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Abstract The evaluation of deep-learning (DL) systems typically relies on the Area under the Receiver-Operating-Curve (AU-ROC) as a performance metric. However, AU-ROC, in its holistic form, does not sufficiently consider performance within specific ranges of sensitivity and specificity, which are critical for the intended operational context of the system. Consequently, two systems with identical AU-ROC values can exhibit significantly divergent real-world performance. This issue is particularly pronounced in the context of anomaly detection tasks, a commonly employed application of DL systems across various research domains, including medical imaging, industrial automation, manufacturing, cyber security, fraud detection, and drug research, among others. The challenge arises from the heavy class imbalance in training datasets, with the abnormality class often incurring a considerably higher misclassification cost compared to the normal class. Traditional DL systems address this by adjusting the weighting of the cost function or optimizing for specific points along the ROC curve. While these approaches yield reasonable results in many cases, they do not actively seek to maximize performance for the desired operating point. In this study, we introduce a novel technique known as AUCReshaping, designed to reshape the ROC curve exclusively within the specified sensitivity and specificity range, by optimizing sensitivity at a predetermined specificity level. This reshaping is achieved through an adaptive and iterative boosting mechanism that allows the network to focus on pertinent samples during the learning process. We primarily investigated the impact of AUCReshaping in the context of abnormality detection tasks, specifically in Chest X-Ray (CXR) analysis, followed by breast mammogram and credit card fraud detection tasks. The results reveal a substantial improvement, ranging from 2 to 40%, in sensitivity at high-specificity levels for binary classification tasks.

Last years researches focused on several natural and synthetic compounds that may interfere with the major functions of the endocrine system and were termed endocrine disrupters. Endocrine disrupters are defined as chemical substances with either agonist or antagonist endocrine effects in human and animals. These effects may be achieved by interferences with the biosynthesis or activity of several endogenous hormones. Recently, it was demonstrated that heavy metals such as cadmium (Cd), arsen (As), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) may exhibit endocrine-disrupting activity in animal experiments. Emerging evidence of the intimate mechanisms of action of these heavy metals is accumulating. It was revealed, for example, that the Zn atom from the Zn fingers of the estrogen receptor can be replaced by several heavy metal molecules such as copper, cobalt, Ni and Cd. By replacing the Zn atom with Ni or copper, binding of the estrogen receptor to the DNA hormone responsive elements in the cell nucleus is prevented. In both males and females, low-level exposure to Cd interferes with the biological effects of steroid hormones in reproductive organs. Arsen has the property to bind to the glucocorticoid receptor thus disturbing glucocorticoids biological effects. With regard to Hg, this may induce alterations in male and female fertility, may affect the function of the hypothalamo-pituitary-thyroid axis or the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis, and disrupt biosynthesis of steroid hormones.

The Tzurcana breed, a rustic breed with mixed morpho-productive character, named for good “the queen of mountains”, constitutes the main ovine breed exploited in Romania, being almost 90% from the total ovine livestock bred and exploited in our country. It presents great biodiversity both as color varieties and also as ecotype, the most spread one being white variety and for that reason in this article we propose to present a study on white variety bred in farms from Bistriţa-Năsăud, Cluj, Satu Mare and Sălaj Counties. In the morpho-productive characterization we followed aspects concerning the body development and some body sizes, the wool production, the lambs’ number and milk production. In abstract, we refer to the body weight and we can say that comparing with the breed standard, in which in females it is between 35.00 and 45.00 kg, in our analyzed livestock this parameter varied between 57.12 and 66.00 kg, and in males was surpassed the standard with over 25 kg. This fact shows a tenacious work for breed massiveness increasing and other analyzed features improvement comparatively to the breed standard.

The constant and accelerated increase of world fish production through the expansion of fisheries and the development of aquaculture has also generated a higher interest in animal welfare. In the present, is proven that the fish welfare is a factor that influences the quality of the product and the practices of capture and slaughter, which can compromise these attributes. The harvesting and suppressing life methods give to the biochemical processes of fish meat some particularities, as a result of the stressor to which it is subjected by tracking, agglomeration, space restriction and asphyxiation. In the view of all, it is important to correctly identify procedures that improve both the welfare of the fish and the quality of the product. In this review, there are highlighted some of the stunning and slaughter methods of fish used in the aquaculture or capture fisheries, focusing on the human agreed standards and international organizations. There are recommendations in this sense for operations prior to slaughter and the possibility of developing and implementing new methods, by country and species of fish. In this sense, the brain puncture stands out as a more humane method of slaughtering fish, which also improves the quality of the product.

Hermetia illucens is a sustainable and an increasingly bioeconomical source of nutrients for farm animals. It is still necessary, however, to improve our knowledge of the biological features of this species in order to maximize its use. The aims of this research were to evaluate the effect of the energy level of rearing diets on its body weight and fat-body reserves. The quantity and quality of the fats storred by the non-feeding stages of this insect and its reproductive performances were also studied. A control diet (CD - Gainesville diet) and three diets with progressively greater energy contents (kcal/kg ME) were formulated. The increase was achieved by including different amounts of maize, 40% (ED1), 60% (ED2) and 80% (ED3), in these three diets. Abother diet (ED4) consisted of fruit and vegetable waste. The results indicate that the body weight of larvae, prepupae, pupae and adult flies, as well as fat content of the larvae increased significantly (p ˂ 0.01) with increase in the energy content of the diets. There was a positive Pearson correlation between energy content of diets and body weight of adult flies. The heaviest egg clutches with the highest number of eggs/clutch (p ˂ 0.01) were laid by flies reared on the diets with the highest energy content. The quality of the fat stored by larvae did not influence the weight and number of egg laid.

Abstract With the rapid growth and increasing use of brain MRI, there is an interest in automated image classification to aid human interpretation and improve workflow. We aimed to train a deep convolutional neural network and assess its performance in identifying abnormal brain MRIs and critical intracranial findings including acute infarction, acute hemorrhage and mass effect. A total of 13,215 clinical brain MRI studies were categorized to training (74%), validation (9%), internal testing (8%) and external testing (8%) datasets. Up to eight contrasts were included from each brain MRI and each image volume was reformatted to common resolution to accommodate for differences between scanners. Following reviewing the radiology reports, three neuroradiologists assigned each study to abnormal vs normal, and identified three critical findings including acute infarction, acute hemorrhage, and mass effect. A deep convolutional neural network was constructed by a combination of localization feature extraction (LFE) modules and global classifiers to identify the presence of 4 variables in brain MRIs including abnormal, acute infarction, acute hemorrhage and mass effect. Training, validation and testing sets were randomly defined on a patient basis. Training was performed on 9845 studies using balanced sampling to address class imbalance. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed. The ROC analysis of our models for 1050 studies within our internal test data showed AUC/sensitivity/specificity of 0.91/83%/86% for normal versus abnormal brain MRI, 0.95/92%/88% for acute infarction, 0.90/89%/81% for acute hemorrhage, and 0.93/93%/85% for mass effect. For 1072 studies within our external test data, it showed AUC/sensitivity/specificity of 0.88/80%/80% for normal versus abnormal brain MRI, 0.97/90%/97% for acute infarction, 0.83/72%/88% for acute hemorrhage, and 0.87/79%/81% for mass effect. Our proposed deep convolutional network can accurately identify abnormal and critical intracranial findings on individual brain MRIs, while addressing the fact that some MR contrasts might not be available in individual studies.

This paper is an overview of the contractor’s referral presented to the Dispute Adjudication Board with a focus on F.I.D.I.C. Contracts. It is presented the contractual and legal steps that an Entrepreneur need to go through it to present his statement of case to D.A.B. Also you can find how important is a Notice of Claim issued by the Contractor when he get to know about an event or circumstance of the Employer risk. Not issued in time the Notice of Claim, he can lose any rights for time and money fort that event. Also, a strong Statement of Case presented to the Dispute Adjudication Board can solve the problem for time that the contractor had lost and give him all the cost associated to that time.

The developmental stages of the black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens, are widely studied because there are several ways in which this species can be utilized. In this context, the aim of the current study is to determine the loss of weight of larvae of different weights between the prepupal and reproductive adult stages and their effect on the egg clutch quality parameters. The Hermetia illucens prepupae were categorized in 3 body weight classes. The weight loss was evaluated by weighing individuals in the prepupal, pupal and adult stages. The weight and length of the individuals were positively correlated in the pupal stage and adult females. There were significant losses of weight (P = 0.000) in the prepupal, pupal and adult stages in all three weight classes. In each weight class the relationship between weights was significant (P = 0.000) for all development stages. The results clearly indicate that the largest larvae of Hermetia illucens produced the adults with the best clutch quality parameters and the existence of significant positive correlations between body weight and both weight loss and the egg clutch quality parameters.

Edible insects such as the black soldier fly Hermetia illucens L. represent a potential and sustainable source of nutrients for food and feed due to their valuable nutritional composition, which can be modulated through dietary enrichment. The high content of saturated fatty acid (FA) of Hermetia illucens larvae fats can be modulated through dietary enrichment as a result of adding vegetable oils in the rearing substrate. Therefore, the present research aims to highlight the effects of a 10% addition of vegetable oils from five dietary fat sources (linseed oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, and hempseed oil) on the growth, development, reproductive performance, and the fat and fatty acids profile of H. illucens. Oil inclusion in the larval diet improved (p < 0.05) the weight of larvae, prepupae, pupae, and imago without influencing (p > 0.05) the egg clutch weight and the number of eggs in the clutch. In addition, the larvae fatty acid profile was different (p < 0.001) according to the oil type, because the unsaturated FAs (UFA) increased from 11.23 to 48.74% of FAME, as well as according to the larvae age, because the saturated FAs decreased from 85.86 to 49.56% of FAME. Linseed oil inclusion led to the improvement of the FA profile at 10 days age of larvae, followed by hempseed and rapeseed oil. These three dietary treatments recorded the highest concentrations in UFA (29.94–48.74% of FAME), especially in polyunsaturated FA (18.91–37.22% of FAME) from the omega-3 series (3.19–15.55% of FAME) and the appropriate n–6/n–3 ratio. As a result, the degree of the lipid polyunsaturation index increased (17.76–41.44) and the value of the atherogenic (3.22–1.22) and thrombogenic (1.43–0.48) indices decreased. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that enriching the larval diet with these oils rich in UFA can modulate the larvae FA profile, making them suitable sources of quality fats for feed and indirectly for food.

Knowledge regarding the influence of the microbial community in cancer promotion or protection has expanded even more through the study of bacterial metabolic products and how they can modulate cancer risk, which represents an extremely challenging approach for the relationship between intestinal microbiota and colorectal cancer (CRC). This review discusses research progress on the effect of bacterial dysbiosis from a metabolic point of view, particularly on the biochemical mechanisms of butyrate, one of the main short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) with anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor properties in CRC. Increased daily intake of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) significantly increases the density of bacteria that are known to produce butyrate. Omega-3 PUFAs have been proposed as a treatment to prevent gut microbiota dysregulation and lower the risk or progression of CRC.

Cadmium (Cd) exposure in fish is the result of aquatic pollution with heavy metals, which is mainly caused byanthropic interventions. Rarely, Cd mobilization from natural resources takes place. Bioaccumulation in tissues and organs is a property of this heavy metal, to generate various pathological effects and major risks due to bio-propagation within the human food chain. Wehereby reviewed the main circumstances and levels of exposure to Cd in the aquatic environment, and effects on growth, development and reproduction induced by its bioaccumulation in fish, as well as the possible ramifications for food security in humans.

The succes ofartificial reproduction in the rainbow trout(Oncorhynchus mykiss), the development of gonads and the results obtained at incubation are significantly affected by the feeding of the breeders. The use of quality sexual products is decisive for the assurance of the production of viable larvae and further of the estimated fish production, so that in addition to the assurance of optimal environmental parameters, the proper feeding of the breeders is required. Starting from the current stage of knowledge in the field,the main objective of the working paperwas to highlight the way the differentiatedfeeding of the rainbow trout females (Oncorhynchus mykiss) influences their growth and development. The extruded peeled feed with a high protein level upon theegg weightand the gonosomatic index were followed. The extruded peeled feed with 53% protein proved to be highly effective, materialized trough high growth performances, a better conversion and the growth of gonadal weight.

Background: Metabolomics—the novel science that evaluates the multitude of low-molecular-weight metabolites in a biological system, provides new data on pathogenic mechanisms of diseases, including endocrine tumors. Although development of metabolomic profiling in pituitary disorders is at an early stage, it seems to be a promising approach in the near future in identifying specific disease biomarkers and understanding cellular signaling networks.Objectives: To review the metabolomic profile and the contributions of metabolomics in pituitary adenomas (PA).Methods: A systematic review was conducted via PubMed, Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases, summarizing studies that have described metabolomic aspects of PA.Results: Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry, which are traditional techniques employed in metabolomics, suggest amino acids metabolism appears to be primarily altered in PA. N-acetyl aspartate, choline-containing compounds and creatine appear as highly effective in differentiating PA from healthy tissue. Deoxycholic and 4-pyridoxic acids, 3-methyladipate, short chain fatty acids and glucose-6-phosphate unveil metabolite biomarkers in patients with Cushing's disease. Phosphoethanolamine, N-acetyl aspartate and myo-inositol are down regulated in prolactinoma, whereas aspartate, glutamate and glutamine are up regulated. Phosphoethanolamine, taurine, alanine, choline-containing compounds, homocysteine, and methionine were up regulated in unclassified PA across studies. Intraoperative use of ultra high mass resolution matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI), which allows localization and delineation between functional PA and healthy pituitary tissue, may contribute to achievement of complete tumor resection in addition to preservation of pituitary cell lines and vasopressin secretory cells, thus avoiding postoperative diabetes insipidus.Conclusion: Implementation of ultra high performance metabolomics analysis techniques in the study of PA will significantly improve diagnosis and, potentially, the therapeutic approach, by identifying highly specific disease biomarkers in addition to novel molecular pathogenic mechanisms. Ultra high mass resolution MALDI-MSI emerges as a helpful clinical tool in the neurosurgical treatment of pituitary tumors. Therefore, metabolomics appears to be a science with a promising prospect in the sphere of PA, and a starting point in pituitary care.

The search for a parameter representing left ventricular relaxation from non-invasive and invasive diagnostic tools has been extensive, since heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HF-pEF) is a global health problem. We explore here the feasibility using patient-specific cardiac computer modeling to capture diastolic parameters in patients suffering from different degrees of systolic HF. Fifty eight patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy have undergone thorough clinical evaluation, including cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), heart catheterization, echocardiography, and cardiac biomarker assessment. A previously-introduced framework for creating multi-scale patient-specific cardiac models has been applied on all these patients. Novel parameters, such as global stiffness factor and maximum left ventricular active stress, representing cardiac active and passive tissue properties have been computed for all patients. Invasive pressure measurements from heart catheterization were then used to evaluate ventricular relaxation using the time constant of isovolumic relaxation Tau (τ). Parameters from heart catheterization and the multi-scale model have been evaluated and compared to patient clinical presentation. The model parameter global stiffness factor, representing diastolic passive tissue properties, is correlated significantly across the patient population with τ. This study shows that multi-modal cardiac models can successfully capture diastolic (dys) function, a prerequisite for future clinical trials on HF-pEF.

During the last few years, the entire business environment has changed, being characterized by volatility and discontinuities. Change has become so intense that companies have lost, on a large extent, their visibility and the strategic planning capacity. In order to operate in such a dynamic environment, companies should be flexible in the strategical, organizational and operational points of view. The higher education institutions are not an exception. Universities have to cope with this change. In this context, the adoption of market orientation approach and principles, which is a business’s concept and practice, may lead to a sustainable development and a higher adaptation capacity to change. Thus, the purpose of this study is to emphasise the approach of market orientation concept in the particular context of higher education institutions and to display some general factors that can intensify or inhibit the market orientation adoption, labelled as antecedents, but also the consequences of market orientation implementation.

The present study is part of a much more cognitive approach, which tries to study resocialization and the social reinsertion of women who are under freedom privation penalty. The present material contains a short historical evolution of the sociologic theories of crime, then plunging towards feminist theories, in order to approach the gender problematic concerning the delinquent woman.. The first objective is to demonstrate the necessity of a wider approach in analyzing the genesis of the crime, through the re-evaluation and reconsidering the factors with a crime risk and placing them in an equal position in the social environment. Another objective of this study is to emphasize the importance of the gender role concerning the expectations of the society from the feminine population’s side. The present study is focused on the contribution of placing the research of feminine crime research on a basis characterized by unprecedented generality, under total influencing conditions, with orientation towards gender problematic.

BackgroundDespite modern pharmacotherapy and advanced implantable cardiac devices, overall prognosis and quality of life of HF patients remain poor. This is in part due to insufficient patient stratification and lack of individualized therapy planning, resulting in less effective treatments and a significant number of non-responders.Methods and resultsState-of-the-art clinical phenotyping was acquired, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and biomarker assessment. An individualized, multi-scale model of heart function covering cardiac anatomy, electrophysiology, biomechanics and hemodynamics was estimated using a robust framework. The model was computed on n=46 HF patients, showing for the first time that advanced multi-scale models can be fitted consistently on large cohorts. Novel multi-scale parameters derived from the model of all cases were analyzed and compared against clinical parameters, cardiac imaging, lab tests and survival scores to evaluate the explicative power of the model and its potential for better patient stratification. Model validation was pursued by comparing clinical parameters that were not used in the fitting process against model parameters.ConclusionThis paper illustrates how advanced multi-scale models can complement cardiovascular imaging and how they could be applied in patient care. Based on obtained results, it becomes conceivable that, after thorough validation, such heart failure models could be applied for patient management and therapy planning in the future, as we illustrate in one patient of our cohort who received CRT-D implantation.

Cold welding on cogged surfaces is a technology developed by researchers from Robotics and Welding Department, Dunarea de Jos University of Galati. Easily deformable samples, having plane surfaces, are pressed on cogged surfaces of harder samples. The paper presents several experimental results regarding mechanical resistance on cold welding achievement. Welded joints between aluminum and copper, brass, carbon steel, stainless steel have been obtained. The maximum mechanical strength is obtained at the deformation rates 20...30%, value obviously much lower that the one characterizing the usual cold welding (minimum 70%). While the tensile strength of the joint is low (around 10% of the tensile strength of the parent metal), the shearing strength is much relevant.

Welding by cold pressing on cogged surfaces, produces the joint of a component made from an easy deformable metal by pressing on the cogged surface of a harder metal component. Different welds between aluminium (the easy deformable component) and copper, brass, steel, stainless steel (harder component, cogged on the contact surface) can be obtained. The weld is obtained only by deforming the aluminium component at a deformation rate of 20…30%. The weld tensile strength is up to 10% of aluminium ultimate tensile strength, better results being obtained for the shearing strength. The weld contact electric resistance is negligible, recommending the process for producing dissimilar elements used in electrotechnics.