Deserción escolar de la sección secundaria del Sistema Educativo Nacional del Ecuador en el Valle de los Chillos.

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A novel approach for disease and pests detection in potato production system based on deep learning

Vulnerability of potato crops to diseases and pest infestation can affect its quality and lead to significant yield losses. Timely detection of such diseases can help take effective decisions. For this purpose, a deep learning-based object detection framework is designed in this study to identify and classify major potato diseases and pests under real-world field conditions. A total of 2,688 field images were collected from two research farms in Punjab, Pakistan, across multiple growth stages in various seasonal conditions. Excluding 285 symptoms-free images from the earliest collection led to 2,403 images which were annotated into four biotic-stress classes: blight disease (n = 630), leaf spot disease (n = 370), leafroll virus (viral symptom complex; n = 888), and Colorado potato beetle (larvae/adults; n = 515), indicating class imbalance. Several state-of-the-art models were used including YOLOv8 variants (n/s/m), YOLOv7, YOLOv5, and Faster R-CNN, and the results are discussed in relation to recent potato disease classification studies involving cropped leaf images. Stratified splitting (70% training, 20% validation, 10% testing) was applied to preserve class distribution across all subsets. YOLOv8-medium achieve the best performance with mean average precision (mAP)@0.5 of 98% on the held-out test images. Results for stable 5-fold cross-validation show a mean mAP@0.5 of 97.8%, which offers a balance between accuracy and inference time. Model robustness was evaluated using 5-fold cross-validation and repeated training with different random seeds, showing a low variance of ±0.4% mAP. Results demonstrate promising outcomes under the real-world field conditions, while, broader cross-region and cross-season validation is intended for the future.

Producción Científica

Ahmed Abbas mail , Saif Ur Rehman mail , Khalid Mahmood mail , Santos Gracia Villar mail santos.gracia@uneatlantico.es, Luis Alonso Dzul López mail luis.dzul@uneatlantico.es, Aseel Smerat mail , Imran Ashraf mail ,

Abbas

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Concern for mpox infection in Latin America

Background Mpox arrived in Latin America and quickly began to replicate, so it is important to measure the concern it generates among residents. The study aims to assess whether country or other factors are associated with concern about mpox infection in Latin America. Methods The study uses a cross-sectional, multicenter design. Sampling was conducted using non-random snowball sampling. From August to September 2022, concern about being infected with mpox was assessed using a previously validated questionnaire (Cronbach's Alpha: 0.85); it was divided into nine countries and other social variables. Results From 1404 respondents, the majority of respondents were female (60.3%) and young (median age 25 years); also, a few reported that it was a significant problem (6% almost all the time and 11% often) and were concerned (6% almost all the time and 11% often) about the possibility of mpox infection. In multivariate analysis, men (aPR: 0.85; 95% CI: 0.73–0.99; p-value=0.046), younger (aPR: 0.98; 95% CI: 0.97–0.99; p-value<0.001), single (aPR: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.62–0.99; p-value=0.042) and, compared to Peru, those living in Colombia (aPR: 0.75; 95% CI. 0.58–0.97; p-value=0.027) and Costa Rica (aPR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.44–0.96; p-value=0.032) reported the lowest concern; also, Bolivia (aPR: 1.16; 95% CI: 0.94–1.43; p-value=0.176) and Honduras (aPR: 1.01; 95% CI: 0.80–1.27; p-value=0.943) reported that their concerns tend to be higher. Conclusions There were evident differences across respondents' countries; these baseline results show that the first report was made in many countries that were also significantly affected by mpox and now face a new epidemic threatening public health.

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Christian R. Mejia mail , Aldo Alvarez-Risco mail , Luciana Daniela Garlisi-Torales mail , Telmo Raúl Aveiro mail , Jamil Cedillo-Balcázar mail , Néstor Valentin Rocha-Saravia mail , Andrea Retana-González mail , Medally C. Paucar mail , Beatriz Mejia Raudales mail , Jose Armada mail , Shyla Del-Aguila-Arcentales mail , Neal M. Davies mail , Jaime A. Yáñez mail jaime.yanez@unini.edu.mx,

Mejia

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Fish consumption and brain structure: a comprehensive systematic review of observational studies

Background Age-related structural changes in the human brain, including cortical atrophy, reductions in grey and white matter volumes, and the accumulation of small vessel–related lesions such as white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and cerebral microbleeds, represent critical biological substrates underlying cognitive decline and dementia. Fish consumption has been associated with slower cognitive decline and reduced risk of dementia, but a comprehensive evaluation of its relation with brain structures is lacking. Aims The aim of this study was to systematically review current scientific literature providing evidence of relation between fish intake and brain structures in human studies. Methods Studies indexed in two major electronic databases have been screened based on a combination of keywords and MeSH terms. Studies were eligible whether they assessed fish consumption in relation to brain structures in the adult populations. Results A total of 24 studies conducted predominantly on older adults met inclusion criteria. Most brain volume measures were obtained via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedures. Higher fish consumption was associated with reduced severity of white matter hyperintensities (a biomarker of cerebral small vessel disease and white matter damage) and cerebral micro-bleed, preservation of certain brain areas volumes (i.e., hippocampus, temporal lobe and periventricle white matter) and cortical thickness of specific areas (i.e., precuneus, parietal, and cingulate grey matter), among others, compared to lower intake. Some analyses found no association and isolated findings suggested possible adverse associations that were not consistently replicated. Studies reporting null findings may underline the possible relevance of the overall diet (i.e., adherence to the Mediterranean diet). Conclusions Inclusion of fish in a healthy and balanced diet is associated with better white matter grades on MRI and slower progression of white matter hyperintensities and reduction of vascular-related lesions of the aging brain, suggesting a potential role in preventing neurocognitive deterioration. Heterogeneity across studies underscores the need for additional studies.

Producción Científica

Justyna Godos mail , Giuseppe Caruso mail , Agnieszka Micek mail , Alberto Dolci mail , Zoltan Ungvari mail , Andrea Lehoczki mail , Lisandra León Brizuela mail , Evelyn Frias-Toral mail , Andrea Di Mauro mail , Mario Siervo mail , Michelino Di Rosa mail , Giuseppe Grosso mail ,

Godos

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Concern about the potential environmental impact of a large-scale war among Latin American adults

Background Large-scale armed conflicts can cause substantial environmental damage, with consequences for ecosystems, infrastructure, and population health. However, little is known about concern regarding these potential impacts among Latin American populations. Objective To determine the factors associated with concern about the potential environmental impact of a large-scale war among Latin American adults. Methods A multi-country cross-sectional survey was conducted among adults residing in Latin American countries. Concern about the environmental impact of a possible large-scale war was assessed using a study-specific question; the survey was conducted during the early weeks of the Russia-Ukraine war, but the outcome referred to concern about a possible large-scale war rather than to that conflict alone. Associations with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress measured with the DASS-21, used here as indicators of general psychological symptoms rather than conflict-specific effects, as well as sociodemographic characteristics, were then analyzed. Generalized linear models with Poisson distribution, log link, and robust variance were used to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Results Among 2,669 respondents, 55% reported concern about the environmental consequences of a possible large-scale war. In multivariable analysis, concern was higher among participants with moderate or greater stress (PR: 1.16; 95% CI: 1.04–1.28) and among those residing in Argentina (PR: 1.79; 95% CI: 1.44–2.21). Concern was lower among men (PR: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.72–0.85) and among participants with technical education (PR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.67–0.99). Conclusion A substantial proportion of respondents expressed concern about the potential environmental consequences of a large-scale war. This concern was associated with stress and selected sociodemographic factors. These findings provide exploratory evidence on war-related environmental risk perception in Latin America.

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Christian R. Mejía mail , Víctor Serna-Alarcón mail , Jaime A. Yáñez mail jaime.yanez@unini.edu.mx, Neal M. Davies mail , Jamil Cedillo-Balcázar mail , Dalia Useche-Villamizar mail , Camilo Vega-Useche mail ,

Mejía

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Benchmarking multiple instance learning architectures from patches to pathology for prostate cancer detection and grading using attention-based weak supervision

Histopathological evaluation is necessary for the diagnosis and grading of prostate cancer, which is still one of the most common cancers in men globally. Traditional evaluation is time-consuming, prone to inter-observer variability, and challenging to scale. The clinical usefulness of current AI systems is limited by the need for comprehensive pixel-level annotations. The objective of this research is to develop and evaluate a large-scale benchmarking study on a weakly supervised deep learning framework that minimizes the need for annotation and ensures interpretability for automated prostate cancer diagnosis and International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grading using whole slide images (WSIs). This study rigorously tested six cutting-edge multiple instance learning (MIL) architectures (CLAM-MB, CLAM-SB, ILRA-MIL, AC-MIL, AMD-MIL, WiKG-MIL), three feature encoders (ResNet50, CTransPath, UNI2), and four patch extraction techniques (varying sizes and overlap) using the PANDA dataset (10,616 WSIs), yielding 72 experimental configurations. The methodology used distributed cloud computing to process over 31 million tissue patches, implementing advanced attention mechanisms to ensure clinical interpretability through Grad-CAM visualizations. The optimum configuration (UNI2 encoder with ILRA-MIL, 256 256 patches, 50% overlap) achieved 78.75% accuracy and 90.12% quadratic weighted kappa (QWK), outperforming traditional methods and approaching expert pathologist-level diagnostic capability. Overlapping smaller patches offered the best balance of spatial resolution and contextual information, while domain-specific foundation models performed noticeably better than generic encoders. This work is the first large-scale, comprehensive comparison of weekly supervised MIL methods for prostate cancer diagnosis and grading. The proposed approach has excellent clinical diagnostic performance, scalability, practical feasibility through cloud computing, and interpretability using visualization tools.

Producción Científica

Naveed Anwer Butt mail , Dilawaiz Sarwat mail , Irene Delgado Noya mail irene.delgado@uneatlantico.es, Kilian Tutusaus mail kilian.tutusaus@uneatlantico.es, Nagwan Abdel Samee mail , Imran Ashraf mail ,

Butt