Diffusion tensor imaging of the brain in children with sensory processing disorder: A review.

Sensory processing disorder (SPD) is a clinical condition characterized by difficulties in the neurological processes of registering, discriminating, organizing, and responding to various sensory sensations. This study aimed to review the association between impaired white matter (WM) tract structure and neurofunctional deficits in children with SPD using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). A comprehensive literature search was conducted using the online databases Google Scholar and PubMed (from 2010 to July 2023), resulting in the selection of nine relevant studies. Findings revealed that the splenium of the corpus callosum (SCC), superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), posterior corona radiata (PCR), and posterior thalamic radiation (PTR) exhibited reduced microstructural integrity, strongly associated with SPD. Specifically, auditory over-responsivity, a subtype of SPD, was linked to impaired integrity of the PCR, PTR, anterior corona radiata, and SLF. Tactile over-responsivity (TOR) was correlated with markers of decreased integrity in the SCC, superior corona radiata, and left PTR. Among the DTI parameters, decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) emerged as the most reliable factor for identifying SPD, followed by increased radial diffusivity (RD) and mean diffusivity (MD). Notably, significant correlations were observed between with auditory over-responsivity and TOR with the DTI parameters (positive for FA and negative for RD and MD). Overall, this review confirms the impaired integrity of specific WM tracts in children with SPD and establishes correlations between DTI parameters and neurobehavioral deficits associated with the disorder. The insights gained from this review contribute to a better understanding of SPD and hold clinical implications for its diagnosis and treatment.

Analyzing Time Use by Occupation Area between Weekdays and Weekends by Gender of Parents in Single-Parent Families.

Introduction: Based on the "2019 Living Time Survey" data conducted by the National Statistical Office, this study is aimed at comparing the time usage of single-parent families by classifying the occupation area based on the fourth edition of the occupational therapy practice framework (OTPF) and dividing time use according to weekdays and weekends and by gender. Methods: After extracting the subjects who were selected belonging to a single-parent family from the original data of the "2019 Living Time Survey," 404 subjects who were single parents were selected, and the data were analysed. The sample consisted of 134 males and 270 females. The time usage by occupation area during weekdays and weekends and according to the gender of the subjects was checked. By using SPSS 25.0 version for data analysis, the general characteristics and time usage of subjects were presented as frequency analysis and technical statistics, and an independent sample t-test was conducted to compare time usage on weekdays and weekends. Results: Subjects spent more time on "education" and "work" on weekdays, and on weekends, they spent more time on "activities of daily living," "rest and sleep," "leisure," and "social participation." After classifying the subjects by gender, men spent more time on "work" on weekdays, and on weekends, they spent more time on "activities of daily living," "rest and sleep," "leisure," and "social participation." Women spent more time on "education" and "work" on weekdays, and on weekends, they spent more time on "rest and sleep," "leisure," and "social participation." Conclusion: By examining the time usage of single-parent families according to the day of the week, we hope that it will be used as basic data to suggest in which areas they have difficulty managing time, depending on the day of the week, and to establish solutions to insufficient time use due to gender differences.

Standardization of apple cancellation test for neglect patients in Korea: An observational study.

BACKGROUND: Neglect can be divided into two types using apple cancellation test (apple test): Egocentric neglect (EN) and allocentric neglect (AN). However, in South Korea, apple test results and decision criteria are still largely dependent on tests by foreign countries. AIM: To establish a new South Korea standard and improve the accuracy of neglect assessment, the apple experiment was standardized in this study. METHODS: This study was conducted on 223 healthy subjects for a total of 7 mo from August 2021 to February 2022. Standardization was carried out using the original apple test developed by Bickerton in 2011. In scoring for the apple test, total omission error refers to the number of missed targets (full apple) in the entire test sheet (left, middle, and right area). The score for EN is the difference between the cor-rect number of right area and the correct number of left area (excluding the middle area). For AN, the score is difference between the number of left opening apples and number of right opening apples (including the middle area). Linear regression analysis was used for standardization using the general characteristics of subjects and the results of the apple test. RESULTS: The cut-off score, which is the standard value indicating the pathological condition by combining the results of all subjects, is as follows: Total omission error (5), error for EN (2), and error for AN (2). Also, differences in cut-off score according to age were found. CONCLUSION: This study will be helpful in facilitating a more accurate differential diagnosis of neglect.

Digital Therapeutics for the Egocentric and Allocentric Neglects in Patients with Brain Injury: A Mini Review.

Various therapeutic approaches have been developed for neglect. Many studies have demonstrated the effect of digital therapeutics (DTx) on neglect. However, few studies have reported the effects of DTx on egocentric and allocentric neglect. The differentiation of types of neglect and separate interventions is crucial in the rehabilitation process. In this article, seven studies on DTx on egocentric and allocentric neglect were reviewed. DTx, which was employed in these studies, could be classified as follows: (1) software adaptation in traditional treatment, (2) VR game using the head-mount display as treatment, and (3) the development of a new digital program like ReMoVES. In addition, more studies and more effective results were reported for egocentric neglect than for allocentric neglect. In future studies, each effect on egocentric and allocentric neglect should be identified in detail with the appropriate use of differential evaluation and long-term application of independent DTx.

Time usage analysis and satisfaction comparison by occupational area according to the sex of single-parent families.

BACKGROUND: Single-parent families are burdened with dual roles as parents amidst economic poverty due to the lack of a spouse. Single parents also face the complications of time poverty. AIM: To examine the time use of single-parent families by dividing their time into occupational area and explore the differences in time deficiency and life satisfaction. METHODS: In this study, the time usage in the '2019 time of life survey' data of the National Statistical Office is classified based on the fourth edition of the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework, and the time use and satisfaction of single-parent families classified according to sex. In the '2019 time of life survey' of the National Statistical Office, the subjects who selected single-parent families in the 'single parent-parent-grandchild households' item were first selected. The data of 404 parents from single-parent families were selected next. The time usage, time deficiency, and life satisfaction were analyzed by occupational area. RESULTS: The subjects spent the most time resting and sleeping, followed by engaging in instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), work, and health management. As a result of comparing the subjects by sex, it was found that the male subjects spent more time on work than the female subjects, and the female subjects spent more time on IADLs, education and social participation. As a result of comparing time deficiency and life satisfaction, the male subjects felt that they lacked time compared to the female subjects. There was no significant difference in life satisfaction. By examining whether single-parent families' time use by occupational area affected the time deficiency, it was found that male's working time make them feel they have less time, while female's leisure time makes them feel they have more time. CONCLUSION: This study made it possible to determine the characteristics of single-parent households' time use and sex differences. Furthermore, it is expected to be used as basic data for measures to solve not only time poverty, but also economic poverty in single-parent families.

SELID: Selective Event Labeling for Intrusion Detection Datasets.

A large volume of security events, generally collected by distributed monitoring sensors, overwhelms human analysts at security operations centers and raises an alert fatigue problem. Machine learning is expected to mitigate this problem by automatically distinguishing between true alerts, or attacks, and falsely reported ones. Machine learning models should first be trained on datasets having correct labels, but the labeling process itself requires considerable human resources. In this paper, we present a new selective sampling scheme for efficient data labeling via unsupervised clustering. The new scheme transforms the byte sequence of an event into a fixed-size vector through content-defined chunking and feature hashing. Then, a clustering algorithm is applied to the vectors, and only a few samples from each cluster are selected for manual labeling. The experimental results demonstrate that the new scheme can select only 2% of the data for labeling without degrading the F1-score of the machine learning model. Two datasets, a private dataset from a real security operations center and a public dataset from the Internet for experimental reproducibility, are used.

Effects of Twins Therapy on Egocentric and Allocentric Neglect in Stroke Patients: A Feasibility Study.

(1) Background: Existing treatment methods for neglect are concentrated on egocentric neglect and may lead to various problems such as cost/space constraints and portability. Therefore, this study seeks to determine how a new treatment (also known as twins therapy, TT) for stroke patients can improve an existing problem associated with neglect. (2) Method: A pre/post-test control group research design was used and both groups continued to receive existing rehabilitation treatment, whilst TT intervention was only added to the experimental group. TT intervention was conducted for a total of 20 sessions (1 session for 30 min/day, 5 days/week, for 4 weeks). (3) Result: There was no significant difference in the manual function test (MFT) and the Korean version of the Modified Barthel Index (K-MBI) items (p > 0.05) before and after the TT intervention. However, the score and execution time of the apple cancellation test showed a significant reduction only in the experimental group (p < 0.05). (4) Conclusion: TT not only improved egocentric neglect, but also allocentric neglect symptoms in stroke patients.

Time usage analysis according to occupational area and satisfaction level in family caregivers of dementia patients.

Background: This study was designed to investigate the difference between the family caregivers of dementia patients (hereafter referred to as dementia family) and the non-family caregivers of dementia patients (hereafter referred to as non-dementia family) in terms of time usage. Methodology: A total of 102 dementia families who responded to the 'time use survey' in 2019 were enrolled in the study. 101 non-dementia families include families who did not respond to the 'dementia' item, and simple random sampling was performed. Time usage according to occupational area and satisfaction level were analyzed based on the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework-Fourth Edition (OTPF-4). Statistical analyses were completed using IBM SPSS 25. The data was analyzed by using frequency analysis and independent two-sample t-test. A level of p < 0.05 was used as a cut-off for statistical significance. Results: As for the time consumption by occupational area of dementia families and non-dementia families, dementia families spent more time than non-dementia families in instrumental daily life activities. The increase in the time for instrumental activities of daily living, including the time for caring for dementia patients, may lead to changes in time use for members of the family with dementia. By comparing the time usage by occupational area according to gender within the dementia families, it was possible to find out the difference between male and female instrumental daily activities and health care time use. The difference in time use according to gender showed that women took on more caring roles than men, and actually spent more time than men. Conclusion: The amount of time used between the dementia family and the non-dementia family differed according to the group and gender. These results suggest that dementia can cause changes in the time usage of dementia family. Therefore, this study recognizes the need for efficient use of time for dementia families and suggests that there is a need for a balanced use of time according to gender.

Multi-Currency Integrated Serial Number Recognition Model of Images Acquired by Banknote Counters.

The objective of this study was to establish an automated system for the recognition of banknote serial numbers by developing a deep learning (DL)-based optical character recognition framework. An integrated serial number recognition model for the banknotes of four countries (South Korea (KRW), the United States (USD), India (INR), and Japan (JPY)) was developed. One-channel image data obtained from banknote counters were used in this study. The dataset used for the multi-currency integrated serial number recognition contains about 150,000 images. The class imbalance problem and model accuracy were improved through data augmentation based on geometric transforms that consider the range of errors that occur when a bill is inserted into the counter. In addition, by fine-tuning the recognition network, it was confirmed that the performance was improved when the serial numbers of the banknotes of four countries were recognized instead of the serial number of a banknote from each country from a single-currency dataset, and the generalization performance was improved by training the model to recognize the diverse serial numbers of multiple currencies. Therefore, the proposed method shows that real-time processing of less than 30 ms per image and character recognition with 99.99% accuracy are possible, even though there is a tradeoff between inference speed and serial number recognition accuracy when data augmentation based on the characteristics of banknote counters and a 1-stage object detector for banknote serial number recognition is used.

Assessment tools for differential diagnosis of neglect: Focusing on egocentric neglect and allocentric neglect.

BACKGROUND: There are very few studies on the differential diagnosis between egocentric neglect (EN) and allocentric neglect (AN). AIM: To investigate the overall trend of the previously developed assessment tools by conducting a descriptive review of the studies on assessment tools that can perform a differential diagnosis of EN and AN. METHODS: The data were collected by using databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and ScienceDirect. The most commonly used search terms were "neglect", "stroke", "egocentric neglect", and "allocentric neglect". RESULTS: A total of seven studies that met the inclusion criteria were selected and analyzed. We were able to confirm the research process, test method, and differential diagnosis criteria of the seven presented assessment tools from four studies on paper-based tests and three studies on computerized tests. The majority of the tests were carried out via the cancellation method using stimuli such as everyday objects or numbers. EN distinguished the left from right based on the test paper, while AN distinguished the left from right based on stimuli. In order to perform differential diagnosis, the difference in the number of left and right responses or non-responses was used based on the EN and AN criteria. CONCLUSION: It was confirmed that all the seven assessment tools can effectively perform differential diagnosis of EN and AN. This study may provide important data that can be used in clinical practice for differential diagnosis and future intervention planning for neglect patients.

Multi-Class Parrot Image Classification Including Subspecies with Similar Appearance.

Owing to climate change and human indiscriminate development, the population of endangered species has been decreasing. To protect endangered species, many countries worldwide have adopted the CITES treaty to prevent the extinction of endangered plants and animals. Moreover, research has been conducted using diverse approaches, particularly deep learning-based animal and plant image recognition methods. In this paper, we propose an automated image classification method for 11 endangered parrot species included in CITES. The 11 species include subspecies that are very similar in appearance. Data images were collected from the Internet and built in cooperation with Seoul Grand Park Zoo to build an indigenous database. The dataset for deep learning training consisted of 70% training set, 15% validation set, and 15% test set. In addition, a data augmentation technique was applied to reduce the data collection limit and prevent overfitting. The performance of various backbone CNN architectures (i.e., VGGNet, ResNet, and DenseNet) were compared using the SSD model. The experiment derived the test set image performance for the training model, and the results show that the DenseNet18 had the best performance with an mAP of approximately 96.6% and an inference time of 0.38 s.

Bioaerosol monitoring by integrating DC impedance microfluidic cytometer with wet-cyclone air sampler.

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted the seriousness of airborne diseases and the need for a proper pathogen detection system. Compared to the ample amount of research on biological detection, work on integrated devices for air monitoring is rare. In this work, we integrated a wet-cyclone air sampler and a DC impedance microfluidic cytometer to build a cyclone-cytometer integrated air monitor (CCAM). The wet-cyclone air sampler sucks the air and concentrates the bioaerosols into 10 mL of aqueous solvent. After 5 min of air sampling, the bioaerosol-containing solution was conveyed to the microfluidic cytometer for detection. The device was tested with aerosolized microbeads, dust, and Escherichia coli (E. coli). CCAM is shown to differentiate particles from 0.96 to 2.95 µm with high accuracy. The wet cyclone air-sampler showed a 28.04% sampling efficiency, and the DC impedance cytometer showed 87.68% detection efficiency, giving a total of 24.59% overall CCAM efficiency. After validation of the device performance, CCAM was used to detect bacterial aerosols and their viability without any separate pretreatment step. Differentiation of dust, live E. coli, and dead E. coli was successfully performed by the addition of BacLight bacterial viability reagent in the sampling solvent. The usage could be further extended to detection of specific species with proper antibody fluorescent label. A promising strategy for aerosol detection is proposed through the constructive integration of a DC impedance microfluidic cytometer and a wet-cyclone air sampler.

In Situ Real-Time Monitoring of ITO Film under a Chemical Etching Process Using Fourier Transform Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy.

As a novel approach to the in situ real-time investigation of an ITO electrode during the wet etching process, step-excitation Fourier-transform electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (FT-EIS) was implemented. The equivalent circuit parameters (e.g., Rct, Cdl) continuously obtained by the FT-EIS measurements during the entire etching process showed an electrode activation at the initial period as well as the completion of etching. The FT-EIS results were further validated by cyclic voltammograms and impedance measurements of partially etched ITO films using ferri- and ferrocyanide solution in combination with FESEM imaging, EDS, XRD analyses, and COMSOL simulation. We also demonstrated that this technique can be further utilized to obtain intact interdigitated array (IDA) electrodes in a reproducible manner, which is generally considered to be quite tricky due to delicacy of the pattern. Given that the FT-EIS allows for instantaneous snapshots of the electrode at every moment, this work may hold promise for in situ real-time examination of structural, electrokinetic, or mass transfer-related information on electrochemical systems undergoing constantly changing, transient processes including etching, which would be impossible with conventional electroanalytical techniques.

Mental health and quality of life in firefighters working on the scene in South Korea: Focused on the capital area and the ground pro-motion area.

INTRODUCTION: Today, firefighters' work areas are expanding into various fields. The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of mental health on quality of life between firefighters in the capital area and in the growth promotion area. METHOD: A survey was conducted with 206 firefighters including 110 firefighters in the capital area and 96 firefighters in the growth promotion area through a questionnaire. RESULT: The differences in mental health based on working areas between firefighter groups have been identified. In addition, among the factors affecting the quality of life among firefighter, the factor most closely associated with quality of life was "sociopsychological health stress," followed by "occupational stress," "depression," and "working area." CONCLUSION: There is a need for research into mental health interventions appropriate for regional characteristics of each region regarding the implementation of mental health management by working area.

A miniaturized solid salt reverse electrodialysis battery: a durable and fully ionic power source.

A novel pump-free miniaturized reverse electrodialysis (RED) system was designed to provide lasting power transduced from salinity gradients, named solid salt RED (ssRED), and this quasi-battery uses a solid salt instead of electrolyte solution for streamlined usage. It is portable, flexible, comparable in size to a universal serial bus flash drive, and easily activated with a small amount of water. It maintains a constant ionic concentration gradient through precipitation reactions between a pair of different salts. This precipitation-assisted solid salt RED (PssRED) is an unprecedented ionic power source as it can generate steady electricity in the absence of a driving pump. The PssRED was successfully coupled with bipolar electrode (BPE) microchip sensors which require stable ionic electricity and a polyelectrolyte ionic diode to realize a fully ionic circuit. It is envisioned that the range of application could be expanded to supply electromotive force to various devices through an ionic charge flow.

Dielectric Breakdown and Post-Breakdown Dissolution of Si/SiO2 Cathodes in Acidic Aqueous Electrochemical Environment.

Understanding the conducting mechanisms of dielectric materials under various conditions is of increasing importance. Here, we report the dielectric breakdown (DB) and post-breakdown mechanism of Si/SiO2, a widely used semiconductor and dielectric, in an acidic aqueous electrochemical environment. Cathodic breakdown was found to generate conduction spots on the Si/SiO2 surface. Using scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM), the size and number of conduction spots are confirmed to increase from nanometer to micrometer scale during the application of negative voltage. The morphologies of these conduction spots reveal locally recessed inverted-pyramidal structures with exposed Si{111} sidewalls. The pits generation preceded by DB is considered to occur via cathodic dissolution of Si and exfoliation of SiO2 that are induced by local pH increases due to the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at the conduction spots. The HER at the conduction spots is more sluggish due to strongly hydrogen-terminated Si{111} surfaces.

Multiplex immunoassays using virus-tethered gold microspheres by DC impedance-based flow cytometry.

Bead-based multiplex immunoassays for common use require enhanced sensitivity and effective prevention of non-specific adsorption, as well as miniaturization of the detection device. In this work, we have implemented virus-tethered gold microspheres for multiplex immunoassay applications, employing a DC impedance-based flow cytometer as a detection element. The advantages of virus-tethered gold microspheres, including excellent prevention of non-specific adsorption, are extended to signal enhancement arising from the large quantity of antibody loading on each virion, and to flexible movement of filamentous virus. Individual virus-tethered beads generate their own DC impedance and fluorescence signals, which are simultaneously detected by a chip-based microfluidic flow cytometer. This system successfully realized multiplex immunoassays involving four biomarkers: cardiac troponin I (cTnI), prostate specific antigen (PSA), creatine kinase MB (CK-MB), and myoglobin in undiluted human sera, elevating sensitivity by up to 5.7-fold compared to the beads without virus. Constructive integration between filamentous virus-tethered Au-layered microspheres and use of a microfluidic cytometer suggests a promising strategy for competitive multiplex immunoassay development based on suspension arrays.

3D interdigitated electrode array in the microchannel free of reference and counter electrodes.

We demonstrate the three-dimensional (3D) interdigitated array (IDA) chip that operates without reference and counter electrodes, which are necessary components to apply enough potential to trigger the intended redox process, but used unwieldy for chip-based electrochemical detection. Using the electrode configuration, we propose a unique electrochemical system that is capable of controlling applied potential to a pair of working electrodes despite absence of reference and counter electrodes by fixing the electron transfer mediator on the electrodes in a microchannel. The electrochemical potential of the 2-electrode (2E) system is defined by the potential of the electron transfer mediator, poly(methylene green) (PMG), immobilized with poly(dopamine) (PDA) on the ITO surface by electropolymerization. The 3D IDA chip in the 2E system successfully acts as an electrochemical immunosensing platform. Creatine Kinase-MB in human serum was measured down to ~ pg / mL level. Therefore, the 3D IDA in the 2E system constitutes a simple and scalable platform that needs only nL level of sample volume for sensitive electrochemical detection in miniaturized multiplex immunoassay field.

Nonfaradaic nanoporous electrochemistry for conductometry at high electrolyte concentration.

Nanoporous electrified surfaces create a unique nonfaradaic electrochemical behavior that is sensitively influenced by pore size, morphology, ionic strength, and electric field modulation. Here, we report the contributions of ion concentration and applied ac frequency to the electrode impedance through an electrical double layer overlap and ion transport along the nanopores. Nanoporous Pt with uniform pore size and geometry (L2-ePt) responded more sensitively to conductivity changes in aqueous solutions than Pt black with poor uniformity despite similar real surface areas and enabled the previously difficult quantitative conductometry measurements at high electrolyte concentrations. The nanopores of L2-ePt were more effective in reducing the electrode impedance and exhibited superior linear responses to not only flat Pt but also Pt black, leading to successful conductometric detection in ion chromatography without ion suppressors and at high ionic strengths.

A computational model for predicting protein interactions based on multidomain collaboration.

Recently, several domain-based computational models for predicting protein-protein interactions (PPIs) have been proposed. The conventional methods usually infer domain or domain combination (DC) interactions from already known interacting sets of proteins, and then predict PPIs using the information. However, the majority of these models often have limitations in providing detailed information on which domain pair (single domain interaction) or DC pair (multidomain interaction) will actually interact for the predicted protein interaction. Therefore, a more comprehensive and concrete computational model for the prediction of PPIs is needed. We developed a computational model to predict PPIs using the information of intraprotein domain cohesion and interprotein DC coupling interaction. A method of identifying the primary interacting DC pair was also incorporated into the model in order to infer actual participants in a predicted interaction. Our method made an apparent improvement in the PPI prediction accuracy, and the primary interacting DC pair identification was valid specifically in predicting multidomain protein interactions. In this paper, we demonstrate that 1) the intraprotein domain cohesion is meaningful in improving the accuracy of domain-based PPI prediction, 2) a prediction model incorporating the intradomain cohesion enables us to identify the primary interacting DC pair, and 3) a hybrid approach using the intra/interdomain interaction information can lead to a more accurate prediction.