITIONS (BASED ON PROVISIONS OF SECTION VII OF THE SPECIAL PART OF THE CRIMINAL CODE OF UKRAINE)

The article examines the blanket method for describing dispositions of criminal law prohibitions, in particular, the norms of Section VII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. It has been established that when using blanket dispositions, the content of a criminal act is determined both by the law on criminal liability and by the norms of other branches of law; at the same time, such dispositions do not replace criminal law provisions, while performing in such cases auxiliary, clarifying function. It is determined that the blanket way of describing economic articles of criminal legislation is due to the special meaning of a criminal prohibition, which protects the economy as a regulator of relations by non-criminal legal acts. In the norms of the Criminal Code of Ukraine on economic crimes considered in the article, the domestic legislator pragmatically concretized the semantic links between the norm of the criminal and special regulatory law, which should be taken positively. It was established that in this way, firstly, the limits of the volume of unlawful behavior are clearly established, beyond which the representatives of law enforcement practice are strictly prohibited from going out during the criminal-legal assessment of the deed. At the same time, here, to a certain extent, the work of the law enforcement officer is facilitated, since normative acts of a non-criminal direction have been concretized, which should be relied upon in the investigation and further judicial proceedings. Secondly, such a normatively specific approach to the construction of criminal law prohibitions obviously contributes to the unification and simplification of approaches to socially dangerous acts in the economic sphere. It shows that the state does not need numerous laws and regulations, which are textually, chronologically and legally distorted. It has been established defined that the reform of the object and system of norms on crimes against the order of economic activity should have as its main task the careful development of specific criminal law norms in order to create the cross-sectoral mechanism of legal regulation. Key words: blanket disposition, economic crime, legal act, disposition, regulatory law.

Институт законодательной инициативы граждан в субъектах Российской Федерации

The article considers the issues of legal regulation of granting citizens the right to implement legislative initiatives and the consolidation of this right in the constitutions (charters) of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. It was founded that the federal legislator, while providing the regions with the opportunity to empower citizens with the right to legislative initiative, did not regulate the issues of determining the conditions and procedure for realizing by citizens of this right. A variety of practices of legal regulation and constitutional consolidation of this institution based on the analysis of the constitutions (charters) of the regions were identified. In particular, three forms of legislative initiative of citizens were identified - a draft law, a legislative proposal, an amendment to a bill. It is proposed to consider a legislative proposal as an independent legal institution. It has been established that granting citizens the right to amend bills is aimed at developing the democratization of lawmaking process, so it was proposed to consolidate this right in the legislation of the constituent entities of the federation. But taking into account the peculiarities of the parliamentary discussion of the bill in the second reading, it was recommended to simplify the procedure of amending bills for citizens by reducing the number of signatures of citizens supporting this initiative. It has been established that regional legislators use a blanket method of securing the norms on the right to legislative initiative of citizens in the constitutions (charters) of the regions in most of the cases. The absolute number of citizens or the percentage of the total number of citizens who have the right to vote is used in the regions to determine the number of citizens required for the implementation of a legislative initiative. It is proposed to regulate the mechanism for implementing the institution of citizens’ legislative initiative at the federal level in order to expand the opportunity for citizens to participate in legislative activities and eliminate contradictions in the regional legislation.

Chemical realkalization for carbonated concrete treatment: Alkaline solutions and application methods

Realkalization is a carbonated concrete treatment that aims to raise concrete pH. Chemical realkalization occurs by contact of an alkaline solution with a concrete surface. The result of this contact is alkaline solution absorption and diffusion into the concrete. This paper aims to test the efficiency of six alkaline solutions and four application methods. The alkaline solutions used were KOH, NaOH, triple, commercial, Ca(OH)2 and lime. The application methods were spray, brush, covering and immersion. Compressive strength and capillary absorption tests were performed. The KOH solution had the highest realkalization rate in all applied cases. The KOH solution was the most efficient. This solution took 14 days to realkalize the carbonated concrete (16.25 mm). The triple, commercial and NaOH solutions took 31 days to realkalize the same thickness of carbonated concrete (16.25 mm). The Ca(OH)2 and lime solutions were not capable of realkalizing carbonated concrete, even after 9 months of treatment. Spray and brush methods showed low efficiency and immersion and covering methods were efficient. The average realization rate after applying the spray and brush methods is 1.56 mm. The immersion and blanket methods were able to realkalize all the carbonated concrete (30 mm).

Research on Hybrid Feature Selection Method Based on Iterative Approximation Markov Blanket.

The basic experimental data of traditional Chinese medicine are generally obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. The data often show the characteristics of high dimensionality and few samples, and there are many irrelevant features and redundant features in the data, which bring challenges to the in-depth exploration of Chinese medicine material information. A hybrid feature selection method based on iterative approximate Markov blanket (CI_AMB) is proposed in the paper. The method uses the maximum information coefficient to measure the correlation between features and target variables and achieves the purpose of filtering irrelevant features according to the evaluation criteria, firstly. The iterative approximation Markov blanket strategy analyzes the redundancy between features and implements the elimination of redundant features and then selects an effective feature subset finally. Comparative experiments using traditional Chinese medicine material basic experimental data and UCI's multiple public datasets show that the new method has a better advantage to select a small number of highly explanatory features, compared with Lasso, XGBoost, and the classic approximate Markov blanket method.

Analyse de la texture de l’os trabéculaire autour d’une cupule non cimentée RM Pressfit® : une série de 46 cas sur une période de 5 ans

BackgroundCementless total hip arthroplasty (THA) is a common procedure producing excellent clinical results. Their long-term survival is nevertheless burdened by loosening of the acetabular part caused by changes in the distribution of strains around the cup. In this context the RM-Pressfit® cup has been developed, resulting in a more harmonious distribution of the strains. HypothesisTexture analysis of X-ray films can evaluate the evolution of trabecular bone micro-architecture during the five years following THA with a RM-Pressfit® cup. Material and methodA monocentric series of 46 hips was reviewed regularly within five years post-surgery. Radiographic evaluation of the operated hip was done on frontal digitized radiographs of the pelvis to follow evolution of bone micro-architecture in the #2 zone of De Lee and Charnley. Texture analysis using fractal algorithms was done at D0, 6 months, 1, 2 and 5 years post-THA. The fractal methods used included the skyscrapers and the dynamic blanket methods with 3 different structuring elements (a cross, a horizontal and a vertical vector). ResultsThe RM-Pressfit® caused significant changes in the distribution of strains around the acetabulum that preserved the bone volume over a 5-year period post-surgery. This corresponds to an improvement of the trabecular micro-architecture around the acetabular cups. ConclusionA statistically significant increase in the four fractal dimensions considered corresponded to an improved trabecular bone micro-architecture revealed by texture analysis, a non-invasive method that can be used on digitized X-ray images. Level of evidenceIIIb, Case control study, retrospective design.

Texture analysis of trabecular bone around RM-Pressfit cementless acetabulum in a series of 46 patients during a 5 year period

BackgroundCementless total hip arthroplasty (THA) is a common procedure producing excellent clinical results. Their long-term survival is nevertheless burdened by loosening of the acetabular part caused by changes in the distribution of strains around the cup. In this context the RM-Pressfit® cup has been developed, resulting in a more harmonious distribution of the strains. HypothesisTexture analysis of X-ray films can evaluate the evolution of trabecular bone micro-architecture during the five years following THA with a RM-Pressfit® cup. Material and methodA monocentric series of 46 hips was reviewed regularly within five years post- surgery. Radiographic evaluation of the operated hip was done on frontal digitized radiographs of the pelvis to follow evolution of bone micro-architecture in the #2 zone of De Lee and Charnley. Texture analysis using fractal algorithms was done at D0, 6 months, 1, 2 and 5 years post-THA. The fractal methods used included the skyscrapers and the dynamic blanket methods with 3 different structuring elements (a cross, a horizontal and a vertical vector). ResultsThe RM-Pressfit® caused significant changes in the distribution of strains around the acetabulum that preserved the bone volume over a 5-year period post-surgery. This corresponds to an improvement of the trabecular micro-architecture around the acetabular cups. ConclusionA statistically significant increase in the four fractal dimensions considered corresponded to an improved trabecular bone micro-architecture revealed by texture analysis, a non-invasive method that can be used on digitized X-ray images. Level of evidenceIIIb, Case control study, retrospective design.

Metode Selimut Insulasi Panas untuk Pencegahan Penurunan Suhu Tubuh Bayi Tikus Putih

The temperature decrease is caused by heat loss by conduction, convection, evaporation, and radiation. Various methods for preventing heat loss in newborns include the use of plastic bags. Nugraheni's research in 2016, the use of plastic wrap in newborns can still result in body heat loss because polyethylene plastic is not heated insulation. Aluminum foil is one of the ingredients that insulates heat insulation. The use of aluminum foil is widely used in various fields, for example as a food wrap to keep it warm and an emergency blanket for mountain climbers. This study aims to determine the comparison of the use of blanket heat insulation and plastic wrap in preventing the decrease in body temperature of babies of white rats. The type of research used was quasi-experimental (Quasi-Experiment) with the design of post test only control group design. The sample in this study was 30 white rats which were calculated based on Federer's formula. There were no statistically significant difference in the 15th minute p=0.221, 30th minute p=0.65 and 30th minute p=0.08, this was due to the small number of samples studied but in a systematic way, the control group's median difference was -0.1, then there was no significant difference in temperature change at 15 minutes in the blanket and plastic wrap group. In the 30th minute, the median difference in the control group was -0.5, so clinically there were differences in the blanket group and the plastic wrap group with a median difference of 0.0. In the 60th minute, the median difference in the control group was -1.2, clinically there were differences in the blanket group and the plastic wrap group with a median difference of 1.9. There is a difference in the decrease in body temperature of baby white rats using the blanket method of heat insulation and plastic wrap.

Rapid quantification of mitochondrial fractal dimension in individual cells.

An improved technique for fractal characterization called the modified blanket method is introduced that can quantify surrounding fractal structures on a pixel by pixel basis without artifacts associated with scale-dependent image features such as object size. The method interprets images as topographical maps, obtaining information regarding the local surface area as a function of image resolution. Local fractal dimension (FD) can be quantified from the power law exponent derived from the surface area and image resolution relationship. We apply this technique on simulated cell images of known FD and compared the obtained values to power spectral density (PSD) analysis. Our method is sensitive to a wider FD range (2.0-4.5), having a mean error of 1.4% compared to 6% for PSD analysis. This increased sensitivity and an ability to compute regional FD properties enabled the discrimination of the differences in radiation resistant cancer cell responses that could not be detected using PSD analysis.

Development of a Fully Cross-Validated Bayesian Network Approach for Local Control Prediction in Lung Cancer.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that a Bayesian network (BN) approach can explore hierarchical biophysical relationships that influence tumor response and predict tumor local control (LC) in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients before and during radiotherapy from a large-scale dataset. Our BN building approach has two steps. First, relevant biophysical predictors influencing LC before and during the treatment are selected through an extended Markov blanket (eMB) method. From this eMB process, the most robust BN structure for LC prediction was found via a wrapper-based approach. Sixty-eight patients with complete feature information were used to identify a full BN model for LC prediction before and during the treatment. Fifty more recent patients with some missing information were reserved for independent testing of the developed pre- and during-therapy BNs. A nested cross-validation (N-CV) was developed to evaluate the performance of the two-step BN approach. An ensemble BN model is generated from the N-CV sampling process to assess its similarity with the corresponding full BN model, and thus evaluate the sensitivity of our BN approach. Our results show that the proposed BN development approach is a stable and robust approach to identify hierarchical relationships among biophysical features for LC prediction. Furthermore, BN predictions can be improved by incorporating during treatment information.

Fractal Feature Analysis and Information Extraction of Woodlands Based on MODIS NDVI Time Series

The quick and accurate extraction of information on woodland resources and distributions using remote sensing technology is a key step in the management, protection, and sustainable use of woodlands. This paper presents a low-cost and high-precision extraction method for large woodland areas based on the fractal features of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series data for Beijing, China. The blanket method was used for computing the upper and lower fractal signals of each pixel in the NDVI time series images. The fractal signals of woodlands and other land use/land cover types at corresponding scales were analyzed and compared, and the attributes of woodlands were enhanced at the fifth lower fractal signal. The spatial distributions of woodlands were extracted using the Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis technique (ISODATA), and an accuracy assessment of the extracted results was conducted using the China Land Use and Land Cover Data Set (CLUCDS) from the same period. The results showed that the overall accuracy, kappa coefficient, and error coefficient were 90.54%, 0.74, and 8.17%, respectively. Compared with the extracted results for woodlands using the MODIS NDVI time series only, the average error coefficient decreased from 30.2 to 7.38% because of these fractal features. The method developed in this study can rapidly and effectively extract information on woodlands from low spatial resolution remote sensing data and provide a robust operational tool for use in further research.

Connotations of pixel-based scale effect in remote sensing and the modified fractal-based analysis method

Scale problems are a major source of concern in the field of remote sensing. Since the remote sensing is a complex technology system, there is a lack of enough cognition on the connotation of scale and scale effect in remote sensing. Thus, this paper first introduces the connotations of pixel-based scale and summarizes the general understanding of pixel-based scale effect. Pixel-based scale effect analysis is essentially important for choosing the appropriate remote sensing data and the proper processing parameters. Fractal dimension is a useful measurement to analysis pixel-based scale. However in traditional fractal dimension calculation, the impact of spatial resolution is not considered, which leads that the scale effect change with spatial resolution can't be clearly reflected. Therefore, this paper proposes to use spatial resolution as the modified scale parameter of two fractal methods to further analyze the pixel-based scale effect. To verify the results of two modified methods (MFBM (Modified Windowed Fractal Brownian Motion Based on the Surface Area) and MDBM (Modified Windowed Double Blanket Method)); the existing scale effect analysis method (information entropy method) is used to evaluate. And six sub-regions of building areas and farmland areas were cut out from QuickBird images to be used as the experimental data. The results of the experiment show that both the fractal dimension and information entropy present the same trend with the decrease of spatial resolution, and some inflection points appear at the same feature scales. Further analysis shows that these feature scales (corresponding to the inflection points) are related to the actual sizes of the geo-object, which results in fewer mixed pixels in the image, and these inflection points are significantly indicative of the observed features. Therefore, the experiment results indicate that the modified fractal methods are effective to reflect the pixel-based scale effect existing in remote sensing data and it is helpful to analyze the observation scale from different aspects. This research will ultimately benefit for remote sensing data selection and application.