Community-based exercise and nutritional interventions to improve frailty syndrome among older adults: A quasi-experimental study.

This study aimed to explore the efficacy of single and combined effects of exercise and branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) supplements on improving frailty and quality of life in older adults. In total, 120 study participants were allocated into a combined exercise-and-BCAA supplementation group, an exercise-only group, a BCAA supplementation-only group, and a control group. Results showed that Fried's frailty score significantly decreased in the combined exercise-and-BCAA supplementation group (ß= -1.73, p<0.001), exercise-only group (ß= -1.68, p<0.001), and BCAA supplementation-only group (ß= -0.73, p=0.005) compared to the control group. Moreover, the combination of exercise and BCAA supplements and the exercise-only program produced significant improvements in frailty compared to the BCAA supplement-only group and control group (p<0.05). Exercise should be a critical approach for older adults to improve frailty. Healthcare professionals in geriatric care should incorporate exercise programs as frailty management and prevention for older adults.

Deep Learning for Prediction of Progression and Recurrence in Nonfunctioning Pituitary Macroadenomas: Combination of Clinical and MRI Features.

Objectives: A subset of non-functioning pituitary macroadenomas (NFMAs) may exhibit early progression/recurrence (P/R) after tumor resection. The purpose of this study was to apply deep learning (DL) algorithms for prediction of P/R in NFMAs. Methods: From June 2009 to December 2019, 78 patients diagnosed with pathologically confirmed NFMAs, and who had undergone complete preoperative MRI and postoperative MRI follow-up for more than one year, were included. DL classifiers including multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and convolutional neural network (CNN) were used to build predictive models. Categorical and continuous clinical data were fed into the MLP model, and images of preoperative MRI (T2WI and contrast enhanced T1WI) were analyzed by the CNN model. MLP, CNN and multimodal CNN-MLP architectures were performed to predict P/R in NFMAs. Results: Forty-two (42/78, 53.8%) patients exhibited P/R after surgery. The median follow-up time was 42 months, and the median time to P/R was 25 months. As compared with CNN using MRI (accuracy 83%, precision 87%, and AUC 0.84) or MLP using clinical data (accuracy 73%, precision 73%, and AUC 0.73) alone, the multimodal CNN-MLP model using both clinical and MRI features showed the best performance for prediction of P/R in NFMAs, with accuracy 83%, precision 90%, and AUC 0.85. Conclusions: DL architecture incorporating clinical and MRI features performs well to predict P/R in NFMAs. Pending more studies to support the findings, the results of this study may provide valuable information for NFMAs treatment planning.

Disambiguating Stereoscopic Transparency Using a Thaumatrope Approach.

Volume rendering is a popular visualization technique for scientific computing and medical imaging. By assigning proper transparency, it allows us to see more information inside the volume. However, because volume rendering projects complex 3D structures into the 2D domain, the resultant visualization often suffers from ambiguity and its spatial relationship could be difficult to recognize correctly, especially when the scene or setting is highly transparent. Stereoscopic displays are not the rescue to the problem even though they add an additional dimension which seems helpful for resolving the ambiguity. This paper proposes a thaumatrope method to enhance 3D understanding with stereoscopic transparency for volume rendering. Our method first generates an additional cue with less spatial ambiguity by using a high opacity setting. To avoid cluttering the actual content, we only select its prominent feature for displaying. By alternating the actual content and the selected feature quickly, the viewer only perceives a whole volume while its spatial understanding has been enhanced. A user study was performed to compare the proposed method with the original stereoscopic volume rendering and the static combination of the actual content and the selected feature using a 3D display. Results show that the proposed thaumatrope approach provides better spatial understanding than compared approaches.

Gradient-free visualization with multiple light approximations.

Gradient computing suffers the noise and ill-definition problems such that local shading is not sufficient for medical imaging to get accurate visualization. However, the current global solutions are either time-consuming or limited to single light source that easily leads misinterpretation. This paper introduces a gradient-free approach to interactively approximate the effects of multiple lights for transparent volume data. Using attenuation maps, our lighting method gets rid of the tricky normal estimation and improves the spatial perception. In addition, the proposed method can be extended to explorative models, ex: plane cutting and modified maximum intensity projection (MPI), to get better inside view of medical applications.

Production of high-purity neofructooligosaccharides by culture of Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous.

Neofructooligosaccharides (neo-FOS) were produced in submerged cultures of Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous. Among the various strains of X. dendrorhous that have intracellular (6)G-fructofuranosidase ((6)G-FFase), BCRC 21346 with high enzyme activity (3.60 U/mL) and BCRC 22367 with low enzyme activity (0.59 U/mL) were investigated in this work. Neo-FOS were generated in a 5-L jar fermenter at 20°C, 100rpm and 2vvm with the pH controlled at 6.9±0.1, using 250g/L of sucrose as the substrate. Through the catalytic action of X. dendrorhous(6)G-FFase on sucrose, monosaccharides as well as neo-FOS were produced. A portion of these monosaccharides was consumed by the yeast cells. However, the production of monosaccharides was low in concentration in culture with low (6)G-FFase activity, indicating they might be used up concurrently during the fermentation. Consequently, neo-FOS at a purity of up to 87.4% could be obtained.

Effects of gelation temperature on Mozzarella-type curd made from buffalo and cows' milk: 2. Curd yield, overall quality and casein fractions.

The overall quality of Mozzarella-type curds made from buffalo and cows' milks were measured at gelation temperatures of 28, 34 and 39°C, and cutting times of 45, 60, 75 and 90min after chymosin addition. The curd yield and moisture content decreased with increasing gelation temperature, while whey fat losses increased. The effect of higher gelation temperature (39°C) was more pronounced in cows' milk than buffalo milk. This results in more fat losses and lower yields in both milk samples at a gelation temperature of 39°C. The minimum losses of fat and protein in rennet whey occurred at a gelation temperature of 34°C in both milk samples. The curd yield was higher in buffalo milk as compared to cows' milk. This is due to difference in total solids (fat and protein contents) of the two types of bovine milk. The different cutting times had a small effect on the yield and overall quality of curds made from both milk types. Curd moisture and loss tangent have a strong relationship with respect to effects of gelation temperature. Two different curd drainage methods (centrifugation and Buchner funnel filtration) were used to compare the final overall quality of Mozzarella-type curds made from both milk types. The α(s1) and ß casein fractions were found to be in different proportions in the two milk types. The total- and casein bound-calcium were higher in buffalo milk than cows' milk. The total protein, casein and fat were also found to be higher in buffalo milk than cows' milk.

Automatic defect detection for TFT-LCD array process using quasiconformal kernel support vector data description.

Defect detection has been considered an efficient way to increase the yield rate of panels in thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) manufacturing. In this study we focus on the array process since it is the first and key process in TFT-LCD manufacturing. Various defects occur in the array process, and some of them could cause great damage to the LCD panels. Thus, how to design a method that can robustly detect defects from the images captured from the surface of LCD panels has become crucial. Previously, support vector data description (SVDD) has been successfully applied to LCD defect detection. However, its generalization performance is limited. In this paper, we propose a novel one-class machine learning method, called quasiconformal kernel SVDD (QK-SVDD) to address this issue. The QK-SVDD can significantly improve generalization performance of the traditional SVDD by introducing the quasiconformal transformation into a predefined kernel. Experimental results, carried out on real LCD images provided by an LCD manufacturer in Taiwan, indicate that the proposed QK-SVDD not only obtains a high defect detection rate of 96%, but also greatly improves generalization performance of SVDD. The improvement has shown to be over 30%. In addition, results also show that the QK-SVDD defect detector is able to accomplish the task of defect detection on an LCD image within 60 ms.

Esophageal and gastric Kaposi's sarcomas presenting as upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is an uncommon malignant neoplasm of mesenchymal tissue that occurs in immunocompromised patients and people of Mediterranean descent. It is most common in males, and skin lesions are usual presentations. However, visceral lesions are common in organ transplant recipients and involve the gastrointestinal tract. Although the gastrointestinal tract is a site for extracutaneous lesions, most lesions are asymptomatic. Herein, a case of a 41-year-old female with cadaveric renal transplantation and immunosuppressive therapy but without human immunodeficiency virus infection is reported. She was admitted due to tarry stool passage and bilateral neck and inguinal lymph node enlargement. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed multiple grayish-purple plaques in the esophagus and stomach with active oozing from one of the stomach lesions. Histological examination demonstrated characteristic spindle cell stroma and vascular slits with hemorrhage. Furthermore, KS was the impression. The site of gastric bleeding produced by KS was injected locally with bosmin 1:10,000, and heat probe coagulation was performed. No further bleeding was discovered during follow-up. Following modification of the immunosuppressive therapy regimen, the lesions disappeared.