45 research outputs found
Diseño de la imagen corporativa y lenguaje visual de una exposición basada en el movimiento Impresionista y los principios científicos
El proyecto “Impresionismo + Ciencia” consiste en el desarrollo de una exposición temporal, que muestra al público como el arte del Impresionismo; desarrollado en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, consiguió innovar y potenciar sus cualidades gracias a la aplicación de avances científicos. El Impresionismo es un movimiento pictórico que surge en Francia en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX en contra de las fórmulas artísticas impuestas por la Academia Francesa de Bellas Artes, que fijaba los modelos a seguir. El objetivo principal de los pintores era conseguir una representación del mundo espontánea y directa, a través de la percepción visual de un momento determinado. Deseaban plasmar la luz y el color real que surge de la naturaleza en el instante en el que el artista lo contempla. Se centrarán en los efectos que produce la luz natural sobre los objetos y no en la representación exacta de sus formas, lo que les importa son las variaciones cromáticas que sufre el objeto o paisaje a lo largo del día y eliminarán los detalles minuciosos. A su vez, el proceso de la industrialización progresó a lo largo del siglo XIX, y su característica principal fue la de ser un periodo con grandes cambios relacionados con la economía y la ciencia, por ello surgieron grandes avances científicos y tecnológicos como la cinematografía, las cámaras de fotografía o la locomotora. Los pintores Impresionistas tenían una estrecha relación con científicos e inventores de este siglo, por ello en el desarrollo de este movimiento pictórico influyó la comunicación y el intercambio de conocimientos, para dar lugar a un movimiento novedoso para la época nunca visto anteriormente. En base a las conclusiones obtenidas en todo el proceso de investigación del proyecto se diseñaron y realizaron las correspondientes aplicaciones gráficas y el manual de marca correspondiente, así como el diseño de las salas de la exposición y su lenguaje visual. A lo largo de las diferentes salas de la exposición, el visitante se va a encontrar con diferentes cuadros y paneles que muestran información sobre el tema que va en relación con la sala, vitrinas que albergan objetos relevantes y curiosos, pero también experimentos o actividades interactivas con las que podrá interactuar y aumentar sus conocimientos vinculados al arte y la ciencia. Algunos de estos experimentos cuentan con aspectos o cualidades mecánicas, químicas o incluso la utilización de dispositivos electrónicos (tablet) alojados en un expositor.<br /
Development of a clinical prediction model for an international normalised ratio >= 4.5 in hospitalised patients using vitamin K antagonists
Development of a clinical prediction model for an international normalised ratio ≥ 4·5 in hospitalised patients using vitamin K antagonists
Vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) used for the prevention and treatment of thromboembolic disease, increase the risk of bleeding complications. We developed and validated a model to predict the risk of an international normalised ratio (INR) ≥ 4·5 during a hospital stay. Adult patients admitted to a tertiary hospital and treated with VKAs between 2006 and 2010 were analysed. Bleeding risk was operationalised as an INR value ≥4·5. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to assess the association between potential predictors and an INR ≥ 4·5 and validated in an independent cohort of patients from the same hospital between 2011 and 2014. We identified 8996 admissions of patients treated with VKAs, of which 1507 (17%) involved an INR ≥ 4·5. The final model included the following predictors: gender, age, concomitant medication and several biochemical parameters. Temporal validation showed a c statistic of 0·71. We developed and validated a clinical prediction model for an INR ≥ 4·5 in VKA-treated patients admitted to our hospital. The model includes factors that are collected during routine care and are extractable from electronic patient records, enabling easy use of this model to predict an increased bleeding risk in clinical practice
A Comprehensive Molecular Characterization of the Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor Cell Lines BON-1 and QGP-1
Experimental models of neuroendocrine tumor disease are scarce, with only a few existing neuroendocrine tumor cell lines of pancreatic origin (panNET). Their molecular characterization has so far focused on the neuroendocrine phenotype and cancer-related mutations, while a transcription-based assessment of their developmental origin and malignant potential is lacking. In this study, we performed immunoblotting and qPCR analysis of neuroendocrine, epithelial, developmental endocrine-related genes as well as next-generation sequencing (NGS) analysis of microRNAs (miRs) on three panNET cell lines, BON-1, QGP-1, and NT-3. All three lines displayed a neuroendocrine and epithelial phenotype; however, while insulinoma-derived NT-3 cells preferentially expressed markers of mature functional pancreatic β-cells (i.e., INS, MAFA), both BON-1 and QGP-1 displayed high expression of genes associated with immature or non-functional β/δ-cells genes (i.e., NEUROG3), or pancreatic endocrine progenitors (i.e., FOXA2). NGS-based identification of miRs in BON-1 and QGP-1 cells revealed the presence of all six members of the miR-17-92 cluster, which have been implicated in b-cell function and differentiation, but also have roles in cancer being both oncogenic or tumor suppressive. Notably, both BON-1 and QGP-1 cells expressed several miRs known to be negatively associated with epithelial-mesenchymal transition, invasion or metastasis. Moreover, both cell lines failed to exhibit migratory activity in vitro. Taken together, NT-3 cells resemble mature functional β-cells, while both BON-1 and QGP-1 are more similar to immature/non-functional pancreatic β/δ-cells or pancreatic endocrine progenitors. Based on the recent identification of three transcriptional subtypes in panNETs, NT-3 cells resemble the "islet/insulinoma tumors" (IT) subtype, while BON-1 and QGP-1 cells were tentatively classified as "metastasis-like/primary" (MLP). Our results provide a comprehensive characterization of three panNET cell lines and demonstrate their relevance as neuroendocrine tumor models
Risk profiling of soil-transmitted helminth infection and estimated number of infected people in South Asia : a systematic review and Bayesian geostatistical analysis
In South Asia, hundreds of millions of people are infected with soil-transmitted helminths (Ascaris lumbricoides, hookworm, and Trichuris trichiura). However, high-resolution risk profiles and the estimated number of people infected have yet to be determined. In turn, such information will assist control programs to identify priority areas for allocation of scarce resource for the control of soil-transmitted helminth infection.; We pursued a systematic review to identify prevalence surveys pertaining to soil-transmitted helminth infections in four mainland countries (i.e., Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan) of South Asia. PubMed and ISI Web of Science were searched from inception to April 25, 2019, without restriction of language, study design, and survey date. We utilized Bayesian geostatistical models to identify environmental and socioeconomic predictors, and to estimate infection risk at high spatial resolution across the study region.; A total of 536, 490, and 410 georeferenced surveys were identified for A. lumbricoides, hookworm, and T. trichiura, respectively. We estimate that 361 million people (95% Bayesian credible interval (BCI) 331-395 million), approximately one-quarter of the South Asia population, was infected with at least one soil-transmitted helminth species in 2015. A. lumbricoides was the predominant species. Moderate to high prevalence (>20%) of any soil-transmitted helminth infection was predicted in the northeastern part and some northern areas of the study region, as well as the southern coastal areas of India. The annual treatment needs for the school-age population requiring preventive chemotherapy was estimated at 165 million doses (95% BCI: 146-185 million).; Our risk maps provide an overview of the geographic distribution of soil-transmitted helminth infection in four mainland countries of South Asia and highlight the need for up-to-date surveys to accurately evaluate the disease burden in the region
Risk of depression, suicide and psychosis with hydroxychloroquine treatment for rheumatoid arthritis:a multinational network cohort study
Objectives: Concern has been raised in the rheumatology community regarding recent regulatory warnings that HCQ used in the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic could cause acute psychiatric events. We aimed to study whether there is risk of incident depression, suicidal ideation or psychosis associated with HCQ as used for RA.Methods: We performed a new-user cohort study using claims and electronic medical records from 10 sources and 3 countries (Germany, UK and USA). RA patients ≥18 years of age and initiating HCQ were compared with those initiating SSZ (active comparator) and followed up in the short (30 days) and long term (on treatment). Study outcomes included depression, suicide/suicidal ideation and hospitalization for psychosis. Propensity score stratification and calibration using negative control outcomes were used to address confounding. Cox models were fitted to estimate database-specific calibrated hazard ratios (HRs), with estimates pooled where I2 <40%.Results: A total of 918 144 and 290 383 users of HCQ and SSZ, respectively, were included. No consistent risk of psychiatric events was observed with short-term HCQ (compared with SSZ) use, with meta-analytic HRs of 0.96 (95% CI 0.79, 1.16) for depression, 0.94 (95% CI 0.49, 1.77) for suicide/suicidal ideation and 1.03 (95% CI 0.66, 1.60) for psychosis. No consistent long-term risk was seen, with meta-analytic HRs of 0.94 (95% CI 0.71, 1.26) for depression, 0.77 (95% CI 0.56, 1.07) for suicide/suicidal ideation and 0.99 (95% CI 0.72, 1.35) for psychosis.Conclusion: HCQ as used to treat RA does not appear to increase the risk of depression, suicide/suicidal ideation or psychosis compared with SSZ. No effects were seen in the short or long term. Use at a higher dose or for different indications needs further investigation.Trial registration: Registered with EU PAS (reference no. EUPAS34497; http://www.encepp.eu/encepp/viewResource.htm? id=34498). The full study protocol and analysis source code can be found at https://github.com/ohdsi-studies/Covid19EstimationHydroxychloroquine2.</p
Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements
Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search
Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe
Risk of hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a multinational, retrospective study
Background: Hydroxychloroquine, a drug commonly used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, has received much negative publicity for adverse events associated with its authorisation for emergency use to treat patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. We studied the safety of hydroxychloroquine, alone and in combination with azithromycin, to determine the risk associated with its use in routine care in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Methods: In this multinational, retrospective study, new user cohort studies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis aged 18 years or older and initiating hydroxychloroquine were compared with those initiating sulfasalazine and followed up over 30 days, with 16 severe adverse events studied. Self-controlled case series were done to further establish safety in wider populations, and included all users of hydroxychloroquine regardless of rheumatoid arthritis status or indication. Separately, severe adverse events associated with hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin (compared with hydroxychloroquine plus amoxicillin) were studied. Data comprised 14 sources of claims data or electronic medical records from Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the USA. Propensity score stratification and calibration using negative control outcomes were used to address confounding. Cox models were fitted to estimate calibrated hazard ratios (HRs) according to drug use. Estimates were pooled where the I2 value was less than 0·4. Findings: The study included 956 374 users of hydroxychloroquine, 310 350 users of sulfasalazine, 323 122 users of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, and 351 956 users of hydroxychloroquine plus amoxicillin. No excess risk of severe adverse events was identified when 30-day hydroxychloroquine and sulfasalazine use were compared. Self-controlled case series confirmed these findings. However, long-term use of hydroxychloroquine appeared to be associated with increased cardiovascular mortality (calibrated HR 1·65 [95% CI 1·12–2·44]). Addition of azithromycin appeared to be associated with an increased risk of 30-day cardiovascular mortality (calibrated HR 2·19 [95% CI 1·22–3·95]), chest pain or angina (1·15 [1·05–1·26]), and hear