Search

Background: This study aims to evaluate the progression of morphological and functional alterations over time in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) using Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR). Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on patients with HCM who underwent serial CMR at 1.5 Tesla. Left ventricular (LV) mass was measured during diastole, including papillary muscles and trabeculae assessment. Appearance of Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) was volumetrically quantified using a 5-standard-deviation (SD) threshold. Results: Thirty-two patients, with a mean age of 44 ± 16 years (range: 11–70 years), were evaluated after an average follow-up period of 5.2 ± 2.4 years (range: 0.8–9.1 years). Significant increases were observed in LV mass (from 194 ± 56 g to 217 ± 60 g; p = 0.0001), septal wall thickness (from 18 ± 4 mm to 19 ± 4 mm; p = 0.01), LGE mass (from 6 ± 17 g to 8 ± 18 g; p = 0.006), and left atrial volume (from 109 ± 41 ml to 129 ± 40 ml; p = 0.0001). Both left and right ventricular ejection fractions (LVEF and RVEF) significantly decreased over time (LVEF: from 70 ± 9 % to 66 ± 9 %; p = 0.04 and RVEF: from 70 ± 7 % to 67 ± 9 %; p = 0.02). Multivariate regression analysis revealed that HCM mass gain was independently associated with age (B = -0.43; p = 0.02) and LGE mass (B = -0.46; p = 0.02). The median LV mass gain rate in adults was 1.7 g per year/BSA (IQR, 0.6–2.7) compared to 6.0 g per year/BSA (IQR, 0.5–11.6) in adolescents (mean age: 16 years; range: 11–20 years). A positive correlation was found between LV mass and LGE mass (B = 0.55; p = 0.001), while an inverse relationship was observed between LV mass gain and LGE mass gain rates (−0.37; p = 0.03). Conclusion: The range of morphological changes in HCM seems to reflect an age-related equilibrium between hypertrophy and fibrosis. The extent of changes in LV mass, fibrosis, and functional decline in HCM may help identify patients at risk, emphasizing the importance of ongoing follow-up studies.

Abstract Background To compare the diagnostic value of 120-kV with conventional 96-kV Cone-Beam CT (CBCT) of the temporal bone after cochlear implant (CI) surgery. Methods This retrospective study included CBCT scans after CI surgery between 06/17 and 01/18. CBCT allowed examinations with 96-kV or 120-kV; other parameters were the same. Two radiologists independently evaluated following criteria on 5-point Likert scales: osseous spiral lamina, inner and outer cochlear wall, semi-circular canals, mastoid trabecular structure, overall image quality, metal and motion artefacts, depiction of intracochlear electrode position and visualisation of single electrode contacts. Effective radiation dose was assessed. Results Seventy-five patients (females, n = 39 [52.0%], mean age, 55.8 ± 16.5 years) were scanned with 96-kV (n = 32, 42.7%) and 120-kV (n = 43, 57.3%) protocols including CI models from three vendors (vendor A n = 7; vendor B n = 43; vendor C n = 25). Overall image quality, depiction of anatomical structures, and electrode position were rated significantly better in 120-kV images compared to 96-kV (all p

Coffee leaf diseases are a significant challenge for coffee cultivation. They can reduce yields, impact bean quality, and necessitate costly disease management efforts. Manual monitoring is labor-intensive and time-consuming. This research introduces a pioneering mobile application equipped with global positioning system (GPS)-enabled reporting capabilities for on-site coffee leaf disease detection. The application integrates advanced deep learning (DL) techniques to empower farmers and agronomists with a rapid and accurate tool for identifying and managing coffee plant health. Leveraging the ubiquity of mobile devices, the app enables users to capture high-resolution images of coffee leaves directly in the field. These images are then processed in real-time using a pre-trained DL model optimized for efficient disease classification. Five models, Xception, ResNet50, Inception-v3, VGG16, and DenseNet, were experimented with on the dataset. All models showed promising performance; however, DenseNet proved to have high scores on all four-leaf classes with a training accuracy of 99.57%. The inclusion of GPS functionality allows precise geotagging of each captured image, providing valuable location-specific information. Through extensive experimentation and validation, the app demonstrates impressive accuracy rates in disease classification. The results indicate the potential of this technology to revolutionize coffee farming practices, leading to improved crop yield and overall plant health.

Objective To compare the perception towards injury risk reduction approach between athletes who have already experienced an injury and those who have not.Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study using a one-time online survey asking athletics athletes licensed at the French Federation of Athletics (http://www.athle.fr) about their perceptions regarding injuries and injury risk reduction behaviours. We statistically compared athletes who already experienced an injury and those who did not.Results A total of 7870 athletes were included. 90% of athletes declared having experienced at least one injury. They (1) were proportionally more men than women, (2) had significantly more years of experience in athletics, (3) had a significant difference in disciplines (more hurdles, jumps and combined events and fewer sprint athletes), (4) had a significant difference in competition levels (more national and less departmental levels) and (5) reported significantly higher values or agreements in favour of injury risk reduction approach, compared with uninjured athletes. There were significantly more athletes declaring following injury risk reduction programmes among athletes who experienced at least one injury than those who did not.Conclusions Athletes who experienced at least one injury during their lifetime were more prone to adhere to injury risk reduction strategies than athletes who have never experienced an injury. Their entourage (coaches and health professionals) should use this fertile ground to implement injury risk reduction strategies. In addition, their experience should be disseminated to uninjured athletes to help them adhere to injury risk reduction without injury experience.

For teachers to be effective in promoting understanding of mathematical concepts, they need to understand the nature of mathematical concepts. However, to date, the mathematics education literature has not focused on this important area of teacher understanding. One reason that attention to this issue has been lacking is that the term "mathematical concept" has generally been used with little specification. In recent theoretical work, I have explicated two types of mathematical (arithmetical) concepts. The first type involves knowledge of the logical necessity of a mathematical relationship. The second type specifies what it means to understand an arithmetic operation. In this commentary, I examine the implications of this work for primary teacher understanding about the nature of arithmetical concepts and challenges inherent in promoting those understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Soil salinity-alkalinity has emerged as a global problem affecting many ecosystems, including grassland. Plants evolve into different ecotypes to adapt to various environments. Leymus chinensis widely distributed in the eastern Eurasian steppe, has evolved into two main ecotypes: yellow-green (YG) and gray-green (GG). Studies on the adaption mechanisms of both ecotypes in response to saline-alkaline stress are limited. Methods: In this study, the growth and physiological traits of ecotypes YG and GG in soils with different salinity-alkalinity levels-severe saline-alkaline soil (SS), moderate saline-alkaline soil (MS), and light saline-alkaline soil (LS)-were studied. After exposure to saline-alkaline stress for 15 months, the L. chinensis ecotypes exhibited significant differences in the growth characteristics. Results: The specific leaf area, individual tiller biomass, net photosynthetic rate, and potassium content of the two ecotypes under MS conditions were significantly higher than or similar to those under LS conditions. This indicates that L chinensis showed a certain degree of tolerance to saline-alkaline environments under MS conditions. Saline-alkaline stress increased the tillers by 56% in GG and reduced them by 26% in YG, and did not alter the SLA and the number of individual tiller leaves of GG but reduced that of YG. Moreover, with increasing levels of saline-alkaline stress, ecotype GG exhibited an increase in net photosynthetic rate (Pn), while ecotype YG showed insignificant changes. Under SS, GG exhibited higher Pn and chlorophyll content than YG. Additionally, with the increase in the saline-alkaline stress level, the Na+ content increased, but GG exhibited a significantly lower Na+ content than YG. Conversely, the K+ and Ca2+ contents and the K+/Na+ and Ca2+/Na+ ratios decreased, but GG exhibited higher values than YG. Discussion: GG reduced Na+ by absorption by increasing tillers. Additionally, GG absorbed more K+ and Ca2+ ions, thereby maintaining higher K+/Na+ and Ca2+/ Na+ ratios than YG under saline-alkaline stress. These adaptive strategies enable ecotype GG to grow and maintain normal physiological functions under high saline-alkaline stress. The findings of this study hold practical significance for enhancing the economic and ecological value of saline-alkaline grasslands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regioselective functionalization of heptacyclo[6.6.0.02,6.03,13.04,11.05,9.010,14]tetradecane (HCTD) under photocatalytic conditions is described. The protocols developed share an initial photo‐triggered hydrogen atom abstraction that regioselectively generates the necessary HCTD‐radical preferentially at position 1‐, they employ no excess of the precious cage carbocycle, and enable the straightforward access to a broad variety of 1‐(alkyl, aryl, or sulfinyl) HCTDs in moderate but still synthetically useful yields. The scope and limitations of each transformation are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil acidity is a major constraint to crop production in tropical regions. Although agricultural lime is one option to remediate acid soils, there is limited information on the potential returns on investments to liming by smallholders. Using survey data collected from 261 households in Rwanda, we estimated the crop-specific yield response to lime application and associated financial benefits. The estimated average yield gain from lime ranged from 941 kg/ha to 1 579 kg/ha for Irish potato, 562 kg/ha to 709 kg/ha for maize, and 453 kg/ha to 520 kg/ha for beans. With the existing lime and farmgate crop prices, reliable returns on investment from lime were observed for Irish potato, while applying lime to maize and bean was only profitable at a 50% lime price subsidy. As maize and beans are the major staple crops in Rwanda, the subsidy for ag-lime use in improving crop productivity is highly justifiable. The results inform policy decisions in considering market-oriented crops and subsidies when promoting agricultural lime in acid soils under smallholder conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomously driving vehicles in car factories and parking spaces can represent a competitive advantage in the logistics industry. However, the real-world application is challenging in many ways. First of all, there are no publicly available datasets for this specific task. Therefore, we equipped two industrial production sites with up to 11 LiDAR sensors to collect and annotate our own data for infrastructural 3D object detection. These form the basis for extensive experiments. Due to the still limited amount of labeled data, the commonly used ground truth sampling augmentation is the core of research in this work. Several variations of this augmentation method are explored, revealing that in our case, the most commonly used is not necessarily the best. We show that an easy-to-create polygon can noticeably improve the detection results in this application scenario. By using these augmentation methods, it is even possible to achieve moderate detection results when only empty frames without any objects and a database with only a few labeled objects are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia y Memoria de la Educación is the property of Historia y Memoria de la Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A low energy particle confined by a horizontal reflective surface and gravity settles in gravitationally bound quantum states. These gravitational quantum states (GQS) were so far only observed with neutrons. However, the existence of GQS is predicted also for atoms. The GRASIAN collaboration pursues the first observation of GQS of atoms, using a cryogenic hydrogen beam. This endeavor is motivated by the higher densities, which can be expected from hydrogen compared to neutrons, the easier access, the fact that GQS were never observed with atoms and the accessibility to hypothetical short-range interactions. In addition to enabling gravitational quantum spectroscopy, such a cryogenic hydrogen beam with very low vertical velocity components-a few cm s - 1 , can be used for precision optical and microwave spectroscopy. In this article, we report on our methods developed to reduce background and to detect atoms with a low horizontal velocity, which are needed for such an experiment. Our recent measurement results on the collimation of the hydrogen beam to 2 mm, the reduction of background and improvement of signal-to-noise and finally our first detection of atoms with velocities < 72 ms - 1 are presented. Furthermore, we show calculations, estimating the feasibility of the planned experiment and simulations which confirm that we can select vertical velocity components in the order of cm s - 1 ., (© The Author(s) 2024.)