Small Portion Research Articles

Health Behavioural Status of Gender Differences in Older People

Aging is a universal phenomenon with no single definition, varying across cultures, time, and space. The health and well-being of older adults are significantly influenced by their behaviors, which often vary by gender. These differences can impact physical health, mental health, and overall quality of life. This study explores the health behavioral status of older adults, focusing on gender differences and how these disparities affect their health indicators. Such changes impact the health status of older people, making it harder for them to manage daily tasks and access healthcare. Conducted in Dhangadhi Sub-Metropolitan City, Kailali District, Nepal, this study aims to understand the socio-economic and health status of older people. Objectives include examining gender differences in health behavior among the elderly in this region. Gender differences in health behaviors among older adults significantly impact their health. Women engage more in preventive behaviors and seek healthcare services, while men engage in riskier behaviors and underutilize services. Understanding these differences is crucial for developing effective, gender-specific interventions to improve older adults' health and well-being. Gender differences were significant, with males showing a higher percentage of better health compared to females, and females showing slightly higher rates of bad health compared to males. Vision problems were prevalent, with a majority reporting no issues, some reporting minor problems, and a smaller portion having normal vision. Significant vision problems were reported by a notable fraction of respondents. Respiratory diseases were more prevalent among males than females, indicating a significant gender association. Gout or knee pain was more common in females than males, also showing a significant gender difference. Diabetes affected a larger portion of males compared to females, indicating a significant gender association. Blood pressure issues were slightly more prevalent in males compared to females, showing a significant gender association. Emotional health conditions such as grief, depression, and sadness showed significant gender differences, with females more likely to experience these issues.

Critical Result Notifications: What Do Providers Really Think?

Abstract Introduction/Objective Timely communication of critical test results, those that are significantly outside expected ranges and potentially life-threatening, is crucial in patient care. The Joint Commission and other regulatory bodies, such as CMS, CAP, mandate that hospitals have an alert system for reporting critical values. Traditionally, our hospital system communicates these results through phone calls to the responsible licensed provider, a system that has remained unchanged despite the rise of electronic health records. To assess the perception of this system and providers’ readiness to utilize new communication methods, we conducted a survey among healthcare professionals in our institution. Methods/Case Report We sent a survey to all providers via broadcast email. It contained 10 questions, some with free-text input, others with categorical or multiple-choice responses. The survey was open for 4 weeks with 2 reminder emails. Of 544 providers who opened the survey, 191 completed it (35.1% completion rate). The majority (84%) of respondents were physicians, with a smaller portion (15%) identifying as advanced practitioners. Results (if a Case Study enter NA) Most providers reported using multiple modes to check critical results and did not rely solely on lab notifications, though a minority (7%) depended on phone calls. Only 2 respondents used the smartphone app (EPIC Haiku) for checking results. Notably, over 67% of providers were unfamiliar with different methods of critical result notification, yet nearly 82% indicated they were open to adopting a new system. A significant proportion (more than a third) felt that phone calls distracted from patient care, suggesting that alternate methods of communication could be beneficial. Despite this, 62% of respondents found these calls useful. However, more than a third did not find the calls helpful, indicating a possible need for improved communication methods. Conclusion The survey indicates that while the current system of critical result notifications is useful to many providers, there are clear opportunities for improvement. Implementing secure, smart systems and increasing awareness of these new communication modalities may help reduce distractions and streamline critical result communication. This could also offer providers a customizable approach to receiving notifications, enhancing both patient care and workflow efficiency.

Emissions and transport of urban biocides from facades to topsoil at the district-scale

Urban biocides used in facade paints and renders to prevent algae and fungal growth are released into the environment during rainfall, subsequently contaminating groundwater. However, quantitative data on the emission, transport and infiltration of urban biocides at the district scale are generally lacking. In this study, we quantified the fluxes of the urban biocide terbutryn and its major transformation product, terbutryn-sulfoxide, from building facades into stormwater, sediment, soil, and vegetation within a seven-year-old district employing sustainable stormwater management such as infiltration trenches and ponds. Combining four months of field observations with district scale modeling, we estimated initial concentrations of terbutryn in facade paint, quantified the emissions of terbutryn and terbutryn-sulfoxide from facades to soil, and evaluated terbutryn storage in soil under various painting scenarios. Terbutryn concentrations in sustainable stormwater management systems ranging from 2 to 67 ng L−1, frequently exceeding predicted no-effect concentrations. The constant release of terbutryn and its transformation products in runoff highlighted the chronic exposure of non-target organisms to urban biocides. Terbutryn concentrations in topsoil and pond sediment indicated accumulation, while concentrations exceeding 1 μg g−1 in the vegetation suggested plant uptake. Model results revealed that a substantial portion (27 to 73 %) of biocides infiltrated near facades through permeable surfaces like gravel, while a smaller portion (7 to 39 %) reached the stormwater management systems. Additionally, significant biocide leaching in the topsoil (30 cm below the surface) underscored the potential for biocide contamination in groundwater. Overall, this district-scale study and modeling approach provide a comprehensive framework for evaluating scenarios and measures for sustainable stormwater management to mitigate the infiltration of urban biocides into groundwater.

Formulation and clinical evaluation of carbidopa/levodopa oral solution for the treatment of sepiapterin reductase deficiency

Backgroundsepiapterine reductase deficiency (SRD) is a rare levodopa (L-dopa)-responsive disorder treated with a combination therapy of controlled-release L-dopa and carbidopa. The currently available formulation of controlled-release carbidopa/L-dopa does not entirely meet the requirements for the long-term therapy in pediatric patients. In fact, administration of a manufactured tablet at a dose intended for adults necessitates its adjustment to the child’s needs, as the splitting of the tablet into smaller portions or its dilution in water. It’s essential to emphasize that tablets must not be crushed, as this can compromise the controlled-release mechanism and affect the efficacy of the medication. At the moment, commercial liquid formulations are not available. Given these limitations, in house drug preparation in hospitals and community pharmacies is a valid option to ensure the proper therapeutic management of these patients. Materials and methodswe described sample preparation, physical and microbiological analyses, taste testing, and tolerability of a 1:10 ratio carbidopa/L-dopa flavored (mint, raspberry, cacao, berries) and unflavored oral formulation (no sweetening agents were added). We also reported long-term follow-up of two pediatric patients with SRD. Resultswe documented the stability for 28 days at 25 °C of the liquid solution. All formulations were well-tolerated, and no adverse events were observed during or after assessing taste and tolerability. The long-term follow up of two patients was characterized by effective symptom control and optimal treatment adherence and compliance. Conclusionsin-house liquid drug formulations can be a valid option for pediatric patients with SRD. Given the significant impact of taste on medication adherence, the use of flavoring agents in the development of liquid formulations of L-dopa/carbidopa results a very useful strategy to obtain optimal adherence in the pediatric population.

Root-Cause Analysis with Semi-Supervised Co-Training for Integrated Systems

Root-cause analysis for integrated systems has become increasingly challenging due to their growing complexity. To tackle these challenges, machine learning (ML) has been applied to enhance root-cause analysis. Nonetheless, ML-based root-cause analysis usually requires abundant training data with root causes labeled by human experts, which are difficult or even impossible to obtain. To overcome this drawback, a semi-supervised co-training method is proposed for root-cause analysis in this article, which only requires a small portion of labeled data. First, a random forest is trained with labeled data. Next, we propose a co-training technique to learn from unlabeled data with semi-supervised learning, which pre-labels a subset of these data automatically and then retrains each decision tree in the random forest. In addition, a robust framework is proposed to avoid over-fitting. We further apply initialization by clustering and feature selection to improve the diagnostic performance. With two case studies from industry, the proposed approach shows superior performance against other state-of-the-art methods by saving up to 67% of labeling efforts.

Leveraging Adversarial Augmentation on Imbalance Data for Online Trading Fraud Detection

Nowadays, the emergence of online trading greatly facilitates people’s life. Meanwhile, online trading also brings hidden dangers, such as online fraudulent trading. To solve the issue, researchers have proposed many different detection models. However, in actual business scenarios, fraudulent transactions usually only account for a small portion of normal transactions, resulting in extremely imbalanced data. Besides, the concealment of fraud is reflected in that the fraudsters are imitating the normal transactions of users, posing a huge challenge for fraudulent transaction detection modeling. Inspired by generative adversarial networks (GANs), we propose a GAN-based framework to detect online banking fraud on extremely imbalanced data, called BalanceGAN. A fraud detection model is first pretrained using the data generated by the generator and then the model is fine-tuned using transfer learning on real-world datasets, by using this approach to address data imbalances. Compared with the conventional methods for solving imbalanced data, our BalanceGAN can avoid over-fitting of the model relatively, experiments on two real datasets show that our BalanceGAN has more than 10% performance improvement in Precision and Recall.

Fusarium pernambucanum Causing Peduncle Rot on Grape in Guangxi, China.

Grape (Vitis vinifera) is regarded as one of the most economically important fruit crops throughout the world and is widely cultivated in China. In March 2023, peduncle rot symptoms were observed on ripe grape (cv. Kyoho) of Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Nanning, Guangxi Province (20°54' to 26°24' N, 104°26' to 112°04' E), causing severe shrink of infected grapes with incidence of 20 to 40%. Initially, a small portion of the grape peduncles turned from light brown to darker brown and gradually spread to the entire bunch of grape peduncles. Then the peduncles gradually dried up and became dark brown, resulting in necrosis and shedding of the fruits. Symptomatic peduncles were cut into small pieces (approximately 3 mm long), surface disinfected with 75% alcohol for 10 s, 1% NaOCl for 2 min followed by three washes in sterile distilled water and separately transferred to potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates. Forty-six Fusarium isolates were obtained from the seventy-five tissue pieces after 5 days of incubation at 25°C on PDA (average isolation frequency 61%). Based on the morphology, a representative isolate of Fusarium was selected for each of the three samples. Single spore isolates (PT1-1, PT3-1, and PT3-2) were selected for further study. The colonies produced abundant whitish to yellowish aerial mycelium on PDA after 7 days incubation at 25°C in the dark. Macroconidia cultured on carnation leaf agar (CLA) for 7 days were falcate, multiseptate, with a curved apical cell and foot-shaped basal cell, mostly 1-3-septate, measuring 21.3 ± 0.5 μm × 4.8 ± 0.1 μm, 24.3 ± 0.5 μm × 4.5 ± 0.1 μm, 21.9 ± 0.3 μm × 4.5 ± 0.1 μm (n=90) for PT1-1, PT3-1, and PT3-2, respectively. Microconidia were hyaline, fusoid or ovoid, 0- or 1-septate, measuring 10.5 ± 0.2 μm × 3.5 ± 0.1 μm, 10.4 ± 0.3 μm × 3.6 ± 0.1 μm, 10.0 ± 0.2 μm × 3.6 ± 0.1 μm (n=90) for PT1-1, PT3-1, and PT3-2, respectively. The internal transcribed spacer (ITS), translation elongation factor (TEF1), calmodulin (CAM) and partial RNA polymerase second largest subunit (RPB2) were amplified using primers ITS4/ITS1, EF1/EF2, CL1/CL2A, and 5F2/7cR, respectively (White et al. 1990; O'Donnell et al. 1998, 2000; Reeb et al. 2004; Liu et al. 1999). Sequences from the three isolates were deposited in GenBank (ITS: OR511756-OR511758; TEF1: OR535156-OR535158; CAM: OR535153-OR535155; RPB2: OR535159-OR535161). A maximum likelihood (ML) phylogenetic tree was constructed with RAxML version 8.2.10 based on the concatenated sequences (ITS, CAM, TEF1, RPB2). According to morphology and phylogenetic analysis, the isolates were identified as Fusarium pernambucanum (Santos et al. 2019). A pathogenicity test was performed with three isolates on twenty-four asymptomatic strings of grapes in a field in Nanning, Guangxi Province, China. On twelve strings of ripe grapes (cv. Kyoho), 3-mm-long wounds were made on the peduncle of each string of grapes with a sterile needle, followed by inoculation with conidial suspension (106spores/ml in 0.1% sterile Tween 20) by misting with an atomizer until runoff (Lorenz et al. 1995). Three isolates were separately inoculated onto three strings of grapes. Controls were inoculated with water containing 0.1% sterile Tween 20 under the same conditions. The same inoculation was applied to twelve strings of non-wound grapes. Plants were covered with polythene bags to maintain high humidity for 7 days. Typical dark brown lesions were observed on all inoculated peduncles with conidia. After 14 days, the necrotic lesions spread to the entire peduncles causing them to shrivel and die. No symptoms were observed on controls. Koch's postulates were completed by reisolating the fungus from the inoculated tissues. The results of morphological identification and multigene sequence analysis obtained by reisolation were consistent with original isolates. To our knowledge, this is the first report of F. pernambucanum causing peduncle rot on grape in China. These results will provide valuable information for prevention and management of peduncle rot on grape.

Bank’s strategic interaction, adverse price dynamics and systemic liquidity risk

AbstractWhen a widespread funding shock hits the banking system, banks may engage in strategic behaviour to deal with funding shortages by a pre-emptive disposal of assets. Alternatively, they may adopt a more cautious strategy to mitigate price reactions, thereby distributing the assets sales into smaller portions over time. We model banks’ optimal behaviour using standard optimisation techniques and show that an equilibrium always exits in a stylised setting. A numerical analysis to approximate the equilibrium supplements the theoretical part. The implementation delivers two liquidity measures for the German banking system: the Systemic Liquidity Buffer and the Systemic Liquidity Shortfall. These measures are more informative about systemic liquidity risk than regulatory liquidity measures, such as the LCR, because they model adverse, nonlinear price dynamics in a more realistic way. Our approach is applied to different stress scenarios.

Legacy Mercury Re-emission and Subsurface Migration at Contaminated Sites Constrained by Hg Isotopes and Chemical Speciation.

The re-emission and subsurface migration of legacy mercury (Hg) are not well understood due to limited knowledge of the driving processes. To investigate these processes at a decommissioned chlor-alkali plant, we used mercury stable isotopes and chemical speciation analysis. The isotopic composition of volatilized Hg(0) was lighter compared to the bulk total Hg (THg) pool in salt-sludge and adjacent surface soil with mean ε202HgHg(0)-THg values of -3.29 and -2.35‰, respectively. Hg(0) exhibited dichotomous directions (E199HgHg(0)-THg = 0.17 and -0.16‰) of mass-independent fractionation (MIF) depending on the substrate from which it was emitted. We suggest that the positive MIF enrichment during Hg(0) re-emission from salt-sludge was overall controlled by the photoreduction of Hg(II) primarily ligated by Cl- and/or the evaporation of liquid Hg(0). In contrast, O-bonded Hg(II) species were more important in the adjacent surface soils. The migration of Hg from salt-sludge to subsurface soil associated with selective Hg(II) partitioning and speciation transformation resulted in deep soils depleted in heavy isotopes (δ202Hg = -2.5‰) and slightly enriched in odd isotopes (Δ199Hg = 0.1‰). When tracing sources using Hg isotopes, it is important to exercise caution, particularly when dealing with mobilized Hg, as this fraction represents only a small portion of the sources.

Research on the Classification of Concrete Sulfate Erosion Types in Tumushuke Area, Xinjiang

Tumushuke, a significant node of “the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor” and “the Silk Road Economic Belt”, is strategically located in the southern region of Xinjiang. Due to the widespread distribution of its salty soils, concrete construction safety is significantly compromised. The construction of this project used sulfate-resistant cement, which was costly to construct. Six groups with varying sulfate immersion concentrations were set up to perform sulfate erosion tests and sulfate freeze–thaw coupling tests, respectively, based on the survey of the distribution of sulfate concentration in the area. The Tumushuke area’s concrete erosion kinds were classified using a microanalysis of the degraded concrete. The findings indicate that the concrete primarily exhibits gypsum-type erosion when the sulfate concentration is greater than 20,000 mg/kg, ettringite–gypsum-type erosion when the sulfate concentration is between 15,000 and 20,000 mg/kg, and ettringite-gypsum-type erosion when the sulfate concentration is less than 15,000 mg/kg. The erosion product, carbon–sulfur silica-calcite, also occurs under sulfate freeze–thaw coupling. In the Tumushuke area, ettringite-type erosion damage is primarily found in low-sulfate areas in the southwest and a small portion of the northeast. In contrast, higher-sulfate areas in the central northward area are primarily affected by ettringite–gypsum and gypsum-type erosion damage. The results of this study can provide a basis for adopting different anti-sulfate erosion measures for engineering construction in different regions.

Tracking electron motion within and outside of Floquet bands from attosecond pulse trains in time-resolved ARPES

Floquet engineering has recently emerged as a technique for controlling material properties with light. Floquet phases can be probed with time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (Tr-ARPES), providing direct access to the laser-dressed electronic bands. Applications of Tr-ARPES to date focused on observing the Floquet-Bloch bands themselves, and their build-up and dephasing on sub-laser-cycle timescales. However, momentum and energy resolved sub-laser-cycle dynamics between Floquet bands have not been analyzed. Given that Floquet theory strictly applies in time-periodic conditions, the notion of resolving sub-laser-cycle dynamics between Floquet states seems contradictory—it requires probe pulse durations below a laser cycle that inherently cannot discern the time-periodic nature of the light-matter system. Here we propose to employ attosecond pulse train probes with the same temporal periodicity as the Floquet-dressing pump pulse, allowing both attosecond sub-laser-cycle resolution and a proper projection of Tr-ARPES spectra on the Floquet–Bloch bands. We formulate and employ this approach in ab-initio calculations in light-driven graphene. Our calculations predict significant sub-laser-cycle dynamics occurring within the Floquet phase with the majority of electrons moving within and in-between Floquet bands, and a small portion residing and moving outside of them in what we denote as ‘non-Floquet’ bands. We establish that non-Floquet bands arise from the pump laser envelope that induces non-adiabatic electronic excitations during the pulse turn-on and turn-off. By performing calculations in systems with poly-chromatic pumps we also show that Floquet states are not formed on a sub-laser-cycle level. This work indicates that the Floquet-Bloch states are generally not a complete basis set for sub-laser-cycle dynamics in steady-state phases of matter.

Joint effects of air pollution and neighborhood socioeconomic status on cognitive decline - Mediation by depression, high cholesterol levels, and high blood pressure

Air pollution and neighborhood socioeconomic status (N-SES) are associated with adverse cardiovascular health and neuropsychiatric functioning in older adults. This study examines the degree to which the joint effects of air pollution and N-SES on the cognitive decline are mediated by high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure (HBP), and depression. In the Emory Healthy Aging Study, 14,390 participants aged 50+ years from Metro Atlanta, GA, were assessed for subjective cognitive decline using the cognitive function instrument (CFI). Information on the prior diagnosis of high cholesterol, HBP, and depression was collected through the Health History Questionnaire. Participants' census tracts were assigned 3-year average concentrations of 12 air pollutants and 16 N-SES characteristics. We used the unsupervised clustering algorithm Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) to create 6 exposure clusters based on the joint distribution of air pollution and N-SES in each census tract. Linear regression analysis was used to estimate the effects of the SOM cluster indicator on CFI, adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, education, and neighborhood residential stability. The proportion of the association mediated by high cholesterol levels, HBP, and depression was calculated by comparing the total and direct effects of SOM clusters on CFI. Depression mediated up to 87 % of the association between SOM clusters and CFI. For example, participants living in the high N-SES and high air pollution cluster had CFI scores 0.05 (95 %-CI:0.01,0.09) points higher on average compared to those from the high N-SES and low air pollution cluster; after adjusting for depression, this association was attenuated to 0.01 (95 %-CI:-0.04,0.05). HBP mediated up to 8 % of the association between SOM clusters and CFI and high cholesterol up to 5 %. Air pollution and N-SES associated cognitive decline was partially mediated by depression. Only a small portion (<10 %) of the association was mediated by HBP and high cholesterol.

Nexus between environmental degradation and climate change during the times of global conflict: Evidence from CS-ARDL model

There has been a substantial amount of research done on air pollution, both in terms of its history and its state at the present time. On the other hand, the ever–changing influence of climatic variables such as sun hour, air pressure, and wind speed has gotten just a small portion of the attention. This divide becomes even more apparent when one considers the ongoing conflicts that are taking place between Russia and Ukraine as well as the current state of the environment's response to climate change. In order to bridge this research gap, the goal of this study is to explore the ways in which climatological factors impact air quality, especially levels of PM2.5 and ozone, in a range of cities situated in India, during 2020–2021. Studies conducted over brief and extended periods of time have made it abundantly evident that sun hour, wind speed, and humidity have an impact on ozone levels. The study also sheds light on prospective policies that may be implemented in the future, such as those relating to carbon emission and particulate pollution such as PM2.5, in order to successfully battle the negative impacts that these variables have on the environment.

Radiating biofuel-blended turbulent nonpremixed hydrogen flames on a coaxial spray burner

The low radiant intensity and luminosity of hydrogen flames can be enhanced by the addition of a small portion of sooting biofuels. To achieve higher effectiveness, the impact of blending turbulent nonpremixed hydrogen flames with liquid biofuels, by gas-assist atomisation, is investigated and compared with the introduction methods of prevapourisation and ultrasonic spray. The flame appearance, luminosity, radiant fraction, centreline temperature, and the near-field spray characteristics of four biofuel surrogates (eucalyptol, D-limonene, guaiacol, and anisole) blended into hydrogen flames are measured experimentally. Radiating biofuel/hydrogen flames are achieved on a coaxial needle spray burner by the addition of 0.1–0.3 mol% biofuel surrogates. Compared with the unblended hydrogen flame, the luminosity and radiant fraction are enhanced by 30%–500% and 2%–15%, respectively, with the addition of biofuel surrogates. The results show that adding the biofuel surrogates by gas-assist atomisation is more effective than prevapourisation and ultrasonic atomisation in luminosity and radiant fraction enhancement. It is found that the local fuel-rich conditions, which are beneficial for soot formation, are further facilitated by the larger droplets and spray objects generated by gas-assist atomisation. Of the additives tested, anisole is the most effective for luminosity and radiant fraction enhancement of a hydrogen flame while exhibiting the largest flame temperature drop due to the enthalpy of vapourisation and the radiative loss from the promoted soot formation. The viscosity and surface tension greatly influence the spray characteristics which in turn impacts the flame characteristics. Guaiacol, the representative of lignin, appears to have the lowest effectiveness in radiant fraction enhancement due to the presence of a hydroxy group, a higher bond dissociation enthalpy, and a coarser spray ascribed to higher viscosity and surface tension.

Plant invasion in Mediterranean Europe: current hotspots and future scenarios

The Mediterranean Basin has historically been subject to alien plant invasions that threaten its unique biodiversity. This seasonally dry and densely populated region is undergoing severe climatic and socioeconomic changes, and it is unclear whether these changes will worsen or mitigate plant invasions. Predictions are often biased, as species may not be in equilibrium in the invaded environment, depending on their invasion stage and ecological characteristics. To address future predictions uncertainty, we identified invasion hotspots across multiple biased modelling scenarios and ecological characteristics of successful invaders. We selected 92 alien plant species widespread in Mediterranean Europe and compiled data on their distribution in the Mediterranean and worldwide. We combined these data with environmental and propagule pressure variables to model global and regional species niches, and map their current and future habitat suitability. We identified invasion hotspots, examined their potential future shifts, and compared the results of different modelling strategies. Finally, we generalised our findings by using linear models to determine the traits and biogeographic features of invaders most likely to benefit from global change. Currently, invasion hotspots are found near ports and coastlines throughout Mediterranean Europe. However, many species occupy only a small portion of the environmental conditions to which they are preadapted, suggesting that their invasion is still an ongoing process. Future conditions will lead to declines in many currently widespread aliens, which will tend to move to higher elevations and latitudes. Our trait models indicate that future climates will generally favour species with conservative ecological strategies that can cope with reduced water availability, such as those with short stature and low specific leaf area. Taken together, our results suggest that in future environments, these conservative aliens will move farther from the introduction areas and upslope, threatening mountain ecosystems that have been spared from invasions so far.

Magnifying Networks for Histopathological Images with Billions of Pixels.

Amongst the other benefits conferred by the shift from traditional to digital pathology is the potential to use machine learning for diagnosis, prognosis, and personalization. A major challenge in the realization of this potential emerges from the extremely large size of digitized images, which are often in excess of 100,000 × 100,000 pixels. In this paper, we tackle this challenge head-on by diverging from the existing approaches in the literature-which rely on the splitting of the original images into small patches-and introducing magnifying networks (MagNets). By using an attention mechanism, MagNets identify the regions of the gigapixel image that benefit from an analysis on a finer scale. This process is repeated, resulting in an attention-driven coarse-to-fine analysis of only a small portion of the information contained in the original whole-slide images. Importantly, this is achieved using minimal ground truth annotation, namely, using only global, slide-level labels. The results from our tests on the publicly available Camelyon16 and Camelyon17 datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of MagNets-as well as the proposed optimization framework-in the task of whole-slide image classification. Importantly, MagNets process at least five times fewer patches from each whole-slide image than any of the existing end-to-end approaches.

Benefits of integrating popular music in primary and secondary schools: A case study of Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, China

Western popular music began to dominate the Chinese music market after China implemented the open-door policy in 1978, which led to its introduction in schools in 2001. Popular music remains common outside of the classroom while occupying a small portion of school curricula. This study explores the influence of popular music in primary and secondary schools in Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, China. A combination of questionnaires, interviews, observations and an examination of the author’s teaching experience was used to gather data on issues affecting students’ and teachers’ acceptance of popular music and the relationship between popular music and music education. Findings indicate that popular music can be integrated into the curricula, improve teaching effectiveness, make learning more attractive for students and relate to the students’ everyday lives.

Homodyned K-Distribution Parameter Estimation in Quantitative Ultrasound: Autoencoder and Bayesian Neural Network Approaches.

Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) analyzes the ultrasound (US) backscattered data to find the properties of scatterers that correlate with the tissue microstructure. Statistics of the envelope of the backscattered radio frequency (RF) data can be utilized to estimate several QUS parameters. Different distributions have been proposed to model envelope data. The homodyned K-distribution (HK-distribution) is one of the most comprehensive distributions that can model US backscattered envelope data under diverse scattering conditions (varying scatterer number density and coherent scattering). The scatterer clustering parameter ( α ) and the ratio of the coherent to diffuse scattering power ( k ) are the parameters of this distribution that have been used extensively for tissue characterization in diagnostic US. The estimation of these two parameters (which we refer to as HK parameters) is done using optimization algorithms in which statistical features such as the envelope point-wise signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), skewness, kurtosis, and the log-based moments have been utilized as input to such algorithms. The optimization methods minimize the difference between features and their theoretical value from the HK model. We propose that the true value of these statistical features is a hyperplane that covers a small portion of the feature space. In this article, we follow two approaches to reduce the effect of sample features' error. We propose a model projection neural network based on denoising autoencoders to project the noisy features into this space based on this assumption. We also investigate if the noise distribution can be learned by the deep estimators. We compare the proposed methods with conventional methods using simulations, an experimental phantom, and data from an in vivo animal model of hepatic steatosis. The network weight and a demo code are available online at ht.tp://code.sonography.ai.

Preresidency research output among US neurological surgery residents.

Research productivity is often used to evaluate candidates for neurosurgery residency. Official annual reports describe the mean total number of research products of successful applicants for each match cycle; however, the average number of indexed publications, the highest-valued research product, is not reported separately from other research products. The primary objectives of this study were to describe the distribution of preresidency indexed publication quantity among successful neurosurgery applicants from 2017 to 2021 and determine whether any change in publication quantity across application cycles existed. Secondary objectives included determining the rate at which the average publication quantity is increasing across application cycles, whether this increase is driven by high-output applicants alone, and if a performance ceiling has been reached. US doctor of medicine seniors applying to the senior author's institution between 2017 and 2021 and who successfully matched into any US neurosurgery program were included. Publication quantities were extracted using Scopus. Additional variables were extracted from residency applications. Mean (SD) and median (IQR) publication quantities were used to describe the distribution and compare across years. Applicants were ranked by descending publication count and divided into quartiles. Averages within each quartile were compared with respective quartiles across years. Averages of the top 10% most productive applicants were compared across years to determine if a performance ceiling existed. Overall, 93.2% of matched applicants were captured. The mean and median total numbers of publications for applicants who matched from 2017 to 2021 were 5.6 ± 8.3 and 3.0 (1.0, 7.0), respectively. The mean and median numbers of publications increased from 3.7 ± 5.3 and 2.0 (0.0, 5.0) in 2016-2017 to 8.1 ± 10.0 and 5.0 (2.0, 11.0) in 2020-2021 (p < 0.001). The distribution of publication quantity was right-skewed. Multivariable analysis determined the application year to be independently and positively correlated with publication quantity (β 1.07 [95% CI 0.71-1.42], p < 0.001). All quartiles observed an increased average number of publications across years (p < 0.001). The mean and median numbers for the top 10% increased from 15.8 ± 8.7 and 13.0 (10.8, 15.5) in 2016-2017, respectively, to 31.3 ± 16.0 and 25.0 (21.0, 35.5) in 2020-2021 (p < 0.001). Indexed publications account for a small portion of the total research products that successful neurosurgery candidates list on applications. A high number of publications is not necessary for candidates to match, with approximately 50% of all applicants who successfully matched having ≤ 5 publications and 25% having ≤ 2 publications. The average preresidency publication quantity has been increasing yearly among neurosurgery applicants. This increase was present across the applicant pool. Additionally, no performance ceiling was observed.

Fabrication of Sawfish photonic crystal cavities in bulk diamond

Color centers in diamonds are quantum systems with optically active spin-states that show long coherence times and are, therefore, a promising candidate for the development of efficient spin–photon interfaces. However, only a small portion of the emitted photons is generated by the coherent optical transition of the zero-phonon line (ZPL), which limits the overall performance of the system. Embedding these emitters in photonic crystal cavities improves the coupling to the ZPL photons and increases their emission rate. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication process of “Sawfish” cavities, a design recently proposed that has the experimentally realistic potential to simultaneously provide a high waveguide coupling efficiency and significantly enhance the emission rate. The presented process allows for the fabrication of fully suspended devices with a total length of 20.5 μm and feature sizes as small as 40 nm. The optical characterization shows fundamental mode resonances that follow the behavior expected from the corresponding design parameters and quality (Q) factors as high as (3800 ± 1200). Finally, we investigate the effects of nanofabrication on the devices and show that, despite a noticeable erosion of the fine features, the measured cavity resonances deviate by only 0.8 (1.2)% from the values estimated by simple inspection via scanning electron microscopy. This proves that the Sawfish design is robust against fabrication imperfections, which makes it an attractive choice for the development of quantum photonic networks.