Ontology Based Strategies for Supporting Communication within Social Networks

In this paper, ontology based dialogue strategies are presented in connection with the concept of communicative images. Communicative images are graphical objects integrated with a dialogue interface and linked to an associated knowledge database which stores the semantics of the objects depicted. The relevant pieces of information can be linked to the external knowledge distributed in a social network. Exploiting a formal ontology approach facilitates the process of deriving information from relevant texts that can be found in the social network and it simultaneously forms a suitable framework for supporting dialogue communication in natural language. This approach is discussed and illustrated with various examples in this paper

Care of dying patients in hospital Palliative care teams have helped.

EDITOR, - It is disappointing that Mina Mills and colleagues make no comment in their paper on the care of dying patients in hospital about changes that may have led to improvements in the past decade.1 Their study showed a lack of nursing care for dying patients, but whether this poor standard of care was applied to all patients admitted to hospitals in the study is not clear. For example, what was the standard of care for patients with stroke or other chronic disability? A similar study performed 10 years after the original would have been useful in showing any improvements or otherwise in practice. Nursing care may still be a problem, but perhaps this reflects general attitudes and staffing levels rather than a specific failure to address the needs of dying patients

Eosinophils: Biological properties and role in health and disease

Eosinophils are pleiotropic multifunctional leukocytes involved in initiation and propagation of diverse inflammatory responses, as well as modulators of innate and adaptive immunity. In this review, the biology of eosinophils is summarized, focusing on transcriptional regulation of eosinophil differentiation, characterization of the growing properties of eosinophil granule proteins, surface proteins and pleiotropic mediators, and molecular mechanisms of eosinophil degranulation. New views on the role of eosinophils in homeostatic function are examined, including developmental biology and innate and adaptive immunity (as well as their interaction with mast cells and T cells) and their proposed role in disease processes including infections, asthma, and gastrointestinal disorders. Finally, strategies for targeted therapeutic intervention in eosinophil-mediated mucosal diseases are conceptualized