TY - JOUR A1 - Acqualagna, Laura A1 - Botrel, Loic A1 - Vidaurre, Carmen A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Blankertz, Benjamin T1 - Large-Scale Assessment of a Fully Automatic Co-Adaptive Motor Imagery-Based Brain Computer Interface JF - PLoS ONE N2 - In the last years Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology has benefited from the development of sophisticated machine leaning methods that let the user operate the BCI after a few trials of calibration. One remarkable example is the recent development of co-adaptive techniques that proved to extend the use of BCIs also to people not able to achieve successful control with the standard BCI procedure. Especially for BCIs based on the modulation of the Sensorimotor Rhythm (SMR) these improvements are essential, since a not negligible percentage of users is unable to operate SMR-BCIs efficiently. In this study we evaluated for the first time a fully automatic co-adaptive BCI system on a large scale. A pool of 168 participants naive to BCIs operated the co-adaptive SMR-BCI in one single session. Different psychological interventions were performed prior the BCI session in order to investigate how motor coordination training and relaxation could influence BCI performance. A neurophysiological indicator based on the Power Spectral Density (PSD) was extracted by the recording of few minutes of resting state brain activity and tested as predictor of BCI performances. Results show that high accuracies in operating the BCI could be reached by the majority of the participants before the end of the session. BCI performances could be significantly predicted by the neurophysiological indicator, consolidating the validity of the model previously developed. Anyway, we still found about 22% of users with performance significantly lower than the threshold of efficient BCI control at the end of the session. Being the inter-subject variability still the major problem of BCI technology, we pointed out crucial issues for those who did not achieve sufficient control. Finally, we propose valid developments to move a step forward to the applicability of the promising co-adaptive methods. KW - large-scale assessment KW - Brain Computer Interface KW - machine leaning KW - fully automatic KW - co-adaptive Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-167230 VL - 11 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - The prototype detection unit of the KM3NeT detector JF - The European Physical Journal C N2 - A prototype detection unit of the KM3NeT deep-sea neutrino telescope has been installed at 3500m depth 80 km offshore the Italian coast. KM3NeT in its final configuration will contain several hundreds of detection units. Each detection unit is a mechanical structure anchored to the sea floor, held vertical by a submerged buoy and supporting optical modules for the detection of Cherenkov light emitted by charged secondary particles emerging from neutrino interactions. This prototype string implements three optical modules with 31 photomultiplier tubes each. These optical modules were developed by the KM3NeT Collaboration to enhance the detection capability of neutrino interactions. The prototype detection unit was operated since its deployment in May 2014 until its decommissioning in July 2015. Reconstruction of the particle trajectories from the data requires a nanosecond accuracy in the time calibration. A procedure for relative time calibration of the photomultiplier tubes contained in each optical module is described. This procedure is based on the measured coincidences produced in the sea by the 40K background light and can easily be expanded to a detector with several thousands of optical modules. The time offsets between the different optical modules are obtained using LED nanobeacons mounted inside them. A set of data corresponding to 600 h of livetime was analysed. The results show good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations of the expected optical background and the signal from atmospheric muons. An almost background-free sample of muons was selected by filtering the time correlated signals on all the three optical modules. The zenith angle of the selected muons was reconstructed with a precision of about 3∘. KW - Zenith Angle KW - Remotely Operate Vehicle KW - Combinatorial Background KW - Time Calibration KW - Neutrino Telescope Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-165159 VL - 76 IS - 54 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Long-term outcome of patients with newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia: a randomized comparison of stem cell transplantation with drug treatment JF - Leukemia N2 - Tyrosine kinase inhibitors represent today's treatment of choice in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is regarded as salvage therapy. This prospective randomized CML-study IIIA recruited 669 patients with newly diagnosed CML between July 1997 and January 2004 from 143 centers. Of these, 427 patients were considered eligible for HSCT and were randomized by availability of a matched family donor between primary HSCT (group A; N = 166 patients) and best available drug treatment (group B; N = 261). Primary end point was long-term survival. Survival probabilities were not different between groups A and B (10-year survival: 0.76 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.69-0.82) vs 0.69 (95% CI: 0.61-0.76)), but influenced by disease and transplant risk. Patients with a low transplant risk showed superior survival compared with patients with high( P < 0.001) and non-high-risk disease (P = 0.047) in group B; after entering blast crisis, survival was not different with or without HSCT. Significantly more patients in group A were in molecular remission (56% vs 39%; P = 0.005) and free of drug treatment (56% vs 6%; P < 0.001). Differences in symptoms and Karnofsky score were not significant. In the era of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, HSCT remains a valid option when both disease and transplant risk are considered. KW - chronic myelogenous leukemia KW - hematopoietic SCT KW - interferon-alpha KW - molecular response in cml KW - Imatinib KW - european leukemia net Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190738 VL - 30 IS - 3 SP - 562 EP - 569 ER -