Deploying deep learning approaches to left ventricular non-compaction measurement

The Journal of Supercomputing - Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) is a rare cardiomyopathy characterized by abnormal trabeculations in the left ventricle cavity. Although traditional computer...     

Contrasting Rootstock-Mediated Growth and Yield Responses in Salinized Pepper Plants (Capsicum annuum L.) Are Associated with Changes in the Hormonal Balance

Salinity provokes an imbalance of vegetative to generative growth, thus impairing crop productivity. Unlike breeding strategies, grafting is a direct and quick alternative to improve salinity tolerance in horticultural crops, through rebalancing plant development. Providing that hormones play a key role in plant growth and development and stress responses, we hypothesized that rootstock-mediated reallocation of vegetative growth and yield under salinity was associated with changes in the hormonal balance. To test this hypothesis, the hybrid pepper variety (Capsicum annuum L. “Gacela F1”) was either non-grafted or grafted onto three commercial rootstocks (Creonte, Atlante, and Terrano) and plants were grown in a greenhouse under control (0 mM NaCl) and moderate salinity (35 mM NaCl) conditions. Differential vegetative growth versus fruit yield responses were induced by rootstock and salinity. Atlante strongly increased shoot and root fresh weight with respect to the non-grafted Gacela plants associated with improved photosynthetic rate and K⁺ homeostasis under salinity. The invigorating effect of Atlante can be explained by an efficient balance between cytokinins (CKs) and abscisic acid (ABA). Creonte improved fruit yield and maintained the reproductive to vegetative ratio under salinity as a consequence of its capacity to induce biomass reallocation and to avoid Na⁺ accumulation in the shoot. The physiological responses associated with yield stability in Creonte were mediated by the inverse regulation of CKs and the ethylene precursor 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid. Finally, Terrano limited the accumulation of gibberellins in the shoot thus reducing plant height. Despite scion compactness induced by Terrano, both vegetative and reproductive biomass were maintained under salinity through ABA-mediated control of water relations and K⁺ homeostasis. Our data demonstrate that the contrasting developmental and physiological responses induced by the rootstock genotype in salinized pepper plants were critically mediated by hormones. This will be particularly important for rootstock breeding programs to improve salinity tolerance by focusing on hormonal traits.     

Enterotoxigenic <Emphasis Type="Italic">Escherichia coli</Emphasis> strains bind bovine milk gangliosides in a ceramide-dependent process

Diarrhea caused by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is the main infectious disease of newborn calves. The first step of infection involves bacterial attachment to the intestinal mucosa. This adhesion is mediated by fimbriae that recognize some glycoconjugates on the host cell surface, in particular, several gangliosides. Because milk also contains gangliosides, these have been suggested to serve as ligands for bacterial fimbriae and thus prevent the bacterial attachment to mucosa. The most relevant ETEC strains in calves, including those with K99 and F41 fimbriae, were assayed to determine whether they are able to bind gangliosides isolated from several stages of bovine lactation. Both GM3 and GD3, the main gangliosides of milk, were recognized by ETEC strains, although the different fimbriae showed diverse levels of affinity. Unexpectedly, the adhesion to colostral gangliosides was considerably weaker than that to gangliosides from the other stages of lactation. Because the carbohydrate moiety did not change and because differences in the percentages of unsaturated FA and sphingosine between colostrum and other stages were observed, we conclude that the differences in adhesion could be due to a different composition of the ganglioside caramide.     

Open Innovation in an Enterprise 3.0 framework: Three case studies

Nowadays, especially after the recent financial downturn, companies are looking for much more efficient and creative business processes. They need to place better solutions in the market in a less time with less cost. There is a general intuition that communication and collaboration, especially mixed with Web 2.0 approach within companies and ecosystems, can boost the innovation process with positive impacts on business indicators. Open Innovation within an Enterprise 2.0 context is a one of the most chosen paradigm for improving the innovation processes of enterprises, based on the collaborative creation and development of ideas and products. The key feature of this new paradigm is that the knowledge is exploited in a collaborative way flowing not only among internal sources, i.e. R&D departments, but also among external ones as other employees, customers, partners, etc. In this paper we show how an ontology-based analysis of plain text can provide a semantic contextualization of content support tasks, such as finding semantic distance between contents, and can help in creating relations between people with shared knowledge and interests. Along this paper we will present the results obtained by the adoption of this technology in a large corporate environment like Bankinter, a financial institution, Telefonica I+D, an international telecommunication firm and Repsol, a major oil company in Spain.     

Semi-automated and fully automated mammographic density measurement and breast cancer risk prediction

The task of breast density quantification is becoming increasingly relevant due to its association with breast cancer risk. In this work, a semi-automated and a fully automated tools to assess breast density from full-field digitized mammograms are presented. The first tool is based on a supervised interactive thresholding procedure for segmenting dense from fatty tissue and is used with a twofold goal: for assessing mammographic density (MD) in a more objective and accurate way than via visual-based methods and for labeling the mammograms that are later employed to train the fully automated tool. Although most automated methods rely on supervised approaches based on a global labeling of the mammogram, the proposed method relies on pixel-level labeling, allowing better tissue classification and density measurement on a continuous scale. The fully automated method presented combines a classification scheme based on local features and thresholding operations that improve the performance of the classifier. A dataset of 655 mammograms was used to test the concordance of both approaches in measuring MD. Three expert radiologists measured MD in each of the mammograms using the semi-automated tool (DM-Scan). It was then measured by the fully automated system and the correlation between both methods was computed. The relation between MD and breast cancer was then analyzed using a case–control dataset consisting of 230 mammograms. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was used to compute reliability among raters and between techniques. The results obtained showed an average ICC = 0.922 among raters when using the semi-automated tool, whilst the average correlation between the semi-automated and automated measures was ICC = 0.838. In the case–control study, the results obtained showed Odds Ratios (OR) of 1.38 and 1.50 per 10% increase in MD when using the semi-automated and fully automated approaches respectively. It can therefore be concluded that the automated and semi-automated MD assessments present a good correlation. Both the methods also found an association between MD and breast cancer risk, which warrants the proposed tools for breast cancer risk prediction and clinical decision making. A full version of the DM-Scan is freely available.     

Effect of self-etching dual-curing universal adhesive system application on bond strength of dentin resinous liners dentin

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of previous application of an adhesive system on bond strength of resinous liner materials to dentin. Methods: Ninety bovine incisors crowns had a 6 × 6 mm area of dentin exposed, with minimum of 2 mm thickness. They were embedded in acrylic resin, and the dentin was polished with P600 SiC sandpaper for 30 s to standardize the smear layer. The specimens were divided into 6 groups (n = 15) according to the application or not of a self-etching system (Futurabond U – Voco) and the type of resinous liner used: A+Ionoseal (adhesive and Ionoseal – Voco); Ionoseal (Ionoseal only); A+Vitrebond (adhesive and Vitrebond – 3M/ESPE); Vitrebond (Vitrebond only); A+Ionosit (adhesive and Ionosit – DMG) and Ionosit (Ionosit only). Adhesives were used following manufacturer’s instructions, and the liner materials were applied inside a 2-mm-depth matrix and light-cured for 20 s. The bond strength was measured by microtensile test, using a universal testing machine with a cross-speed of 1 mm/min. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s test (p < 0.05). Results: The adhesive system application increased bond strength of all liners tested. Ionoseal presented the highest bond strength when the adhesive system was used and exhibited similar performance to Vitrebond without adhesive. Ionosit without adhesive showed the smallest bond strength compared with the other liners tested. Conclusion: The application of an adhesive system prior to the use of the resinous liners improved the bond strength to dentin and should be preconized.     

Mechanical behavior of cold-water fish gelatin gels crosslinked with 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether

In this work, chemical crosslinking with 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether (BDDGE) is used as strategy to enhance mechanical performance of fish gelatin (FG) gels in order to meet the properties' range of mammalian gelatin physical gels. Joint analysis of free amino groups, swelling ratio, and total soluble material indicates that crosslinking degree increases with increasing FG concentration and it is favored by a 0.2 BDDGE/FG ratio. Increasing crosslinking degree enhances gel indentation strength and shear modulus (μ) while decreases fracture toughness (G_IC). Measured μ and G_IC values lies within the range exhibited by mammalian gelatin physical gels, but the relationship between these parameters is opposite. This is due to the different fracture mechanisms occurring in chemically crosslinked and physical gels.     

Speciation of lead in environmental waters by preconcentration on a new fullerene derivative

A novel fullerene derivative including a chelating group attached to the fullerene core has been prepared by photoreaction of C60 and sodium diethyldithiocarbamate (NaDDC) in toluene-methanol medium. The optimization of the synthesis procedure was monitored by UV-visible spectroscopy using the spectrum of C60 fullerene as reference; the new material, a C60-NaDDC monoadduct, showed a shoulder at 430 nm and an increase in the absorption band comprised between 425 and 500 nm. The solid was obtained by photolysis reaction in approximately 24 h, requiring further purification by preparative chromatography. Characterization of the brown product was accomplished by XRD and solid-state 13C MAS NMR; chemical modification was confirmed through the appearance of peaks close to the fullerene core peak located at 146.9 ppm, which can be assigned to carbon atoms of C60 that are covalently bonded to the diethyldithiocarbamate group to form a pyrrolidine ring-fused fullerene monoadduct. Using lead species as a model assessed the ability of the new material for the preconcentration of metallic and organometallic compounds, providing detection limits of 4-15 ng/L. The most interesting conclusions of the results were high adsorption efficiency, selectivity, and stability of the C60-NaDDC derivative (the packed material can be used for at least six months).     

ESBL-producing E. coli in Austrian sewage sludge

The aim of this study was to investigate the degree of contamination of sewage sludge with ESBL-producing Escherichia coli strains and the effectiveness of different sewage sludge treatment methods.Monthly sewage sludge samples were collected between January and September 2009 in 5 different sewage treatment plants and tested for the presence of ESBL E. coli. In addition, the number of colony forming units (CFU) of E. coli and coliform bacteria before and after the different sludge treatment methods (aerobic/anaerobic digestion, lime stabilization, and thermal treatment) was investigated.Of the 72 sewage sludge samples investigated, ESBL-positive E. coli were found in 44 (61.1%) sewage sludge samples. The classification of β-lactamase groups was carried out in 15 strains resulting in the detection of 2 different groups (CTX-M and TEM) of bla genes. All 15 of them had a CTX-M gene and 4 of these strains furthermore carried a TEM gene.With regard to the CFU of E. coli and coliform bacteria, thermal treatment and lime stabilization following dehydration sufficiently reduced pathogen concentrations. The plants using merely stabilization and dehydration showed an increase of E. coli and coliform bacteria and thus also an increase in ESBL-producing E. coli.