Youths and Peace-Building in Africa: Socio-Political & Economic Exclusion and the Role Youths Play in Peace-Building in Africa

Peacebuilding consists of a set of physical, social, and structural initiatives that are often an integral part of post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation. It actively works to promote a culture of peace, intercultural dialogue and non-violent conflict transformation. Because of social exclusion, lack of opportunities, slow implementation of public policies that promote reparation and reconciliation, young people become exposed and vulnerable to armed or political recruitment, as a result, they are considered perpetrators of crime instead of peacebuilders. This paper portrays the unique potentials and actual contributions the youths of Africa have demonstrated in building peace in different African communities

Decision-making among experts in advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma.

BACKGROUND In the treatment of advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma (aHL), based on guidelines a multitude of treatment options are available. The availability of PET guided decision-making and new therapeutic agents increase the complexity of the decision-making process. METHODS Thirteen experts of Swiss university and cantonal hospitals in Switzerland were asked to describe their institutional decision-making practice in aHL. Variables influencing the decision-making process were identified, standardized and converted into decision trees for analysis of consent and discrepancies. The algorithms of all participating experts were analyzed with the objective consensus methodology. RESULTS Four decision criteria (age, fertility preservation, fitness, interim PET) and 12 unique treatment regimens were identified. Consensus for the treatment of aHL for young and fit, as well as for older patients without comorbidity was found. Large heterogeneity was identified with use of a variety of different regimens for unfit patients with aHL and for young female patients with a desire of fertility preservation. CONCLUSION Four major decision criteria were identified allowing the representation of expert's approach to first-line treatment of aHL. Among Swiss experts, consensus for a PET guided curative treatment of aHL was identified. The use of a multitude of treatment regimens was observed for older and comorbid (unfit) aHL patients, highlighting the need for clinical trials and recommendations for this group of patients

Implications of TP53 allelic state for genome stability, clinical presentation and outcomes in myelodysplastic syndromes

Tumor protein p53 (TP53) is the most frequently mutated gene in cancer1,2. In patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), TP53 mutations are associated with high-risk disease3,4, rapid transformation to acute myeloid leukemia (AML)5, resistance to conventional therapies6–8 and dismal outcomes9. Consistent with the tumor-suppressive role of TP53, patients harbor both mono- and biallelic mutations10. However, the biological and clinical implications of TP53 allelic state have not been fully investigated in MDS or any other cancer type. We analyzed 3,324 patients with MDS for TP53 mutations and allelic imbalances and delineated two subsets of patients with distinct phenotypes and outcomes. One-third of TP53-mutated patients had monoallelic mutations whereas two-thirds had multiple hits (multi-hit) consistent with biallelic targeting. Established associations with complex karyotype, few co-occurring mutations, high-risk presentation and poor outcomes were specific to multi-hit patients only. TP53 multi-hit state predicted risk of death and leukemic transformation independently of the Revised International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-R)11. Surprisingly, monoallelic patients did not differ from TP53 wild-type patients in outcomes and response to therapy. This study shows that consideration of TP53 allelic state is critical for diagnostic and prognostic precision in MDS as well as in future correlative studies of treatment response

Large-Scale Recombinant Production of the SARS-CoV-2 Proteome for High-Throughput and Structural Biology Applications

The highly infectious disease COVID-19 caused by the Betacoronavirus SARS-CoV-2 poses a severe threat to humanity and demands the redirection of scientific efforts and criteria to organized research projects. The international COVID19-NMR consortium seeks to provide such new approaches by gathering scientific expertise worldwide. In particular, making available viral proteins and RNAs will pave the way to understanding the SARS-CoV-2 molecular components in detail. The research in COVID19-NMR and the resources provided through the consortium are fully disclosed to accelerate access and exploitation. NMR investigations of the viral molecular components are designated to provide the essential basis for further work, including macromolecular interaction studies and high-throughput drug screening. Here, we present the extensive catalog of a holistic SARS-CoV-2 protein preparation approach based on the consortium’s collective efforts. We provide protocols for the large-scale production of more than 80% of all SARS-CoV-2 proteins or essential parts of them. Several of the proteins were produced in more than one laboratory, demonstrating the high interoperability between NMR groups worldwide. For the majority of proteins, we can produce isotope-labeled samples of HSQC-grade. Together with several NMR chemical shift assignments made publicly available on covid19-nmr.com, we here provide highly valuable resources for the production of SARS-CoV-2 proteins in isotope-labeled form

Surface reconstruction of manmade objects using polymorphic mid-level features and generic scene knowledge

This paper presents a new concept for 3D-surface reconstruction, which infers domain speci c local 3D-structures in space from its observed local 2D-structures in multiple images using polymorphic relational image descriptions. A 3D-aggregation can combine these local 3D-structures and thus results in a 3D-boundary representation of man-made objects being useful for di erent analyses and simulations.

3D-city modeling with a digital one-eye stereo system

3D-city information is crucial for a number of applications in city planning, environmental control or fortelecommunication. We describe a semiautomatic system for acquiring the 3D-shape of buildings as topographic objects. Buildings are either modeled as a freely structured union of basic shape primitives or asprisms with an arbitrary ground plan, covering a large percentage of existing buildings. Interaction takes place in only one image, requiring the operator to specify the approximate structure and shape of the buildings. 3D-reconstruction including both, height determination and form adaptation, is performed automatically using various matching tools. The paper describes the features of the system and reports on its e ciency based on an extensive test.

Topological And Geometrical Reasoning In 3D Grouping for Reconstructing Polyhedral Surfaces

We are developing a system for reconstructing polyhedral surfaces from multiple images. This process can take advantage of the topological relations of the observed image features triggering and therefore speeding up the grouping of features to polyhedral surfaces. Exploiting the statistical properties of features when grouping them leads to consistent decisions being invariant to numbering and choice of coordinate system and allows statistical testing. This simplifies the choice of thresholds to the definition of a scene independent significance level. We decribe the topological and statistical models used within our system. Experiments with synthetic and real data prove the feasibility of the approach. y 1 INTRODUCTION Reconstructing polyhedral surfaces from multiple images is a classical task in Computer Vision. In case of controlled environment solutions are quite far advanced. However, in outdoor environments, e. g. when tracking vehicles or when reconstructing buildings, system..

A procedure for segmenting surfaces by symbolic and iconic image fusion, inB.Jähne

Abstract. This paper deals with the derivation of a symbolic surface description exploiting the information of multiple images while using a minimum of domain knowledge. We present a new concept for segmenting surfaces by fusing multiple images both on the iconic and on the symbolic description level. In a rst step a local 3D-reconstruction and interpretation is derived based on the result of a polymorphic feature extraction. It serves as prior information for a second step which re nes the initial segmentation using the radiometric image content. Examples of the proposed procedure are presented for the application of 3D-building reconstruction from aerial images.