13 research outputs found
Security of Multi-frame DICOM Images Using XOR Encryption Approach
No full textAbstractTransferring medical images using networks is subjected to a wide variety of security risks. Hence, there is a need of a robust and secure mechanism to exchange medical images over the Internet. The Digital Image and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard provides attributes for the header data confidentiality but not for the pixel image data. In this paper, a simple and effective encryption approach for pixel data is provided for multi-frame DICOM medical images. The main goal of the proposed approach is to reduce the encryption and decryption time of these images, using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) where only one image is encrypted and XOR cipher for encrypting the remaining multi-frame DICOM images. The proposed algorithm is evaluated using computational time, normalized correlation, entropy, Peak-Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (PSNR) and histogram analysis. The results show that the proposed approach can reduce the encryption and decryption time and is able to ensure image confidentiality
Analytical Study of the Radioactivity of Some Asphalt Springs in the Heet City, Anbar Governorate, Iraq
No full textThis research aims to estimate pollution levels of the concentrations of238U,232Th, and40K in the soil, water, and asphalt for some Heet City in the west of Anbar Governorate-Iraq to find out the natural and industrial radioactivity contaminations. In this study, the gamma-ray spectroscopy technique was used with a Germanium detector to calculate the levels of radioactivity of natural radionuclides (238U,232Th,40K) in different samples of soil, water, and asphalt collected from (8) areas of Heet City and its nearby regions in Anbar Governorate-Iraq. Through the study results, it was shown that the range of concentration values for238U,232Th, and40k in soil samples ranged from (1.2, 2, and 26) Bq/kg to (810, 506.6, and 435.7) Bq/kg and at an average (147.2, 94,1, and 309.28), respectively. While in asphalt samples, the concentrations ranged between (17 and 48) Bq/kg for both238U and232Th, and for40k, they ranged between (220 and 326) Bq/kg. As for water samples, the study did not detect any concentrations of238U and232Th, and the detected concentrations of40k were very low. In general, from this study, we conclude that the Abu Al-Jeer region contains relatively high radioactivity levels, higher than the permissible global limit in some of its areas. Therefore, periodic and continuous monitoring must be conducted to verify radioactivity in these areas to avoid any potential danger to the population. © 2025, Academic Science Publications and Distributions. All rights reserved
Identification of heart rate-associated loci and their effects on cardiac conduction and rhythm disorders
No full textElevated resting heart rate is associated with greater risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality. In a 2-stage meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in up to 181,171 individuals, we identified 14 new loci associated with heart rate and confirmed associations with all 7 previously established loci. Experimental downregulation of gene expression in Drosophila melanogaster and Danio rerio identified 20 genes at 11 loci that are relevant for heart rate regulation and highlight a role for genes involved in signal transmission, embryonic cardiac development and the pathophysiology of dilated cardiomyopathy, congenital heart failure and/or sudden cardiac death. In addition, genetic susceptibility to increased heart rate is associated with altered cardiac conduction and reduced risk of sick sinus syndrome, and both heart rate-increasing and heart rate-decreasing variants associate with risk of atrial fibrillation. Our findings provide fresh insights into the mechanisms regulating heart rate and identify new therapeutic targets
Establishment of a Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Registry in Vietnam: Rationale and Methodology
No full textCopyright: © 2020 The Author(s).
Background: In lower- and middle-income countries across Asia there has been a rapid expansion and uptake of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, there has been limited routine collection of related data, particularly around quality, safety and cost. The aim of this study was to assess the viability of implementing routine collection of PCI data in a registry at a leading hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Method: A Vietnamese data collection form and collection strategy were developed in collaboration with the Vietnam National Heart Institute. Information on patient characteristics, treatments, and outcomes was collected through direct interviews using a standardised form and medical record abstraction, while PCI data was read and coded into paper forms by interventional cardiologists. Viability of the registry was determined by four main factors: 1) being able to collect a representative sample; 2) quality of data obtained; 3) costs and time taken for data collection by hospital staff; and 4) level of support from key stakeholders in the institute.
Results: Between September 2017 and May 2018, 1,022 patients undergoing PCI were recruited from a total of 1,041 procedures conducted during that time frame. The estimated mean time to collect information from patients before discharge was 60 minutes. Of the collected data fields, 98% were successfully completed. Most hospital staff surveyed indicated support for the continuation of the activity following the implementation of the pilot study.
Conclusions: The proposed methodology for establishing a PCI registry in a large hospital in Vietnam produced high quality data and was considered worthwhile by hospital staff. The model has the potential opportunity for replication in other cardiac catheterisation sites, leading to a national PCI registry in Vietnam
8q Gain Has No Additional Predictive Value in SF3B1MUT Uveal Melanoma but Is Predictive for a Worse Prognosis in Patients with BAP1MUT Uveal Melanoma
No full textPurpose: Gain of chromosome 8q has been associated with poor prognosis in uveal melanoma (UM), and an increase in the absolute number of 8q-copies correlated with an even shorter survival. Splicing factor 3b subunit 1 (SF3B1)-mutated (SF3B1MUT) tumors display structural chromosomal anomalies and frequently show a partial gain of chromosome 8qter. A recent subset of SF3B1MUT UM with early-onset metastases has been identified, prompting the investigation of the relationship between survival, 8q gain, and SF3B1MUT UM. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Subjects: Patients diagnosed with UM who underwent enucleation or received a biopsy at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute or the Rotterdam Eye Hospital, The Netherlands were included. Methods: Fifty-nine patients with SF3B1MUT tumors and 211 patients with BRCA1 associated protein 1 (BAP1)-mutated (BAP1MUT) tumors were included in this study. Copy number status and gene expression were assessed using either a single nucleotide polymorphism array, fluorescence in situ hybridization, and karyotyping, or a combination of these techniques. Disease-free survival was determined and a cut-off of 60 months was used to define early-onset metastatic disease. Main Outcome Measures: Disease-free survival. Results: Forty-eight patients with SF3B1MUT UM (81%) had chromosome 8q gain (3 copies, 78%; 4 copies, 22%). Kaplan–Meier analysis of SF3B1MUT UM did not indicate a difference in survival in patients with or without gain of 8q (P = 0.99). Furthermore, the number of 8q copies was not associated with survival when comparing early (P = 0.97) versus late (P = 0.23) metastases group. In contrast, the presence of 8q gain (86%) was correlated with a decreased survival in BAP1MUT UM (P = 0.013). Conclusions: We did not find a correlation between 8q gain and early-onset metastasis in SF3B1MUT tumors. Gain of 8q has no additional predictive value in SF3B1MUT tumors. In contrast, 8q gain is predictive of a worse prognosis in patients with BAP1MUT tumors. Thus, gain of chromosome 8q has additional predictive value for BAP1MUT tumors, but not for SF3B1MUT tumors. Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article
Origins of the long-range exciton diffusion in perovskite nanocrystal films : photon recycling vs exciton hopping
No full textThe outstanding optoelectronic performance of lead halide perovskites lies in their exceptional carrier diffusion properties. As the perovskite material dimensionality is reduced to exploit the quantum confinement effects, the disruption to the perovskite lattice, often with insulating organic ligands, raises new questions on the charge diffusion properties. Herein, we report direct imaging of >1 μm exciton diffusion lengths in CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite nanocrystal (PNC) films. Surprisingly, the resulting exciton mobilities in these PNC films can reach 10 ± 2 cm2 V-1 s-1, which is counterintuitively several times higher than the carrier mobility in 3D perovskite films. We show that this ultralong exciton diffusion originates from both efficient inter-NC exciton hopping (via Förster energy transfer) and the photon recycling process with a smaller yet significant contribution. Importantly, our study not only sheds new light on the highly debated origins of the excellent exciton diffusion in PNC films but also highlights the potential of PNCs for optoelectronic applications.Ministry of Education (MOE)National Research Foundation (NRF)Published versionWe acknowledged Dr. Pio John S. Buenconsejo from the Facility for Analysis Characterization Testing and Simulation (FACTS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, for help with GISAXS measurements. This research/project was supported by Nanyang Technological University under its start-up grants (M4080514, M4081630); the Ministry of Education under its AcRF Tier 1 grant (RG91/19) and Tier 2 grants (MOE2016-T2-1-034, MOE2017-T2-1-001, and MOE2017-T2-2-002); and the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its NRF Investigatorship (NRF-NRFI-2018-04) and Competitive Research Programme (NRF-CRP14-2014-03). Author information Author notes These authors contributed equally: David Giovanni, Marcello Righetto Affiliations Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), 21 Nanyang Link, Singapore, 637371, Singapore David Giovanni, Marcello Righetto, Qiannan Zhang, Jia Wei Melvin Lim, Sankaran Ramesh & Tze Chien Sum Energy Research Institute @NTU (ERI@N), Interdisciplinary Graduate School, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, S2-B3a-01, Singapore, 639798, Singapore Jia Wei Melvin Lim & Sankaran Ramesh Contributions D.G. and M.R. conceived the idea. M.R. synthesized the samples. D.G. and M.R. performed the optical spectroscopy measurements and analysis of perovskite samples. Q.N. performed the AFM and GISAXS measurements and analysis. M.R. and J.W.M.L. performed the TEM measurement and analysis. D.G. and S.R. performed CdSe sample fabrication and measurement. T.C.S. led the project. All authors were involved in writing the manuscript. Corresponding author Correspondence to Tze Chien Sum. Ethics declarations Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Supplementary information Supplementary Information for Origins of the Long-Range Exciton Diffusion in Perovskite Nanocrystal Films: Photon Recycling vs Exciton Hopping Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Reprints and Permissions About this article Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark Cite this article Giovanni, D., Righetto, M., Zhang, Q. et al. Origins of the long-range exciton diffusion in perovskite nanocrystal films: photon recycling vs exciton hopping. Light Sci Appl 10, 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-020-00443-z Download citation Received19 July 2020 Revised13 November 2020 Accepted23 November 2020 Published01 January 2021 DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-020-00443-z Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content
Measurement of the leptonic decay width of J/ψ using initial state radiation
No full textAbstractUsing a data set of 2.93 fb−1 taken at a center-of-mass energy of s=3.773 GeV with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider, we measure the process e+e−→J/ψγ→μ+μ−γ and determine the product of the branching fraction and the electronic width Bμμ⋅Γee=(333.4±2.5stat±4.4sys) eV. Using the earlier-published BESIII result for Bμμ=(5.973±0.007stat±0.037sys)%, we derive the J/ψ electronic width Γee=(5.58±0.05stat±0.08sys) keV
Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults
No full textBody-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)
Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol
No full textHigh blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited
A multicentre, randomized, single-blind comparison of topical clindamycin 1%/benzoyl peroxide 5% once-daily gel versus clindamycin 1% twice-daily gel in the treatment of mild to moderate acne vulgaris in Chinese patients
No full textBackgroundAcne vulgaris affects up to 54% of Chinese adolescents. Combination therapy has become the recommended standard of care for acne. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of clindamycin (1%) and benzoyl peroxide (5%) (CDP/BPO) gel once daily vs. clindamycin (1%) (CDP) monotherapy gel twice daily in Chinese patients with mild to moderate acne. Methods1020 patients (aged 12-45 years) with mild to moderate acne were randomized (1 : 1); 1016 patients were treated with CDP/BPO (n = 500) or CDP (n = 516) for a 12-week treatment period. Efficacy assessments were performed at baseline, and at weeks 1, 2, 4, 8 and 12; and primarily included change in total lesion count (inflammatory and non-inflammatory lesions), and proportion of patients with a minimum 2-grade improvement in Investigator's Static Global Assessment (ISGA) score. Patient safety and local tolerability were also evaluated. ResultsPatients in CDP/BPO group showed a greater per cent reduction in total lesion count compared with patients in CDP group at week 12 (delta = -0.05; 95% CI = -0.09, -0.02; P = 0.003); statistically significant reduction in lesion count was noted as early as week 1 and continued through week 12. A greater proportion of patients in CDP/BPO group showed a 2-grade improvement in ISGA score at week 12 compared with CDP group (30.2% vs. 22.7%; P = 0.018). Overall, the incidence of adverse events (AEs) was higher in the CDP/BPO group (14.4%) than in the CDP group (7.9%); the most commonly reported events were generally related to application site reactions (erythema, pruritus and swelling). Incidence of drug-related AEs was 8.6% in CDP/BPO group and 1.2% in CDP group. Both groups showed trends towards reduction in investigator and subject rated local tolerability scores. ConclusionCDP/BPO gel demonstrated superior efficacy over CDP gel along with acceptable safety and tolerability in Chinese patients with mild to moderate acne. Clinical Trials.gov number: NCT01915732GlaxoSmithKline (China)SCI(E)[email protected]
