Computerized determination of proliferating cell nuclear antigen expression in meningiomas. A comparison with non-automated method

Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) expression has been proven to be a significant marker of cell proliferation in meningiomas, which correlates with growth rate and, as shown by several authors, possibly provides prognostic information concerning biologic behavior. However, the current method for determining PCNA labeling index (LI) is tedious and time consuming like all the nonautomated methods for evaluating cell kinetics, presenting high interobserver and interlaboratory variability and low reproducibility. In the present study, we introduce a semi-automated computer-assisted image analysis method for determining PCNA LI in 38 meningiomas, in parallel with the current nonautomated method. Image analysis technique permits unbiased cell counting, standardizes the degree of staining intensity and provides instant results. By calculating coefficient of variability, the method proved to be highly reproducible. The correlation between the results provided by the nonautomated and the semiautomated image analysis method showed a high agreement between them, with a correlation coefficient, r, of 0.82. In conclusion, we consider that image analysis contributes to the accuracy, reproducibility, and practicality of PCNA LI determination so that along with other useful parameters this significant marker may serve to predict the clinical behavior in meningiomas.     

Photocatalytic mineralisation of organic compounds: a comparison of flame-made TiO2 catalysts

A comparative photocatalytic analysis was carried out on TiO₂ made in a Flame Spray Pyrolysis (FSP) process and flame-made Degussa P25. Both have similar crystallinity, phase composition, phase segregation and a non-porous surface. Hence comparison was made based on their difference in specific surface area, organic adsorption and the amount of OH• generated upon illumination. The photocatalytic activity tests were carried out using the following series of organic compounds: sucrose, glucose, fructose, maleic acid, glyoxylic acid, oxalic acid, isobutyric acid, phenol and methanol. FSP-made TiO₂ outperformed P25 for saccharides mineralisation, while for phenol and methanol mineralisation P25 was better than FSP-made TiO₂. Similar mineralisation rates were observed for both FSP-made and P25 TiO₂ for the mineralisation of carboxylic acids. This shows that the relative performance of the photocatalysts depends on the type of organic compounds to be degraded. The high surface area and possibly a more efficient interfacial charge transfer of FSP-made TiO₂ provided an efficient pathway for saccharides mineralisation. As for phenol and methanol, the mineralisation rates were higher when using P25 due to the greater amount of OH• radicals generated by this photocatalyst. The fast mineralisation rates of carboxylic acids made degradation of these organic compounds to be less affected by the TiO₂ photocatalyst properties and conditions tested in this work.     

Ag-ZnO catalysts for UV-photodegradation of methylene blue

High surface area Ag-ZnO catalysts have been made by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption, UV–vis spectroscopy and electron microscopy (SEM and transmission electron microscopy (TEM)) combined with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) for elemental mapping. Silver metal clusters deposited directly on ZnO nanocrystals were obtained from this process. The Ag loading (1–5 at.%) controlled the Ag cluster size from 5 to 25 nm but did not influence the ZnO crystal size. Photodegradation of 10 ppm methylene blue (MB) solution was used to evaluate the performance of these FSP-made Ag-ZnO and was compared to wet-made Ag-ZnO and reference titania photocatalysts. The rate of photodegradation was optimal for Ag loading around 3 at.%. The best photocatalytic performance was exhibited by flame-made Ag-ZnO produced at the longest high-temperature residence times having high crystallinity as determined by XRD and UV–vis.     

Diagnostic captioning: a survey

Knowledge and Information Systems - Diagnostic captioning (DC) concerns the automatic generation of a diagnostic text from a set of medical images of a patient collected during an examination. DC...     

Accelerated collection of sensor data by mobility-enabled topology ranks

We study the problem of fast and energy-efficient data collection of sensory data using a mobile sink, in wireless sensor networks in which both the sensors and the sink move. Motivated by relevant applications, we focus on dynamic sensory mobility and heterogeneous sensor placement. Our approach basically suggests to exploit the sensor motion to adaptively propagate information based on local conditions (such as high placement concentrations), so that the sink gradually “learns” the network and accordingly optimizes its motion. Compared to relevant solutions in the state of the art (such as the blind random walk, biased walks, and even optimized deterministic sink mobility), our method significantly reduces latency (the improvement ranges from 40% for uniform placements, to 800% for heterogeneous ones), while also improving the success rate and keeping the energy dissipation at very satisfactory levels.     

Direction-based adaptive data propagation for heterogeneous sensor mobility

We consider sensor networks where the sensor nodes are attached on entities that move in a highly dynamic, heterogeneous manner. To capture this mobility diversity we introduce a new network parameter, the direction-aware mobility level, which measures how fast and close each mobile node is expected to get to the data destination (the sink). We then provide local, distributed data dissemination protocols that adaptively exploit the node mobility to improve performance. In particular, “high” mobility is used as a low cost replacement for data dissemination (due to the ferrying of data), while in the case of “low” mobility either (a) data propagation redundancy is increased (when highly mobile neighbors exist) or (b) long-distance data transmissions are used (when the entire neighborhood is of low mobility) to accelerate data dissemination toward the sink. An extensive performance comparison to relevant methods from the state of the art demonstrates significant improvements, i.e. latency is reduced by even four times while keeping energy dissipation and delivery success at very satisfactory levels.