RAMPVIS: Answering the challenges of building visualisation capabilities for large-scale emergency responses.

The effort for combating the COVID-19 pandemic around the world has resulted in a huge amount of data, e.g., from testing, contact tracing, modelling, treatment, vaccine trials, and more. In addition to numerous challenges in epidemiology, healthcare, biosciences, and social sciences, there has been an urgent need to develop and provide visualisation and visual analytics (VIS) capacities to support emergency responses under difficult operational conditions. In this paper, we report the experience of a group of VIS volunteers who have been working in a large research and development consortium and providing VIS support to various observational, analytical, model-developmental, and disseminative tasks. In particular, we describe our approaches to the challenges that we have encountered in requirements analysis, data acquisition, visual design, software design, system development, team organisation, and resource planning. By reflecting on our experience, we propose a set of recommendations as the first step towards a methodology for developing and providing rapid VIS capacities to support emergency responses.

An Empirical Study on Using Visual Embellishments in Visualization.

In written and spoken communications, figures of speech (e.g., metaphors and synecdoche) are often used as an aid to help convey abstract or less tangible concepts. However, the benefits of using rhetorical illustrations or embellishments in visualization have so far been inconclusive. In this work, we report an empirical study to evaluate hypotheses that visual embellishments may aid memorization, visual search and concept comprehension. One major departure from related experiments in the literature is that we make use of a dual-task methodology in our experiment. This design offers an abstraction of typical situations where viewers do not have their full attention focused on visualization (e.g., in meetings and lectures). The secondary task introduces "divided attention", and makes the effects of visual embellishments more observable. In addition, it also serves as additional masking in memory-based trials. The results of this study show that visual embellishments can help participants better remember the information depicted in visualization. On the other hand, visual embellishments can have a negative impact on the speed of visual search. The results show a complex pattern as to the benefits of visual embellishments in helping participants grasp key concepts from visualization.

Right hemisphere dysfunction and emotional processing in ALS: an fMRI study.

Emotional processing may be abnormal in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Our aim was to explore functional anatomical correlates in the processing of aversive information in ALS patients. We examined the performance of nine non-demented ALS patients and 10 healthy controls on two functional MRI (fMRI) tasks, consisting of an emotional attribution task and a memory recognition task of unpleasant versus neutral stimuli. During the emotional decision task, subjects were asked to select one of three unpleasant or neutral words. During the memory task, subjects were asked to recognize words presented during the previous task. Controls showed, as expected, greater activation in the right middle frontal gyrus during selection of unpleasant than neutral words, and a greater activation mainly in right-sided cerebral areas during the emotional recognition task. Conversely, patients showed a general increase in activation of the left hemisphere, and reduced activation in right hemisphere in both emotional tasks. Such findings may suggest extra-motor neurodegeneration involving key circuits of emotions, mostly negative, commonly involved in FTD.

MRI in the assessment of muscular pathology: a comparison between limb-girdle muscular dystrophies, hyaline body myopathies and myotonic dystrophies.

PURPOSE: The continuous discovery of new subtypes of neuromuscular disorders demands more accurate imaging analyses. We set out to establish the specific patterns of muscular involution using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A systematic clinical evaluation based on the Medical Research Council scale and MRI was completed in ten patients with calpainopathy [limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD)-2A], 16 with dysferlinopathy (LGMD-2B), ten with hyaline body myopathy (HBM), six with myotonic dystrophy (MD) types 1 and 5 with MD type 2. Severity of fibroadipose degeneration was specifically staged using T1-weighted sequences. Turbo inversion recovery magnitude (TIRM) sequences were used to assess oedema-like changes. RESULTS: T1 scans showed recurrent patterns of fibroadipose replacement, whereas TIRM images revealed differences in oedema-like changes between the various diseases. In LGMD, the posterior compartments are more vulnerable to degeneration. In HBM, fatty muscle degeneration and oedema are allocated to muscles of the posterior compartments of the leg. In MD, fatty muscle degeneration and oedematous changes are allocated to muscles of the anterior thigh and posterior lower leg. CONCLUSIONS: Imaging examination suggests a characteristic pattern of muscle involvement. MRI represents an important diagnostic technique useful in differential diagnosis, thanks to the distinctive patterns observed in the distribution of muscular changes between the different muscular diseases.

[Study of mitochondrial DNA in Helix land snails by PCR-RFLP]. / Etude de l'ADN mitochondrial d'espèces d'escargots du genre Helix par PCR-RFLP.

Sometimes the morphological criteria--used to distinguish between 4 land snails species (Helix pomatia, Helix lucorum, Helix aspersa aspersa and Helix aspersa maxima)--are little pronounced and ambiguous. We have selected mitochondrial DNA, a widely used molecular marker, in order to have a reliable technique of distinction between the 4 studied species. After extraction, mtDNA is amplified by PCR and digested with several enzymes. Among them, Dra I give restriction fragments of different length depending on species. So, owing to PCR-RFLP of mtDNA, we describe here a reliable method for identifying 4 snail species.