Semi-supervised source extraction methodology for the nosological imaging of glioblastoma response to therapy.

Glioblastomas are one the most aggressive brain tumors. Their usual bad prognosis is due to the heterogeneity of their response to treatment and the lack of early and robust biomarkers to decide whether the tumor is responding to therapy. In this work, we propose the use of a semi-supervised methodology for source extraction to identify the sources representing tumor response to therapy, untreated/unresponsive tumor, and normal brain; and create nosological images of the response to therapy based on those sources. Fourteen mice were used to calculate the sources, and an independent test set of eight mice was used to further evaluate the proposed approach. The preliminary results obtained indicate that was possible to discriminate response and untreated/unresponsive areas of the tumor, and that the color-coded images allowed convenient tracking of response, especially throughout the course of therapy

CD8 (+)/V beta 5.1(+) large granular lymphocyte leukemia associated with autoimmune cytopenias, rheumatoid arthritis and vascular mammary skin lesions: successful response to 2‐deoxycoformycin.

Hematol Oncol. 2002 Jun;20(2):87-93. Cd8(+)/V beta 5.1(+) large granular lymphocyte leukemia associated with autoimmune cytopenias, rheumatoid arthritis and vascular mammary skin lesions: successful response to 2-deoxycoformycin. Granjo E, Lima M, Correia T, Lisboa C, Magalhães C, Cunha N, Teixeira MA, Queirós ML, Candeias J, Matutes E. Department of Clinical Haematology, Hospital Geral de São João, Porto, Portugal. [email protected] Abstract We report a case of CD8(+)/V beta 5.1(+) T-cell large granular lymphocyte leukemia (T-LGL leukemia) presenting with mild lymphocytosis, severe autoimmune neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, polyarthritis and recurrent infections with a chronic disease course. Immunophenotyping showed an expansion of CD3(+)/TCR alpha beta(+)/CD8(+bright)/CD11c(+)/CD57(-)/CD56(-) large granular lymphocytes with expression of the TCR-V beta 5.1 family. Southern blot analysis revealed a clonal rearrangement of the TCR beta-chain gene. Hematopoietic growth factors, high dose intravenous immunoglobulin and corticosteroids were of limited therapeutic benefit to correct the cytopenias. During the disease course, the patient developed a severe cutaneous leg ulcer and bilateral vascular mammary skin lesions. Treatment with 2-deoxycoformycin resulted in both clinical and hematological complete responses, including the resolution of vascular skin lesions. Combined immuno-staining with relevant T-cell associated and anti-TCR-V beta monoclonal antibodies proved to be a sensitive method to assess the therapeutic effect of 2-deoxycoformicin and to evaluate the residual disease. Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. PMID: 12111871 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLIN

'Diverse mobilities': second-generation Greek-Germans engage with the homeland as children and as adults

This paper is about the children of Greek labour migrants in Germany. We focus on two life-stages of ‘return’ for this second generation: as young children brought to Greece on holidays or sent back for longer periods, and as young adults exercising an independent ‘return’ migration. We draw both on literature and on our own field interviews with 50 first- and second-generation Greek-Germans. We find the practise of sending young children back to Greece to have been surprisingly widespread yet little documented. Adult relocation to the parental homeland takes place for five reasons: (i) a ‘search for self’; (ii) attraction of the Greek way of life; (iii) the actualisation of the ‘family narrative of return’ by the second, rather than the first, generation; (iv) life-stage events such as going to university or marrying a Greek; (v) escape from a traumatic event or oppressive family situation. Yet the return often brings difficulties, disillusionment, identity reappraisal, and a re-evaluation of the German context

A care bundle approach for prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia

AbstractImplementation of care bundles for prevention of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) and its impact on patient outcomes requires validation with long-term follow-up. A collaborative multi-centre cohort study was conducted in five Spanish adult intensive-care units. A care bundle approach based on five measures was implemented after a 3-month baseline period, and compliance, VAP rates, intensive-care unit length of stay (ICU LOS) and duration of mechanical ventilation were prospectively recorded for 16 months. There were 149 patients in the baseline period and 885 after the intervention. Compliance with all measures after intervention was <30% (264/885). In spite of this, VAP incidence decreased from 15.5% (23/149) to 11.7% (104/885), after the intervention (p <0.05). This reduction was significantly associated with hand hygiene (OR = 0.35), intra-cuff pressure control (OR = 0.21), oral hygiene (OR = 0.23) and sedation control (OR = 0.51). Use of the care bundle was associated with an incidence risk ratio of VAP of 0.78 (95% CI 0.15–0.99). We documented a reduction of median ICU LOS (from 10 to 6 days) and duration of mechanical ventilation (from 8 to 4 days) for patients with full bundle compliance (intervention period). Efforts on VAP prevention and outcome improvement should focus on achieving higher compliance in hand and oral hygiene, sedation protocols and intracuff pressure control

Specific heat and magnetic measurements in Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3, Nd0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and Ho0.5Ca0.5MnO3 samples

We studied the magnetization as a function of temperature and magnetic field in the compounds Nd0.5Sr0.5MnO3, Nd0.5Ca0.5MnO3 and Ho0.5Ca0.5MnO3. It allowed us to identify the ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic and charge ordering phases in each case. The intrinsic magnetic moments of Nd3+ and Ho3+ ions experienced a short range order at low temperatures. We also did specific heat measurements with applied magnetic fields between 0 and 9 T and temperatures between 2 and 300 K in all three samples. Close to the charge ordering and ferromagnetic transition temperatures the specific heat curves showed peaks superposed to the characteristic response of the lattice oscillations. Below 10 K the specific heat measurements evidenced a Schottky-like anomaly for all samples. However, we could not successfully fit the curves to either a two level nor a distribution of two-level Schottky anomaly. Our results indicated that the peak temperature of the Schottky anomaly was higher in the compounds with narrower conduction band.Comment: submitted to PR

A Data Science Methodology Based on Machine Learning Algorithms for Flood Severity Prediction

In this paper, a novel application of machine learning algorithms including Neural Network architecture is presented for the prediction of flood severity. Floods are considered natural disasters that cause wide scale devastation to areas affected. The phenomenon of flooding is commonly caused by runoff from rivers and precipitation, specifically during periods of extremely high rainfall. Due to the concerns surrounding global warming and extreme ecological effects, flooding is considered a serious problem that has a negative impact on infrastructure and humankind. This paper attempts to address the issue of flood mitigation through the presentation of a new flood dataset, comprising 2000 annotated flood events, where the severity of the outcome is categorised according to 3 target classes, demonstrating the respective severities of floods. The paper also presents various types of machine learning algorithms for predicting flood severity and classifying outcomes into three classes, normal, abnormal, and high-risk floods. Extensive research indicates that artificial intelligence algorithms could produce enhancement when utilised for the pre-processing of flood data. These approaches helped in acquiring better accuracy in the classification techniques. Neural network architectures generally produce good outcomes in many applications, however, our experiments results illustrated that random forest classifier yields the optimal results in comparison with the benchmarked models

Neutrophil to lymphocyte count ratio as an early indicator of blood stream infection in the emergency department

Objectives Early identification of patients with blood stream infection (BSI), especially bacteraemia, is important as prompt treatment improves outcome. The initial stages of severe infection may be characterised by increased numbers of neutrophils in the peripheral blood and depression of the lymphocyte count (LC). The neutrophil to LC ratio (NLCR) has previously been compared with conventional tests, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and white cell count (WCC), and has been proposed as a useful marker in the timely diagnosis of bacteraemia. Methods Data on consecutive adult patients presenting to the emergency department with pyrexial illness during the study period, November 2009 to October 2010, were analysed. The main outcome measure was positive blood cultures (bacteraemia). Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values and likelihood ratios were determined for NLCR, CRP, WCC, neutrophil count and LC. Results 1954 patients met the inclusion criteria. Blood cultures were positive in 270 patients, hence the prevalence of bacteraemia was 13.8%. With the exception of WCC, there were significant differences in the mean value for each marker between bacteraemic and non-bacteraemic patients (p<0.001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was highest for NLCR (0.72; 95% CI 0.69 to 0.75) and LC (0.71; 0.68 to 0.74) and lowest for WCC (0.54; 0.40 to 0.57). The sensitivity and specificity of NLCR for predicting bacteraemia were 70% (64% to 75%) and 57% (55% to 60%), respectively. Positive and negative predictive values for NLCR were 0.20 (0.18 to 0.23) and 0.92 (0.91 to 0.94), respectively. The positive likelihood ratio was 1.63 (1.48 to 1.79) and the negative likelihood ratio was 0.53 (0.44 to 0.64). Conclusions Although NLCR outperforms conventional markers of infection, it is insufficient in itself to guide clinical management of patients with suspected BSI, and it offers no advantage over LC. However, it may offer some diagnostic utility when taken into account as part of the overall assessment