32 research outputs found
Liver elastography malignancy prediction score for noninvasive characterization of focal liver lesions.
No full textBACKGROUND & AIMS
To analyse elastographic characteristics of focal liver lesions (FLL)s and diagnostic performance of real-time two-dimensional shear-wave elastography (RT-2D-SWE) in order to differentiate benign and malignant FLLs.
METHODS
Consecutive patients diagnosed with FLL by abdominal ultrasound (US) underwent RT-2D-SWE of FLL and non-infiltrated liver by intercostal approach over the right liver lobe. The nature of FLL was determined by diagnostic work-up, including at least one contrast-enhanced imaging modality (MDCT/MRI), check-up of target organs when metastatic disease was suspected and FLL biopsy in inconclusive cases.
RESULTS
We analysed 196 patients (median age 60 [range 50-68], 50.5% males) with 259 FLLs (57 hepatocellular carcinomas, 17 cholangiocarcinomas, 94 metastases, 71 haemangiomas, 20 focal nodular hyperplasia) of which 70 (27%) were in cirrhotic liver. Malignant lesions were stiffer (P 32.5 kPa had PPV of 96% for malignancy. Lesion stiffness, lesion/liver stiffness ratio and lesion stiffness variability significantly predicted malignancy in stepwise logistic regression (P < .05), and were used to construct a new Liver Elastography Malignancy Prediction (LEMP) score with accuracy of 96.1% in validation cohort (online calculator available at http://bit.do/lemps).
CONCLUSION
The comprehensive approach demonstrated in this study enables correct differentiation of benign and malignant FLL in 96% of patients by using RT-2D-SWE
High-silica Zeolites as Novel Adsorbents for the Removal of Organic Micro-pollutants in Water Treatment
No full textA broad range of organic micropollutants (OMPs), including pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, are present in drinking water sources and effluent of wastewater treatment plants (Kolpin et al., 2002; Stackelberg et al., 2004). The presence of OMPs in water significantly threatens public health and thus calls for effective treatment technologies (Alan et al., 2008; Pal et al., 2010). Zeolites are highly structured minerals with uniform micropores (pore diameters < 2nm) (McCusker and Baerlocher 2001). The pores of zeolites allow for the adsorption of OMPs and potentially avoid the negative influence of natural organic matter (NOM) (de Ridder et al., 2012; Hung and Lin 2006; Knappe and Campos 2005). High-silica zeolites have hydrophobic surfaces, which could prevent water competition with OMP adsorption (Maesen 2007; Rakic et al., 2010; Tsitsishvili 1973). High-silica zeolites are thus expected to be potential alternative adsorbents for activated carbon in water treatment.Sanitary Engineerin
The potential role of Dutch urban and transportation planners in the Automated Vehicles transition
No full textThe transition towards fully Automated Vehicles (AV) can lead to inefficient use of the available infrastructure in the Netherlands, while space is already scarce. - Knowledge from AV impact studies can help the government in the management of available infrastructure. Therefore, in this research a systematic literature review was carried out in order to describe the spatial impact of AVs. Secondly, this research used an interview method, a workshop and a questionnaire, to show how Dutch stakeholders (urban planners of the government and transportation companies) perceive these impacts and what actions they are planning to take in reaction to these impacts. The results showed that urban planners are worried about introducing AVs, but despite these worries, the introduction of AVs is not included in most strategies and policies. The actions that are preferred by most of them to manage potential negative AV impacts are stimulating car-sharing, public transport and bicycle use and discouraging private vehicle use by parking policies. These actions are supported in the literature. Recommendations for further research are on estimating the effect of these actions in practice and on evaluating the potential support of citizens for these actions.Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM
The “controversial” image of the Jews. The case of the parish church of Saint George in Lovran
No full textIn the town of Lovran, located on the eastern coast of the Istrian peninsula, three late medieval churches are adorned with Gothic frescoes. These include the parish church of St. George, the church of St. John the Baptist, and the church of the Holy Trinity. The subject of research in this paper focuses on the frescoes in the church of St. George, specifically the images on the northern wall. In the iconography of the paintings, the author recognizes anti-Jewish symbolism that had hitherto gone unnoticed and unstudied at this location. The author substantiates the hypothesis of anti-Jewish iconography in the frescoes with evidence drawn from the contemporary reception of the images, specifically through the interpretation of graffiti inscribed by worshippers. Written in Glagolitic script, these graffiti—particularly those of an offensive nature—were directed at the negative figures portrayed in the frescoes.
Nella città di Lovran, situata sulla costa orientale della penisola istriana, tre chiese tardo medievali sono adornate con affreschi gotici: la chiesa parrocchiale di San Giorgio, la chiesa di San Giovanni Battista e la chiesa della Santissima Trinità. Questo articolo si concentra sugli affreschi della chiesa di San Giorgio, nello specifico sulle immagini sulla parete settentrionale. Nell’iconografia di questi dipinti, l’autore riconosce un simbolismo antiebraico che fino ad ora era passato inosservato in questa località. L’autore sostiene l’ipotesi che i dipinti siano antiebraici attraverso analizzando la coeva ricezione delle immagini, in particolare mediante l’interpretazione dei graffiti incisi dai fedeli. Scritti in alfabeto glagolitico, questi graffiti – soprattutto quelli di natura offensiva – erano rivolti alle figure negative rappresentate negli affreschi.In the town of Lovran, located on the eastern coast of the Istrian peninsula, three late medieval churches are adorned with Gothic frescoes. These include the parish church of St. George, the church of St. John the Baptist, and the church of the Holy Trinity. The subject of research in this paper focuses on the frescoes in the church of St. George, specifically the images on the northern wall. In the iconography of the paintings, the author recognizes anti-Jewish symbolism that had hitherto gone unnoticed and unstudied at this location. The author substantiates the hypothesis of anti-Jewish iconography in the frescoes with evidence drawn from the contemporary reception of the images, specifically through the interpretation of graffiti inscribed by worshippers. Written in Glagolitic script, these graffiti—particularly those of an offensive nature—were directed at the negative figures portrayed in the frescoes.
Nella città di Lovran, situata sulla costa orientale della penisola istriana, tre chiese tardo medievali sono adornate con affreschi gotici: la chiesa parrocchiale di San Giorgio, la chiesa di San Giovanni Battista e la chiesa della Santissima Trinità. Questo articolo si concentra sugli affreschi della chiesa di San Giorgio, nello specifico sulle immagini sulla parete settentrionale. Nell’iconografia di questi dipinti, l’autore riconosce un simbolismo antiebraico che fino ad ora era passato inosservato in questa località. L’autore sostiene l’ipotesi che i dipinti siano antiebraici attraverso analizzando la coeva ricezione delle immagini, in particolare mediante l’interpretazione dei graffiti incisi dai fedeli. Scritti in alfabeto glagolitico, questi graffiti – soprattutto quelli di natura offensiva – erano rivolti alle figure negative rappresentate negli affreschi
Distinctive features attributed to an infidel. The political propaganda, religious enemies and the iconography of visual narratives in the Renaissance Venice
No full textAfter the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the political debate between the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire intensified, culminating with the War of Cyprus in the second half of the 16th century. At the same time the rise of Lutheranism started to erode Christian Europe from the north. In these times of crisis, the Church did not hesitate to use all available resources in its battle against infidels. Several Christian monks preached claiming that they had foreseen the triumph of Christians over Muslims.Their words were printed on various pamphlets, leaflets and brochures which were distributed throughout the Venetian territory and beyond. That kind of propaganda was supported and reinforced by visual narratives. In this text, the author analyzes the impact of historical circumstances and of ecclesiastical and political propaganda on the iconography of Renaissance painting in Venice, particularly focusing on how two Venetian painters – Girolamo and Francesco da Santa Croce – responded to those inputs.
Dopo la caduta di Costantinopoli nel 1453, il dibattito politico tra la Repubblica veneta e l’impero ottomano si intensificò, culminando con la guerra di Cipro nella seconda metà del XVI secolo. Allo stesso tempo la diffusione del luteranesimo aveva cominciato a erodere l’Europa cristiana dal nord. In questi tempi di crisi, la Chiesa non esitò a utilizzare tutte le risorse disponibili nella sua battaglia contro gli infedeli. Diversi monaci cristiani predicarono affermando di aver previsto il trionfo dei cristiani sui musulmani. Le loro parole furono stampate su vari opuscoli, volantini e pamphlet distribuiti in tutto il territorio veneziano e oltre. Tale propaganda fu sostenuta e rafforzata da narrazioni visive. In questo testo, l’autore analizza l’impatto delle circostanze storiche e della propaganda ecclesiastica e politica sull’iconografia della pittura rinascimentale a Venezia, in particolare sul modo in cui due pittori veneti – Girolamo e Francesco da Santa Croce – reagirono a quegli input
Education in the works of Vićentije Rakić
No full textThe movement for a 'new school and modern education', whose representative was Vićentije Rakic, included all the European countries between the two world wars. It was also influential in our country. At that time it was felt that there were deficiencies and poor educational effects in our schools, and that there was a need for a modern contemporary pedagogical reform. Increasingly there was a need to adapt our schools to the requirements of the new time and to the developmental and educational needs of our country. It was necessary to implement contemporary educational methods for our new school to be more successful. In this paper, the author attempts to present Vićentije Rakić, one of the representatives of that new pedagogical orientation, through the analysis of the concepts of education in his works
Author Correction: Smac mimetics and oncolytic viruses synergize in driving anticancer T-cell responses through complementary mechanisms
No full textThe originally published version of this article contained an error in the spelling of the author Pankaj Tailor, which was incorrectly given as Pankaj Taylor. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the article.</jats:p
Multi-Rater Calibration Error Estimation
No full textPublisher Copyright: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.Calibration, the property of producing predicted probabilities that reflect true likelihoods of outcomes, is a relevant attribute of medical image computing models and a key requirement in clinical decision-making. However, empirical Calibration Error (CE) estimates suffer from instability in data-scarce scenarios. Here, for any existing CE we propose a Multi-Rater version of it (MR-CE), a wrapper over conventional calibration metrics, which provides a new strategy for estimating a CE that effectively addresses this limitation in situations where there are multiple annotations per sample. MR-CEs offer more consistent estimates of calibration errors by leveraging the consensus and disagreement among multiple annotators to generate virtually extended test datasets, more robust to typical binning artifacts. We evaluate a MR version of the popular Expected Calibration Error (ECE), and also of the more recent Kernel Density Estimation-ECE (kdeECE), in a comprehensive set of classification and segmentation problems, demonstrating improved stability compared to their single-rater CE counterparts. Specifically, we show that MR-CEs achieve a reduced variability as the test set size decreases across all analysed datasets. Our findings emphasize the critical role of modelling inter-rater variability not only for training but also for evaluating medical image analysis models, in particular when studying the calibration of modern neural networks.Peer reviewe
Enhancing the ability of nurses and midwives to promote breastfeeding: a longitudinal study
No full textAbstract: The research aimed to determine the effectiveness of the Lactation Adviser Program (LAP), six months following an educational intervention for nurses and midwives. Sixty one (61) participants were involved in the research, the second phase of a two phase, longitudinal study. The intervention involved twelve two hour sessions designed to increase nurses' and midwives' knowledge, attitudes and confidence toward lactation management in order to enable them to more appropriately promote breastfeeding among their clients. Using repeated measures MANOVA, the results showed the LAP intervention produced significantly higher knowledge scores in the experimental group compared to the control group over the time period. In addition, the interaction between knowledge and study group was significant demonstrating that the intervention had an effect on participant's knowledge six months following the program. Similarly, the results showed that the experimental group participants had significantly higher attitude scores than the control group across the time periods. Further analysis revealed that those who experienced the LAP developed more positive attitudes over the six month period, however, this was not maintained consistently at each time point. In the analysis of confidence scores across time, participants in the experimental group were no different to those in the control group. However, confidence was shown to be significantly higher in experimental group participants six months following the intervention. Overall, the results of the study were very positive in support of the Lactation Adviser Program as an effective initiative to increase knowledge and confidence and enhance positive attitudes of participants, in the long term, in regard to breastfeeding management. (author abstract
P01-174 - Executive Dysfunctions in Disorders Central in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
No full textMany cognitive operations are needed for the successful completion of goal-oriented behaviour. These operations are commonly referred to as executive functions (EF). It is assumed that the prefrontal cortex has a central role in EF. Given its many connections to other parts of the brain, is in an excellent position to coordinate processing across wide regions of the central nervous system. EF enable the individual to shift attention, inhibit pre-potent response, generate goal-directed behaviour, and solve problems in a planned, strategic way (Goldman-Rakic, 1993). Patients with frontal lobe damage fail on tests that tap these abilities (e.g. Damasio, 1994). Another deficit is their inability to calculate ‘chance’.Concerning many disorders in child and adolescent psychiatry it has been assumed, that EF deficits are essential in their etiology. For instance it has been proposed, that such deficits are central in autism (Ozonoff, Pennington & Rogers, 1994; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996; Ozonoff, 1997), and that this deficit may underlie the social (mentalising) deficit in autistic individuals (Hughes, Russel & Robbins, 1994). EF deficits can also be found in individuals with ADHD, but these deficits are supposed to show a different ‘profile’ than the EF deficits in autism. In adolescence the brain undergoes a major transformation, and in this stage the EF deficits may lead to disruptive behaviors (e.g. Spear, 2007).In this presentation there will be an emphasis on results of research by the author concerning EF deficits in autism and in adolescence.</jats:p
