Rose of No Man\u27s Land, The

[Verse 1, English] I’ve seen some beautiful flowers, Grow in life’s garden fair, I’ve spent some wonderful hours, Lost in their fragrance rare; But I have found another, Wondrous beyond compare. [Refrain, English] There’s a rose that grows on “No Man’s Land” And its wonderful to see, Though it’s sprayed with tears, it will live for years, In my garden of memory. It’s the one red rose the soldier knows, It’s the work of the Master’s hand; ‘Mid the war’s great curse stands the Red Cross Nurse, She’s the rose of “No Man’s Land.” [Verse 2] Out of the heavenly splendor, Down to the trail of woe, God in his mercy has sent her, Cheering the world below; We call her “Rose of Heaven,” We’ve learned to love her so. [Refrain] [Verse, French] J’ai vu bien des fleurs s’empourprer, Au jardin de la vie, Et souvent j’aime à m’enivrer, De leur senteur be’nie, J’en sais une au pur eclat, Sans rival ici bas. [Refrain, French] La rose fleurit sous le Boulets, En avant du front elle est, De pleurs arrosée, Pour bien des années, Dans nos coeurs elle restera. Le rose rouge amour de soldat, Dans cette enceinte où rienne bouge, L’ombre qui parâit, Portant la Crois Rouge, C’est la Rose de Boulets

Adaptive image compression algorithm for angiograms stored on optical memory card

The main objective of the Cardio-Média project is to produce a coronarian multimedia data record stored on an optical car d in order to offer a better follow-up for the patients treated by angioplasty . In this paper, we present the compression algorithm implemented to store the angiographìc images of the data record . This algorithm is based on a wavelet decomposition followe d by an adapted lattice quantization of the wavelet coefficients . An original bit allocation algorithm is used during a learning step i n orderto provide a fast coding algorithm which is adapted to the angiographic images . A subjective evaluation of the diagnosti c quality of the images, based on the consensus approach leads to a compression ratio of 12 :1 which insures both a sufficien t medical quality and a sufficient data compression in regards to the storage capacity of the optical card .Le projet Cardio-Média a pour objectif la création d'un prototype de dossier coronarien sur carte optique afin de faciliter le suivi clinique des patients traités par angioplastie. Dans cet article, nous présentons l'algorithme de compression mis en oeuvre et les résultats obtenus. Notre algorithme utilise une transformation en ondelettes et une quantification vectorielle adaptée des coefficients d'ondelettes. Son originalité repose sur la phase d'apprentissage qui permet de disposer d'un algorithme de compression/décompression rapide adapté à la modalité médicale « angiographie ». Une évaluation subjective par consensus de la qualité diagnostique des images comprimées a permis de retenir un taux de compression de 12 qui répond aux contraintes matérielles et médicales du projet

Management of rare movement disorders in Europe:outcome of surveys of the European Reference Network for Rare Neurological Diseases

Background and purpose The diagnosis of rare movement disorders is difficult and specific management programmes are not well defined. Thus, in order to capture and assess care needs, the European Reference Network for Rare Neurological Diseases has performed an explorative care need survey across all European Union (EU) countries. Methods This is a multicentre, cross‐sectional study. A survey about the management of different rare movement disorders (group 1, dystonia, paroxysmal dyskinesia and neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation; group 2, ataxias and hereditary spastic paraparesis; group 3, atypical parkinsonism; group 4, choreas) was sent to an expert in each group of disorders from each EU country. Results Some EU countries claimed for an increase of teaching courses. Genetic testing was not readily available in a significant number of countries. Regarding management, patients’ accessibility to tertiary hospitals, to experts and to multidisciplinary teams was unequal between countries and groups of diseases. The availability of therapeutic options, such as botulinum toxin or more invasive treatments like deep brain stimulation, was limited in some countries. Conclusions The management of these conditions in EU countries is unequal. The survey provides evidence that a European care‐focused network that is able to address the unmet rare neurological disease care needs and inequalities is highly warranted

The Alignment Between 3-D Data and Articulated Shapes with Bending Surfaces

International audienceIn this paper we address the problem of aligning 3-D data with articulated shapes. This problem resides at the core of many motion tracking methods with applications in human motion capture, action recognition, medical-image analysis, etc. We describe an articulated and bending surface representation well suited for this task as well as a method which aligns (or registers) such a surface to 3-D data. Articulated objects, e.g., humans and animals, are covered with clothes and skin which may be seen as textured surfaces. These surfaces are both articulated and deformable and one realistic way to model them is to assume that they bend in the neighborhood of the shape's joints. We will introduce a surface-bending model as a function of the articulated-motion parameters. This combined articulated-motion and surface-bending model better predicts the observed phenomena in the data and therefore is well suited for surface registration. Given a set of sparse 3-D data (gathered with a stereo camera pair) and a textured, articulated, and bending surface, we describe a register-and-fit method that proceeds as follows. First, the data-to-surface registration problem is formalized as a classifier and is carried out using an EM algorithm. Second, the data-to-surface fitting problem is carried out by minimizing the distance from the registered data points to the surface over the joint variables. In order to illustrate the method we applied it to the problem of hand tracking. A hand model with 27 degrees of freedom is successfully registered and fitted to a sequence of 3-D data points gathered with a stereo camera pair

Influenza A Virus Infection of Human Primary Dendritic Cells Impairs Their Ability to Cross-Present Antigen to CD8 T Cells

Influenza A virus (IAV) infection is normally controlled by adaptive immune responses initiated by dendritic cells (DCs). We investigated the consequences of IAV infection of human primary DCs on their ability to function as antigen-presenting cells. IAV was internalized by both myeloid DCs (mDCs) and plasmacytoid DCs but only mDCs supported viral replication. Although infected mDCs efficiently presented endogenous IAV antigens on MHC class II, this was not the case for presentation on MHC class I. Indeed, cross-presentation by uninfected cells of minute amounts of endocytosed, exogenous IAV was ∼300-fold more efficient than presentation of IAV antigens synthesized by infected cells and resulted in a statistically significant increase in expansion of IAV-specific CD8 T cells. Furthermore, IAV infection also impaired cross-presentation of other exogenous antigens, indicating that IAV infection broadly attenuates presentation on MHC class I molecules. Our results suggest that cross-presentation by uninfected mDCs is a preferred mechanism of antigen-presentation for the activation and expansion of CD8 T cells during IAV infection

Motion Capture of Hands in Action Using Discriminative Salient Points

Abstract. Capturing the motion of two hands interacting with an object is a very challenging task due to the large number of degrees of freedom, self-occlusions, and similarity between the fingers, even in the case of multiple cameras observing the scene. In this paper we propose to use discriminatively learned salient points on the fingers and to estimate the finger-salient point associations simultaneously with the estimation of the hand pose. We introduce a differentiable objective function that also takes edges, optical flow and collisions into account. Our qualitative and quantitative evaluations show that the proposed approach achieves very accurate results for several challenging sequences containing hands and objects in action.

OntoCAT -- simple ontology search and integration in Java, R and REST/JavaScript

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ontologies have become an essential asset in the bioinformatics toolbox and a number of ontology access resources are now available, for example, the EBI Ontology Lookup Service (OLS) and the NCBO BioPortal. However, these resources differ substantially in mode, ease of access, and ontology content. This makes it relatively difficult to access each ontology source separately, map their contents to research data, and much of this effort is being replicated across different research groups.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>OntoCAT provides a seamless programming interface to query heterogeneous ontology resources including OLS and BioPortal, as well as user-specified local OWL and OBO files. Each resource is wrapped behind easy to learn Java, Bioconductor/R and REST web service commands enabling reuse and integration of ontology software efforts despite variation in technologies. It is also available as a stand-alone MOLGENIS database and a Google App Engine application.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>OntoCAT provides a robust, configurable solution for accessing ontology terms specified locally and from remote services, is available as a stand-alone tool and has been tested thoroughly in the ArrayExpress, MOLGENIS, EFO and Gen2Phen phenotype use cases.</p> <p>Availability</p> <p><url>http://www.ontocat.org</url></p

Practical diagnosis of cirrhosis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease using currently available non-invasive fibrosis tests

Unlike for advanced liver fibrosis, the practical rules for the early non-invasive diagnosis of cirrhosis in NAFLD remain not well defined. Here, we report the derivation and validation of a stepwise diagnostic algorithm in 1568 patients with NAFLD and liver biopsy coming from four independent cohorts. The study algorithm, using first the elastography-based tests Agile3+ and Agile4 and then the specialized blood tests FibroMeterV3G and CirrhoMeterV3G, provides stratification in four groups, the last of which is enriched in cirrhosis (71% prevalence in the validation set). A risk prediction chart is also derived to allow estimation of the individual probability of cirrhosis. The predicted risk shows excellent calibration in the validation set, and mean difference with perfect prediction is only −2.9%. These tools improve the personalized non-invasive diagnosis of cirrhosis in NAFLD

Prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement, spleen diameter and platelets in HIV-infected patients

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: People living with HIV (PLWH) are at high risk for advanced chronic liver disease and related adverse outcomes. We aimed to validate the prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and on markers of portal hypertension (PH), namely platelets and spleen diameter, in PLWH. METHODS: We combined data from eight international cohorts of PLWH with available non-invasive scores, including LSM and the composite biomarkers liver stiffness-spleen size-to-platelet ratio score (LSPS), LSM-to-Platelet ratio (LPR) and PH risk score. Incidence and predictors of all-cause mortality, any liver-related event and classical hepatic decompensation were determined by survival analysis, controlling for competing risks for the latter two. Non-invasive scores were assessed and compared using area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC). RESULTS: We included 1695 PLWH (66.8% coinfected with hepatitis C virus). During a median follow-up of 4.7 (interquartile range 2.8-7.7) years, the incidence rates of any liver-related event, all-cause mortality and hepatic decompensation were 13.7 per 1000 persons-year (PY) (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.4-16.3), 13.8 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 11.6-16.4) and 9.9 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 8.1-12.2), respectively. The AUROC of LSM was similar to that of the composite biomarkers, ranging between 0.83 and 0.86 for any liver-related event, 0.79-0.85 for all-cause mortality and 0.87-0.88 for classical hepatic decompensation. All individual non-invasive scores remained independent predictors of clinical outcomes in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Non-invasive scores based on LSM, spleen diameter and platelets predict clinical outcomes in PLWH. Composite biomarkers do not achieve higher prognostic performance compared to LSM alone

Prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement, spleen diameter and platelets in HIV-infected patients.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS People living with HIV (PLWH) are at high risk for advanced chronic liver disease and related adverse outcomes. We aimed to validate the prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and on markers of portal hypertension (PH), namely platelets and spleen diameter, in PLWH. METHODS We combined data from eight international cohorts of PLWH with available non-invasive scores, including LSM and the composite biomarkers liver stiffness-spleen size-to-platelet ratio score (LSPS), LSM-to-Platelet ratio (LPR) and PH risk score. Incidence and predictors of all-cause mortality, any liver-related event and classical hepatic decompensation were determined by survival analysis, controlling for competing risks for the latter two. Non-invasive scores were assessed and compared using area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC). RESULTS We included 1695 PLWH (66.8% coinfected with hepatitis C virus). During a median follow-up of 4.7 (interquartile range 2.8-7.7) years, the incidence rates of any liver-related event, all-cause mortality and hepatic decompensation were 13.7 per 1000 persons-year (PY) (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.4-16.3), 13.8 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 11.6-16.4) and 9.9 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 8.1-12.2), respectively. The AUROC of LSM was similar to that of the composite biomarkers, ranging between 0.83 and 0.86 for any liver-related event, 0.79-0.85 for all-cause mortality and 0.87-0.88 for classical hepatic decompensation. All individual non-invasive scores remained independent predictors of clinical outcomes in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS Non-invasive scores based on LSM, spleen diameter and platelets predict clinical outcomes in PLWH. Composite biomarkers do not achieve higher prognostic performance compared to LSM alone