Visualizing Collocations in Religious Online Forums

We present results of a project examining the application of text visualization in the context of religious studies and sociology. Our goal is to analyze and compare the online communication of various religious directions. For this contribution we focus on the visualization of collocations for specific religious and spiritual key concepts. As a corpus, we acquired the content of the three religious subreddits /r/Islam, /r/Christianity and /r/Occult for a one-year time span. The overall corpus consists of 700,000 comments and around 50 million tokens. We explore and visualize collocations for the concepts “life”, “religion” and “love”. We discuss the results and to what extent we were able to gather new insights

Distant Reading of Religious Online Communities: A Case Study for Three Religious Forums on Reddit

We present results of a project examining the application of computational text analysis and distant reading in the context of comparative religious studies, sociology, and online communication. As a source for our corpus, we use the popular platform Reddit and three of the largest religious subreddits: the subreddit Christianity, Islam and Occult. We have acquired all posts along with metadata for an entire year resulting in over 700,000 comments and around 50 million tokens. We explore the corpus and compare the different online communities via measures like word frequencies, bigrams, collocations and sentiment and emotion analysis to analyze if there are differences in the language used, the topics that are talked about and the sentiments and emotions expressed. Furthermore, we explore approaches to diachronic analysis and visualization. We conclude with a discussion about the limitations but also the benefits of distant reading methods in religious studie

Influence of Annotation Media on Proof-Reading Tasks

Annotating and proof-reading documents are common tasks. Digital annotation tools provide easily searchable annotations and facilitate sharing documents and remote collaboration with others. On the other hand, advantages of paper, such as creative freedom and intuitive use, can get lost when annotating digitally. There is a large amount of research indicating that paper outperforms digital annotation tools in task time, error recall and task load. However, most research in this field is rather old and does not take into consideration increasing screen resolution and performance, as well as better input techniques in modern devices. We present three user studies comparing different annotation media in the context of proof-reading tasks. We found that annotating on paper is still faster and less stressful than with a PC or tablet computer, but the difference is significantly smaller with a state-of-the-art device. We did not find a difference in error recall, but the used medium has a strong influence on how users annotate

Efficient and Easy Conversion of Human iPSCs into Functional Induced Microglia-like Cells

Current protocols converting human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into induced microglia-like cells (iMGL) are either dependent on overexpression of transcription factors or require substantial experience in stem-cell technologies. Here, we developed an easy-to-use two-step protocol to convert iPSCs into functional iMGL via: (1) highly efficient differentiation of hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) from iPSCs, and (2) optimized maturation of HPCs to iMGL. A sequential harvesting approach led to an increased HPC yield. The protocol implemented a freezing step, thus allowing HPC biobanking and flexible timing of differentiation into iMGL. Our iMGL responded adequately to the inflammatory stimuli LPS, and iMGL RNAseq analysis matched those of other frequently used protocols. Comparing three different coating modalities, we increased the iMGL yield by culturing on uncoated glass surfaces, thereby retaining differentiation efficiency and functional hallmarks of iMGL. In summary, we provide a high-quality, easy-to-use protocol, rendering generation and functional studies on iMGL an accessible lab resource

Zooming in on cryopreservation of hiPSCs and neural derivatives: A dual-center study using adherent vitrification

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are an important tool for research and regenerative medicine, but their efficient cryopreservation remains a major challenge. The current gold standard is slow‐rate freezing of dissociated colonies in suspension, but low recovery rates limit immediate post‐thawing applicability. We tested whether ultrafast cooling by adherent vitrification improves post‐thawing survival in a selection of hiPSCs and small molecule neural precursor cells (smNPCs) from Parkinson's disease and controls. In a dual‐center study, we compared the results by immunocytochemistry (ICC), fluorescence‐activated cell sorting analysis, and RNA‐sequencing (RNA‐seq). Adherent vitrification was achieved in the so‐called TWIST substrate, a device combining cultivation, vitrification, storage, and post‐thawing cultivation. Adherent vitrification resulted in preserved confluency and significantly higher cell numbers, and viability at day 1 after thawing, while results were not significantly different at day 4 after thawing. RNA‐seq and ICC of hiPSCs revealed no change in gene expression and pluripotency markers, indicating that physical damage of slow‐rate freezing disrupts cellular membranes. Scanning electron microscopy showed preserved colony integrity by adherent vitrification. Experiments using smNPCs demonstrated that adherent vitrification is also applicable to neural derivatives of hiPSCs. Our data suggest that, compared to the state‐of‐the‐art slow‐rate freezing in suspension, adherent vitrification is an improved cryopreservation technique for hiPSCs and derivatives

Multimodal Treatment of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: Real-World Experience with 112 Patients

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare pleural cancer associated with asbestos exposure. According to current evidence, the combination of chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy improves patients’ survival. However, the optimal sequence and weighting of the respective treatment modalities is unclear. In anticipation of the upcoming results of the MARS-2 trial, we sought to determine the relative impact of the respective treatment modalities on complications and overall survival in our own consecutive institutional series of 112 patients. Fifty-seven patients (51%) underwent multimodality therapy with curative intent, while 55 patients (49%) were treated with palliative intent. The median overall survival (OS) of the entire cohort was 16.9 months (95% CI: 13.4–20.4) after diagnosis; 5-year survival was 29% for patients who underwent lung-preserving surgery. In univariate analysis, surgical treatment (p p p p = 0.02) and the absence of arterial hypertension (p = 0.034) were found to be prognostic factors for OS. In multivariate analysis, epithelioid subtype was associated with a survival benefit, whereas the occurrence of complications was associated with worse OS. Multimodality therapy including surgery significantly prolonged the OS of MPM patients compared with multimodal therapy without surgery