Genomic and toxigenic heterogeneity of bacillus cereus sensu lato Isolated from ready-to-eat foods and powdered milk in day care centers in Colombia

Bacillus cereus sensu lato (s.l.) is a group of bacteria commonly found in diverse environments, including foods, with potential to cause emesis and diarrhea. In Colombia, it is one of the main foodborne pathogens. The aim of this study was to determine the genomic and toxigenic heterogeneity of B. cereus s.l. isolated from ready-to-eat foods and powdered milk collected in day care centers of Medellin, Colombia. Of 112 B. cereus s.l. isolates obtained, 94% were beta-hemolytic. Toxigenic heterogeneity was established by the presence of nheABC, hblCDAB, cytK2, entFM, and cesB toxigenic genes. The nheABC operon and entFM gene were most frequently detected in the isolates, whereas the cesB gene was not found. According to the toxin genes content, nine toxigenic profiles were identified. A 44% of isolates had profiles with all genes for nonhemolytic enterotoxin, hemolysin BL, and enterotoxin FM production (profiles II and IV). Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis indicated a high genomic heterogeneity among the B. cereus s.l., with 68 isolates grouping into 16 clusters and 33 placed separately in the dendrogram. This study provides useful information on the safety of ready-to-eat foods and powdered milk in day care centers where children, a susceptible population, are exposed and it should incentive for more studies to understand the distribution of different toxin-encoding genes among B. cereus s.l. isolates, enabling detailed risk assessment

Big Data para el análisis de sentimientos en imágenes

During the last years the terms Big Data and data mining are being listened to a lot, so in this project they will be explained that they are, in which they differ, their importance at present and will see some of the tools that are implemented with these two terms. Also, in recent years is increasing the use of social networks, where users give their opinion on any subject and also can upload any multimedia file, either a video or an image. Big companies are able to make any kind of prediction and extract information from any text that users have written, using Big Data and data mining. But, could it extract information from the images that users upload to know their opinion on a topic? In this project, a web page will be created, which simulates a social network, where through the use of hashtags and images, the page can know the feeling that causes a specific topic. To do this, it will be necessary to perform an analysis of the images, specifically those in which faces are detected, to determine their feelings. This analysis would be done using a technology of Big Data and data mining, with which the application will obtain a pattern with which can determine the feeling of the face. The analysis of the data extracted from the images will follow a set of steps that are carried out in any data mining project, thanks to these steps, it can be posible made modifications to the data or the configuration of the Big Data tool and data mining to improve results. As for the web application, a design will be made, and will explain the technologies that will be necessary for its creation. Finally, you will see the final result, where the web application will be displayed with the extraction of the image sentiment, thus achieving the main objective of the project

Chemorefractory Gastric Cancer: The Evolving Terrain of Third-Line Therapy and Beyond

Gastric cancer; Molecular approach; Third line of treatmentCáncer gástrico; Enfoque molecular; Tercera línea de tratamientoCàncer gàstric; Enfocament molecular; Tercera línia de tractamentGastric and gastro-oesophageal junction cancer (GC) represent a global healthcare problem being the fifth most common tumour type and the fourth cause of cancer mortality. Extremely poor median survival of approximately 10 months is normally reported within advanced GC patients, mainly secondary to two factors, i.e., the fragility of these patients and the aggressiveness of this disease. In this context, the correct treatment of GC patients requires not only a multidisciplinary team with special attention to palliative and nutritional care but also a close follow-up with regular monitoring of disease symptoms and tumour evaluation. Sequential treatment lines with few toxic adverse events have emerged as the best therapeutic approach, and a third line of therapy could further improve survival and quality of life of GC patients. Chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted agents -when indicated- constitute the treatment armamentarium of these patients. In this review, we discuss treatment options in the refractory setting as well as novel approaches to overcome the poor prognosis of GC

Design of a Current Converter for the Study of the UV Emission in DBD Excilamps

This paper presents the design of a current converter to supply a DBD exciplex lamp. The structure is implemented, based on a Boost converter. An analysis in the state plane is used, to determine the stability of the converter and the values of current and voltage during the discharge phase. An electrical model of the lamp is used to simulate the non measurable variables: the gas current and the gas conductance. Finally, the relationship between the gas current and the UV emission is presented

Ascites and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibition in dMMR/MSI-H metastatic colorectal and gastric cancers

Gastrointestinal neoplasms; Immunotherapy; Tumor biomarkersNeoplasias gastrointestinales; Inmunoterapia; Biomarcadores tumoralesNeoplàsies gastrointestinals; Immunoteràpia; Biomarcadors tumoralsBackground Despite unprecedented benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in patients with mismatch repair deficient (dMMR)/microsatellite instability high (MSI-H) advanced gastrointestinal cancers, a relevant proportion of patients shows primary resistance or short-term disease control. Since malignant effusions represent an immune-suppressed niche, we investigated whether peritoneal involvement with or without ascites is a poor prognostic factor in patients with dMMR/MSI-H metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) and gastric cancer (mGC) receiving ICIs. Methods We conducted a global multicohort study at Tertiary Cancer Centers and collected clinic-pathological data from a cohort of patients with dMMR/MSI-H mCRC treated with anti-PD-(L)1 ±anti-CTLA-4 agents at 12 institutions (developing set). A cohort of patients with dMMR/MSI-high mGC treated with anti-PD-1 agents±chemotherapy at five institutions was used as validating dataset. Results The mCRC cohort included 502 patients. After a median follow-up of 31.2 months, patients without peritoneal metastases and those with peritoneal metastases and no ascites had similar outcomes (adjusted HR (aHR) 1.15, 95% CI 0.85 to 1.56 for progression-free survival (PFS); aHR 0.96, 95% CI 0.65 to 1.42 for overall survival (OS)), whereas inferior outcomes were observed in patients with peritoneal metastases and ascites (aHR 2.90, 95% CI 1.70 to 4.94; aHR 3.33, 95% CI 1.88 to 5.91) compared with patients without peritoneal involvement. The mGC cohort included 59 patients. After a median follow-up of 17.4 months, inferior PFS and OS were reported in patients with peritoneal metastases and ascites (aHR 3.83, 95% CI 1.68 to 8.72; aHR 3.44, 95% CI 1.39 to 8.53, respectively), but not in patients with only peritoneal metastases (aHR 1.87, 95% CI 0.64 to 5.46; aHR 2.15, 95% CI 0.64 to 7.27) when compared with patients without peritoneal involvement. Conclusions Patients with dMMR/MSI-H gastrointestinal cancers with peritoneal metastases and ascites should be considered as a peculiar subgroup with highly unfavorable outcomes to current ICI-based therapies. Novel strategies to target the immune-suppressive niche in malignant effusions should be investigated, as well as next-generation ICIs or intraperitoneal approaches

Synthesized High-Frequency Thyristor for Dielectric Barrier Discharge Excimer Lamps

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) lamps, being capacitive loads, must be associated with bidirectional current sources for an appropriate control of the transferred power. Pulsed current source supplies, which are known to offer very interesting performances, require specific power switches that are able to manage bidirectional voltage and unidirectional current at much higher frequencies (several hundreds of kilohertz) than commercial thyristors. This paper proposes the detailed design of such a high-speed synthesized thyristor, using discrete components: a MOSFET in series with a high-voltage (HV) diode and a logic circuit that controls its gate. This switch is associated with an optimized self-powered driver, which is a very efficient solution to handle the perturbations associated with the HV and high-frequency operation. Experimental application of this device for DBD excimer lamp supply is proposed

Multi-Stream Extension of Variational Bayesian HMM Clustering (MS-VBx) for Combined End-to-End and Vector Clustering-based Diarization

Combining end-to-end neural speaker diarization (EEND) with vector clustering (VC), known as EEND-VC, has gained interest for leveraging the strengths of both methods. EEND-VC estimates activities and speaker embeddings for all speakers within an audio chunk and uses VC to associate these activities with speaker identities across different chunks. EEND-VC generates thus multiple streams of embeddings, one for each speaker in a chunk. We can cluster these embeddings using constrained agglomerative hierarchical clustering (cAHC), ensuring embeddings from the same chunk belong to different clusters. This paper introduces an alternative clustering approach, a multi-stream extension of the successful Bayesian HMM clustering of x-vectors (VBx), called MS-VBx. Experiments on three datasets demonstrate that MS-VBx outperforms cAHC in diarization and speaker counting performance.Comment: Accepted at Interspeech 202

External validity of docetaxel triplet trials in advanced gastric cancer: are there patients who still benefit?

Bayesian model; Docetaxel; Gastric cancerModel bayesià; Docetaxel; Càncer gàstricModelo bayesiano; Docetaxel; Cáncer gástricoBackground The purpose of our study was to develop an online calculator to estimate the effect of docetaxel triplets (DPF) in first line of advanced gastric cancer (AGC), and to assess the external validity of docetaxel trials in individual patients. Methods The study includes patients with HER2(-) AGC treated with platin and fluoropyrimidine (PF) or with DPF in first line. Treatment effect and interactions were assessed using Bayesian accelerated failure time models. Result The series comprises 1376 patients; 238 treated with DPF and 1138 with PF between 2008 and 2019. DPF was associated with increased progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with time ratio (TR) 1.27 (95% credible interval [CrI], 1.15–1.40), and TR 1.19 (95% CrI, 1.09–1.27), respectively. Serious adverse events were more common with DPF, particularly hematological effects (32% vs 22%). Younger participants received greater DPF dose density without achieving greater disease control, while severe toxicity was likewise higher. DPF yielded superior OS in Lauren intestinal (TR 1.27, 95% CrI, 1.08–1.11) vs diffuse subtype (TR 1.17, 95% CrI, 1.09–1.24) and the probability of increasing OS > 15% was 90% vs 67% in each subtype, respectively. The effect dwindles over time, which can be attributed to pathological changes and clinical practice changes. Conclusion Our study confirms the effect of DPF is highly dependent on several clinical–pathological variables, with discreet and gradually declining benefit over platinum doublets in later years, at the expense of increased toxicity. These results may help to underpin the idea that external validity of AGC trials should be revised regularly

Current-Mode Power Converter for Radiation Control in DBD Excimer Lamps

A pulsed current-mode converter specifically designed for the supply of dielectric barrier discharge excimer lamps is proposed in this paper. The power supply structure is defined on the basis of causality criteria that are justified by the structure of the lamp model. The converter operation is studied, and its design criteria are established using state-plane analysis. This converter, operating in discontinuous conduction mode, controls directly both the amplitude and the duration of the emitted ultraviolet (UV) pulses. Experimentally, the UV radiation is demonstrated to be proportional to the current injected into the gas, and the degrees of freedom offered by the control of the supply are shown to be very efficient for the active control of the UV power

Sex and gender disparities in patients with advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma: data from the AGAMENON-SEOM registry

Gastroesophageal cancer; Gender; SexCáncer gastroesofágico; Género; SexoCàncer gastroesofàgic; Gènere; SexeBackground Recommendations for research articles include the use of the term sex when reporting biological factors and gender for identities or psychosocial or cultural factors. There is an increasing awareness of incorporating the effect of sex and gender on cancer outcomes. Thus, these types of analyses for advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma are relevant. Patients and methods Patients with advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma from the Spanish AGAMENON-SEOM registry treated with first-line combination chemotherapy were selected. Epidemiology, characteristics of the disease, treatment selection, and results were examined according to sex. Results This analysis included 3274 advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma patients treated with combination chemotherapy between 2008 and 2021: 2313 (70.7%) men and 961 (29.3%) women. Tumors in females were more frequently HER2-negative (67.8% versus 60.8%; P < 0.0001), grade 3 (45.4% versus 36.8%; P < 0.001), diffuse (43.3% versus 26.5%; P < 0.0001), and signet ring cell histology (40.5 versus 23.9%; P < 0.0001). Peritoneal spread was more common in women (58.6% versus 38.9%; P < 0.0001), while liver burden was lower (58.9% versus 71.1%; P < 0.0001). There were no significant differences in treatment recommendation. Treatment doses, density, and duration were comparable between sexes. Women experienced more diarrhea (46% versus 37%; P < 0.0001), neutropenia (51% versus 43%; P < 0.0001), and anemia (62% versus 57%; P < 0.0001). After a median 59.6-month follow-up [95% confidence interval (CI) 54.5-70.8], there were no statistically significant differences between the sexes in progression-free survival [6.21 months (95% CI 5.8-6.5 months) versus 6.08 months (95% CI 5.8-6.3 months); log-rank test, χ2 = 0.1, 1 df, P = 0.8] or in overall survival [10.6 months (95% CI 9.8-11.1 months) versus 10.9 months (95% CI 10.4-11.4 months); log-rank test: χ2 = 0.6, 1 df, P = 0.5]. Conclusion This sex analysis of patients with advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma from the AGAMENON-SEOM registry receiving first-line polychemotherapy found no differences in survival. Although women had worse prognostic histopathology, metastatic disease pattern, and greater toxicity, treatment allocation and compliance were equivalent