2,559 research outputs found
Crowd Sourced Semantic Enrichment (CroSSE) for knowledge driven querying of digital resources
Today, most information sources provide factual, objective knowledge, but they fail to capture personalized contextual knowledge which could be used to enrich the available factual data and contribute to their interpretation, in the context of the knowledge of the user who queries the system. This would require a knowledge framework which can accommodate both objective data and seman-
tic enrichments that capture user provided knowledge associated to the factual data in the database. Unfortunately, most conventional DBMSs lack the flexibilities necessary (a) to prevent the data and metadata, evolve quickly with changing application requirements and (b) to capture user-provided and/or crowdsourced data and knowledge for more effective decision support. In this paper, we present CrowdSourced Semantic Enrichment (CroSSE) knowledge framework which al-
lows traditional databases and semantic enrichment modules to coexist. CroSSE provides a novel Semantically Enriched SQL (SESQL) language to enrich SQL queries with information from a knowledge base containing semantic annotations.
We describe CroSSE and SESQL with examples taken from our SmartGround EU project
Contamination of a high-cell-density continuous bioreactor
Continuous fermentations were carried out
with a recombinant flocculent Saccharomyces cerevisiae
strain in an airlift bioreactor. Once operating under
steady state at a dilution rate of 0.45 hâ1, the bioreactor
was contaminated with Escherichia coli cells. The faster
growing E. coli strain was washed out of the bioreactor
and the recombinant, slower growing flocculating S. cerevisiae
strain remained as the only species detected in
the bioreactor. Flocculation, besides allowing for the realization
of high-cell-density systems with corresponding
unusual high productivity, may be used as a selective
property for controlling some contamination problems
associated with prolonged continuous operation.Fundação para a CiĂȘncia e Tecnologia -PRAXIS XXI/BD/11306/97
Klippel-Feil syndrome. When using fiberoptic bronchoscopy guide, a case report
Klippel-Feil syndrome is a rare disease with congenital musculoskeletal condition characterized by faulty segmentation of cervical vertebrae and consists of cervical vertebra fusions with limitation of head movements, short neck and low posterior hairline. In several cases the syndrome is associated with cardiovascular malformations. Patients affected by Klippel-Feil syndrome could be an anesthetic challenge, not only during cardiac surgery. We are presenting a case of Klippel-Feil Syndrome in an adult patient, who was operated on for a pulmonary valve insufficiency in a previously corrected Tetralogy of Fallot Syndrome. We are going to discuss the features of this rare syndrome
Reproductive activity in sheep with different lambing period treated with melatonin in April
The object was to evaluate the effect of melatonin treatment on the advance in April of the reproductive resumption in Sarda breed sheep with different lambing period. For the research two farms, located in North Sardinia between 39° and 40° N, were chosen. In each farm, 120 lactating ewes were selected: 30 lambed between October 20th and November 20th (group 1); 30 lambed between December 1st and 30th (group 2); 30 lambed between January 1st and 30th; 30 lambed between February 1st and 28th (group 4). In each farm, each group of 30 animals was divided into two subgroups of 15 animals (M and C). On April 1st, in each farm, the animals of the M subgroups were treated with a implant containing 18 mg melatonin. The subgroups C were kept as control. The lambing dates and the number of newborn lambs were recorded until 220 days after ram introduction. In treated animals greatest fertility (P<0.01) and lowest distance in days from male introduction to lambing (P<0.01) were recorded. The best reproductive performances were found in the group 1 and 2 compared to the other two groups (P<0.01).The present research shows that melatonin treatment should be made 3 or 4 months after lambing, in order to obtain optimal results
Key role of MEK/ERK pathway in sustaining tumorigenicity and in vitro radioresistance of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma stem-like cell population
The identification of signaling pathways that affect the cancer stem-like phenotype may provide insights into therapeutic targets for combating embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the MEK/ERK pathway in controlling the cancer stem-like phenotype using a model of rhabdospheres derived from the embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma cell line (RD)
Coinage Metal Compounds With 4-Methoxy-Diphenylphosphane Benzoate Ligand Inhibit Female Cancer Cell Growth
In the continuous effort to find new metal-based compounds as alternatives to platinum related
anticancer drugs, 11th group metal phosphane compounds have been thoroughly considered. Tris-arylphosphane metal derivatives have been extensively
considered heteroleptic metal compounds exhibiting remarkable cytotoxic activities.
Functional groups in the aryl moieties modulate the activity reinforcing or eliminating it.
Previous works have highlighted that the presence of hydrophilic groups in the phosphane
ligands, such as COOH or OH, hampers the anticancer activity of gold azolate/PPh3
compounds. To increase the polarity of the triarylphosphane ligand without affecting the
activity, we considered the preparation of esters starting from the 4-diphenylphosphanebenzoic
acid. The resulting phosphanes are poorer donators than the PPh3, leading to
poly-phosphane M(I) compounds, and they exhibit intense emissive properties. A
homologous series of L3MX-type compounds (where M = Au and X = Cl, M = Cu and
X = BF4, and M = Ag and X = PF6) were obtained with the 4-methoxy-diphenylphosphane
benzoate. The homologous metal compounds have been characterized by analytical and
spectroscopic methods and, remarkably, their formation was associated with high
frequencies of 31P NMR chemical shift variations (5â35 ppm in CDCl3). The new
complexes and the ligand were evaluated on sensitive and cisplatin-resistant human
tumor cell lines. The ligand is ineffective on cells while the complexes exert a notable
antiproliferative effect. The homologous series of the L3MX complexes were able to
significantly reduce the cell viability of human triple-negative breast cancer cells (MDAMB-
231), representing the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer, and of ovarian
carcinoma (A2780). Among these coinage metal compounds, L3AgPF6 results the most
interesting, showing the lowest GI50 values in all cell lines. Interestingly, this silver complex
is more cytotoxic than cisplatin, taken as a reference drug. The investigation of the
mechanism of action of L3AgPF6 in A2780 cells highlighted the induction of the apoptotic
pathway, the depolarization of the mitochondrial inner membrane, and a significant
accumulation in cells
Risky behaviours among university students in Italy
Background. The use of psychoactive substances is one of the most important ublic health issues. Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs are among the top risk factors for illhealth defined by World Health Organisation. The risky behaviours acquired in teenage can be magnified or decreased during university when a person starts   having more awareness about the importance of own wellness. This paper describes the results of the project âSportello Salute Giovaniâ (âYouth Health Information Deskâ) with respect to risky behaviours in a large sample of Italian university  students. Materials and methods. 18 questions of the survey âSportello Salute Giovaniâ dealing with risky behaviors, the use of psychoactive substances such as tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs were included. Absolute and relative frequencies were calculated. Besides, chisquare test were used to test the differences in sex, age class and socio-economic status. Results. About 24% of the interviewed students currently smokes. 89% and 42.2% respectively drinks at least rarely or weekly beer, wine or spirits. About 40% of students smoked at least a joint and about 2% used other drugs (mostly cocaine). Conclusion. The âSportello Salute Giovaniâ survey suggests that the frequency of risky behaviours in Italian university students is not reassuring, although they should be aware about the negative consequences on their and others health because of their educational level
Radiomic and Artificial Intelligence Analysis with Textural Metrics, Morphological and Dynamic Perfusion Features Extracted by Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Classification of Breast Lesions
The aim of the study was to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of textural, morpho- logical and dynamic features, extracted by dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) images, by carrying out univariate and multivariate statistical analyses including artificial intelligence approaches. Methods: In total, 85 patients with known breast lesion were enrolled in this retrospective study according to regulations issued by the local Institutional Review Board. All patients underwent DCE-MRI examination. The reference standard was pathology from a surgical specimen for malignant lesions and pathology from a surgical specimen or fine needle aspiration cytology, core or Tru-Cut needle biopsy for benign lesions. In total, 91 samples of 85 patients were ana- lyzed. Furthermore, 48 textural metrics, 15 morphological and 81 dynamic parameters were extracted by manually segmenting regions of interest. Statistical analyses including univariate and multivari- ate approaches were performed: non-parametric WilcoxonâMannâWhitney test; receiver operating characteristic (ROC), linear classifier (LDA), decision tree (DT), k-nearest neighbors (KNN), and support vector machine (SVM) were utilized. A balancing approach and feature selection methods were used. Results: The univariate analysis showed low accuracy and area under the curve (AUC) for all considered features. Instead, in the multivariate textural analysis, the best performance (accuracy (ACC) = 0.78; AUC = 0.78) was reached with all 48 metrics and an LDA trained with balanced data. The best performance (ACC = 0.75; AUC = 0.80) using morphological features was reached with an SVM trained with 10-fold cross-variation (CV) and balanced data (with adaptive synthetic (ADASYN) function) and a subset of five robust morphological features (circularity, rectangularity, sphericity, gleaning and surface). The best performance (ACC = 0.82; AUC = 0.83) using dynamic features was reached with a trained SVM and balanced data (with ADASYN function). Conclusion: Multivariate analyses using pattern recognition approaches, including all morphological, textural and dynamic features, optimized by adaptive synthetic sampling and feature selection operations obtained the best results and showed the best performance in the discrimination of benign and malignant lesions
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