Search Results (25)

Background/Objectives: Spinal MRI segmentation has become increasingly important with the prevalence of disc herniation and vertebral injuries. Artificial intelligence can help orthopedic surgeons and radiologists automate the process of segmentation. Currently, there are few tools for T1-weighted spinal MRI segmentation, with most focusing on T2-weighted imaging. This paper focuses on creating an automatic lumbar spinal MRI segmentation tool for T1-weighted images using deep learning. Methods: An Attention U-Net was employed as the main algorithm because the architecture has shown success in other segmentation applications. Segmentation loss functions were compared, focusing on the difference between BCE and MSE loss. Two board-certified radiologists scored the output of the Attention U-Net versus four other algorithms to assess clinical relevance and segmentation accuracy. Results: The Attention U-Net achieved superior results, with SSIM and DICE coefficients of 0.998 and 0.93, outperforming other architectures. Both radiologists agreed that the Attention U-Net segmented lumbar spinal images with the highest accuracy on the Likert Scale (3.7 ± 0.82). Cohen’s Kappa coefficient was measured at 0.31, indicating a fair level of agreement. MSE loss outperformed BCE with respect to both SSIM and DICE, serving as the loss function of choice. Conclusions: Qualitative observations showed that the Attention U-Net and U-Net++ were the top performing networks. However, the Attention U-Net minimized external noise and focused on internal spinal preservation, demonstrating strong segmentation performance for T1-weighted lumbar spinal MRI. Full article

Background/Objectives: Current methods for diagnosing color vision deficiency (CVD) generally fall into two categories: computer-based tests that lack full-color lighting and non-computer-based tests that provide full-color lighting. Most of these approaches face several limitations, including inaccurate illumination of test samples, inconsistent test durations, learning effects, and the need for highly skilled operators. Methods: To address these limitations, this study introduces the Computerized Full-Color Assessment (CFCA) method, which employs a full-color light generation system based on 16 color spectra selected from the classical Farnsworth D-15 (D-15) test. In the CFCA method, each pair of colors generated by the system was presented under software control, and participants indicated within three seconds whether the colors were different. The total test duration was limited to 5 min. The method was validated using 10 normal trichromats and 11 patients with CVDs. Results: Results obtained from the CFCA were compared with those from the classical D-15 test using quantitative parameters, including confusion angle (CA) and confusion index (CI). Correlations between the two methods were analyzed. The p-values for CA and CI are 0.688 and 0.587, respectively, and the correlation coefficients are 0.821 for CA and 0.884 for CI, indicating a strong and statistically significant correlation. Conclusions: The CFCA method provides an accurate, convenient, and efficient tool for diagnosing CVD, with particular advantages for use in young children. It enables an expanded range of color choices beyond the 16 discs of the D-15 test and allows for the generation of individualized visual spectra, which can be applied in the design of customized color-vision-correcting glasses. Full article

Four tertiary amines (tributylamine, tripentylamine, trihexylamine, triethanolamine) were investigated with a 25 μm platinum disc microelectrode in more organic solvents. In the commonly used inert solvent acetonitrile, the sigmoidal-shaped curves used were recorded, except for triethanolamine, which showed two current plateaus close to each other, indicating temporal blocking in this case. The really surprising results arose from studies in acetic acid and ethyl acetate. Due to the complete protonation in acetic acid, the significant shifts of oxidation potentials led to the acquisition of lower currents only with the rising parts also using the same potential window as in ethyl acetate, where the voltammograms had a sigmoidal shape. Triethanolamine exhibited significant electrode deactivation in ethyl acetate, leading to the appearance of peak-shaped curves, and the difference between the first and second voltammograms was large. The current difference between the first and second scans allowed consequences for acetic acid content in cases where it was small, as the choice of this parameter proved to be the best for the analytical task. On the other hand, the differences in the shape of voltammograms allowed for quantitative approximations. The observed phenomenon could be utilized only for the estimation of acetic acid content. Full article

Background: Percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PELD) is a minimally invasive surgical technique for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation. Despite its growing popularity, limited research has explored the influence of patient characteristics and the choice of technique on post-operative outcomes and patient satisfaction. Objective: To investigate the impact of patient characteristics and surgical technique (interlaminar vs. transforaminal) on the surgical outcomes and patient satisfaction following PELD. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on 177 patients who underwent PELD (53.1% males, age = 46.11 ± 14.2 years), including 147 patients with the interlaminar approach and 30 with the transforaminal approach. Demographic data, pre-operative clinical features, surgical technique, intra-operative and post-operative complications and complaints, patient-reported outcomes (disability, quality of life, satisfaction), and revision surgery rates were documented and analyzed. The mean follow-up duration was 5.55 years ± 2.73 years. Results: No significant differences were observed in demographics, pre-operative status, or post-operative complaints and complication rates between two surgical techniques, except that transforaminal technique showed a higher incidence for dural tear and persistent muscle weakness (p = 0.028 and p = 0.046, respectively). Both techniques led to excellent patient-reported outcomes with no significant differences. Total patient satisfaction with PELD was 93.8%, which correlated positively with the absence of complications and complaints and negatively with persistent back pain, recurrent herniation and revision surgery. Conclusions: Interlaminar and transforaminal PELD are both effective and safe minimally invasive surgical techniques for the treatment of lumbar disc herniation with a high patient satisfaction rate. Further prospective studies are warranted to confirm these findings. Full article

Rotating biological contactors (RBCs) are widely utilized in aerobic wastewater treatment due to their high stability, efficiency, and ease of maintenance. The choice of disc carrier material for biofilm formation is a critical factor influencing treatment performance. In the context of rural domestic wastewater treatment, the biofilm carriers must balance cost-effectiveness and high efficiency. This study focuses on the aerobic unit of a combined anoxic denitrification–deodorization filter–aerobic RBC system, specifically, the waterwheel-driven aerobic RBC, and evaluates three types of biofilm carrier media: felt, carbon felt, and nonwoven fabric. The study compares their pollutant removal performance and biofilm enrichment characteristics to identify the optimal material. The results indicate that RBCs using nonwoven fabric as the biofilm carrier exhibit superior nitrification efficiency and biocompatibility compared to the other materials, achieving average removal rates of 84.3% for COD_Cr and 80.5% for ammonia nitrogen. While the addition of nonwoven fabric slightly reduced the driving efficiency of the waterwheel-driven aerobic RBC, it significantly enhanced oxygen transfer efficiency, which explained the enhanced organic degradation and ammonia nitrification. During the biofilm stable phase, the two-stage waterwheel-driven RBC with a nonwoven fabric carrier achieved average COD_Cr and ammonia nitrogen removal rates of 86.76 ± 0.85% and 92.15 ± 1.49%, respectively. Nonwoven fabric demonstrates significant potential as a biofilm carrier for aerobic rotating biological contactors. Full article

Most existing optic disc (OD) and cup (OC) segmentation models are biased to the dominant size and easy class (normal class), resulting in suboptimal performances on glaucoma-confirmed samples. Thus, these models are not optimal choices for assisting in tracking glaucoma progression and prognosis. Moreover, fully supervised models employing annotated glaucoma samples can achieve superior performances, although restricted by the high cost of collecting and annotating the glaucoma samples. Therefore, in this paper, we are dedicated to developing a glaucoma-specialized model by exploiting low-cost annotated normal fundus images, simultaneously adapting various common scenarios in clinical practice. We employ a contrastive learning and domain adaptation-based model by exploiting shared knowledge from normal samples. To capture glaucoma-related features, we utilize a Gram matrix to encode style information and the domain adaptation strategy to encode domain information, followed by narrowing the style and domain gaps between normal and glaucoma samples by contrastive and adversarial learning, respectively. To validate the efficacy of our proposed model, we conducted experiments utilizing two public datasets to mimic various common scenarios. The results demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed model across multi-scenarios, showcasing its proficiency in both the segmentation- and glaucoma-related metrics. In summary, our study illustrates a concerted effort to target confirmed glaucoma samples, mitigating the inherent bias issue in most existing models. Moreover, we propose an annotation-efficient strategy that exploits low-cost, normal-labeled fundus samples, mitigating the economic- and labor-related burdens by employing a fully supervised strategy. Simultaneously, our approach demonstrates its adaptability across various scenarios, highlighting its potential utility in both assisting in the monitoring of glaucoma progression and assessing glaucoma prognosis. Full article

Within the context of ecofriendly alternatives to neonicotinoids, we explored the direct and endophytic potential of two Beauveria bassiana isolates, GHA from BotaniGard and the new endemic isolate GxABT-1, against the Sugar Beet Mild Yellow Virus (BMYV)-Myzus persicae pathosystem. A mortality rate of 96 and 91% was registered after 8 days of treatment with GHA and Gx-ABT-1, respectively. To assess the endophytic impact, sugar beet seeds were treated, and the ability of the fungi to colonize the plant was assessed and correlated with the aphids’ (1) life cycle, (2) attraction towards the plants, and (3) ability to transmit BMYV. Both fungi colonized the plants, and the GxABT-1 isolate impaired the aphids’ life cycle. Myzus persicae were more attracted to leaf discs from non-treated plants than to the fungal-treated ones. Interestingly, when the choice test dealt only with the fungal treatments, aphids were more attracted to leaves from plants harboring Gx-ABT-1 than those with GHA. Moreover, no significant impact was observed for BMYV transmission despite the slight decrease in the viral load in GxABT-1 isolate-treated plants. Our findings constitute a baseline to delve more into the performance of the new endemic isolate B. bassiana in other pathosystems using different treatment methods. Full article

The goal of this study was to clarify the role of capsule size and morphology in the alkaloid yield of poppy. In 2023, two industrial varieties from large-scale cultivation were investigated. Three classes of capsule size (large, medium, and small) and four organelles (wall, placenta, disc, and thalamus) of the seedless capsule were studied for their mass proportions and alkaloid contents. In ‘Meara’, large capsules had 41% lower total alkaloid levels than smaller ones. In ‘Morgana’, there was no difference in total alkaloids between size groups, but large capsules had higher contents of codeine and thebaine. Among the four organelles, the wall represented the largest mass in both varieties (60–67%), while the disc and the thalamus gave the lowest proportions (below 9%). In the variety ’Meara’, the highest alkaloid contents appeared in the wall (2.69% d.w.), followed by the placenta, and the other two parts. ‘Morgana’ accumulated the highest alkaloid content (3.72% d.w.) in the placenta. Morphine follows the trend of the total content, while codeine and thebaine may differ. Accurate information on the accumulation of alkaloids in the generative organs may contribute to increasing effectiveness in target-oriented breeding and optimization of cultivation with an appropriate choice of variety. Full article

In mining machines with friction discs, but also in multi-rope traction elevators, it is necessary to distribute the applied tensile load, generated by the weight of the cage and counterweight, evenly in all cross-sections of the load-bearing ropes. Hydraulic devices used for this purpose can operate on the principle of Pascal’s law. This article presents a structural design, a 3D model and an implemented solution of a laboratory device capable of simulating a practical method of evenly distributing the total weight of the load into partial tensile forces of the same size acting on a selected number of load-bearing ropes. The laboratory equipment uses two pairs of three steel cables of finite length for the simulations. During the experimental measurements, tensile forces derived from the tractive force of the piston rods, pushed into the bodies of the hydraulic cylinders by the pressure of the hydraulic oil supplied through the pipeline under the pistons of the hydraulic cylinders, were detected. The resulting amount of hydraulic oil pressure in the hydraulic circuit influenced by different values of the hydraulic oil pressures in the hydraulic cylinders and by the pressure in the supply pipe was experimentally studied on the laboratory equipment. Simulations were also carried out in order to detect the hydraulic oil pressure in the hydraulic circuit caused by the change in the different magnitudes of the tensile forces in the ropes. From the experiments carried out, it follows that with the appropriate choice of hydraulic elements and the design of the hydraulic circuit, the weight of the load, acting as the total pulling force in the ropes, can be evenly distributed (with a deviation of up to 5%) to all cross-sections of the load-bearing ropes. If the exact values of the hydraulic oil volumes under the pistons of all hydraulic cylinders are not known, it is not possible to calculate the pressure values in the hydraulic circuit when the valves of the hydraulic pipes are gradually opened. Full article

In this work, the geometric nature of solutions to two second-order differential equations, $z{\mathtt{y}}^{\prime \prime }\left(z\right)+a\left(z\right){\mathtt{y}}^{\prime }\left(z\right)+b\left(z\right)\mathtt{y}\left(z\right)=0$ and $z^2{\mathtt{y}}^{\prime \prime }\left(z\right)+a\left(z\right){\mathtt{y}}^{\prime }\left(z\right)+b\left(z\right)\mathtt{y}\left(z\right)=d\left(z\right)$, is studied. Here, $a\left(z\right)$, $b\left(z\right)$, and $d\left(z\right)$ are analytic functions defined on the unit disc. Using differential subordination, we established that the normalized solution $F\left(z\right)$ (with F(0) = 1) of above differential equations maps the unit disc to the domain bounded by the leminscate curve $\sqrt{1+z}$. We construct several examples by the judicious choice of $a\left(z\right)$, $b\left(z\right)$, and $d\left(z\right)$. The examples include Bessel functions, Struve functions, the Bessel–Sturve kernel, confluent hypergeometric functions, and many other special functions. We also established a connection with the nephroid domain. Directly using subordination, we construct functions that are subordinated by a nephroid function. Two open problems are also suggested in the conclusion. Full article

We systematically evaluate the training methodology and efficacy of two inpainting-based pretext tasks of context prediction and context restoration for medical image segmentation using self-supervised learning (SSL). Multiple versions of self-supervised U-Net models were trained to segment MRI and CT datasets, each using a different combination of design choices and pretext tasks to determine the effect of these design choices on segmentation performance. The optimal design choices were used to train SSL models that were then compared with baseline supervised models for computing clinically-relevant metrics in label-limited scenarios. We observed that SSL pretraining with context restoration using 32 × 32 patches and Poission-disc sampling, transferring only the pretrained encoder weights, and fine-tuning immediately with an initial learning rate of 1 × 10${}^{-3}$ provided the most benefit over supervised learning for MRI and CT tissue segmentation accuracy (p < 0.001). For both datasets and most label-limited scenarios, scaling the size of unlabeled pretraining data resulted in improved segmentation performance. SSL models pretrained with this amount of data outperformed baseline supervised models in the computation of clinically-relevant metrics, especially when the performance of supervised learning was low. Our results demonstrate that SSL pretraining using inpainting-based pretext tasks can help increase the robustness of models in label-limited scenarios and reduce worst-case errors that occur with supervised learning. Full article

The Colorado potato beetle (CPB) is a serious pest of economically important Solanaceae species. The use of essential oil compounds in pest management has been proposed as an alternative to harmful chemical insecticides that disturb human health and ecosystem functioning. We examined the antifeedant activity of three concentrations (0.125%, 0.25% and 0.5%) of pure camphor and a thujone-camphor mixture against 3rd instar larvae and adults. Their efficacy was evaluated according to the degree of leaf damage and avoidance of treated leaves by the CPB. Treatment of potato leaves significantly reduced leaf damage compared to the control. Leaf protection increased at higher concentrations of the examined compounds. Camphor was more effective against larvae and the thujone-camphor mixture was more effective against adults. Additionally, adults moved faster towards the control leaf disc in the two-choice olfactometer assay if an alternative disc was treated with a thujone-camphor mixture, whereas larvae responded similarly to the two potential repellents. However, after contact with the leaf disc treated with the highest compound concentration, the larvae escaped faster from the thujone-camphor mixture than from pure camphor. In conclusion, both examined compounds are promising eco-friendly antifeedants, but their efficacy depends on the developmental stage of the beetle, compound type and applied concentration. Full article

Background. Acute anterior disc displacement without reduction (ADDWoR) is characterized by permanent TMJ disc displacement, pain and functional limitations. Occlusal appliances (OA) are among the therapies of choice. Methods. A single-blind randomized study was carried out to compare the therapeutic success of two different types of splints in patients with ADDWoR. A total of 30 subjects were eligible for the study out of the 330 screened. Group I (n = 15) received RA.DI.CA splint therapy and Group II (n = 15) received stabilization splint therapy. Temporomandibular pain, headache, neck pain and functional excursions were evaluated at baseline (T0), after 4 weeks (T1) and after 6 months (T2). Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed. Results. There was a significant increase in maximum jaw opening and a reduction in pain in both groups (p < 0.05), except for neck pain in Group II. Significant differences in between- and within-subject factors emerged in all of the parameters evaluated, especially between T1 and T2 scores, with a greater trend of improvement in Group I than Group II. Conclusion. RA.DI.CA splints were found to be more effective for the considered sample, especially in the treatment of comorbidities and functional movements, probably due to the greater orthopedic action and joint mobilization. Full article

The paper is focused on magnetorheological (MR) clutches applied in industrial drive systems working in a steady continuous-duty state. The main goal of the carried out numerical and analytical analyses oriented towards electrical power consumption, copper losses (Joule heat) in an excitation coil, spatial temperature distributions and the highest temperature possible for an MR fluid is to compare MR clutches due to a different number of discs. The authors considered selected representative MR multi-disc clutches with one, two, three or four discs, developing clutching torque $T_c$ equal to 20, 35 and 50 Nm. These clutches were constructed based on the in-house design that integrates analytical and field methods (further in the paper referred to as the integrated analytical-field design method) described in the literature. The thermal computer simulation results obtained with the help of the AGROS2D program, combined with findings achieved with the use of simplified physical reasonings, allow one to draw the conclusion that the most advantageous, recommended number of discs for a magnetorheological clutch from the viewpoint of various (both constructional and thermal) criteria is the number of discs: N = 2. This conclusion takes into account the results presented earlier in the literature: the choice is a compromise between decreasing the mass (volume) of the MR clutches and increasing both the electrical power consumption and the maximum temperature of MR fluids in a clutch working region as the number of discs, N, increases. Full article

Spider mites belonging to the genus Tetranychus infest many important agricultural crops in both fields and greenhouses worldwide and are diversified in their host plant range. How spider mites perceive their suitable host plants remains not completely clear. Here, through two-host-choice designs (bean vs. tomato, and bean vs. eggplant), we tested the efficacies of the olfactory and gustatory systems of five spider mite species (T. urticae, T. truncatus, T. pueraricola, T. piercei, and T. evansi), which differ in host plant range in sensing their suitable host plant, by Y-tube olfactometer and two-choice disc experiments. We found that spider mites cannot locate their suitable host plants by volatile odours from a long distance, but they can use olfactory sensation in combination with gustatory sensation to select suitable host plants at a short distance. Highly polyphagous species displayed strong sensitivity in sensing suitable host plants rather than the lowered sensitivity we expected. Intriguingly, our principal component analyses (PCAs) showed that the similarity among five spider mite species in the performance of perceiving suitable host plants was highly correlated with their relative phylogenetic relationships, suggesting a close relationship between the chemosensing system and the speciation of spider mites. Our results highlight the necessity of further work on the chemosensing system in relation to host plant range and speciation of spider mites. Full article