US

Many studies have shown the effect of solution chemistry on the environmental behavior of metal-based nanoparticles (NPs), except CuO NPs. Here, we investigated the agglomeration, sedimentation, dissolution, and speciation of CuO NPs by varying pH, ionic strength, ionic valence, and natural organic matter (NOM). The results showed that as the pH moved away from 6, the size of CuO agglomerates decreased, along with the enhanced NP suspension stabilization, due to the increase of electrostatic repulsive force...

The malignancy risk differentiation of pulmonary nodule is one of the most challenge tasks of computer-aided diagnosis (CADx). Most recently reported CADx methods or schemes based on texture and shape estimation have shown relatively satisfactory on differentiating the risk level of malignancy among the nodules detected in lung cancer screening. However, the existing CADx schemes tend to detect and analyze characteristics of pulmonary nodules from a statistical perspective according to local features only. Enlightened by the currently prevailing learning ability of convolutional neural network (CNN), which simulates human neural network for target recognition and our previously research on texture features, we present a hybrid model that takes into consideration of both global and local features for pulmonary nodule differentiation using the largest public database founded by the Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative (LIDC-IDRI)...

Distinguishing dementia subtypes can be difficult due to similarities in clinical presentation. There is increasing interest in discrete gait characteristics as markers to aid diagnostic algorithms in dementia. This structured review explores the differences in quantitative gait characteristics between dementia and healthy controls, and between four dementia subtypes under single-task conditions: Alzheimer's disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson's disease dementia, and vascular dementia. Twenty-six papers out of an initial 5,211 were reviewed and interpreted using a validated model of gait...

It has been proposed that subclinical psychotic experiences (PEs) may causally impact on each other over time and engage with one another in patterns of mutual reinforcement and feedback. This subclinical network of experiences in turn may facilitate the onset of psychotic disorder. PEs, however, are not inherently distressing, nor do they inevitably lead to impairment. The question arises therefore, whether nondistressing PEs, distressing PEs, or both, meaningfully inform an extended psychosis phenotype. The current study first aimed to exploit valuable ordinal data that captured the absence, occurrence and associated impairment of PEs in the general population to construct a general population based severity network of PEs...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common psychiatric disorder among service members and veterans. The clinical course of PTSD varies across individuals, and patterns of symptom development have yet to be clearly delineated. Previous studies have been limited by convenience sampling, short follow-up periods, and inability to account for combat-related trauma. To determine the trajectories of PTSD symptoms among deployed military personnel with and without combat exposure, we used data from a population-based representative sample of 8,178 US service members participating in the Millennium Cohort Study from 2001-2011...

The authors evaluated the performance of a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (SFFQ), web-based 24-hour recalls (ASA24s), and 7-day dietary records (7DDRs) compared to biomarkers among 627 women in Women's Lifestyle Validation Study (US, 2010-2012). Two paper SFFQs, one web-based SFFQ, four ASA24s (beta version), two 7DDRs, four 24-hour urine samples, one doubly-labeled water (repeated among 76 participants), and two fasting blood samples were collected over a 15-months-period. Dietary variables evaluated were energy, energy-adjusted intakes of protein, sodium, potassium, and specific fatty acids, carotenoids, α-tocopherol, retinol and folate...

Motivation: Our overall goal is to develop machine-learning approaches based on genomics and other relevant accessible information for use in predicting how a patient will respond to a given proposed drug or treatment. Given the complexity of this problem, we begin by developing, testing and analyzing learning methods using data from simulated systems, which allows us access to a known ground truth. We examine the benefits of using prior system knowledge and investigate how learning accuracy depends on various system parameters as well as the amount of training data available...

Objective: Birth month and climate impact lifetime disease risk, while the underlying exposures remain largely elusive. We seek to uncover distal risk factors underlying these relationships by probing the relationship between global exposure variance and disease risk variance by birth season. Material and Methods: This study utilizes electronic health record data from 6 sites representing 10.5 million individuals in 3 countries (United States, South Korea, and Taiwan)...

Motivation: Mass cytometry or CyTOF is an emerging technology for high-dimensional multiparameter single cell analysis that overcomes many limitations of fluorescence-based flow cytometry. New methods for analyzing CyTOF data attempt to improve automation, scalability, performance and interpretation of data generated in large studies. Assigning individual cells into discrete groups of cell types (gating) involves time-consuming sequential manual steps, untenable for larger studies. Results: We introduce DeepCyTOF, a standardization approach for gating, based on deep learning techniques...

Synthetic RNA-based systems have increasingly been used for the regulation of eukaryotic gene expression. Due to their structural properties, riboregulators provide a convenient basis for the development of ligand-dependent controllable systems. Here, we demonstrate reversible conditional control of miRNA biogenesis with an aptamer domain as a sensing unit connected to a natural miRNA precursor for the first time. For the design of the pre-miR switch, we replaced the natural terminal loop with the TetR aptamer...

The discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) remains an important problem, particularly given the growth of high-throughput sequencing, cell sorting and single cell biology. While a large number of miRNAs have already been annotated, there may well be large numbers of miRNAs that are expressed in very particular cell types and remain elusive. Sequencing allows us to quickly and accurately identify the expression of known miRNAs from small RNA-Seq data. The biogenesis of miRNAs leads to very specific characteristics observed in their sequences...

Evidence suggests contemporary population distributions of breast cancer estrogen receptor (ER) status may be shaped by earlier major societal events, such as the 1965 abolition of Jim Crow (legal racial discrimination in the US) and the Great Famine in China (1959-1961). We accordingly analyzed changes in ER status in relation to Jim Crow birth place among the 46,417 black and 339,830 white US-born non-Hispanic women in the 13 SEER Registry Group who were born between 1915 and 1979 and diagnosed (age 25-84, inclusive) between 1992-2012...

BACKGROUND: Providing HIV testing at health facilities remains the most common approach to ensuring access to HIV treatment and prevention services for the millions of undiagnosed HIV-infected individuals in sub-Saharan Africa. We sought to explore the costs of providing these services across three southern African countries with high HIV burden. METHODS: Primary costing studies were undertaken in 54 health facilities providing HIV testing services (HTS) in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe...

We investigate the temporal coherence of random, pulsed, quasi-stationary scalar light fields and introduce a new type of expansion for the mutual coherence function in terms of fully coherent frequency-shifted quasi-monochromatic modes of identical shape. The mode representation is valid provided the pulse length is shorter and the coherence time is much shorter than the width of the time window in which the field is considered. The construction of the expansion is particularly straightforward since information is required only on the average spectrum and the average temporal intensity...

We present a comprehensive procedure to simulate real-world scenes viewed through ophthalmic lenses. Such a method enables us to anticipate the effects on image formation of the following combined undesired optical defects typically found in ophthalmic lenses: blur, distortion, and chromatic aberration. Additionally, it helps in comparing the expected scenes seen with different lens designs. The procedure is based on the following steps: (1) to calculate the distortion and local dioptric matrix associated with a set of different gaze directions; (2) to estimate point spread functions (PSF) associated with these matrices; (3) to compute the joint action of distortion, chromatic aberration, and PSF field on the scenes...

The problem of diffraction by slanted lamellar dielectric and metallic gratings in classical mounting is formulated as an eigenvalue eigenvector problem. The numerical solution is obtained by using the moment method with Legendre polynomials as expansion and test functions, which allows us to enforce in an exact manner the boundary conditions which determine the eigensolutions. Our method is successfully validated by comparison with other methods including in the case of highly slanted gratings.

The treatment approach for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) depends on the stage and extent of disease, the severity of the underlying liver disease, and the overall performance status of the patient. Treatment consists of 4 main strategies: surgery (eg, resection and liver transplant), locoregional procedures (eg, ablation and transarterial embolization), systemic therapies, and best supportive care. For patients with early-stage tumors, surgical treatment or ablation can be curative. Patients with intermediate-stage disease can be candidates for embolization, administered as either transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) or transarterial radioembolization (TARE)...

BACKGROUND: Disparities in the presentation of knee osteoarthritis (OA) and in the utilization of treatment across sex, racial, and ethnic groups in the United States are well documented. OBJECTIVES: We used a Markov model to calculate lifetime costs of knee OA treatment. We then used the model results to compute costs of disparities in treatment by race, ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic status. RESEARCH DESIGN: We used the literature to construct a Markov Model of knee OA and publicly available data to create the model parameters and patient populations of interest...

OBJECTIVES: Small for gestational age (SGA) infants are more susceptible to infectious morbidity and growth faltering compared to their appropriate for gestational age (AGA) counterparts. Zinc supplementation of SGA infants may be beneficial but the underlying susceptibility to zinc deficiency of SGA infants has not been examined. METHODS: In a community-based, observational, longitudinal study in a peri-urban settlement of Karachi, Pakistan, we compared the size of the exchangeable zinc pools (EZP) in term SGA and AGA infants at birth and at 6 months of age, hypothesizing that the EZP would be lower in the SGA group...

BACKGROUND: Biliary dyskinesia is a controversial clinical entity. Standardized diagnostic test and management guidelines are lacking in children. Published data suggest that long-term outcomes of surgical and medical management are similar. We sought to determine national population-based trends of cholecystectomies performed in children for biliary dyskinesia and associated healthcare expenditure in the US over a 10-year period. METHODS: Using Nationwide Inpatient Sample and the International Classification of Diseases, the 9th revision clinical modification codes, we identified children who had a cholecystectomy for biliary dyskinesia from 2002-2011 in the United States...