Towards a joint international database: alignment of SSR marker data for European collections of cherry germplasm

The objective of our study was the alignment of microsatellite or simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker data across germplasm collections of cherry within Europe. Through the European Co-operative program for Plant Genetic Resources ECPGR, a number of European germplasm col-lections had previously been analysed using standard sets of SSR loci. However, until now these datasets remained unaligned. We used a combination of standard reference genotypes and ad-hoc selections to compile a central dataset representing as many alleles as possible from national datasets produced in France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. Through the comparison of alleles called in data from replicated samples we were able to create a series of alignment factors, supported across 448 different allele calls, that allowed us to align a dataset of 2241 SSR profiles from six countries. The proportion of allele comparisons that were either in agreement with the alignment factor or confounded by null alleles ranged from 67% to 100% and this was further improved by the inclusion of a series of allele-specific adjustments. The aligned dataset allowed us to identify groups of previously unknown matching accessions and to identify and resolve a number of errors in the prior datasets. The combined and aligned dataset represents a significant step forward in the co-ordinated management of field collections of cherry in Europe

Guillain-Barré Syndrome due to CMV Reactivation after Cardiac Transplantation

A 40-year-old male patient suffered from end-stage heart failure due to ischemic cardiomyopathy and received orthotopiccardiac transplantation in June 2005. The instantaneous postoperative course was uneventful, but, seven months later, he suffered from paralysis in the lower extremities finally resulting in quadriplegia and was admitted to hospital. After laboratory testings the diagnosis of a Guillain-Barré syndrome due to cytomegalovirus reactivation was confirmed

POPCORN: privacy-preserving charging for eMobility

Upcoming years will see a massive deployment of electric vehicles and, combined with this, of charging infrastructure. This will require protocols and standards that will control authentication, authorization, and billing of electric-vehicle charging. The ISO/IEC 15118 protocol that addresses the communication between the charging station and the vehicle is going to play an important role, at least in Europe. While it foresees security protection, there are no significant mech- anisms for privacy protection in place. In this paper, we in- vestigate the privacy protection of ISO/IEC 15118 and the surrounding charging and payment infrastructure by means of a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). Based on this we propose modular extensions of the protocol applying state- of-the-art Privacy Enhancing Technologies like anonymous credentials to come to a system with maximum privacy pro- tection. We conducted a second PIA to show the benefits to privacy protection that our POPCORN protocol provides compared to the original ISO/IEC 15118. We also describe a proof-of-concept implementation of our system based on a model of electric vehicle and charging station that shows the feasibility of our approach and allows a first preliminary analysis of performance and other issues

POPCORN: privacy-preserving charging for eMobility

Upcoming years will see a massive deployment of electric vehicles and, combined with this, of charging infrastructure. This will require protocols and standards that will control authentication, authorization, and billing of electric-vehicle charging. The ISO/IEC 15118 protocol that addresses the communication between the charging station and the vehicle is going to play an important role, at least in Europe. While it foresees security protection, there are no significant mech- anisms for privacy protection in place. In this paper, we in- vestigate the privacy protection of ISO/IEC 15118 and the surrounding charging and payment infrastructure by means of a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). Based on this we propose modular extensions of the protocol applying state- of-the-art Privacy Enhancing Technologies like anonymous credentials to come to a system with maximum privacy pro- tection. We conducted a second PIA to show the benefits to privacy protection that our POPCORN protocol provides compared to the original ISO/IEC 15118. We also describe a proof-of-concept implementation of our system based on a model of electric vehicle and charging station that shows the feasibility of our approach and allows a first preliminary analysis of performance and other issues

Cardiac sarcoidosis mimicking arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia

Isolated manifestation of sarcoidosis in the heart is very rare. The present work describes the case of a 41-year-old woman with ventricular tachycardia and severe symptoms of heart failure in June 2006. Clinical, MRI and echocardiographic findings revealed the diagnosis of an arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia. Due to the severe progression of the disease, cardiac transplantation was performed in August 2007. Histopathological examination of the explanted heart, however, revealed numerous non-necrotising granulomas with giant cells, lymphocytic infiltration and interstitial fibrosis, finally confirming the diagnosis of a myocardial sarcoidosis

Post-transplant multimorbidity index and quality of life in patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease—results from a joint evaluation of a prospective German multicenter validation trial and a cohort from the National Institutes of Health

Comorbidity after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT) impairs quality of life (QoL), physical functioning, and survival. We developed a new standardized measure to capture comorbidity after transplantation, the Posttransplant Multimorbidity Index (PTMI) in a cohort of 50 long term survivors. We subsequently evaluated the content validity and impact on survival and QoL within a multicenter trial, including 208 patients (pts) after alloHSCT, who were prospectively evaluated applying the FACT-BMT, the Human Activity Profile (HAP), the SF-36 v.2, PTMI and the Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation-Comorbidity Index (HCT-CI). The most prevalent comorbidities were compensated arterial hypertension (28.4%), ambulatory infections (25.5%), iron overload (23%), mild renal function impairment (20%), and osteoporosis (13%). Applying the PTMI 13% of patients had no comorbidity, while 37.1% had 1–3 comorbidities, 27.4% had 4–6 comorbidities, and 13.5% had > 6 comorbidities. Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGvHD) was significantly associated with the PTMI, while age and prior acute GvHD were not. In contrast, the HCT-CI was not associated with the presence of cGvHD. cGvHD was significantly associated with depression (r = 0.16), neurological disease (r = 0.21), osteoporosis (r = 0.18) and nonmelanoma skin cancer (r = 0.26). The PTMI demonstrated strong measurement properties and compared to the HCT-CI captured a wider range of comorbidities associated with cGvHD