A Curriculum Mining Method for Clustering Study Modules and Assessing their Uniqueness

Curriculum development can pursue several pedagogical goals. One is to design a curriculum that is attractive in comparison with other competing universities. To contribute to such a comparative assessment and, thereby, to the targeted development of curricula, the idea of a curriculum mining method is presented. Here, study modules are divided into homogeneous groups by means of a document clustering procedure. The generated knowledge improves the comparative assessment of curricula in two ways: First, depending on the context, it can be used to assess either the extent of the uniqueness of a module or its consecutiveness with other modules. Second, by supplementing the modules with metadata (e.g., region), a competitive analysis is provided in terms of modules offered by competing institutions. An exemplary case study demonstrates how this improves the evaluation of a specific IS curriculum. In conclusion, the current limitations and next steps of the research project are summarized

Nitric oxide and long-term outcomes after kidney transplantation:Results of the TransplantLines cohort study

Impaired endogenous nitric oxide (NO) production may contribute to graft failure and premature mortality in kidney transplant recipients (KTR). We investigated potential associations of 24-h urinary NOx (NO3- + NO2-) excretion (uNOx) with long-term outcomes. uNOx was determined by HPLC and GC-MS in 698 KTR and in 132 kidney donors before and after donation. Additionally, we measured urinary nitroso species (RXNO) by gas-phase chemiluminescence. Median uNOx was lower in KTR compared to kidney donors (688 [393-1076] vs. 1301 [868-1863] before donation and 1312 [982-1853] μmol/24 h after donation, P < 0.001). During median follow-up of 5.4 [4.8-6.1] years, 150 KTR died (61 due to cardiovascular disease) and 83 experienced graft failure. uNOx was inversely associated with all-cause mortality (HR per doubling of uNOx: 0.84 [95% CI 0.75-0.93], P < 0.001) and cardiovascular mortality (HR 0.78 [95% CI 0.67-0.92], P = 0.002). The association of uNOx with graft failure was lost when adjusted for renal function (HR per doubling of uNOx: 0.89 [95% CI 0.76-1.05], P = 0.17). There were no significant associations of urinary RXNO with outcomes. Our study suggests that KTR have lower NO production than healthy subjects and that lower uNOx is associated with a higher risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality

Relationship between common objective functions, idle time and waiting time in permutation flow shop scheduling

This paper focuses on two components of idle time and waiting time, namely core idle time, ∑CITi, and core waiting time, ∑CWTj. Both measures are relevant indicators of the efficiency of production systems, since they are directly related to machine utilization and to the flow of jobs, and they can be used as scheduling criteria if no-idle and no-wait constraints do not have to be strictly enforced. However, they have been scarcely considered in the literature, and their relationship with other objectives in the permutation flowshop literature (makespan or Cmax and total completion time or ∑Cj), has not been studied. To bridge this gap, the alignment between ∑CITi and ∑CWTj, and the classical scheduling criteria is studied. First, it is shown that ∑CWTj (∑CITi) is tantamount to ∑Cj (Cmax) for some special cases. Secondly, the general case with randomly generated processing times is computationally analysed using exact methods. Results show alignment between ∑CWTj and ∑Cj and between ∑CITi and Cmax, being the alignment stronger for the first pair of objectives. Based on the analysis, conclusions about the possibilities for the permutation flowshop problem with these new objectives are established.Ministerio de Ciencia en Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Nitric oxide and long-term outcomes after kidney transplantation: results of the TransplantLines cohort study

Impaired endogenous nitric oxide (NO) production may contribute to graft failure and premature mortality in kidney transplant recipients (KTR). We investigated potential associations of 24-h urinary NOx (NO3- + NO2-) excretion (uNOx) with long-term outcomes. uNOx was determined by HPLC and GC-MS in 698 KTR and in 132 kidney donors before and after donation. Additionally, we measured urinary nitroso species (RXNO) by gas-phase chemiluminescence. Median uNOx was lower in KTR compared to kidney donors (688 [393-1076] vs. 1301 [868-1863] before donation and 1312 [982-1853] μmol/24h after donation, P &lt; 0.001). During median follow-up of 5.4 [4.8-6.1] years, 150 KTR died (61 due to cardiovascular disease) and 83 experienced graft failure. uNOx was inversely associated with all-cause mortality (HR per doubling of uNOx: 0.84 [95% CI 0.75-0.93], P &lt; 0.001) and cardiovascular mortality (HR 0.78 [95% CI 0.67-0.92], P = 0.002). The association of uNOx with graft failure was lost when adjusted for renal function (HR per doubling of uNOx: 0.89 [95% CI 0.76-1.05], P = 0.17). There were no significant associations of urinary RXNO with outcomes. Our study suggests that KTR have lower NO production than healthy subjects and that lower uNOx is associated with a higher risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.</p