Automatic Diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Using Optical Coherence Tomography Data and Artificial Intelligence

in Journal of Personalized Medicine (2021)

Background: The aim of this study is to explore an objective approach that aids the diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD), based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) data which are analyzed using artificial ... [more ▼]

Background: The aim of this study is to explore an objective approach that aids the diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD), based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) data which are analyzed using artificial intelligence. Methods: Structural analyses of nine layers of the retina were analyzed in 17 type I BD patients and 42 controls, according to the areas defined by the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) chart. The most discriminating variables made up the feature vector of several automatic classifiers: Gaussian Naive Bayes, K-nearest neighbors and support vector machines. Results: BD patients presented retinal thinning affecting most layers, compared to controls. The retinal thickness of the parafoveolar area showed a high capacity to discriminate BD subjects from healthy individuals, specifically for the ganglion cell (area under the curve (AUC) = 0.82) and internal plexiform (AUC = 0.83) layers. The best classifier showed an accuracy of 0.95 for classifying BD versus controls, using as variables of the feature vector the IPL (inner nasal region) and the INL (outer nasal and inner inferior regions) thickness. Conclusions: Our patients with BD present structural alterations in the retina, and artificial intelligence seem to be a useful tool in BD diagnosis, but larger studies are needed to confirm our findings. [less ▲]

Unemployment and working hours of women and men during the pandemic

Report (2021)

Nearly all modern recessions have had one thing in common: men's employment has been affected significantly more than that of women. At least this was the case until 2020, with the recession caused by the ... [more ▼]

Nearly all modern recessions have had one thing in common: men's employment has been affected significantly more than that of women. At least this was the case until 2020, with the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only has it been unique in terms of its origin, but also in terms of its impact on the labour market: for the first time women were significantly more likely than men to be laid off, furloughed or to experience a reduction in working hours. This has led some economists to coin the term “shecession” (she + recession) to describe the recent economic downturn [less ▲]

Developing multiliteracies in early years education in Luxembourg

Poster (2021, August 17)

Robustness of Adversarial Images against Filters

in Optimization and Learning (2021), 1443

Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enhanced Secure Transmission Against Both Jamming and Eavesdropping Attacks

in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (2021), 70(10, Oct. 2021), 11017-11022

Both the jammer and the eavesdropper pose severe threat to wireless communications due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels. In this paper, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted secure ... [more ▼]

Both the jammer and the eavesdropper pose severe threat to wireless communications due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels. In this paper, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted secure communication system is considered, where a base station (BS) wishes to reliably convey information to a user, in the presence of both a jammer and an eavesdropper whose channel state information (CSI) is not perfectly known. Specifically, we aim to maximize the system achievable rate by jointly designing the BS’s transmit beamforming and the IRS’s reflect beamforming with imperfect CSI, while limiting the information leakage to the potential eavesdropper. Due to the non-convexity and intractability of the original problem induced by the CSI uncertainty, we utilize the auxiliary variables and General Sign-Definiteness transformation to convert the original optimization problem into a tractable convex optimization problem, and then obtain the high-quality optimal solution by using the successive convex approximation and penalty convex concave procedure. Numerical simulations demonstrate the superiority of our proposed optimization algorithm compared with existing approaches, and also reveal the impact of key parameters on the achievable system performance. [less ▲]

Randomization as Mitigation of Directed Timing Inference Based Attacks on Time-Triggered Real-Time Systems with Task Replication

in LITES: Leibnitz Transactions on Embedded Systems (2021)

Time-triggered real-time systems achieve deterministic behavior using schedules that are constructed offline, based on scheduling constraints. Their deterministic behavior makes time-triggered systems ... [more ▼]

Time-triggered real-time systems achieve deterministic behavior using schedules that are constructed offline, based on scheduling constraints. Their deterministic behavior makes time-triggered systems suitable for usage in safety-critical environments, like avionics. However, this determinism also allows attackers to fine-tune attacks that can be carried out after studying the behavior of the system through side channels, targeting safety-critical victim tasks. Replication – i.e., the execution of task variants across different cores – is inherently able to tolerate both accidental and malicious faults (i.e. attacks) as long as these faults are independent of one another. Yet, targeted attacks on the timing behavior of tasks which utilize information gained about the system behavior violate the fault independence assumption fault tolerance is based on. This violation may give attackers the opportunity to compromise all replicas simultaneously, in par- ticular if they can mount the attack from already compromised components. In this paper, we ana- lyze vulnerabilities of time-triggered systems, focusing on safety-certified multicore real-time systems. We introduce two runtime mitigation strategies to withstand directed timing inference based attacks: (i) schedule randomization at slot level, and (ii) randomization within a set of offline constructed schedules. We evaluate these mitigation strategies with synthetic experiments and a real case study to show their effectiveness and practicality. [less ▲]

A Comparative Study of Thermoelectric Properties of Monolayer, Bilayer and Bulk CrI3

in AIP Conference Proceedings (2021), 2382(1), 020004

We comparatively study the electronic and thermoelectric properties of the monolayer, bilayer, and bulk CrI3 by density functional theory (DFT). We show that, according to the DFT calculation, those ... [more ▼]

We comparatively study the electronic and thermoelectric properties of the monolayer, bilayer, and bulk CrI3 by density functional theory (DFT). We show that, according to the DFT calculation, those materials are magnetic semiconductors with ferromagnetic (FM) in monolayer, antiferromagnetic (AFM) in the bilayer, back to FM in the bulk structure. The thermoelectric properties of those materials are evaluated by using the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) with a constant relaxation time approximation (RTA). At room temperature, we obtain bulk CrI3 has more significant electrical conductivity than monolayer and bilayer CrI3, while the Seebeck coefficient is similar that implied the bulk CrI3 has a better thermoelectric performance. In those systems, the optimum power factor is obtained by shifting the chemical potential of CrI3 by 1 eV with p-type doping. [less ▲]

Quantitative trait locus mapping identifies a locus linked to striatal dopamine and points to collagen IV alpha-6 chain as a novel regulator of striatal axonal branching in mice

in Genes, Brain, and Behavior (2021)

Dopaminergic neurons (DA neurons) are controlled by multiple factors, many involved in neurological disease. Parkinson's disease motor symptoms are caused by the demise of nigral DA neurons, leading to ... [more ▼]

Dopaminergic neurons (DA neurons) are controlled by multiple factors, many involved in neurological disease. Parkinson's disease motor symptoms are caused by the demise of nigral DA neurons, leading to loss of striatal dopamine (DA). Here, we measured DA concentration in the dorsal striatum of 32 members of Collaborative Cross (CC) family and their eight founder strains. Striatal DA varied greatly in founders, and differences were highly heritable in the inbred CC progeny. We identified a locus, containing 164 genes, linked to DA concentration in the dorsal striatum on chromosome X. We used RNAseq profiling of the ventral midbrain of two founders with substantial difference in striatal DA–C56BL/6 J and A/J—to highlight potential protein-coding candidates modulating this trait. Among the five differentially expressed genes within the locus, we found that the gene coding for the collagen IV alpha 6 chain (Col4a6) was expressed nine times less in A/J than in C57BL/6J. Using single cell RNA-seq data from developing human midbrain, we found that COL4A6 is highly expressed in radial glia-like cells and neuronal progenitors, indicating a role in neuronal development. Collagen IV alpha-6 chain (COL4A6) controls axogenesis in simple model organisms. Consistent with these findings, A/J mice had less striatal axonal branching than C57BL/6J mice. We tentatively conclude that DA concentration and axonal branching in dorsal striatum are modulated by COL4A6, possibly during development. Our study shows that genetic mapping based on an easily measured Central Nervous System (CNS) trait, using the CC population, combined with follow-up observations, can parse heritability of such a trait, and nominate novel functions for commonly expressed proteins. [less ▲]

A conceptual model for understanding vulnerability in the context of migration

Scientific Conference (2021, August 05)

The notion of ‘vulnerability’ is as popular as it is fuzzy. Its increased prominence in social research and in political and humanitarian discourses on migration has led many scholars and practitioners to ... [more ▼]

The notion of ‘vulnerability’ is as popular as it is fuzzy. Its increased prominence in social research and in political and humanitarian discourses on migration has led many scholars and practitioners to treat the concept as self-explanatory, without problematizing neither its conceptualization nor its use and possible negative societal and psychological consequences. Set within the framework of the EU-funded project MIMY (n°870700), investigating the processes of integration of young migrants in 9 European countries, this paper critically evaluates different conceptualizations and uses of vulnerability and proposes a new multilevel conceptual model for understanding vulnerability in the context of migration. Focusing on different levels of analysis, the model situates individuals and groups in the broader socio-political hierarchies and power dynamics that inevitably affect them (structural vulnerability), acknowledges how these systems are (re)produced in situated interpersonal relationships (situational vulnerability) and accounts for migrants’ biographical and psychological experiences of vulnerability. Focusing on the interrelationships between levels of analysis, the model highlights how macro conditions and definitions of vulnerability may affect individual experiences, through processes such as stigmatization, internalization of stereotypes, disempowerment, but also how individuals can actively negotiate their ascribed ‘vulnerability’ through processes such as resistance, mobilization and collective action. [less ▲]

Gravity prop and moduli spaces Mg,n

E-print/Working paper (2021)

Let Mg,n be the moduli space of algebraic curves of genus g with m+n marked points decomposed into the disjoint union of two sets of cardinalities m and n, and H∙c(Mm+n) its compactly supported cohomology ... [more ▼]

Let Mg,n be the moduli space of algebraic curves of genus g with m+n marked points decomposed into the disjoint union of two sets of cardinalities m and n, and H∙c(Mm+n) its compactly supported cohomology group. We prove that the collection of S-bimodules {H∙−mc(Mg,m+n)} has the structure of a properad (called the gravity properad) such that it contains the (degree shifted) E. Getzler's gravity operad as the sub-collection {H∙−1c(M0,1+n)}n≥2. Moreover, we prove that the generators of the 1-dimensional cohomology groups H∙−1c(M0,1+2), H∙−2c(M0,2+1) and H∙−3c(M0,3+0) satisfy with respect to this properadic structure the relations of the (degree shifted) quasi-Lie bialgebra, a fact making the totality of cohomology groups ∏g,m,nH∙c(Mg,m+n)⊗Sopm×Sn(sgnm⊗Idn) into a complex with the differential fully determined by the just mentioned three cohomology classes . It is proven that this complex contains infinitely many cohomology classes, all coming from M. Kontsevich's odd graph complex. The gravity prop structure is established with the help of T. Willwacher's twisting endofunctor (in the category of properads under the operad of Lie algebras) and K. Costello's theory of moduli spaces of nodal disks with marked boundaries and internal marked points (such that each disk contains at most one internal marked point). [less ▲]