25 research outputs found
Mate desertion affects offspring survival, development and physiology in a songbird with multiple parental strategies
No full textAuthor Contributions
Alejandro Cantarero, Matteo Griggio, Jenny Q Ouyang, Andrea Pilastro and Davide Baldan conceived the ideas and designed the methodology; Alejandro Cantarero, Matteo Beccardi, Manuel Fuertes-Recuero, Matteo Schiavinato, Lia Zampa and Davide Baldan collected the data; Valentina Alaasam, Alejandro Corregidor-Castro and Alessandro Grapputo analysed the data; and Valentina Alaasam, Jenny Q Ouyang and Davide Baldan led the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.Sexual conflict affects the amount and duration of offspring care each parent invests, resulting in multiple parental care strategies sometimes coexisting within a single population. Understanding the persistence of multiple parental care strategies requires a precise estimate of the benefits and costs associated with parental decisions. Even though the benefits of brood desertion are well known, the reproductive costs of desertion (i.e., nestlings' physiological conditions and survival), are less explored.
We use rock sparrows, Petronia petronia, a species in which both uniparental and biparental care occur in the same population, to investigate the costs of brood desertion. Specifically, we continuously monitored breeding attempts to explore the behavioural mechanisms (desertion decision and compensatory responses) and the reproductive and physiological consequences (offspring corticosterone concentrations, oxidative stress, telomere attrition) of parental care strategies.
We show that male desertion was not related to the initial value of the brood (clutch size, brood size) but was associated with a reduction in the survival probability of the nestlings. Females caring alone increased their per capita feeding rate, partially compensating for the lack of male care. Nestlings deserted earlier also experienced higher oxidative stress and had higher corticosterone concentrations during the early stages of development, but these effects did not persist to fledging, and there were no differences in telomere attrition.
Our findings indicate combined reproductive and physiological costs associated with brood desertion. Considering these costs is essential to understand the evolution and persistence of polymorphic patterns of care.National Biodiversity Future CenterMinisterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España)Università degli Studi di PadovaDepto. de FisiologíaFac. de VeterinariaTRUEpu
A machine learning approach to predict mortality and neonatal persistent pulmonary hypertension in newborns with congenital diaphragmatic hernia. A retrospective observational cohort study
No full textCongenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) has high morbidity and mortality rates. This study aimed to develop a machine learning (ML) algorithm to predict outcomes based on prenatal and early postnatal data. This retrospective observational cohort study involved infants with left-sided CDH, born from 2012 to 2020. We analyzed clinical and imaging data using three classification algorithms: XGBoost, Support Vector Machine, and K-Nearest Neighbors. Medical records of 165 pregnant women with CDH fetal diagnosis were reviewed. According to inclusion criteria, 50 infants with isolated left-sided CDH were enrolled. The mean o/eLHR was 37.32%, and the average gestational age at delivery was 36.5 weeks. Among these infants, 26 (52%) had severe persistent neonatal pulmonary hypertension (PPHN), while 24 (48%) had moderate or mild form; 37 survived (74%), and 13 did not (26%). The XGBoost model achieved 88% accuracy and 95% sensitivity for predicting mortality using ten features and 82% accuracy for PPHN severity with 14 features. The area under the ROC curve was 0.87 for mortality and 0.82 for PPHN severity. Conclusion: ML models show promise in predicting CDH outcomes and supporting clinical decisions. Future research should focus on more extensive studies to refine these algorithms and improve care management. Clinical trial registration: NCT04609163
Congenital diaphragmatic hernia: automatic lung and liver MRI segmentation with nnU-Net, reproducibility of pyradiomics features, and a machine learning application for the classification of liver herniation
No full textPrenatal assessment of lung size and liver position is essential to stratify congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) fetuses in risk categories, guiding counseling, and patient management. Manual segmentation on fetal MRI provides a quantitative estimation of total lung volume and liver herniation. However, it is time-consuming and operator-dependent. In this study, we utilized a publicly available deep learning (DL) segmentation system (nnU-Net) to automatically contour CDH-affected fetal lungs and liver on MRI sections. Concordance between automatic and manual segmentation was assessed by calculating the Jaccard coefficient. Pyradiomics standard features were then extracted from both manually and automatically segmented regions. The reproducibility of features between the two groups was evaluated through the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and intraclass correlation
coefficients (ICCs). We finally tested the reliability of the automatic-segmentation approach by building a ML classifier system for the prediction of liver herniation based on support vector machines (SVM) and trained on shape features computed both in the manual and nnU-Net-segmented organs. We compared the area under the classifier receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) in the two cases. Pyradiomics features calculated in the manual ROIs were partly reproducible by the same features calculated in nnU-Net segmented ROIs and, when used in the ML procedure, to predict liver herniation (both AUC around 0.85).
Conclusion: Our results suggest that automatic MRI segmentation is feasible, with good reproducibility of pyradiomics
features, and that a ML system for liver herniation prediction offers good reliability.
Trial registration: https:// clini caltr ials. gov/ ct2/ show/ NCT04 609163? term= NCT04 60916 3& draw= 2& rank=1; Clinical Trial Identification no. NCT04609163.
What is Known:
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is crucial for prenatal congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) assessment. It enables the quantification of the total lung volume and the extent of liver herniation, which are essential for stratifying the severity of CDH, guiding counseling, and patient management.
• The manual segmentation of MRI scans is a time-consuming process that is heavily reliant upon the skill set of the operator.
What is New:
• MRI lung and liver automatic segmentation using the deep learning nnU-Net system is feasible, with good Jaccard coefficient values and satisfactory reproducibility of pyradiomics features compared to manual results.
• A feasible ML system for predicting liver herniation could improve prenatal assessments and CDH patient management
Heart rate and arterial pressure changes during whole-body deep hypothermia
No full textWhole-body deep hypothermia (DH) could be a new therapeutic strategy for asphyxiated newborn. This retrospective study describes how DH modified the heart rate and arterial blood pressure if compared to mild hypothermia (MH). Fourteen in DH and 17 in MH were cooled within the first six hours of life and for the following 72 hours. Hypothermia criteria were gestational age ≥36 weeks; birth weight ≥1800 g; clinical signs of moderate/severe hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. Rewarming was obtained in the following 6-12 hours (0.5°C/h) after cooling. Heart rates were the same between the two groups; there was statistically significant difference at the beginning of hypothermia and during rewarming. Three babies in the DH group and 2 in the MH group showed HR 520 ms. Infant submitted to deep hypothermia had not bradycardia or Qtc elongation before cooling and after rewarming. Blood pressure was significantly lower in DH compared to MH during the cooling, and peculiar was the hypotension during rewarming in DH group. Conclusion. The deeper hypothermia is a safe and feasible, only if it is performed by a well-trained team. DH should only be associated with a clinical trial and prospective randomized trials to validate its us
A maChine and deep Learning Approach to predict pulmoNary hyperteNsIon in newbornS with congenital diaphragmatic Hernia (CLANNISH) : protocol for a retrospective study
No full textOutcome predictions of patients with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) still have some limitations in the prenatal estimate of postnatal pulmonary hypertension (PH). We propose applying Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) approaches to fetuses and newborns with CDH to develop forecasting models in prenatal epoch, based on the integrated analysis of clinical data, to provide neonatal PH as the first outcome and, possibly: favorable response to fetal endoscopic tracheal occlusion (FETO), need for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), survival to ECMO, and death. Moreover, we plan to produce a (semi)automatic fetus lung segmentation system in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which will be useful during project implementation but will also be an important tool itself to standardize lung volume measures for CDH fetuses
Giant dielectric permittivity in ferroelectric thin films : domain wall ping pong
No full textThis study was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (No. 2014CB921004), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61225020 and 61176121), and the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) in Shanghai. C.S.H. acknowledges the support of the Global Research Laboratory Program (2012040157) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea. Date of Acceptance: 02/09/2015The dielectric permittivity in ferroelectric thin films is generally orders of magnitude smaller than in their bulk. Here, we discover a way of increasing dielectric constants in ferroelectric thin films by ca. 500% by synchronizing the pulsed switching fields with the intrinsic switching time (nucleation of domain plus forward growth from cathode to anode). In a 170-nm lead zirconate titanate thin film with an average grain size of 850' this produces a dielectric constant of 8200 with the maximum nucleus density of 3.8 μ1-2, which is one to three orders of magnitude higher than in other dielectric thin films. This permits smaller capacitors in memory devices and is a step forward in making ferroelectric domain-engineered nano-electronics.Peer reviewe
Parental feeding responses to experimental short-term partner removal in a species with male and female brood desertion
No full textAs parental care is costly, it can be expected that there will be a sexual conflict between parents over the individual levels of parental investment because each parent has limited resources to invest in a reproductive event. Theoretical models of parental investment predict that when one parent reduces its parental effort, the other parent should adjust its effort facultatively to compensate for the decrease in the mate’s contribution. Here, we tested for facultative adjustments in care in the rock sparrow, Petronia petronia. In this species, both sexes can desert the brood, creating the potential for strong sexual conflict over parental care to occur. To that end, we examined how rock sparrow parents adjust their level of care in response to an experimental mate removal for a limited time period, mimicking the starting phase of the desertion process. We compared male and female provisioning rates before and after an experimental mate removal. Males behaved according to the prediction of compensatory adjustment, as they allocated more care to the offspring and returned faster to the nest after female removal, whereas females showed no response. Our study shows sexual differences in response to mate removal in a species with biparental care and strong sexual conflict over parental care, and suggests that males may use the female absence to determine their actual parental effort. Significance statement: Strong differences in parental care, with one sex providing more care than the other, are widespread across the animal kingdom. Theoretical models of parental investment predict that when one parent reduces its care, the mate should adjust its care facultatively to compensate. Here, we tested for facultative adjustments in care in the rock sparrow when their mates were experimentally removed for a limited time period. We show that only male behavior was consistent with theoretical predictions as they increased their frequency of provisioning significantly after mate removal, whereas females showed no response. Our study suggests that members of a pair do not make independent decisions, but negotiate to modify their effort in direct response to the prior effort of their mate.Open access funding provided by University of Turku (UTU) including Turku University Central Hospital. This study was financed by project CGL2017-83843-C2-1 to JM from Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO). AC is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from Fundación Ramón Areces. MP was supported by an FPI grant from MINECO. This work was done while the first author was visiting the University of Padova supported by the Program B José Castillejo (grant CAS18/00139)
Building Credibility, Trust, and Safety on Video-Sharing Platforms
No full textVideo-sharing platforms (VSPs) such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch attract millions of users and have become influential information sources, especially among the young generation. Video creators and live streamers make videos to engage viewers and form online communities. VSP celebrities obtain monetary benefits through monetization programs and affiliated markets. However, there is a growing concern that user-generated videos are becoming a vehicle for spreading misinformation and controversial content. Creators may make inappropriate content for attention and financial benefits. Some other creators also face harassment and attack. This workshop seeks to bring together a group of HCI scholars to brainstorm technical and design solutions to improve the credibility, trust, and safety of VSPs. We aim to discuss and identify research directions for technology design, policy-making, and platform services for video-sharing platforms. © 2023 Owner/Author
Increased inter-colony fusion rates are associated with reduced COI haplotype diversity in an invasive colonial ascidian Didemnum vexillum
No full textConsiderable progress in our understanding of the population genetic changes associated with biological invasions has been made over the past decade. Using selectively neutral loci, it has been established that reductions in genetic diversity, reflecting founder effects, have occurred during the establishment of some invasive populations. However, some colonial organisms may actually gain an ecological advantage from reduced genetic diversity because of the associated reduction in inter-colony conflict. Here we report population genetic analyses, along with colony fusion experiments, for a highly invasive colonial ascidian, Didemnum vexillum. Analyses based on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) partial coding sequences revealed two distinct D. vexillum clades. One COI clade appears to be restricted to the probable native region (i.e., north-west Pacific Ocean), while the other clade is present in widely dispersed temperate coastal waters around the world. This clade structure was supported by 18S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequence data, which revealed a one base-pair difference between the two clades. Recently established populations of D. vexillum in New Zealand displayed greatly reduced COI genetic diversity when compared with D. vexillum in Japan. In association with this reduction in genetic diversity was a significantly higher inter-colony fusion rate between randomly paired New Zealand D. vexillum colonies (80%, standard deviation ±18%) when compared with colonies found in Japan (27%, standard deviation ±15%). The results of this study add to growing evidence that for colonial organisms reductions in population level genetic diversity may alter colony interaction dynamics and enhance the invasive potential of newly colonizing species
