Wide-field Mueller matrix polarimetry for spectral characterization of basic biological tissues: Muscle, fat, connective tissue, and skin.

This study investigates the polarimetric properties of skin, skeletal muscle, connective tissue, and fat using Mueller matrix imaging. It aims to compare the polarimetric characteristics of these tissues and explore how they evolve with wavelength. Additionally, the temporal evolution of certain tissues during meat aging is studied, providing insights into the dynamic behavior of polarimetric properties over time. The research employs back-scattering configuration and the differential decomposition analysis method of Mueller matrix images. Both in-vivo and ex-vivo experiments were conducted using a consistent instrument setup to ensure reliable analysis. The results reveal wavelength-dependent variations in tissue properties, including an increase in depolarization with wavelength. Significant differences in the polarimetric characteristics of meat tissues, particularly for skeletal muscle, are observed. Over a 24-h period, intensity, diattenuation, and retardation experience alterations, being the decreased retardation in skeletal muscle and the increased retardation in fat the most notable ones.

Considerations when planning and conducting large global observational studies: Experience from the DISCOVER study of patients with type 2 diabetes.

DISCOVER is a global programme of observational research that includes patients with type 2 diabetes initiating second-line glucose-lowering therapy from 38 countries worldwide, including many with little or no previous epidemiological data available. More than 15,000 patients were followed-up for 3 years, and comprehensive data were collected using a standardized electronic case report form at enrolment, and 6, 12, 24 and 36 months. The study has formed the basis for a long-term registry that is intended to expand the geographic and clinical scope of the study and allow data collection beyond 3 years. In this review, critical aspects of study planning and implementation are summarized, along with challenges that were faced, to provide a resource for researchers planning similar studies. In particular, it is essential to set realistic expectations regarding the degree of study representativeness that can be achieved, allow for sufficient time to obtain ethics committee approval, develop tools to help recruit patients effectively, ensure that data collection systems are robust, user-friendly and adaptable, plan adequate remote and on-site monitoring, maximize patient retention through continuous engagement with study sites and ensure that everyone involved in the study forms a friendly and effective team. Observational studies such as DISCOVER are crucial for understanding disease epidemiology and management in real-world settings. They are also increasingly used by governmental, regulatory and payor agencies for post-marketing surveillance and when considering new drug submissions. The development of future studies of similar scope and ambition to DISCOVER is encouraged.

Do autistic children differ in language-mediated prediction?

Prediction appears to be an important characteristic of the human mind. It has also been suggested that prediction is a core difference of autistic1 children. Past research exploring language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children, however, has been somewhat contradictory, with some studies finding normal anticipatory processing in autistic children with low levels of autistic traits but others observing weaker prediction effects in autistic children with less receptive language skills. Here we investigated language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in young children who differed in the severity of their level of autistic traits and were in professional institutional care in Hangzhou, China. We chose the same spoken sentences (translated into Mandarin Chinese) and visual stimuli as a previous study which observed robust prediction effects in young children (Mani & Huettig, 2012) and included a control group of typically-developing children. Typically developing but not autistic children showed robust prediction effects. Most interestingly, autistic children with lower communication, motor, and (adaptive) behavior scores exhibited both less predictive and non-predictive visual attention behavior. Our results raise the possibility that differences in language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children with higher levels of autistic traits may be differences in visual attention in disguise, a hypothesis that needs further investigation.

Literacy-related differences in morphological knowledge: A nonce-word study.

Using a nonce-word inflection task, we examine the morphosyntactic productivity of adult native speakers of Spanish who are either beginning to learn to read and write (semi-literates) or have acquired literacy in late adulthood (late-literates), as well as age-matched controls (high-literates). High-literates consistently provided the appropriate form more often than late-literates, who in turn were better than semi-literate participants. Crucially, group interacted with person, number, and conjugation, such that the between-group differences were larger for the less frequent cells in the paradigm, indicating that literacy-related differences are not merely a consequence of the high-literacy group being more engaged or test-wise. This suggests that the availability of written representations may facilitate the acquisition of certain aspects of grammar. We also observed vast individual differences in productivity with inflectional endings. These results add to the growing body of research which challenges the assumption that all native speakers converge on the same grammar early in development.

Functional echolalia in autism speech: Verbal formulae and repeated prior utterances as communicative and cognitive strategies.

Echolalia, the echoing of prior speech, is a typical characteristic of autism. Long considered meaningless repetition to be avoided, echolalia may in fact be used functionally in autism. This paper explores the functions of echolalia by children with autism. Based on two prior studies, we designed an elicitation task involving images of 12 professions (teacher) and 12 objects (birthday cake) commonly associated with given conventionalized expressions in Mandarin (e.g., "sheng ri kuai le!" 'Happy birthday!'). Eight Chinese children with autism (mean age: 55.50 ± 8.64) were asked to name and describe these images. All our participants produced a relatively high proportion of echolalia, mostly for naming, description, and topic development, a small percentage being used as conversation maintenance strategy or as cognitive strategy. This indicates that echolalia is often used communicatively in autism speech.

Literacy improves the comprehension of object relatives.

While there is a considerable body of research indicating that the acquisition of literacy has profound effects on many aspects of language and cognition, to our knowledge, very little is known about its effects on morphosyntax. In this paper, we explore the effects of literacy on the comprehension of Spanish object relative clauses, a structure which is typically acquired by literate children about the age of 10, i.e., after a considerable amount of exposure to written language. We tested three groups of native Spanish speakers (semi-literates, late-literates and high-literates) using a picture selection task. Subject relatives were used as a control condition. All three groups performed at ceiling on subject relatives (group means of 95% or above). In contrast, we observed very large differences in performance on object relatives, with the semi-literate group performing at chance (51% correct) and the late-literate group slightly above chance (65% correct). Performance in the high-literate group was much better, although not quite at ceiling (82% correct). The results appear to support the hypothesis that literacy helps in the acquisition of some aspects of grammar. This could be partly due to differences in IQ, metalinguistic awareness, working memory and/or executive functioning. The results are also consistent with the 'training wheels' hypothesis (Dabrowska, 2020), according to which the availability of written representations facilitates the acquisition of difficult structures by easing memory load and enabling speakers to process sentences at their own pace.

Homogeneous Fe2O3 coatings on carbon nanotube structures for supercapacitors.

The combination of carbon nanotubes with transition metal oxides can exhibit complementary charge storage properties for use as electrode materials for next generation energy storage devices. One of the biggest challenges so far is to synthesize homogeneous oxide coatings on carbon nanotube structures preserving their integrity. Here we present the formation of conformal coatings of Fe2O3 on vertically aligned carbon nanotubes obtained by atomic layer deposition. We investigate the effect of pristine, nitrogen plasma and water plasma treated carbon nanotube surfaces on the ALD-growth of Fe2O3 using ferrocene and ozone precursors. The surface morphology, coating thickness, microstructure and surface chemistry of iron oxide-carbon nanotube composites and their ultimate influence on the electrochemical behavior of the composites are evaluated. The most effective surface functionalization is that achieved by H2O plasma treatment, whereas untreated carbon nanotubes, despite the lack of active sites in the starting pristine surface, can be coated with an inhomogeneous Fe2O3 film.

Super-Capacitive Performance of Manganese Dioxide/Graphene Nano-Walls Electrodes Deposited on Stainless Steel Current Collectors.

Graphene nano-walls (GNWs) are promising materials that can be used as an electrode in electrochemical devices. We have grown GNWs by inductively-coupled plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition on stainless steel (AISI304) substrate. In order to enhance the super-capacitive properties of the electrodes, we have deposited a thin layer of MnO2 by electrodeposition method. We studied the effect of annealing temperature on the electrochemical properties of the samples between 70 °C and 600 °C. Best performance for supercapacitor applications was obtained after annealing at 70 °C with a specific capacitance of 104 F g-1 at 150 mV s-1 and a cycling stability of more than 14k cycles with excellent coulombic efficiency and 73% capacitance retention. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, and galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements reveal fast proton diffusion (1.3 × 10-13 cm²·s-1) and surface redox reaction after annealing at 70 °C.

The impact of initial antibiotic treatment failure: Real-world insights in healthcare-associated or nosocomial pneumonia.

OBJECTIVES: To assess real-world treatment patterns and clinical outcomes associated with initial antibiotic therapy (IAT, antibiotics received ≤ 48 h post-initiation of antibiotic therapy), including level of IAT failure, and potential risk factors for IAT failure in healthcare-associated infections. METHODS: Data were obtained from medical records of adult patients hospitalized with healthcare-associated pneumonia (HCAP) and nosocomial pneumonia (NP), including ventilator-associated pneumonia, from 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2014 in Brazil, France, Italy, Russia and Spain during the retrospective, observational study, RECOMMEND (NCT02364284; D4280R00005). Potential risk factors for IAT failure were explored using logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: Mean (standard deviation) age and Deyo-Charlson Comorbidity Score were 66.0 (16.2) years and 2.4 (2.4), respectively (N = 451). Most patients (62.5%) received monotherapy. Mean (standard deviation) duration of IAT was 8.8 (7.2) days. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens were identified in 52.4% of patients with ≥ 1 pathogen isolated (154/294). IAT failure was recorded in 72.5% of patients and was significantly associated with isolation of a MDR pathogen and country using multivariate analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Real-world data demonstrate the burden of HCAP/NP, with high rates of IAT failure. The association of IAT failure with MDR pathogens highlights the urgent need to understand and account for local prevalence of MDR pathogens when selecting IAT for the management of HCAP/NP.

Optical security verification by synthesizing thin films with unique polarimetric signatures.

This Letter reports the production and optical polarimetric verification of codes based on thin-film technology for security applications. Because thin-film structures display distinctive polarization signatures, this data is used to authenticate the message encoded. Samples are analyzed using an imaging ellipsometer able to measure the 16 components of the Mueller matrix. As a result, the behavior of the thin film under polarized light becomes completely characterized. This information is utilized to distinguish among true and false codes by means of correlation. Without the imaging optics the components of the Mueller matrix become noise-like distributions and, consequently, the message encoded is no longer available. Then, a set of Stokes vectors are generated numerically for any polarization state of the illuminating beam and thus, machine learning techniques can be used to perform classification. We show that successful authentication is possible using the k-nearest neighbors algorithm in thin-films codes that have been anisotropically phase-encoded with pseudorandom phase code.

Resource use in patients hospitalized with complicated skin and soft tissue infections in Europe and analysis of vulnerable groups: the REACH study.

BACKGROUND: Hospitalized patients with complicated skin and soft tissue infections (cSSTI) present a substantial economic burden, and resource use can vary according to the presence of comorbidities, choice of antibiotic agent, and the requirement for initial treatment modification. REACH (NCT01293435) was a retrospective, observational study aimed at collecting empirical data on current (year 2010-2011) management strategies of cSSTI in 10 European countries. METHODS: Patients (n = 1995) were aged ≥18 years, hospitalized with a cSSTI and receiving intravenous antibiotics. Data, collected via electronic Case Report Forms, detailed patient characteristics, medical history, disease characteristics, microbiological diagnosis, disease course and outcomes, treatments before and during hospitalization, and health resource consumption. RESULTS: For the analysis population, mean length of hospital stay (including duration of hospitalizations for patients with recurrences) was 18.5 days (median 12.0). Increased length of hospital stay was found for patients with comorbidities vs those without (mean = 19.9; [median = 14.0] days vs 13.3 [median = 8.0] days), for patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus compared with patients with methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (mean = 27.7 [median = 19.5] days vs 18.4 [median = 13.0] days) and for patients requiring surgery (mean = 24.4 [median = 16.0] days vs 15.0 [median = 11.0] days). Patients requiring modification of their initial antibiotic treatment had an associated increase in mean length of hospital stay of 10.9 days (median = 6.5) and additional associated hospital resource use. A multivariate analysis confirmed the association of nosocomial infections, comorbidities, directed treatment, recurrent infections, diabetes, recent surgery, and older age (≥65 years), with longer hospital stay. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides real-life data on factors that are expected to impact length of hospital stay, to guide clinical decision-making to improve outcomes, and reduce resource use in patients with cSSTI.

Mueller matrix microscope with a dual continuous rotating compensator setup and digital demodulation.

In this paper we describe a new Mueller matrix (MM) microscope that generalizes and makes quantitative the polarized light microscopy technique. In this instrument all the elements of the MU are simultaneously determined from the analysis in the frequency domain of the time-dependent intensity of the light beam at every pixel of the camera. The variations in intensity are created by the two compensators continuously rotating at different angular frequencies. A typical measurement is completed in a little over one minute and it can be applied to any visible wavelength. Some examples are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the instrument.

Resource use by patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia in Europe: analysis of the REACH study.

BACKGROUND: Management of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) places a considerable burden on hospital resources. REACH was a retrospective, observational study (NCT01293435) involving adults ≥18 years old hospitalized with CAP and requiring in-hospital treatment with intravenous antibiotics conducted to collect data on current clinical management patterns and resource use for CAP in hospitals in ten European countries. METHODS: Data were collected via electronic Case Report Forms detailing patient and disease characteristics, microbiological diagnosis, treatments before and during hospitalization, clinical outcomes and health resource consumption. RESULTS: Patients with initial antibiotic treatment modification (n = 589; 28.9%) had a longer mean hospital stay than those without (16.1 [SD: 13.1; median 12.0] versus 11.1 [SD: 8.9; median: 9.0] days) and higher ICU admission rate (18.0% versus 11.9%). Septic shock (6.8% versus 3.0%), mechanical ventilation (22.2% versus 9.7%), blood pressure support (fluid resuscitation: 19.4% versus 11.4%), parenteral nutrition (6.5% versus 3.9%) and renal replacement therapy (4.2% versus 1.4%) were all more common in patients with treatment modification than in those without. Hospital stay was longer in patients with comorbidities than in those without (mean 13.3 [SD: 11.1; median: 10.0] versus 10.0 [SD: 7.5; median: 8.0] days). CONCLUSIONS: Initial antibiotic treatment modification in patients with CAP is common and is associated with considerable additional resource use. Reassessment of optimal management paradigms for patients hospitalized with CAP may be warranted.

Comparison of different advanced oxidation processes for phenol degradation.

Advanced Oxidation Processes (O3, O3/H2O2, UV, UV/O3, UV/H2O2, O3/UV/H2O2, Fe2+ /H2O2 and photocatalysis) for degradation of phenol in aqueous solution have been studied in earlier works. In this paper, a comparison of these techniques is undertaken: pH influence, kinetic constants, stoichiometric coefficient and optimum oxidant/pollutant ratio. Of the tested processes, Fenton reagent was found to the fastest one for phenol degradation. However, lower costs were obtained with ozonation. In the ozone combinations, the best results were achieved with single ozonation. As for the UV processes, UV/H2O2 showed the highest degradation rate.