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Multi-channel masked autoencoder and comprehensive evaluations for reconstructing 12-lead ECG from arbitrary single-lead ECG
Electrocardiogram (ECG) has emerged as a widely accepted diagnostic instrument for cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The standard clinical 12-lead ECG configuration causes considerable inconvenience and discomfort, while wearable devices offers a more practical alternative. To reduce information gap between 12-lead ECG and single-lead ECG, this study proposes a multi-channel masked autoencoder (MCMA) for reconstructing 12-Lead ECG from arbitrary single-lead ECG, and a comprehensive evaluation benchmark, ECGGenEval, encompass the signal-level, feature-level, and diagnostic-level evaluations. MCMA can achieve the state-of-the-art performance. In the signal-level evaluation, the mean square errors of 0.0175 and 0.0654, Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.7772 and 0.7287. In the feature-level evaluation, the average standard deviation of the mean heart rate across the generated 12-lead ECG is 1.0481, the coefficient of variation is 1.58%, and the range is 3.2874. In the diagnostic-level evaluation, the average F1-score with two generated 12-lead ECG from different single-lead ECG are 0.8233 and 0.8410.
PlomBOX: a low cost bioassay for the sensitive detection of lead in drinking water
This paper reports the design of a biosensor for sensitive, low-cost measurement of lead in drinking water. The biosensor uses a genetically-modified strain of Escherichia coli, which serves as both signal amplifier and reporter of lead in water, measured via colour change. We developed the PlomBOX measurement platform to image this colour change and we demonstrate its capability to detect concentrations as low as the World Health Organisation upper limit for drinking water of 10 ppb. Our approach does not require expensive infrastructure or expert operators, and its automated sensing, detection and result visualisation platform is user-friendly and robust compared to existing lead biosensors—critical features to enable measurement by non-experts at the point of use.
Aspergillus fumigatus mitogenomes and their influence on azole-resistant and -susceptible populations
The role of the fungal mitochondria goes far beyond energy metabolism. The genomes of 318 Aspergillus fumigatus clinical and environmental isolates from different geographic origins were analyzed aiming to study the mitochondrial sequences from populations sensitive and resistant to azoles. Our results show that A. fumigatus mitogenomic sequences are very conserved and only show variation in small intergenic regions and one intronic sequence in the cox3 gene. Furthermore, a genome-wide association analysis of accessory mitochondrial genes revealed potential mitochondria-based genotypes that may interact synergistically with the ergosterol biosynthesis pathway to confer the resistant phenotype. This includes a mutation in the AMID-like mitochondrial oxidoreductase (aifA, AFUA_3G01290) and the absence of the mitochondrial carrier protein (pet8, AFUA_8G01400). Deletion of these genes did not change the azole-susceptibility but increased the azole-persistence, suggesting mitochondrial genes could be involved in azole-persistence. Our work opens new hypotheses for the involvement of mitochondria in A. fumigatus azole-resistance.
Well-being horizons for silver and golden ages: an application of traditional and fuzzy Markov chains
European societies are currently in a process of population ageing. Although this is the general trend, it would be desirable to know whether the characteristics and intensity of this ageing process are homogeneous in all European countries. In this work, information coming from three macro-surveys (or waves) of the Survey on Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe is used for Denmark, Germany, Poland and Spain, as the basis for a longitudinal well-being and dependency indicator with the aim of studying whether the characteristics of ageing are similar in these regions. First, long-term population distributions are obtained according to the scores of the aforementioned indicator. Next, classical and fuzzy Markov chains are used to estimate steady-state distributions regarding age group, gender, country and wave. Finally, by means of a proper metric for probability distributions, steady-state distributions are clustered in different profiles, which leads us to conclude that the ageing process is not homogeneous among the studied populations.
In vitro and in vivo characterization of a novel West Nile virus lineage 2 strain
Over recent decades, West Nile virus (WNV) has continued to expand its geographical range, emerging in previously non-endemic areas, including northern Europe. In Europe, WNV lineage 2 strains are most prevalent and cause sporadic outbreaks of WNV disease in humans each transmission season. Here, we assessed the virulence of a newly emerged WNV lineage 2 strain that was isolated in the Netherlands in 2020 (WNV-NL20) and caused several cases of West Nile disease in humans and used a WNV lineage 2 strain related to major outbreaks of neuroinvasive disease in humans in central and south-eastern Europe in 2010 (WNV-578/10) as a reference. Infection of primary human cells of the blood-brain barrier in vitro did not show major differences in replication kinetics between WNV-578/10 and WNV-NL20. Experimental infection of mice showed that both WNV strains induced significant weight loss, neurological signs, and lethal disease. Neurological involvement was confirmed for both WNV strains by the presence of infectious virus and viral antigen in the brain. In conclusion, we show that the recent WNV-NL20 strain that emerged in the Netherlands is neurovirulent in mice. The use of in vitro and in vivo models to characterize the pathogenesis of emerging WNV strains may aid in predicting the neurovirulence of WNV infections in humans during potential future outbreaks.
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