Scaling relations formed in forest development processes are fairly important for understanding and predicting forest dynamics. During self-thinning of a relatively even-sized forest, tree abundance will decrease with an increase in average tree size, forming the size-abundance relation (SAR); while for a size-structured forest under the demographic equilibrium state, the frequency of trees also varies with size classes in a similar, decreasing pattern, manifesting as the size-frequency distribution (SFD). In the metabolic scaling theory (MST), the two scaling relations are considered to be consistent. However, in this paper, we proved that SFD can never be equivalent to SAR unless the growth rate of tree diameters is a constant. The reason derives from the time differences of transition between different size classes, which are influenced in SFD maintenance but not in SAR formation. Demographic equilibrium of a size structured forest requires a different resource allocation among different size classes at the same time, which contradicts the resource conservation during SAR formation in the self-thinning process. Consequently, if the rate of resource use per individual scales as a +2 power with its diameter according to MST, which led to the -2 power SAR, SFD can never be a -2 power-law distribution. The previous confusion between SFD of a size-structured forest and SAR formed during self-thinning processes may lead to many misunderstandings and unreliable predictions on forest structure and dynamics.

The NGF content in each region of the brain of four-week-old rats was ranked in the decreasing order of cerebral cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, midbrain/diencephalon, and pons/medulla oblongata, and the NGF concentration, in the decreasing order of hippocampus, cerebral cortex, cerebellum, midbrain/diencephalon, and pons/medulla oblongata in both AFD and SFD groups. The NGF content and concentration in the cerebral cortex were about the same value at each age between those in the AFD and SFD groups. Those in the hippocampus were a little higher in the SFD group than in the AFD group at the ages of three and four weeks, unlike those in the other regions, where the values for the cerebellum, midbrain/diencephalon and pons/medulla oblongata tended to be somewhat higher in the AFD group than in the SFD group. The NGF concentrations in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex increased with growth: the concentration in the hippocampus at four weeks of age was about 4-fold of that at one week in the AFD group and about 5.7-fold of that at one week in the SFD group; and likewise the concentration in the cerebral cortex at four weeks of age was about 5.3-fold in the AFD group and about 7-fold in the SFD group. The NGF concentrations in the cerebellum decreased, and those in midbrain/diencephalon and pons/medulla oblongata hardly changed with growth in either AFD or SFD group. From these results NGF may have stronger implications for the neuronal growth in the hippocampus compared with those in the lower brain regions of the SFD rats.

This article investigates the problem of small fault detection (sFD) for discrete-time nonlinear systems with uncertain dynamics. The faults are considered to be ``small'' in the sense that the system trajectories in the faulty mode always remain close to those in the normal mode, and the magnitude of fault can be smaller than that of the system's uncertain dynamics. A novel adaptive dynamics learning-based sFD framework is proposed. Specifically, an adaptive dynamics learning approach using radial basis function neural networks (RBF NNs) is first developed to achieve locally accurate identification of the system uncertain dynamics, where the obtained knowledge can be stored and represented in terms of constant RBF NNs. Based on this, a novel residual system is designed by incorporating a newmechanism of absolute measurement of system dynamics changes induced by small faults. An adaptive threshold is then developed for real-time sFD decision making. Rigorous analysis is performed to derive the detectability condition and the analytical upper bound for sFD time. Simulation studies, including an application to a three-tank benchmark engineering system, are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach.

The spatial-frequency domain (SFD) imaging technique allows us to estimate the optical properties of biological tissues in a wide field of view. The technique is, however, prone to error in measurement because the two crucial assumptions used for deriving the analytical solution to the diffusion approximation cannot be met perfectly in practical applications. This research mainly focused on modeling light transfer in turbid media under the normal incidence of structured illumination using the finite element method (FEM). Finite element simulations were performed for 50 simulation samples with different combinations of optical absorption and scattering coefficients for varying spatial frequencies, and the results were then compared with the analytical method and Monte Carlo simulation. Relationships between diffuse reflectance and dimensionless absorption and dimensionless scattering coefficients were investigated. The results indicated that the FEM provided reasonable results for diffuse reflectance, compared with the analytical method. Both the FEM and the analytical method overestimated the reflectance for μtr/fx values of greater than 2 and underestimated the reflectance for μtr/fx values of smaller than 2. Larger values of μs'/μa yielded better diffuse reflectance estimations than did those of smaller than 10. The reflectance increased nonlinearly with the dimensionless scattering, whereas the reflectance decreased linearly with the dimensionless absorption. It was also observed that diffuse reflectance was relatively stable and insensitive to μs' when the dimensionless scattering was larger than 50. Overall results demonstrate that the FEM is effective for modeling light transfer in turbid media and can be used to explore the effects of crucial parameters for the SFD imaging technique.

OBJECTIVE

Research on hypochondriasis and other somatoform disorders (SFD) has provided evidence that patients with SFD tend to attribute their symptoms to organic dysfunctions or disease. However, recent studies appear to discredit this. There is no systematic evidence on whether patients with SFD predominantly rely on somatic attributions, despite calls to include somatic attributions as a positive criterion of somatic symptom disorder (SSD) in the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

METHODS

This study is a systematic review of quantitative studies which assess the descriptive and predictive validity of somatic attribution in SFD. The literature search was restricted to studies with patients who met the DSM-IV criteria for SFD.

RESULTS

Somatic attribution style in SFD has acceptable descriptive but insufficient predictive validity. This confirms that the overlap between somatic and psychological attributions is often substantial. Attribution style can discriminate between SFD patients with and without comorbidity.

CONCLUSIONS

A somatic attribution style does not qualify as a positive criterion in SSD. However, there is an urgent need for further research on causal illness perceptions in the full spectrum of medically unexplained symptoms in order to confirm this result. Given its high prevalence, research on psychological attribution style is warranted. Re-attribution does not provide a framework sophisticated enough to address the needs of patients in primary care.

Spray freeze-drying (SFD) technique using four-fluid nozzle (4N), which is a novel particle design technique previously developed by authors, has been further developed to expand its application in pharmaceutical industry. The organic solvent was utilized as a spray solvent to dissolve the poorly soluble drug instead of conventional aqueous solution. Acetonitrile solution of the drug and aqueous solution of the polymeric carrier were separately and simultaneously atomized through 4N, and collided each other at the tip of nozzle edge. The spray mists were immediately frozen in the liquid nitrogen to form a suspension. Then, the iced droplets were freeze-dried to prepare the composite particles of the drug and carrier according to our proprietary method developed before. The resultant composite particles with phenytoin prepared by using acetonitrile (4N-SFD-MeCN system) were deeply characterized compared to those using aqueous solution (4N-SFD-aqua system) from morphological and physicochemical perspectives. The characteristic porous structure was observed in 4N-SFD-MeCN particles as well as 4N-SFD-aqua particles. However, it was found that the size and quantity of pore in 4N-SFD-MeCN particles were smaller than those of 4N-SFD-aqua particles. As a result, the former particles had 2- to 3-times smaller specific surface area than the latter particles independent of the type of carrier loaded. The slight difference of release profiles from the particles prepared between both systems was discussed from the microscopically structural viewpoint. In addition, ciclosporin was applied to organic solvent SFD system because this drug was poorly water soluble and cannot be applied to conventional aqueous SFD system. The release profiles from SFD particles were dramatically improved compared to the bulk material, suggesting that the new SFD technique using organic solvent has potential to develop the novel solubilized formulation for poorly water-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

In this work, saturated and unsaturated structured heterogeneous sand columns were used to examine the fate of graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles in heterogeneous porous media under various conditions. A two-domain model considering mass exchange between zones was applied to describe GO retention and transport in structured, heterogeneous porous media, which matched the transport experimental breakthroughs well. Experimental and model results showed that GO retention and transport in all the heterogeneous columns were dominated by the preferential flow phenomena. Under saturated conditions, the coarse sand with higher hydraulic conductivity was the fast-flow domain (FFD), and the fine sand was the slow-flow domain (SFD), and both FFD and SFD affected GO particles fate in structured heterogeneous media. When the heterogeneous columns were drained, the fine sand with higher moisture content became the FFD, and the coarse sand was the SFD, however, preferential flows in the FFD dominated GO retention and transport processes. For all the columns, the mobility of GO decreased with the increasing ionic strength (IS), and the previous retained particles were released by reducing solution IS, indicating part of the retained particles were trapped in the secondary minimum energy well.

This study was designed to determine whether scores on selected Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) scales could be used to differentiate between individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD). The sample was drawn from 2 psychiatric inpatient hospitals and included data from 199 individuals with SCZ and 808 individuals with MDD. A series of multivariate analyses of variance, analyses of variance, and odds ratios were calculated to determine which MMPI-2-RF scales provide the best differentiation between individuals presenting with these 2 disorders. Results indicated scales assessing internalizing dysfunction, including Emotional/Internalizing Dysfunction (EID), Restructured Clinical Scales Demoralization (RCd), Low Positive Emotions (RC2), Suicidal/Death Ideation (SUI), and Self Doubt (SFD) best discriminated MDD from SCZ. Scales assessing thought dysfunction, incluidng Thought Dysfunction (THD), Restructured Clinical Scales Ideas of Persecution (RC6) and Aberrant Experiences (RC8), and Psychoticism-Revised (PSYC-r) were demonstrated to best identify SCZ. Comparisons of the examined MMPI-2-RF scales to MMPI-2 scales assessing similar constructs suggested scales from the MMPI-2-RF perform similarly to their MMPI-2 counterparts in detecting MDD or SCZ, but might have increased ability to discriminate SCZ from other conditions. Overall, results of this study suggest that scores on the examined MMPI-2-RF scales provide important information about the differential diagnosis of MDD and SCZ to clinicians working in inpatient settings.

This exploratory study investigated the association between self-reported impulsiveness and cortical gray matter volume (GMV) of the entire cortex in healthy adults. As a secondary objective and based on preliminary findings concerning the positive association between self-reported impulsiveness and the slant of the forehead degrees (SFD), we analyzed associations between SFD, GMV and impulsiveness. We obtained 48 structural magnetic resonances. The participants also completed BIS 11 and profile pictures were obtained. SFD was measured by a photographic support and a protractor. The GMV of the whole cortex was obtained for each participant through Freesurfer. Firstly, we found negative and positive correlations between fronto-temporal and occipital areas respectively and BIS. Second, we found negative correlations between SFD and GMV in right postcentral gyrus, right caudal middle frontal gyrus, right transverse temporal cortex and positive correlation in left entorhinal cortex. Third, we observed a positive correlation between SFD and BIS in all impulsiveness scores. In conclusion, variations in fronto-temporal and posterior cerebral areas are crucial for BIS in healthy adults. Furthermore, SFD was associated with BIS and correlated with GMV areas involved in self-reported impulsiveness.

To investigate the natural course of viral shedding during the newborn period, the presence of Cytomegalovirus (CMV) DNA in specimens at 3, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days of life was examined using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. At the 3rd day of life, the viral DNA positive rate in the urine was 7% (4/60), at the 7th day 7% (3/46), at the 14th day 10% (2/20), at the 21st day 10% (1/10), and at the 28th day 25% (1/5). CMV was also detected in samples co-cultivated with HeLa 229 cells and this positive rate was 5% (3/60). The viral positive rate in newborns did not correlate with the gestational age, body weight, or serum IgM level. Six congenital infection cases were identified; two of which were small-for-date babies (SFD) and three of which were born with premature rupture of membranes (PROM). They had no complications during the six months after birth.

Significant uncertainty surrounds the sustainability of healthcare services in which junior doctors work. It is essential that student and foundation doctors (SFDs) are actively engaged if workforce morale is rebuilt. This narrative review explores the evidence driving the individual work-streams of the Royal College of Physicians' newly formed Student and Foundation Doctor Network. Undergraduate and postgraduate training reform has coincided with concerning feedback from newly qualified doctors. System-level efforts to address this include a focus on extra-contractual matters, where small, sustainable changes could address training and work issues.Fewer foundation year-2 doctors are entering specialty training immediately after the foundation programme. Providing dedicated careers guidance and highlighting opportunities within traditional placements and other career paths can support doctors who undertake non-traditional career routes, including those who take time out of programme.Disseminating these resources through an effective peer-to-peer framework and a well-established mentoring scheme could be the most appropriate way to spread good practice.

A common problem in wide-baseline matching is the sparse and non-uniform distribution of correspondences when using conventional detectors, such as SIFT, SURF, FAST, A-KAZE, and MSER. In this paper, we introduce a novel segmentation-based feature detector (SFD) that produces an increased number of accurate features for wide-baseline matching. A multi-scale SFD is proposed using bilateral image decomposition to produce a large number of scale-invariant features for wide-baseline reconstruction. All input images are over-segmented into regions using any existing segmentation technique, such as Watershed, Mean-shift, and simple linear iterative clustering. Feature points are then detected at the intersection of the boundaries of three or more regions. The detected feature points are local maxima of the image function. The key advantage of feature detection based on segmentation is that it does not require global threshold setting and can, therefore, detect features throughout the image. A comprehensive evaluation demonstrates that SFD gives an increased number of features that are accurately localized and matched between wide-baseline camera views; the number of features for a given matching error increases by a factor of 3-5 compared with SIFT; feature detection and matching performance are maintained with increasing baseline between views; multi-scale SFD improves matching performance at varying scales. Application of SFD to sparse multi-view wide-baseline reconstruction demonstrates a factor of 10 increases in the number of reconstructed points with improved scene coverage compared with SIFT/MSER/A-KAZE. Evaluation against ground-truth shows that SFD produces an increased number of wide-baseline matches with a reduced error.

OBJECTIVE

We present the preliminary angiographic and clinical results of the combined utilization of an AXS Catalyst 5 (Cat5) distal access catheter and a Surpass flow diverter (SFD) for the endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms.

METHODS

Interventional neuroradiology case records were evaluated retrospectively to identify patients treated with an SFD in combination with Cat5. Demographic data, technical success, location of the catheter tip, aneurysm occlusion rate, and procedure-related morbidity and mortality were noted.

RESULTS

The analysis yielded 24 patients with 25 aneurysms with a mean age of 52.3±19.7 years. The mean aneurysm diameter was 15.7±8.8 mm. Twenty-one were anterior circulation (seven supraclinoid, one middle cerebral, one anterior choroidal and 12 petrocavernous) and four were posterior circulation (three basilar tip, one posterior inferior cerebellar) aneurysms. Only two of these aneurysms were re-treatments for recurrences. For SFD deployment, the distal tip of Cat5 was placed intradurally and at, or distal to, M1 segment in 88% and 48% of patients, respectively. Aneurysms were bypassed with Cat5 in 80% of the procedures. In one patient, flow diversion was abandoned totally due to arterial tortuosity. With the exclusion of this patient, the technical success rate was 91.7%. There was no permanent procedure-related morbidity or mortality. Of the 22 aneurysms treated successfully with the Surpass device, 20 had imaging follow-up at 6.3±3.8 months and 95% were totally occluded.

CONCLUSIONS

The Cat5 catheter, which was manufactured for the navigation of large-bore stent-like devices, is a useful adjunct to the Surpass device and allowed us to deploy the device safely.

Snake fungal disease (SFD) is an emerging mycotic disease caused by Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, and has been demonstrated to impact snake populations of conservation concern in the United States negatively. Although Ophidiomyces has been shown to affect diverse taxa and to have a broad distribution, host factors associated with infected individuals and optimal testing protocols are not yet well characterized. The purpose of this study was to evaluate host factors and agreement across testing modalities associated with Ophidiomyces infection in a free-ranging snake population in southeast Ohio. Wild-caught snakes were swabbed and biopsied to test for Ophidiomyces via quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), culture, and histopathology. The host parameters assessed were species, sex, snout-vent length, body weight, month captured, and presence of gross skin lesions. A total of 8/30 individuals across three species-Black Racers (Coluber constrictor), Grey Ratsnakes (Pantherophis spiloides), and Eastern Gartersnakes (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis)-tested positive via at least one testing modality for Ophidiomyces infection. There were no associations between sex, snout-vent length, or weight and Ophidiomyces infection status. A higher proportion of individuals with gross lesions tested positive for Ophidiomyces than those without gross lesions, and most individuals that tested positive were caught in April or May. A low level of agreement was observed across testing modalities. Swab qPCR identified the most Ophidiomyces-positive individuals, and fungal culture identified the fewest at 0 individuals. Although there are limitations associated with a sample size of 30, these findings support the potential of this pathogen to infect individuals broadly across species and size, highlighting the relevance of this disease for snake conservation efforts. They also suggest that although little agreement was observed across test modalities, the concurrent use of multiple modalities is a more sensitive method for characterizing prevalence and distribution of Ophidiomyces.

The relation between serial HPL assays in serum and placental weight-for-dates was studied in 70 randomly chosen pregnant women. Out of five different aspects of the HPL curve only a fall below the 2-3d centile without subsequent recovery was related to low placental weight. When a small-for-dates (SFD) placenta was associated with normal HPL levels, maternal body weight tended to be lower than if both placental weight and HPL levels were abnormal. This suggests that physiologically small placentae are discernible from pathologically small placentae by a normal HPL curve.

One hundred sixteen small-for-dates (SFD) children, whose progress had been monitored prospectively from birth, completed a comprehensive developmental assessment at age 7 years. There was an inverse relationship between their developmental scores at 7 years and gestational age at birth. Further analyses showed that the negative associations were stronger when biological factors commonly associated with the birth of SFD babies were absent. SFD babies are often delivered electively before term because of their increased risks of intrauterine death. The infant's ability to withstand the perinatal metamorphosis is usually assured, prior to intervention. Our findings indicate that, among SFD children in general, prolongation of pregnancy beyond about 36 weeks is not associated with an improved long-term prognosis. When pathological factors are operant, delivery before term may enhance the chances of these babies achieving their full developmental potential in later childhood.

To date, the surgical delay of skin flaps is the most common and reliable method that increases skin flap survival. In this study, we aimed to increase skin flap viability using preconditioning by microneedling. Seventy-two Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into control, surgical flap delay (SFD), and four microneedling groups (7 or 14 days of preconditioning with 0.5 mm or 1 mm needles). Modified McFarlane flaps were raised on the back of rats. In Group I, a caudal pedicled skin flap was raised and the flap survival rate was assessed on postoperative day 14. In the SFD group, a bipedicled flap was created and after 14 days of surgical delay, all skin flaps were raised. In the microneedling groups, 0.5 mm or 1 mm needles were used for 7 or 14 days. The flap survival rates of all microneedling and SFD groups were significantly higher than the control group. The plasma levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) did not significantly differ between groups, but the VEGF level of skin samples in the SFD group was higher than the control group. The vessel counts of all microneedling and SFD groups were statistically higher than the control group in all skin samples taken before raising the flaps, but skin samples taken 14 days after raising the skin flap did not show any difference between groups. We showed that preconditioning by microneedling can be used to improve the viability of critical ischemic skin flaps at a level similar to surgical delay.

Keywords: Flap; Microneedle; Microneedling; Preconditioning; Roller; Skin flaps; Surgical delay.

With the emerging use of snore properties for clinical purposes, there is a need to understand the characteristics of snore source flow (SF)-the acoustic source in snore production. This paper attempts to analyze and model both SF and its derivative (SFD), along with its preliminary application to the generation of synthetic snores. SFs and SFDs were extracted from natural snores via an iterative adaptive inverse filtering approach, and subsequently parameterized into various time- and amplitude-based parameters to quantify the oscillatory maneuvers of snore excitation source (ES). The SF and SFD waveforms were also, respectively, modeled using the first and second derivatives of the Gaussian probability density function. Subjective and objective measures, including paired comparison score and sum-of-squared error, were assessed to appraise the performance of SFD model in producing natural-sounding snores. Results consistently show that: 1) the shapes of SF pulse are different among snores and can be associated with the dynamic biomechanical properties (e.g., compliance and elasticity) of ES; 2) changes to the SF or SFD pulse shape can affect the snore properties, both acoustically and perceptually; and 3) the proposed SFD model can generate close-to-natural sounding snores. Further research in this area can potentially yield valuable benefits to snore-oriented applications.

In this paper, we propose a low-complexity storage-reduced digital spectrum-based soft failure management solution including soft failure detection (SFD), identification (SFI) and failure magnitude estimation (FME). Five soft failures are considered. Random fluctuation of key link parameters is introduced in simulations to investigate the robustness of the proposed solution. To reduce computational complexity and storage requirement for digital spectrum calculation, Welch's method is employed instead of applying fast Fourier transform on a long sampling sequence. A false positive rate below 1% and a false negative rate below 3% are achieved for SFD after extensive numerical simulations. Besides, SFI realizes an identification accuracy of 97.4%. The mean square errors of FME for different soft failures are all below 0.4. Finally, with a very small segment length of 2⁵, 46.2% of computational complexity and 99.6% of storage can be reduced for digital spectrum calculation.