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Objective: To compare the diagnostic effectiveness of the Gynecologic Imaging Reporting and Data System (GI-RADS) and Neoplasias in the Adnexa (ADNEX) model for the diagnosis of benign and malignant ovarian tumors by junior physicians. Methods: The sonographic data of 634 patients with ovarian tumors confirmed by pathology in our hospital over 4 years were analyzed retrospectively by junior doctors. The diagnostic efficacy of the GI-RADS and ADNEX models was compared based on pathology. Results: (1) Regarding the diagnostic efficacy of the GI-RADS and ADNEX models, the sensitivity was 90.15% and 84.85%, the specificity was 87.65% and 85.86%, the accuracy rates were 88.17% and 85.65%, and the Youden Indices were 0.778 and 0.707, respectively. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were 0.924 (95% CI: 0.900-0.943) and 0.933 (95% CI: 0.911-0.951), respectively. The GI-RADS classification was equivalent to that of the ADNEX model in the diagnosis of adnexal tumors (P>0.05). These findings were highly consistent with the pathological results (Kappa values were 0.684 and 0.691, respectively). (2) When differentiating between different pathological types of adnexal tumors, the ADNEX model had the best diagnostic value for distinguishing between benign tumors and stage II-IV ovarian cancer (AUC=0.990, 95% CI: 0.978-0.997). Conclusions: (1) The diagnostic efficacy of the GI-RADS and ADNEX models in the diagnosis of benign and malignant ovarian tumors by junior physicians is excellent and comparable. (2) The ADNEX model shows good value for differentiating ovarian tumors of different pathological types by junior physicians [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This study aims to comprehensively evaluate the clinical efficacy of chemotherapy or endocrine therapy maintenance in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients. Materials and Methods The meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and propensity score matching of multicenter cohort study evaluated MBC patients who underwent first-line chemotherapy or endocrine therapy maintenance. This study is registered with PROSPERO: CRD42017071858 and ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04258163. Results A total of 2,867 patients from 15 RCTs and 760 patients from multicenter cohort were included. The results from meta-analysis showed that chemotherapy maintenance improved progression-free survival (PFS) (hazard ratio [HR], 0.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.54 to 0.73; p < 0.001; moderate-quality evidence) and overall survival (OS) (HR, 0.87; 95% CI 0.78 to 0.97; p=0.016; high-quality evidence) than observation. In the cohort study, for hormone receptor-positive MBC patients, chemotherapy maintenance improved PFS (HR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.52 to 0.85; p < 0.001) and OS (HR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.42 to 0.73; p < 0.001) compared with observation, and endocrine therapy maintenance also improved PFS (HR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.53 to 0.80; p < 0.001) and OS (HR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.69; p < 0.001). There were no differences between chemotherapy and endocrine therapy maintenance in PFS and OS (all p > 0.05). Regardless of the continuum or switch maintenance therapy, showed prolonged survival in MBC patients who were response to first-line treatment. Conclusion This study provided evidences for survival benefits of chemotherapy and endocrine therapy maintenance in MBC patients, and there was no difference efficacy between chemotherapy and endocrine therapy maintenance for hormone receptor-positive patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The measurement of liver stiffness (LS) and spleen stiffness (SS) based on ultrasound elastography can be used for non-invasive assessment of portal hypertension (PH). However, there are few studies on the corresponding mechanism of increased spleen stiffness. Our aim was to use two-dimensional shear wave elastrography (2D-SWE) to evaluate the relationship between LS and SS and the severity of PH in rats. And explore the mechanism of the increase of LS and SS in PH. Methods: Sixty male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into portal hypertension (PH group, n = 45) and normal control (NC group, n = 15). At 12 weeks, LS and SS was detected by 2D-SWE in vivo. Related hemodynamic parameters and portal vein pressure (PVP) was measured. Spleen and liver 2D-SWE detection was performed again after sacrifice. Pathological changes were observed. Results: The SS and LS were increased in PH group (P < 0.05). The SS decreased after sacrifice, and what's more the magnitude of SS decline significantly higher in PH group than in NC group (P < 0.05). The correlation between SS and PVP is stronger than LS (r = 0.624, P < 0.001). SS has positive correlation with indexes of hyperdynamic circulation, but LS was weakly. The correlation between SS and the pathological grade (r = 0.633, P < 0.001) was lower than that in LS (r = 0.905, P < 0.001). Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that SS, portal vein inner diameter (PVD) and splenic vein blood flow velocity (SVV) were significantly associated with PH. Conclusions: Spleen and liver measurement by 2D-SWE may be helpful in evaluating PVP. The correlation between SS and PVP is stronger than LS in rats measured by 2D-SWE. Hemodynamic circulation are important in the elevation of SS with portal hypertension. Pathological changes also have a degree of influence, but have more significance for the elevation of LS. SS may be a more effective noninvasive predictor of PH than LS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding microbial interactions is essential to decipher the mechanisms of community assembly and their effects on ecosystem functioning, however, the conservation of species- and trait-based network interactions along environmental gradient remains largely unknown. Here, by using the network-based analyses with three paralleled data sets derived from 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing, functional microarray, and predicted metagenome, we test our hypothesis that the network interactions of traits are more conserved than those of taxonomic measures, with significantly lower variation of network characteristics along the environmental gradient in acid mine drainage. The results showed that although the overall network characteristics remained similar, the structural variation was significantly lower at trait levels. The higher conserved individual node topological properties at trait level rather than at species level indicated that the responses of diverse traits remained relatively consistent even though different species played key roles under different environmental conditions. Additionally, the randomization tests revealed that it could not reject the null hypothesis that species-based correlations were random, while the tests suggested that correlation patterns of traits were non-random. Furthermore, relationships between trait-based network characteristics and environmental properties implied that trait-based networks might be more useful in reflecting the variation of ecosystem function. Taken together, our results suggest that deterministic trait-based community assembly results in greater conservation of network interaction, which may ensure ecosystem function across environmental regimes, emphasizing the potential importance of measuring the complexity and conservation of network interaction in evaluating the ecosystem stability and functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating the species richness of microorganisms is of great importance in predicting, maintaining and managing microbial communities. Although the roles of environmental heterogeneity and geographical distance in structuring soil microbial communities have been studied intensively, the effects of environmental and spatial variation on the species richness estimation have not been examined. To this end, we have explored their effects on estimating the belowground soil bacterial species richness within a 50 ha forest dynamic plot (FDP) using a published massive sequencing dataset with intensive sampling scheme. Our resampling analyses showed that, for a given sequencing depth, increasing the sample size could significantly enhance the detection of rare species by capturing more of the environmental and spatial variation, thus obtaining higher observed and estimated species richness. Additionally, the estimates of bacterial species richness were significantly and positively correlated with environmental variation among samples, indicating that environmental filtering was the main mechanism driving the processes of community assembly for belowground soil bacterial communities in the plot. Moreover, this effect of environmental variation could be markedly alleviated when the sample size was higher than 450, and thus we predicted that there were at least 42,866 soil bacterial species based on 8,296,878 sequences from 550 samples in the whole 50 ha FDP. Furthermore, we built a power law environmental heterogeneity equation (EHE) as a decision-tool to determine an approximate sample size for comprehensively capturing the environmental gradient within a given habitat. Collectively, this work further links the inherent environmental and spatial variation to the estimation of soil bacterial species richness within a given region, and provides a useful tool of sampling design for a better understanding of microbial biogeographic patterns and estimation of microbial biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The aim of this paper is to examine and model how marketingprofessionals seek,judge, use, and share information in the workplace. Method. The study consists of two stages: first, a questionnaire was conducted with eleven marketing professionals, and seven of them completed an intensive five-day diary study followed by semi-structured interviews at the second stage. Analysis. The open coding method was applied to the 1,198 diary entries, which encompassed 101 real work tasks demanding active information seeking, and to the interview transcripts. Results. Marketing professionals were found to spend approximately two to three hours a day seeking information. Most information was found from internal documents (47%) and external search engines and websites (21%). More attention was devoted to quality factors than to cost when they chose information sources, and reliability (20%) and accuracy (16%) were perceived important. The obtained information was used for information processing, knowledge construction, information production, and applying information. Five dimensions of information sharing occurrences were uncovered, including people, purpose, mode, content, and level of pro-activeness. Conclusions. A model of information behaviour incorporating information seeking, judgement, use and sharing was developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is presented that electromyography (EMG) is a shot noise based on the generation of EMG. A novel filter is proposed by applying a neural network (NN) ensemble where the noisy input signal and the desired one are the same in a learning process. Both incremental and batch mode are applied in the learning process of NNs that is better than generalized NN filters. This NN ensemble filter not only reduces additive and multiplicative white noise inside signals, but also preserves the signals' characteristics. In clinical EEG and EMG signals processing, the filter is capable of reducing EMG in the clinical EEG, and it is proved that there is randomness in EMG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently proposed product quantization method is efficient for large scale approximate nearest neighbor search, however, its performance on unstructured vectors is limited. This paper introduces residual vector quantization based approaches that are appropriate for unstructured vectors. Database vectors are quantized by residual vector quantizer. The reproductions are represented by short codes composed of their quantization indices. Euclidean distance between query vector and database vector is approximated by asymmetric distance, i.e., the distance between the query vector and the reproduction of the database vector. An efficient exhaustive search approach is proposed by fast computing the asymmetric distance. A straight forward non-exhaustive search approach is proposed for large scale search. Our approaches are compared to two state-of-the-art methods, spectral hashing and product quantization, on both structured and unstructured datasets. Results show that our approaches obtain the best results in terms of the trade-off between search quality and memory usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on online scene learning and fast camera relocalisation which are two key problems currently limiting the performance of wide area augmented reality systems. Firstly, we propose to use adaptive random trees to deal with the online scene learning problem. The algorithm can provide more accurate recognition rates than traditional methods, especially with large scale workspaces. Secondly, we use the enhanced PROSAC algorithm to obtain a fast camera relocalisation method. Compared with traditional algorithms, our method can significantly reduce the computation complexity, which facilitates to a large degree the process of online camera relocalisation. Finally, we implement our algorithms in a multithreaded manner by using a parallel-computing scheme. Camera tracking, scene mapping, scene learning and relocalisation are separated into four threads by using multi-CPU hardware architecture. While providing real-time tracking performance, the resulting system also possesses the ability to track multiple maps simultaneously. Some experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the validity of our methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose To investigate the clinical application of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) for assessing chromosome disorders of embryos in preimplantation diagnosis of carriers with der(15)t(Y;15)(q12;p11) translocations. Methods Multicolor FISH was performed using directly-labelled DNA probes, chromosome X with one (DXZ1, Xp11.1-q11.1), but Y with two (DYZ3, Yp11.1-q11.1 and DYZ1, Yq12). Normal embryos were transferred on day 6 at blastocyst stage. Results Couple A: Three of 6 biopsied embryos were normal. Two normal blastocysts were transferred, but no pregnancy was achieved. Couple B: Three of 6 biopsied embryos were normal. Two normal blastocysts were transferred. A normal male infant weighing 3,230 g was born by cesarean section on the 39th week of gestation. All of the remaining nonreplaced embryos showed mosaic or der(15). Conclusion Embryos from carries of der(15)t(Y;15)(q12; p11) translocation showed a high frequency of chromosome abnormalities. PGD is a valuable screen tool for those couples to treat their infertility and break the transmission of der(15) chromosome for their offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose To provide more genetic information about meiotic segregation behavior and the possibility of interchromosomal effects (ICE) in spermatozoa from carriers of Robertsonian (Rob) translocations. Materials and methods Meiotic segregation behavior in spermatozoa from six carriers of Rob translocations, four t(13;14), one t(14;22) and one t(13;21), was investigated by dual fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH). Aneuploidy for chromosomes 18, X and Y was studied by triple FISH. Results The rate of normal/balanced spermatozoa resulting from alternate segregation ranged from 78.14 to 86.88%. The frequency of unbalanced spermatozoa resulting from adjacent segregation varied between 11.70 and 19.53%. The higher frequencies of aneuploidy for sex chromosome were observed in three Rob translocation carriers. In addition, the increased rates of diploid were found in two t(13;14) carriers. Conclusions Alternate segregation is dominant in the different types of Rob translocations. Some carriers may be at an increased risk for ICE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving accurate registration between real and synthetic worlds is one of the most difficult problems in augmented reality (AR) systems. A proposed real-time camera-pose estimation method solves the registration problem for wide-area AR applications through two unique features. First, this method employs multiple maps and local bundle adjustment, which solve problems associated with online scene reconstruction. This enables the registration to work without prior knowledge of natural scenes, thus greatly enhancing AR systems' usability. Second, this method redefines the class of traditional ferns and proposes a recognition technique for online learning and recognition of keyframes. (A fern is a nonhierarchical structure consisting of a small set of binary tests; it returns the probability that an image patch belongs to any one of the learned classes.) The result is a system that can learn keyframes dynamically and switch between different scenes automatically, even in large-scale workspaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although sperm dysfunction is the single most common cause of infertility, we have poor methods of diagnosis and surprisingly no effective treatment (excluding assisted reproductive technology). In this review, we challenge the usefulness of a basic semen analysis and argue that a new paradigm is required immediately. We discuss the use of at-home screening to potentially improve the diagnosis of the male and to streamline the management of the sub-fertile couple. Additionally, we outline the recent progress in the field, for example, in proteomics, which will allow the development of new biomarkers of sperm function. This new knowledge will transform our understanding of the spermatozoon as a machine and is likely to lead to non-ART treatments for men with sperm dysfunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]