Hajar Banda: Darfur: West Sudan Topographic Field Map Sheet 5

The present map sheet is one of six field maps of the Darfur Map Series Release II (1:250'000). The maps and the geodatabase were preparded by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Berne with funding from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The map is being released as a technical contribution to support the humanitarian, peace-keeping and reconstruction efforts in Darfur, Western Sudan.

Nyala: Darfur: West Sudan Topographic Field Map Sheet 4

The present map sheet is one of six field maps of the Darfur Map Series Release II (1:250'000). The maps and the geodatabase were preparded by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Berne with funding from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The map is being released as a technical contribution to support the humanitarian, peace-keeping and reconstruction efforts in Darfur, Western Sudan.

Abyei: Sudan Topographic Field Map

The present map was prepared at the request of the 'Intergovernmental Authority on Development' (IGAD) for the 'Abyei Boundaries Commission', whose work is in progress as part of the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed on January 9, 2005. The map and the geodatabase were prepared by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Berne, Switzerland, with funding from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Boundaries, transliteration, settlement locations and the North-South demarcation line of 1956 drawn on this map are not authoritative and should not be considered as such.

Southern Blue Nile: Topographic Overview

The present map sheet was prepared by the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Berne, Switzerland. It was funded and supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The map is released as a technical contribution to the Sudan Peace negotiations at the request of the IGAD Secretariat on Peace in the Sudan.

Full correction for spatially distributed speed-of-sound in echo ultrasound based on measuring aberration delays via transmit beam steering

Aberrations of the acoustic wave front, caused by spatial variations of the speed-of-sound, are a main limiting factor to the diagnostic power of medical ultrasound imaging. If not accounted for, aberrations result in low resolution and increased side lobe level, over all reducing contrast in deep tissue imaging. Various techniques have been proposed for quantifying aberrations by analysing the arrival time of coherent echoes from so-called guide stars or beacons. In situations where a guide star is missing, aperture-based techniques may give ambiguous results. Moreover, they are conceptually focused on aberrators that can be approximated as a phase screen in front of the probe. We propose a novel technique, where the effect of aberration is detected in the reconstructed image as opposed to the aperture data. The varying local echo phase when changing the transmit beam steering angle directly reflects the varying arrival time of the transmit wave front. This allows sensing the angle-dependent aberration delay in a spatially resolved way, and thus aberration correction for a spatially distributed volume aberrator. In phantoms containing a cylindrical aberrator, we achieved location-independent diffraction-limited resolution as well as accurate display of echo location based on reconstructing the speed-of-sound spatially resolved. First successful volunteer results confirm the clinical potential of the proposed technique.

TIMS measurements of full range of natural Ca isotopes with internally consistent fractionation correction

This study presents static measurements of the Ca isotopic composition of standard reference materials SRM 915 a/b on a Triton Plus™ thermal ionization mass spectrometer with a specially developed Faraday cup array allowing simultaneous measurement of 40Ca and 48Ca. The total amount of Ca in all analyses was kept < 1 µg. With this setup the measurement uncertainties were 0.06 ‰ for 40Ca/44Ca and 0.12 ‰ for 48Ca/40Ca. Measuring all isotopes simultaneously better allows to test the internal consistency of different Ca isotope abundances reported in the literature. The exponential law was observed to correct incompletely instrumental mass fractionation. An improved fractionation correction based on the exponential law is proposed. It changes the 40Ca/44Ca ratio of SRM 915a (corrected relative to 42Ca/44Ca = 0.31221; 48Ca/44Ca = 0.08871) from 47.1635 ± 0.0028 to 47.1649 ± 0.0047. The measurements of SRM 915b were performed with different analytical conditions (runs were prolonged till complete filament load depletion). Even if the 40Ca/44Ca ratio of SRM 915b, when corrected with the simple exponential law, appears different (47.1532 ± 0.0038) from that of SRM 915a, it becomes coincident (47.1613 ± 0.0028) when corrected with a second-order refinement. This supports the use of the improved exponential law to obtain internally consistent Ca isotope ratio for natural samples.

Electrocardiographic characteristics of patients with funnel chest before and after surgical correction using pectus bar: A new association with precordial J wave pattern.

OBJECTIVE Abnormal ECG findings suggestive of cardiac disease are frequent in patients with funnel chest, although structural heart disease is rare. Electrocardiographic characteristics and changes following new surgical treatments in young adults are not described so far. The aim of the study was to analyze electrocardiographic characteristics of patients with funnel chest before and after minimally invasive funnel chest correction by the Nuss procedure. METHODS Twenty-six patients with surgical correction of funnel chest using pectus bar were included. Twelve-lead ECGs before and later than one year after surgery were analyzed. RESULTS In postoperative ECGs, amplitude of P wave in lead II and negative terminal amplitude of P wave in lead V1 decreased from 0.13 to 0.10mV (p=0.03), and from 0.10 to 0.04mV (p<0.001), respectively. Mean QRS duration decreased from 108ms to 98ms (p=0.003) after correction. A pathological left and right Sokolow-Lyon index was observed in 35% and 23% of patients before, versus 8% (p=0.04) and 0% (p=0.01) after correction, respectively. In contrast, the rate of patients with J wave pattern in precordial leads V4-V6 increased from 8% before to 42% after surgery (p=0.004). CONCLUSIONS ECG abnormalities in patients with funnel chest are frequent, and can normalize after surgical correction by the Nuss procedure. De novo J wave pattern in precordial leads V4-V6 is a frequent finding after surgical funnel chest correction using pectus bar.

Correction: Usage of Complementary Medicine in Switzerland: Results of the Swiss Health Survey 2012 and Development Since 2007.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141985.]

Multinomial goodness-of-fit: large sample tests with survey design correction and exact tests for small samples

A new Stata command called -mgof- is introduced. The command is used to compute distributional tests for discrete (categorical, multinomial) variables. Apart from classic large sample $\chi^2$-approximation tests based on Pearson's $X^2$, the likelihood ratio, or any other statistic from the power-divergence family (Cressie and Read 1984), large sample tests for complex survey designs and exact tests for small samples are supported. The complex survey correction is based on the approach by Rao and Scott (1981) and parallels the survey design correction used for independence tests in -svy:tabulate-. The exact tests are computed using Monte Carlo methods or exhaustive enumeration. An exact Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for discrete data is also provided.

FISICO: Fast Image SegmentatIon COrrection.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE In clinical diagnosis, medical image segmentation plays a key role in the analysis of pathological regions. Despite advances in automatic and semi-automatic segmentation techniques, time-effective correction tools are commonly needed to improve segmentation results. Therefore, these tools must provide faster corrections with a lower number of interactions, and a user-independent solution to reduce the time frame between image acquisition and diagnosis. METHODS We present a new interactive method for correcting image segmentations. Our method provides 3D shape corrections through 2D interactions. This approach enables an intuitive and natural corrections of 3D segmentation results. The developed method has been implemented into a software tool and has been evaluated for the task of lumbar muscle and knee joint segmentations from MR images. RESULTS Experimental results show that full segmentation corrections could be performed within an average correction time of 5.5±3.3 minutes and an average of 56.5±33.1 user interactions, while maintaining the quality of the final segmentation result within an average Dice coefficient of 0.92±0.02 for both anatomies. In addition, for users with different levels of expertise, our method yields a correction time and number of interaction decrease from 38±19.2 minutes to 6.4±4.3 minutes, and 339±157.1 to 67.7±39.6 interactions, respectively.