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Background The therapeutic strategy for mycetoma relies heavily on the identification of the causative agents, which are either fungal or bacterial. While histopathological examination of surgical biopsies is currently the most used diagnostic tool, it requires well-trained pathologists, who are lacking in most rural areas where mycetoma is endemic. In this work we propose and evaluate a machine learning approach that semi-automatically analyses histopathological microscopic images of grains and provides a classification of the disease as eumycetoma or actinomycetoma. Methods The computational model is based on radiomics and partial least squares. It is assessed on a dataset that includes 890 individual grains collected from 168 patients originating from the Mycetoma Research Centre in Sudan. The dataset contained 94 eumycetoma cases and 74 actinomycetoma cases, with a distribution of the species among the two causative agents that is representative of the Sudanese distribution. Results The proposed model achieved identification of causative agents with an accuracy of 91.89%, which is comparable to the accuracy of experts from the domain. The method was found to be robust to a small error in the segmentation of the grain and to changes in the acquisition protocol. Among the radiomics features, the homogeneity of mycetoma grain textures was found to be the most discriminative feature for causative agent identification. Conclusion The results presented in this study support that this computational approach could greatly benefit rural areas with limited access to specialized clinical centres and also provide a second opinion for expert pathologists to implement the appropriate therapeutic strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Battiau-Queney, Y.; Ventalon, S.; Abraham, R.; Sipka, V.; Cohen, O., and Marin, D., 2024. Bedforms and sedimentary features related to water-depth variations in a sandy tidal-flat environment. Journal of Coastal Research, 40(1), 80–103. Charlotte (North Carolina), ISSN 0749-0208. This study highlighted the variability of a wide sandy macrotidal coastal system on short timescales. Changes in water depth and exposure length were the main drivers of this variability. In the study area, the coastal system consists of three units: a lower ridge-and-runnel beach, a 1000-m-wide tidal flat, and a sandy backshore. This research is based on sedimentary features that can record physical forces, especially the bedforms at the beach surface, and their relationship with beach gradient, exposure length, and changing water depth, according to tidal, weather, and marine conditions. It also demonstrated the ability of scanning electron microscope analysis of quartz grain microtextures to indicate the level of marine and eolian energy in the coastal system. The widespread wave and current sand ripples on the tidal flat showed great variability in time and space. A minimum water depth of 0.30 to 0.50 m was required for their development. The role of wind-induced waves and the frequent interference of tidal, wave, and wind forcing mechanisms are emphasized. The development of some complex sand ripples extended over a complete lunar tidal cycle. Wind-generated sand ripples were observed only on the backshore. Their absence on the tidal flat, despite the high level of eolian energy attested by quartz microtextures, and the poor development of dunes on the backshore are explained by factors impeding eolian sand transport at the beach surface such as extreme fetch segmentation and possible shell armoring of the beach surface during dry periods. This study demonstrated the short-term variability of the beach morphology as opposed to the long-term stability of the coastal system as a whole, in which the ultradissipative tidal flat, characterized by limited sand supply, low wave energy, and high but inefficient wind energy, plays a key role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the morphological discrimination of the three pseudo-cryptic Ammonia species, A. aberdoveyensis, A. confertitesta and A. veneta, has been recently established, information on their ecology and habitats are still relatively scarce. This study aims to define distribution patterns of these species at eight sites scattered along the French coasts of the English Channel, over a total of 39 stations. These sites were classified into two habitats, either harbours (heavily modified sites) or less impacted (moderately influenced sites). The use of IndVal index (an index based on how a species is statistically specific to a habitat) clearly indicates that A. confertitesta is recorded preferentially in or close to harbours. Considering its non-indigenous species (NIS) status in Europe, we investigated its reported occurrences in Europe in the literature. It almost always showed a proximity to major European harbours. Sometimes, this species occurred relatively far away from these harbours, suggesting a secondary spread. Finally, this work interprets A. confertitesta being a NIS in the eastern English Channel with assumptions of being invasive regarding its dominance over the indigenous species A. aberdoveyensis and A. veneta. Complementary works such as retrospective core studies of fossil faunas are needed to quantitatively assess when and where A. confertitesta was introduced in Europe and potentially started to replace its congenerics A. veneta and A. aberdoveyensis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades, benthic foraminiferal ecology has been intensively investigated to improve the potential application of these marine organisms as proxies of the effects of climate change and other global change phenomena. It is still challenging to define the most important factors affecting foraminiferal communities and derived faunistic parameters. In this study, we examined the abiotic-biotic relationships of foraminiferal communities in the central-southern area of the Adriatic Sea using modern machine learning techniques. We combined gradient forest (Gf) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test hypotheses about determinants of benthic foraminiferal assemblages. These approaches helped determine the relative effect of sizes of different environmental variables responsible for shaping living foraminiferal distributions. Four major faunal turnovers (at 13–28 m, 29–58 m, 59–215 m, and >215 m) were identified along a large bathymetric gradient (13–703 m water depth) that reflected the classical bathymetric distribution of benthic communities. Sand and organic matter (OM) contents were identified as the most relevant factors influencing the distribution of foraminifera either along the entire depth gradient or at selected bathymetric ranges. The SEM supported causal hypotheses that focused the factors that shaped assemblages at each bathymetric range, and the most notable causal relationships were direct effects of depth and indirect effects of the Gf-identified environmental parameters (i.e., sand, pollution load Index–PLI, organic matter–OM and total nitrogen–N) on foraminifera infauna and diversity. These results are relevant to understanding the basic ecology and conservation of foraminiferal communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We give an invariance principle for very general additive functionals of conditioned Bienaymé-Galton-Watson trees in the global regime when the offspring distribution lies in the domain of attraction of a stable distribution, the limit being an additive functional of a stable Lévy tree. This includes the case when the offspring distribution has finite variance (the Lévy tree being then the Brownian tree). We also describe, using an integral test, a phase transition for toll functions depending on the size and height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a model of a stationary population with random size given by a continuous-state branching process with immigration with a quadratic branching mechanism. We give an exact elementary simulation procedure for the genealogical tree of n individuals randomly chosen among the extant population at a given time. Then we prove the convergence of the renormalized total length of this genealogical tree as n goes to infinity; see also Pfaffelhuber, Wakolbinger and Weisshaupt (2011) in the context of a constant-size population. The limit appears already in Bi and Delmas (2016) but with a different approximation of the full genealogical tree. The proof is based on the ancestral process of the extant population at a fixed time, which was defined by Aldous and Popovic (2005) in the critical case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under minimal condition, we prove the local convergence of a critical multi-type Galton-Watson tree conditioned on having a large total progeny by types toward a multi-type Kesten’s tree. We obtain the result by generalizing Neveu’s strong ratio limit theorem for aperiodic random walks on Zd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is the presentation of a post-processing method allowing to remove impulse noise in binary images, while preserving thin structures. We use a grain filter. We propose a method to automatically determine the required threshold using Galton-Watson processes. We present numerical results and a complete analysis on a synthetic image. We end the numerical section considering a specific application to granite samples crack detection: Here we deal with X-tomography images that have been binarized via preprocessing techniques and we want to remove residual impulse noise while keeping cracks and micro-cracks structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the Brownian tree introduced by Aldous and the associated Q-process which consists in an infinite spine on which are grafted independent Brownian trees. We present a reversal procedure on these trees that consists in looking at the tree downward from its top: the branching points becoming leaves and leaves becoming branching points. We prove that the distribution of this tree is invariant under this reversal procedure, which provides a better understanding of previous results from Bi and Delmas (2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representation of coalescent processes using pruning of trees has been used by Goldschmidt and Martin for the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent and by Abraham and Delmas for the β(3/2, 1/2)-coalescent. By considering a pruning procedure on stable Galton-Watson tree with n labeled leaves, we give a representation of the discrete β(1+α, 1-α)-coalescent, with α ∈ [1/2, 1) starting from the trivial partition of the n first integers. The construction can also be made directly on the stable continuum Lévy tree, with parameter 1/α, simultaneously for all n. This representation allows to use results on the asymptotic number of coalescence events to get the asymptotic number of cuts in stable Galton-Watson tree (with infinite variance for the offspring distribution) needed to isolate the root. Using convergence of the stable Galton-Watson tree conditioned to have infinitely many leaves, one can get the asymptotic distribution of blocks in the last coalescence event in the β(1 + α, 1 - α)-coalescent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We give an explicit construction of the increasing tree-valued process introduced by Abraham and Delmas using a random point process of trees and a grafting procedure. This random point process will be used in companion papers to study record processes on Lévy trees. We use the Poissonian structure of the jumps of the increasing tree-valued process to describe its behavior at the first time the tree grows higher than a given height, using a spinal decomposition of the tree, similar to the classical Bismut and Williams decompositions. We also give the joint distribution of this exit time and the ascension time which corresponds to the first infinite jump of the tree-valued process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering a random binary tree with n labelled leaves, we use a pruning procedure on this tree in order to construct a β(3/2, ½)-coalescent process. We also use the continuous analogue of this construction, i.e. a pruning procedure on Aldous's continuum random tree, to construct a continuous state space process that has the same structure as the β-coalescent process up to some time change. These two constructions enable us to obtain results on the coalescent process, such as the asymptotics on the number of coalescent events or the law of the blocks involved in the last coalescent event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the height process of a Lévy process with no negative jumps, and its associated continuous tree representation. Using Lévy snake tools developed by Le Gall-Le Jan and Duquesne-Le Gall, with an underlying Poisson process, we construct a fragmentation process, which in the stable case corresponds to the self-similar fragmentation described by Miermont. For the general fragmentation process we compute a family of dislocation measures as well as the law of the size of a tagged fragment. We also give a special Markov property for the snake which is of its own interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the exploration process associated to the continuous random tree (CRT) built using a Lévy process with no negative jumps. This process has been studied by Duquesne, Le Gall and Le Jan. This measure-valued Markov process is a useful tool to study CRT as well as super-Brownian motion with general branching mechanism. In this paper we prove this process is Feller, and we compute its infinitesimal generator on exponential functionals and give the corresponding martingale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We consider the exit measure of super Brownian motion with a stable branching mechanism of a smooth domain D of ℝ[sup d] . We derive lower bounds for the hitting probability of small balls for the exit measure and upper bounds in the critical dimension. This completes results given by Sheu [22] and generalizes the results of Abraham and Le Gall [2]. Because of the links between exits measure and partial differential equations, those results imply bounds on solutions of elliptic semi-linear PDE. We also give the Hausdorff dimension of the support of the exit measure and show it is totally disconnected in high dimension. Eventually we prove the exit measure is singular with respect to the surface measure on ∂D in the critical dimension. Our main tool is the subordinated Brownian snake introduced by Bertoin, Le Gall and Le Jan [4]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study some properties of the exit measure of super Brownian motion from a smooth domain D in R. In particular, we give precise estimates for the probability that the exit measure gives a positive mass to a small ball on the boundary. As an application, we compute the Hausdorff dimension of the support of the exit measure. In dimension 2, we prove that the exit measure is absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure on the boundary. In connection with Dynkin's work, our results give some information on the behavior of solutions of Δ u= u in D, and are related to the characterization of removable singularities at the boundary. As a consequence of our estimates, we give a sufficient condition for the uniqueness of the positive solution of Δ u= u in D that tends to ∞ on an open subset O of ϖ D and to 0 on the complement in ϖ D of the closure of O. Our proofs use the path-valued process studied in [L2, L3]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]