propnet: A Knowledge Graph for Materials Science

Discovering the ideal material for a new application involves determining its numerous properties, such as electronic, mechanical, or thermodynamic, to match those of its desired application. The rise of high-throughput computation has meant that large databases of material properties are now accessible to scientists. However, these databases contain far more information than might appear at first glance, since many relationships exist in the materials science literature to derive, or at least approximate, additional properties. propnet is a new computational framework designed to help scientists to automatically calculate additional information from their datasets. It does this by constructing a network graph of relationships between different materials properties and traversing this graph. Initially, propnet contains a catalog of over 100 property relationships but the hope is for this to expand significantly in the future, and contributions from the community are welcomed

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Paraneoplastic syndromes in pancreatic cancer.

Paraneoplastic syndromes are defined as signs and symptoms which presentdistant to the site of primary cancer or metastases. However, they are closelyassociated with the malignant disease and comprise metabolic, dystrophic, and/ordegenerative symptoms, which are consequences of humoral or hormonal factors. The clinical symptoms vary widely and include systemic and organ-specificmanifestations. In some cases, these can become the major clinical problems determining survival. Systemic manifestations include frequent symptoms ofpancreatic cancer patients such as fever and cachexia. Organ-specific symptomsmay represent as cutaneous, neurological, hematological, or endocrine symptoms. A special focus of this chapter is on diabetes mellitus associated withpancreatic tumors. The best-understood syndromes result from tumor productionof biologically active substances or, to a lesser extent, from autoimmune phenomena. Biological active agents may promote the growth of the tumor directly. In turn, growth-promoting agents of this type may become the focus of newapproaches to anticancer treatment. After successful treatment of the underlyingmalignant disease, paraneoplastic symptoms may resolve completely. Thus, earlyrecognition of paraneoplastic syndromes is very important in the management ofpatients with pancreatic cancer. In the following chapter, the most commonparaneoplastic syndromes are described in detail