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| 2. |
- Tozan, Yesim, et al.
(author)
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A Prospective Study on the Impact and Out-of-Pocket Costs of Dengue Illness in International Travelers
- 2019
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In: American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. - : AMER SOC TROP MED & HYGIENE. - 0002-9637 .- 1476-1645. ; 100:6, s. 1525-1533
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Although the costs of dengue illness to patients and households have been extensively studied in endemic populations, international travelers have not been the focus of costing studies. As globalization and humantravel activities intensify, travelers are increasingly at risk for emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, such as dengue. This exploratory study aims to investigate the impact and out-of-pocket costs of dengue illness among travelers. We conducted a prospective study in adult travelers with laboratory-confirmed dengue and recruited patients at travel medicine clinics in eight different countries from December 2013 to December 2015. Using a structured questionnaire, we collected information on patients and their health-care utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures, as well as income and other financial losses they incurred because of dengue illness. A total of 90 patients participated in the study, most of whom traveled for tourism (74%) and visited countries in Asia (82%). Although 22% reported hospitalization and 32% receiving ambulatory care while traveling, these percentages were higher at 39% and 71%, respectively, after returning home. The out-of-pocket direct and indirect costs of dengue illness were US$421 (SD 744) and US$571 (SD 1,913) per episode, respectively, averaging to a total out-of-pocket cost of US$992 (SD 2,052) per episode. The study findings suggest that international travelers incur important direct and indirect costs because of dengue-related illness. This study is the first to date to investigate the impact and out-of-pocket costs of travel-related dengue illness from the patient's perspective and paves the way for future economic burden studies in this population.
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| 3. |
- De Luca, Alberto, et al.
(author)
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On the generalizability of diffusion MRI signal representations across acquisition parameters, sequences and tissue types : Chronicles of the MEMENTO challenge
- 2021
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In: NeuroImage. - : Elsevier BV. - 1053-8119 .- 1095-9572. ; 240
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Diffusion MRI (dMRI) has become an invaluable tool to assess the microstructural organization of brain tissue. Depending on the specific acquisition settings, the dMRI signal encodes specific properties of the underlying diffusion process. In the last two decades, several signal representations have been proposed to fit the dMRI signal and decode such properties. Most methods, however, are tested and developed on a limited amount of data, and their applicability to other acquisition schemes remains unknown. With this work, we aimed to shed light on the generalizability of existing dMRI signal representations to different diffusion encoding parameters and brain tissue types. To this end, we organized a community challenge - named MEMENTO, making available the same datasets for fair comparisons across algorithms and techniques. We considered two state-of-the-art diffusion datasets, including single-diffusion-encoding (SDE) spin-echo data from a human brain with over 3820 unique diffusion weightings (the MASSIVE dataset), and double (oscillating) diffusion encoding data (DDE/DODE) of a mouse brain including over 2520 unique data points. A subset of the data sampled in 5 different voxels was openly distributed, and the challenge participants were asked to predict the remaining part of the data. After one year, eight participant teams submitted a total of 80 signal fits. For each submission, we evaluated the mean squared error, the variance of the prediction error and the Bayesian information criteria. The received submissions predicted either multi-shell SDE data (37%) or DODE data (22%), followed by cartesian SDE data (19%) and DDE (18%). Most submissions predicted the signals measured with SDE remarkably well, with the exception of low and very strong diffusion weightings. The prediction of DDE and DODE data seemed more challenging, likely because none of the submissions explicitly accounted for diffusion time and frequency. Next to the choice of the model, decisions on fit procedure and hyperparameters play a major role in the prediction performance, highlighting the importance of optimizing and reporting such choices. This work is a community effort to highlight strength and limitations of the field at representing dMRI acquired with trending encoding schemes, gaining insights into how different models generalize to different tissue types and fiber configurations over a large range of diffusion encodings.
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| 4. |
- Galili, Nir, et al.
(author)
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The geologic history of seawater oxygen isotopes from marine iron oxides
- 2019
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In: Science. - : AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE. - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 365:6452, s. 469-473
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The oxygen isotope composition (delta O-18) of marine sedimentary rocks has increased by 10 to 15 per mil since Archean time. Interpretation of this trend is hindered by the dual control of temperature and fluid delta O-18 on the rocks' isotopic composition. A new delta O-18 record in marine iron oxides covering the past similar to 2000 million years shows a similar secular rise. Iron oxide precipitation experiments reveal a weakly temperature-dependent iron oxide-water oxygen isotope fractionation, suggesting that increasing seawater d(18)O over time was the primary cause of the long-term rise in delta O-18 values of marine precipitates. The O-18 enrichment may have been driven by an increase in terrestrial sediment cover, a change in the proportion of high-and low-temperature crustal alteration, or a combination of these and other factors.
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| 5. |
- Har-Shemesh, Omri, et al.
(author)
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Questionnaire data analysis using information geometry
- 2020
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In: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 10:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The analysis of questionnaires often involves representing the high-dimensional responses in a low-dimensional space (e.g., PCA, MCA, or t-SNE). However questionnaire data often contains categorical variables and common statistical model assumptions rarely hold. Here we present a non-parametric approach based on Fisher Information which obtains a low-dimensional embedding of a statistical manifold (SM). The SM has deep connections with parametric statistical models and the theory of phase transitions in statistical physics. Firstly we simulate questionnaire responses based on a non-linear SM and validate our method compared to other methods. Secondly we apply our method to two empirical datasets containing largely categorical variables: an anthropological survey of rice farmers in Bali and a cohort study on health inequality in Amsterdam. Compare to previous analysis and known anthropological knowledge we conclude that our method best discriminates between different behaviours, paving the way to dimension reduction as effective as for continuous data.
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| 6. |
- Meister, Philip, et al.
(author)
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A global compilation of diatom silica oxygen isotope records from lake sediment - trends and implications for climate reconstruction
- 2024
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In: Climate of the Past. - 1814-9324. ; 20:2, s. 363-392
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Oxygen isotopes in biogenic silica (δ18OBSi) from lake sediments allow for quantitative reconstruction of past hydroclimate and proxy-model comparison in terrestrial environments. The signals of individual records have been attributed to different factors, such as air temperature (Tair), atmospheric circulation patterns, hydrological changes, and lake evaporation. While every lake has its own local set of drivers of δ18O variability, here we explore the extent to which regional or even global signals emerge from a series of paleoenvironmental records. This study provides a comprehensive compilation and combined statistical evaluation of the existing lake sediment δ18OBSi records, largely missing in other summary publications (i.e. PAGES network). For this purpose, we have identified and compiled 71 down-core records published to date and complemented these datasets with additional lake basin parameters (e.g. lake water residence time and catchment size) to best characterize the signal properties. Records feature widely different temporal coverage and resolution, ranging from decadal-scale records covering the past 150 years to records with multi-millennial-scale resolution spanning glacial-interglacial cycles. The best coverage in number of records (NCombining double low line37) and data points (NCombining double low line2112) is available for Northern Hemispheric (NH) extratropical regions throughout the Holocene (roughly corresponding to Marine Isotope Stage 1; MIS 1). To address the different variabilities and temporal offsets, records were brought to a common temporal resolution by binning and subsequently filtered for hydrologically open lakes with lake water residence times <100 years. For mid- to high-latitude (>45°N) lakes, we find common δ18OBSi patterns among the lake records during both the Holocene and Common Era (CE). These include maxima and minima corresponding to known climate episodes, such as the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM), Neoglacial Cooling, Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). These patterns are in line with long-term air temperature changes supported by previously published climate reconstructions from other archives, as well as Holocene summer insolation changes. In conclusion, oxygen isotope records from NH extratropical lake sediments feature a common climate signal at centennial (for CE) and millennial (for Holocene) timescales despite stemming from different lakes in different geographic locations and hence constitute a valuable proxy for past climate reconstructions.
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| 7. |
- Palmer, Benjamin A., et al.
(author)
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The image-forming mirror in the eye of the scallop
- 2017
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 358:6367, s. 1172-1175
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Scallops possess a visual system comprising up to 200 eyes, each containing a concave mirror rather than a lens to focus light. The hierarchical organization of the multilayered mirror is controlled for image formation, from the component guanine crystals at the nanoscale to the complex three-dimensional morphology at the millimeter level. The layered structure of the mirror is tuned to reflect the wavelengths of light penetrating the scallop’s habitat and is tiled with a mosaic of square guanine crystals, which reduces optical aberrations. The mirror forms images on a double-layered retina used for separately imaging the peripheral and central fields of view. The tiled, off-axis mirror of the scallop eye bears a striking resemblance to the segmented mirrors of reflecting telescopes.
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| 8. |
- Rosqvist, G., et al.
(author)
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Diatom oxygen isotopes in pro-galcial lake sediments from northern Sweden: A 5000 year record of atmospheric circulation.
- 2004
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In: Quaternary Science Reviews. - : Elsevier BV. - 0277-3791 .- 1873-457X. ; 23:7-8, s. 851-859
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We use a pro-glacial oxygen isotope record of diatom silica (δ18Odiatom) and a sedimentary proxy for glacier flutuations to determine centennial-millennial scale climate change during the last 5000 yeras in northern Sweden. We show that the lake water isotopic composition åredominantly reflects the isotopic composition of the precipitation. Superimposed on a general depletion trend of 3.5‰ over the past 5000 years we found that the isotopic composition of precipitation became depleted (> 1‰ excursions) during four occasions centered at 4400, 3000, 2000 and, after 1200 cal yr BP. Climate simultaneously sustained a positive glacier mass balance, taht caused the catchment glacier to advance. A peristan cgange in the atmopheric circulation pattern could potentially have caused the registered chnages in the δ18Odiatom because different air masses hold characteristics δ18O signatures of their precipitation. The glacier mass balance primarily responds to the influence of summer temperature on ablation. We suggest that the most likely cause for the recorded chnages in both these proxies is a steadily increasing but fluctuating dominance of colder and δ18O depleted air masses from the north/northeast during the past 5000 years. Theδ18Odiatom depletion and glacier events all occur at times of relative ice-rafted-debris maxima in the North Atlanic, consistent with cold conditions and changes in surface wind directions. Our results confirm that changes towards a predominace of north/northeasterly winds occured at these time intervals.
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| 9. |
- Shemesh, Noam, et al.
(author)
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Conventions and nomenclature for double diffusion encoding NMR and MRI.
- 2016
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In: Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. - : Wiley. - 1522-2594 .- 0740-3194. ; 75:1, s. 82-87
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Stejskal and Tanner's ingenious pulsed field gradient design from 1965 has made diffusion NMR and MRI the mainstay of most studies seeking to resolve microstructural information in porous systems in general and biological systems in particular. Methods extending beyond Stejskal and Tanner's design, such as double diffusion encoding (DDE) NMR and MRI, may provide novel quantifiable metrics that are less easily inferred from conventional diffusion acquisitions. Despite the growing interest on the topic, the terminology for the pulse sequences, their parameters, and the metrics that can be derived from them remains inconsistent and disparate among groups active in DDE. Here, we present a consensus of those groups on terminology for DDE sequences and associated concepts. Furthermore, the regimes in which DDE metrics appear to provide microstructural information that cannot be achieved using more conventional counterparts (in a model-free fashion) are elucidated. We highlight in particular DDE's potential for determining microscopic diffusion anisotropy and microscopic fractional anisotropy, which offer metrics of microscopic features independent of orientation dispersion and thus provide information complementary to the standard, macroscopic, fractional anisotropy conventionally obtained by diffusion MR. Finally, we discuss future vistas and perspectives for DDE. Magn Reson Med, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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