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ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Jun 2024Nanomaterials shaped as rings are interesting nanostructures with control of the materials properties at the nanoscale. Nanoring plasmonic resonators provide tunable...
Nanomaterials shaped as rings are interesting nanostructures with control of the materials properties at the nanoscale. Nanoring plasmonic resonators provide tunable optical resonances in the near-infrared with application in sensing. Fabrication of nanorings can be carried out via top-down approaches based on electron beam lithography with high control of the ring size parameters but at high cost. Alternatively, fabrication via self-assembly approaches has a higher speed/lower cost but at the cost of control of ring parameters. Current colloidal lithography approaches can provide nanoring fabrication over large areas but only of specific materials and a select set of rings (large ring diameters or small rings with ultrathin walls). We extend Hole-mask Colloidal Lithography to use ring shaped holes, allow the deposition of arbitrary materials, and allow the independent tuning of ring-wall thickness over a large range of values. We present a generic approach for the fabrication of nanorings formed from a range of materials including low cost (e.g., Cu, Al) and nonplasmonic (e.g., W) materials and with control of ring wall thickness and diameter allowing tuning of ring parameters and materials for applications in nanooptics and beyond.
PubMed: 38940634
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c07100 -
Plant Phenomics (Washington, D.C.) 2024Grape cluster architecture and compactness are complex traits influencing disease susceptibility, fruit quality, and yield. Evaluation methods for these traits include...
Grape cluster architecture and compactness are complex traits influencing disease susceptibility, fruit quality, and yield. Evaluation methods for these traits include visual scoring, manual methodologies, and computer vision, with the latter being the most scalable approach. Most of the existing computer vision approaches for processing cluster images often rely on conventional segmentation or machine learning with extensive training and limited generalization. The Segment Anything Model (SAM), a novel foundation model trained on a massive image dataset, enables automated object segmentation without additional training. This study demonstrates out-of-the-box SAM's high accuracy in identifying individual berries in 2-dimensional (2D) cluster images. Using this model, we managed to segment approximately 3,500 cluster images, generating over 150,000 berry masks, each linked with spatial coordinates within their clusters. The correlation between human-identified berries and SAM predictions was very strong (Pearson's = 0.96). Although the visible berry count in images typically underestimates the actual cluster berry count due to visibility issues, we demonstrated that this discrepancy could be adjusted using a linear regression model (adjusted = 0.87). We emphasized the critical importance of the angle at which the cluster is imaged, noting its substantial effect on berry counts and architecture. We proposed different approaches in which berry location information facilitated the calculation of complex features related to cluster architecture and compactness. Finally, we discussed SAM's potential integration into currently available pipelines for image generation and processing in vineyard conditions.
PubMed: 38939746
DOI: 10.34133/plantphenomics.0202 -
Health Care Science Aug 2023Mental health conditions are known to increase susceptibility to infectious diseases, including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Health behaviors play a crucial role...
BACKGROUND
Mental health conditions are known to increase susceptibility to infectious diseases, including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Health behaviors play a crucial role in mitigating this susceptibility. We aim to examine the differential effectiveness of COVID-19 preventive health behaviors among individuals, considering the presence or absence of specific mental health disorders.
METHODS
Multivariable logistic regression with interaction terms was performed to examine whether associations between adherence to health behaviors and COVID-19 infection were conditional on depression, anxiety, or eating disorders in a national sample of adults ( = 61,891) from 140 US universities, 2020-2021.
RESULTS
Adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, and gender/sex, the effectiveness of mask-wearing was significant and comparable among individuals with and without depression, anxiety, or eating disorders. Social distancing provided significantly less protection among individuals with depression, anxiety, or eating disorders. Hygiene practice provided significantly less protection among individuals with anxiety.
CONCLUSION
Mask-wearing is robustly effective in the prevention of COVID-19 among individuals. However, social distancing and hygiene practice provide less significant protection among individuals with certain mental health conditions, suggesting the importance of prioritizing these individuals for additional preventive measures (e.g., vaccines targeting variants) and mitigation strategies (e.g., financial assistance, targeted mental health care, health education).
PubMed: 38939519
DOI: 10.1002/hcs2.60 -
Frontiers in Plant Science 2024Common object detection and image segmentation methods are unable to accurately estimate the shape of the occluded fruit. Monitoring the growth status of shaded crops in...
Common object detection and image segmentation methods are unable to accurately estimate the shape of the occluded fruit. Monitoring the growth status of shaded crops in a specific environment is challenging, and certain studies related to crop harvesting and pest detection are constrained by the natural shadow conditions. Amodal segmentation can focus on the occluded part of the fruit and complete the overall shape of the fruit. We proposed a Transformer-based amodal segmentation algorithm to infer the amodal shape of occluded tomatoes. Considering the high cost of amodal annotation, we only needed modal dataset to train the model. The dataset was taken from two greenhouses on the farm and contains rich occlusion information. We introduced boundary estimation in the hourglass structured network to provide information about the completion of the amodal shapes, and reconstructed the occluded objects using a GAN network (with discriminator) and GAN loss. The model in this study showed accuracy, with average pairwise accuracy of 96.07%, mean intersection-over-union (mIoU) of 94.13% and invisible mIoU of 57.79%. We also examined the quality of pseudo-amodal annotations generated by our proposed model using Mask R-CNN. Its average precision (AP) and average precision with intersection over union (IoU) 0.5 (AP50) reached 63.91%,86.91% respectively. This method accurately and rationally achieves the shape of occluded tomatoes, saving the cost of manual annotation, and is able to deal with the boundary information of occlusion while decoupling the relationship of occluded objects from each other. Future work considers how to complete the amodal segmentation task without overly relying on the occlusion order and the quality of the modal mask, thus promising applications to provide technical support for the advancement of ecological monitoring techniques and ecological cultivation.
PubMed: 38938637
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1376138 -
Frontiers in Psychiatry 2024Individuals with anxiety disorders (ADs) often display hypervigilance to threat information, although this response may be less pronounced following psychotherapy. This...
BACKGROUND
Individuals with anxiety disorders (ADs) often display hypervigilance to threat information, although this response may be less pronounced following psychotherapy. This study aims to investigate the unconscious recognition performance of facial expressions in patients with panic disorder (PD) post-treatment, shedding light on alterations in their emotional processing biases.
METHODS
Patients with PD (n=34) after (exposure-based) cognitive behavior therapy and healthy controls (n=43) performed a subliminal affective recognition task. Emotional facial expressions (fearful, happy, or mirrored) were displayed for 33 ms and backwardly masked by a neutral face. Participants completed a forced choice task to discriminate the briefly presented facial stimulus and an uncovered condition where only the neutral mask was shown. We conducted a secondary analysis to compare groups based on their four possible response types under the four stimulus conditions and examined the correlation of the false alarm rate for fear responses to non-fearful (happy, mirrored, and uncovered) stimuli with clinical anxiety symptoms.
RESULTS
The patient group showed a unique selection pattern in response to happy expressions, with significantly more correct "happy" responses compared to controls. Additionally, lower severity of anxiety symptoms after psychotherapy was associated with a decreased false fear response rate with non-threat presentations.
CONCLUSION
These data suggest that patients with PD exhibited a "happy-face recognition advantage" after psychotherapy. Less symptoms after treatment were related to a reduced fear bias. Thus, a differential facial emotion detection task could be a suitable tool to monitor response patterns and biases in individuals with ADs in the context of psychotherapy.
PubMed: 38938460
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1375751 -
Scientific Reports Jun 2024In the petroleum and coal industries, digital image technology and acoustic emission technology are employed to study rock properties, but both exhibit flaws during data...
In the petroleum and coal industries, digital image technology and acoustic emission technology are employed to study rock properties, but both exhibit flaws during data processing. Digital image technology is vulnerable to interference from fractures and scaling, leading to potential loss of image data; while acoustic emission technology is not hindered by these issues, noise from rock destruction can interfere with the electrical signals, causing errors. The monitoring errors of these techniques can undermine the effectiveness of rock damage analysis. To address this issue, this paper focuses on the restoration of image data acquired through digital image technology, leveraging deep learning techniques, and using soft and hard rocks made of similar materials as research subjects, an improved Incremental Transformer image algorithm is employed to repair distorted or missing strain nephograms during uniaxial compression experiments. The concrete implementation entails using a comprehensive training set of strain nephograms derived from digital image technology, fabricating masks for absent image segments, and predicting strain nephograms with full strain detail. Additionally, we adopt deep separable convolutional networks to optimize the algorithm's operational efficiency. Based on this, the analysis of rock damage is conducted using the repaired strain nephograms, achieving a closer correlation with the actual physical processes of rock damage compared to conventional digital image technology and acoustic emission techniques. The improved incremental Transformer algorithm presented in this paper will contribute to enhancing the efficiency of digital image technology in the realm of rock damage, saving time and money, and offering an innovative approach to traditional rock damage analysis.
PubMed: 38937588
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-65790-y -
Burns : Journal of the International... Jun 2024A pressure of approximately 15-25 mmHg is used for effective compression therapy to prevent and treat hypertrophic scar formation in patients with burns. However,...
PURPOSE
A pressure of approximately 15-25 mmHg is used for effective compression therapy to prevent and treat hypertrophic scar formation in patients with burns. However, conventional facial compression garments present challenges owing to inadequate pressure distribution in curved areas such as the cheeks, around the mouth, and the slope of the nose. This study aimed to evaluate the utility of a custom-made 3D compression mask equipped with pressure sensors to treat facial burn scars.
METHODS
This single-blinded, prospective randomized controlled trial was conducted between May and October 2023, involving 48 burn scars in 12 inpatients with facial burns. We created the custom-made 3D compression mask equipped with pressure sensors, inner lined with biocompatible silicon, and a harness system using 3D printing technology, which can continuously monitor whether an appropriate pressure of 15-25 mmHg maintains. The biological scar properties, Vancouver Scar Scale (VSS), and Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale (POSAS) scores in patients with facial burns were assessed before applying the compression mask and garment and at 4 and 12 weeks after application.
RESULTS
Pre-application assessment of biological scar properties, VSS, and POSAS revealed no statistically significant differences between the 3D mask and control groups (p > 0.05 for all). Throughout the 12-week application, skin hydration and scar thickness significantly increased (p < 0.001) and reduced (p = 0.010), respectively, in the 3D mask group compared to the control group. Additionally, significant improvements in scar pliability (p = 0.004) and height (p = 0.009) of VSS, itching (p = 0.047), scar stiffness (p = 0.001), thickness (p = 0.011), and irregularity (p < 0.001) of POSAS-patient component, and scar thickness (p = 0.001), pliability (p = 0.012), and surface area (p = 0.027) of the POSAS-observer component were observed in 3D mask group throughout the 12-week application compared to the control group.
CONCLUSION
The customized 3D compression mask equipped with pressure sensors significantly improved scar thickness, skin hydration, and various assessment scale parameters throughout the 12-week application.
PubMed: 38937166
DOI: 10.1016/j.burns.2024.05.021 -
The Kobe Journal of Medical Sciences Jun 2024The fitting of oxygen mask affects the performance of it such as oxygenation or CO₂ elimination. The intersurgical EcoLite™ adult high-concentration oxygen mask... (Observational Study)
Observational Study
Oxygenation and Carbon Dioxide Rebreathing of a Well-fitting Non-rebreathing EcoLite™ Mask with a Reservoir: A Single-center Prospective Observational Study in Healthy Volunteers.
BACKGROUND
The fitting of oxygen mask affects the performance of it such as oxygenation or CO₂ elimination. The intersurgical EcoLite™ adult high-concentration oxygen mask (EcoLite with a reservoir, Intersurgical, UK) was developed to give well-fitting. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of EcoLite with a reservoir compared to the conventional mask.
METHODS
Ten healthy volunteers were included in this study. EcoLite with a reservoir and conventional mask were given to patients at different oxygen flow rates (5, 8, 10, 12, and 15 L/min). Fraction of inspiratory O₂ (FO₂) and partial pressure of inspiratory CO₂ (PCO₂) were measured by a sampling tube at the middle pharynx inserted via nose.
RESULTS
The EcoLite with a reservoir had a significantly higher FO₂ than the control reservoir mask. However, the PCO₂ was significantly higher in the EcoLite with a reservoir than in the control reservoir mask, especially when the oxygen flow rate was low.
CONCLUSION
The EcoLite with a reservoir provided improved oxygenation and a better fit than the conventional reservoir masks in healthy volunteers. However, the EcoLite with a reservoir might cause higher CO₂ rebreathing at low oxygen flow rates.
Topics: Humans; Carbon Dioxide; Male; Adult; Healthy Volunteers; Masks; Prospective Studies; Female; Oxygen; Young Adult
PubMed: 38936879
DOI: 10.24546/0100489920 -
International Journal of Infectious... Jun 2024To clarify the infection route in maternal death due to invasive group A streptococcal (GAS) infection and toxic shock syndrome (TSS).
OBJECTIVE
To clarify the infection route in maternal death due to invasive group A streptococcal (GAS) infection and toxic shock syndrome (TSS).
METHODS
A retrospective study was conducted on maternal deaths due to GAS-TSS in Japan between January 2010 and March 2024. The final causal diagnosis of maternal death and the infection routes of GAS were analysed using medical records, laboratory data, and autopsy findings.
RESULTS
Among the 616 maternal deaths during the study period, 48 (8%) involved infectious diseases. The most common infection was invasive GAS (56%, n=27), 21 (78%) and six cases occurred during the antepartum and puerperium periods, respectively. In the GAS-TSS group, 71% (15/21) infections were originated the upper respiratory tract. However, in the puerperium cases, 67% (4/6) were infected from the genital tract. In addition, no maternal deaths due to GAS-TSS were reported during the COVID-19 pandemic period in Japan from 2020-2023.
CONCLUSION
Most antepartum GAS infections were from the upper respiratory tract. They may be reduced by preventive measures, including frequent disinfection, wearing masks, and isolation from persons at high risk of carrying GAS, such as symptomatic children. On the other hand, GAS-TSS during puerperium infection via the genital tract.
PubMed: 38936654
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2024.107154 -
Journal of Infection and Public Health May 2024The risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to health care workers in intensive care units (ICU) and the contribution of airborne and fomites to SARS-CoV-2 transmission remain...
BACKGROUND
The risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to health care workers in intensive care units (ICU) and the contribution of airborne and fomites to SARS-CoV-2 transmission remain unclear. To assess the rate of air and surface contamination and identify risk factors associated with this contamination in patients admitted to the ICU for acute respiratory failure due to SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia.
METHODS
Prospective multicentric non-interventional study conducted from June 2020 to November 2020 in 3 French ICUs. For each enrolled patient, 3 predefined surfaces were swabbed, 2 air samples at 1 m and 3 m from the patient's mouth and face masks of 3 health care workers (HCW) were collected within the first 48 h of SARS-CoV-2 positive PCR in a respiratory sample. Droplet digital PCR and quantitative PCR were performed on different samples, respectively.
RESULTS
Among 150 included patients, 5 (3.6%, 95%CI: 1.2% to 8.2%) had positive ddPCR on air samples at 1 m or 3 m. Seventy-one patients (53.3%, CI95%: 44.5% to 62.0%) had at least one surface positive. Face masks worn by HCW were positive in 6 patients (4.4%, CI: 1.6% to 9.4%). The threshold of RT-qPCR of the respiratory sample performed at inclusion (odds ratio, OR= 0.88, 95%CI: 0.83 to 0.93, p < 0.0001) and the presence of diarrhea (OR= 3.28, 95%CI: 1.09 to 9.88, p = 0.037) were significantly associated with the number of contaminated surfaces.
CONCLUSION
In this study, including patients admitted to the ICU for acute respiratory failure " contact route " of transmission, i.e. through fomites, seems dominant. While presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the air is rare in this specific population, the presence of diarrhea is associated to surface contamination around Covid patients.
PubMed: 38936235
DOI: 10.1016/j.jiph.2024.05.042