Ipilimumab activity in advanced uveal melanoma: A pooled analysis

Background Uveal Melanoma is a rare tumour that displays different clinical behavior and molecular features compared with cutaneous melanoma. It is generally resistant to systemic therapy and there is no current standard effective therapy to treat patients with advanced disease. Patients and methods We searched Medline, PubMed, EMBASE and major oncology conference abstracts from the past 5 years to identify relevant studies evaluating ipilimumab monotherapy in uveal melanoma. Data were extracted on ipilimumab dose, sample size, Objective Response Rate (ORR), Progression Free Survival (PFS), median Overall Survival (mOS), Disease Control Rate (DCR), 1 year Overall Survival (1yrOS) and 2 year Overall Survival (2yrOS). Results Nine studies were included in this study including Phase II clinical trials (n = 2), Expanded Access Programs (EAP) (n = 4) and retrospective studies (n = 3). Cases were a mix of pre-treated and treatment-naïve patients. Reported mOS ranged from 5.2-28 months (median: 9.3 months), and reported 1yrOS ranged between 4.5-65%. Calculated compound ORR was 3.4%, and compound DCR was 36%. Conclusion Ipilimumab has limited clinical activity in advanced uveal melanoma. Further research is needed to identify more effective systemic therapies for management of these patients

A survey on sentiment analysis in Urdu: A resource-poor language

© 2020 Background/introduction: The dawn of the internet opened the doors to the easy and widespread sharing of information on subject matters such as products, services, events and political opinions. While the volume of studies conducted on sentiment analysis is rapidly expanding, these studies mostly address English language concerns. The primary goal of this study is to present state-of-art survey for identifying the progress and shortcomings saddling Urdu sentiment analysis and propose rectifications. Methods: We described the advancements made thus far in this area by categorising the studies along three dimensions, namely: text pre-processing lexical resources and sentiment classification. These pre-processing operations include word segmentation, text cleaning, spell checking and part-of-speech tagging. An evaluation of sophisticated lexical resources including corpuses and lexicons was carried out, and investigations were conducted on sentiment analysis constructs such as opinion words, modifiers, negations. Results and conclusions: Performance is reported for each of the reviewed study. Based on experimental results and proposals forwarded through this paper provides the groundwork for further studies on Urdu sentiment analysis

SHORT TERM OUTCOME OF PATIENTS WITH HEPATOPANCREATOBILIARY MALIGNANCIES TREATED IN A MULTIDISCIPLINARY HEPATOBILIARY UNIT IN A TERTIARY REFERRAL CENTER

Purpose: Specialisation in hepatopancreatobiliary (HPB) surgery has evolved over the past few decades based on better understanding of the biology and the behaviour of the diseases. In this review from a specialised HPB service, we aim to provide an overview of the HPB oncological cases managed in a tertiary care cancer hospital. Methods: All cases of HPB malignancies treated in our hospital between October 2014 and September 2015 were included in the study. Clinical findings, operative details and short-term post-operative outcomes were assessed from a prospectively managed database. Results: A total of 65 oncological procedures were performed over 1 year. These included 23 hepatic resections, 27 pancreaticoduodenectomies, 5 radical surgeries for gallbladder cancer, 2 distal pancreatectomy and 8 nephrectomies with exploration of the inferior vena cava. One patient successfully underwent Associated Liver Partition with Portal vein ligation and staged hepatectomy (ALPPS Procedure), which to our knowledge was the rst ALPPS procedure carried out in Pakistan. Conclusion: The short-term experience of patients managed in specialised HPB unit has shown good outcomes.There is a need for establishing HPB units in most tertiary care hospitals in the country. Key words: Associated liver partition with portal vein ligation and staged hepatectomy procedure, hepatic resections, hepatopancreatobiliary surgery, pancreaticoduodenectomy

Effect of different caloric values on the recovery of marasmic children

The effect of diets of different caloric values on the recovery of marasmic children was studied for 3 weeks in Pakistan. Sixty marasmic children of less than 5 years age were grouped in to 4; each group was having 15 children. For each group, two diets, one for early recovery and the other for catch up growth, were prepared from fresh buffalo milk, banana, soybean oil and glucose. The basal (reference) and test diets for early recovery and catch up growth were having constant protein and variable amount of calories. The basal diets and test diets for early recovery and catch up growth were assigned to group 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively. The early recovery diets were fed for the first 5 days and the catch up growth diets were fed for the remaining period. The recovery of the children was measured in terms of weight gain and weight was taken weekly. The combined average intake/day of the diets was calculated. The average protein intake of groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 were 2.4 ± 0.6, 2.1 ± 0.4, 2.3 ± 1.0 and 2.6 ± 1.0 g/kg body weight/day respectively. The average caloric intake of groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 were 128 ± 32, 129 ± 30, 150 ± 63 and 185 ± 71 Kcal/Kg body weight/day respectively. Children of all the groups gained weight but the groups of test diets gained more weight than the group of basal diet. Group 3 of test diets gained significantly (P< 0.05) more weight than group 1 of basal diet. The data revealed that the diet that provided 2.3 ± 1.0 g protein and 153 ± 63 Kcal/Kg body weight /day was better for the recovery of marasmic children

Gut microbiota diversity and composition in predicting immunotherapy response and immunotherapy-related colitis in melanoma patients: A systematic review

Background: Gut microbiome (GM) composition and diversity have recently been studied as a biomarker of response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy (ICB) and of ICB-related colitis. Aim: To conduct a systematic review on the role of GM composition and diversity in predicting response and colitis in patients with melanoma treated with ICB. Methods: The review protocol was registered in PROSPERO: CRD42021228018. From a total of 300 studies, nine studies met inclusion criteria. Two studies were phase I clinical trials, while the remainder were prospective observational studies. All but one study has moderate risk of bias. In addition, we conducted a relevant search by Reference Citation Analysis (RCA) (https://www.referencecitationanalysis.com). Results: Fecal samples enriched in Firmicutes phylum were associated with good response to ICB, whereas the Bacteroidales family was associated with poor response to ICB. Samples with greater GM diversity were associated with more favorable response to ICB [hazard ratio (HR) = 3.57, 95% confidence interval = 1.02-12.52, P \u3c 0.05]. Fecal samples with a higher abundance in Firmicutes were more susceptible to ICB-related colitis (P \u3c 0.01) whereas samples enriched in Bacteroidetes were more resistant to ICB-related colitis (P \u3c 0.05). Overall, there was limited concordance in the organisms in the GM identified to be associated with response to ICB, and studies evaluating GM diversity showed conflicting results. Conclusion: This highlights the need for further prospective studies to confirm whether the GM could be used as a biomarker and potential intervention to modulate ICB response in melanoma patients

A study of perturbations in linear and circular polarized antennas in close proximity to the human body and a dielectric liquid filled phantom at 1.8 GHz

In the design and synthesis of wearable antennas isolation distance from the body is a critical parameter. This paper deals with the comparison of perturbations caused to the matching of simple linear and circular polarized patch antennas due to the close proximity of a human torso and rectangular box phantom filled with muscle simulating liquid at 1.8GHz. The isolated variable is return loss (S11). Results show that both linear and circularly polarized antennas produce an optimal return loss closer to the surface of a typical phantom than the back of a human volunteer

Sustainable and Resilient Smart Water Grids: A Solution for Developing Countries

According to a United Nations report, the world population will increase from 7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. Further, the water stress level is more than 70% in 22 countries while in another 31 countries it is between 25% and 70%. More than 2 billion people live in these 53 countries which are all underdeveloped. Water use has increased by 1% per year since the 1980s, so global demand is expected to rise by 30% by 2050. Thus, efficient water grid management is imperative to ensure there is sufficient water for the future. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be used to create smart water grids to optimize water distribution, reduce waste and leakage, and resolve quality and overuse issues. In this work, a low cost, real-time, reliable and sustainable IoT based solution called SmartTubewell is proposed for smart water grid management. It is composed of two components, a sensor node installed at tube wells and an application layer on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for data analysis, storage and processing. The sensor node is based on a Raspberry Pi with integrated current and voltage sensors and a local database. The sensor data is transmitted to AWS using a cellular (GPRS) network. A comparison between the proposed system and SCADA is presented which shows that SmartTubewell has a much lower cost. A field test with multiple tube wells in Peshawar, Pakistan indicates that this is a suitable solution for developing countries

A study of perturbations in linear and circular polarized antennas in close proximity to the human body and dielectric liquid filled rectangular and a cylindrical phantom at 1.8 GHz

In the design and synthesis of wearable antennas isolation distance from the body is a critical parameter. This paper deals with the comparison of perturbations caused to the matching of simple linear and circular polarized patch antennas due to the close proximity of a human torso and rectangular box and cylindrical phantoms filled with muscle simulating liquid at 1.8GHz. The isolated variable is return loss, S11(dB). Results show that at these frequencies a cylindrical phantom resembles the body more closely than a rectangular phantom

Fine-grained sentiment analysis for measuring customer satisfaction using an extended set of fuzzy linguistic hedges

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. In recent years, the boom in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has brought people together for the sharing of opinions, sentiments, emotions, and experiences about products, events, politics, and other topics. In particular, sentiment-based applications are growing in popularity among individuals and businesses for the making of purchase decisions. Fuzzy-based sentiment analysis aims at classifying customer sentiment at a fine-grained level. This study deals with the development of a fuzzy-based sentiment analysis by extending fuzzy hedges and rule-sets for a more efficient classification of customer sentiment and satisfaction. Prior studies have used a limited number of linguistic hedges and polarity classes in their rule-sets, resulting in the degraded efficiency of their fuzzy-based sentiment analysis systems. The proposed analysis of the current study classifies customer reviews using fuzzy linguistic hedges and an extended rule-set with seven sentiment analysis classes, namely extremely positive, very positive, positive, neutral, negative, very negative, and extremely negative. Then, a fuzzy logic system is applied to measure customer satisfaction at a fine-grained level. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed analysis has an improved performance over the baseline works