A multi-site study on walkability, data sharing and privacy perception using mobile sensing data gathered from the mk-sense platform

Walking is a fundamental part of a physically active lifestyle, it is one of everyday activities that positively impacts health and wellbeing. In this paper we describe the challenges and experiences of conducting a sensing campaign in the wild. We make use of mk-sense; a software platform to facilitate the deployment of collaborative sensing campaigns. We elaborate on two cross-cultural studies conducted in four different countries (Mexico, Turkey, Spain, and Switzerland) with a total of 77 participants. We present a detailed description of the data collected from one of the studies aimed at measuring walkability around three different university campuses. The analysis of the data shows that walkability can be assessed using information from the sensors in the smartphones and results from surveys answered by participants. In addition, we analyze issues about data sharing and privacy awareness

Reference Ranges of Age-Based Liver, Spleen, Pancreas, and Kidney Size in Conjunction with Waist Circumference in Children

Objective: In the initial phases of parenchymal diseases, the only finding would be an increase in organ size. We aimed to provide percentile charts of solid intraabdominal organ sizes by age for Turkish children on contrast-enhanced computed tomography images and reveal relative size ratios

The Effect of IVIG on Superoxide Generation in Primary Humoral Immunodeficiencies

WOS: 000215591800002Primary antibody deficiency (common variable immunodeficiency, Hyper IgM, X-linked agammaglobulinemia and selective Ig A deficiency) is a group of heterogeneous diseases characterized by defective antibody production. In primary hypogammaglobulinemias, particularly in patients with common variable immunodeficiency there is an increased generation of reactive oxygen species from monocytes which may be important for both immunopathogenesis and clinical manifestations. The generation of toxic oxygen metabolites may contribute to inflammation and tissue damage associated with phagocytic infiltration, and play role in the pathogenesis of malignancies, autoimmune disorders, acute and chronic pulmonary diseases seen in these patients. In primary immunodeficiencies and functional antibody deficiencies, IVIG act as replacement therapy and several mechanisms of IVIG action have been postulated. In vitro studies with human granulocytes showed stimulation of respiratory burst and promotion of bacterial killing by IVIG. In adult patients with primary humoral immunodeficiency, treated with IVIG showed that IVIG does not affect superoxide generation. We investigated superoxide generation from PMNL in 35 children with hyper IgM syndrome, XLA, CVID and IgA deficiency and 13 healthy children. We also explored the effect of IVIG administration on superoxide generation from granulocytes, white cell count, absolute neutrophil count, absolute lymphocyte count and quantitative CRP levels. There was a substantial increase in superoxide generation from PMNL in patients with XLA, CVID and IgA deficiency. Comparison of the superoxide generation before, 24 hours and one week after IVIG treatment showed no difference. In patients with CVID, quantitative CRP levels before and 24 hours after IVIG revealed significant difference. Other parameters were not changed. It can be concluded that enhanced superoxide generation in patients with XLA, CVID, Ig A deficiency may result from silent activation of the phagocytic system which does not give clinical symptoms; and administration of IVIG in vivo (within the serum concentrations) has no impact on superoxide generation of granulocytes in patients with primary antibody deficiencies

Robust, Long-Term Culture of Endoderm-Derived Hepatic Organoids for Disease Modeling

Organoid technologies have become a powerful emerging tool to model liver diseases, for drug screening, and for personalized treatments. These applications are, however, limited in their capacity to generate functional hepatocytes in a reproducible and efficient manner. Here, we generated and characterized the hepatic organoid (eHEPO) culture system using human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived EpCAM-positive endodermal cells as an intermediate. eHEPOs can be produced within 2 weeks and expanded long term (>16 months) without any loss of differentiation capacity to mature hepatocytes. Starting from patient-specific iPSCs, we modeled citrullinemia type 1, a urea cycle disorder caused by mutations in the argininosuccinate synthetase (ASST) enzyme. The disease-related ammonia accumulation phenotype in eHEPOs could be reversed by the overexpression of the wild-type ASS1 gene, which also indicated that this model is amenable to genetic manipulation. Thus, eHEPOs are excellent unlimited cell sources to generate functional hepatic organoids in a fast and efficient manner