34 research outputs found
The LMOOC4SLAV Project: Academic Discourse for Academic Mobility
studies in another country using a second language (L2) they know with a proficiency level B1/B2. A
path to facilitate a successful mobility exchange, as well as students' inclusion in a multicultural and
multilingual environment through innovative learning and teaching practices offering educational models
to modernize and internationalize the higher education system, and to place European training
experiences on the global training scene through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are some of
the main priorities of the LMOOC4Slav - Romance Languages for Slavic-speaking University Students,
an Erasmus+ funded project (2021-1-IT02-KA220-HED-000027501).
Although not exclusively, its primary target audience consists of university students, mainly with Slavic
languages as their mother tongue (L1), learning Romance languages, specifically Italian and
Portuguese, who intend to do a mobility period at a university in Portugal or Italy, and also native Slavicspeaking
teachers who teach Portuguese and Italian as L2 to those students.
The project centres around the production of two Language MOOCS (LMOOCs), one for Italian and the
other for Portuguese, organised in six modules. The aim is to promote students' development of
linguistic fluency in academic contexts and access to authentic academic situations and learning tools
to enhance their ability to learn how to learn. It also focuses on developing a repertoire of Open
Educational Resources (OERs) intended for Slavic language teachers and students of Portuguese and
Italian as L2. These resources will allow their reuse in different learning environments, guided by an
online pedagogical guide for integrating LMOOCs and OERs. The project outputs will remain available
in an open-source repository after its end ensuring its sustainability
Towards a Deeper Understanding of Sleep Stages through their Representation in the Latent Space of Variational Autoencoders
Artificial neural networks show great success in sleep stage classification, with an accuracy comparable to human scoring. While their ability to learn from labelled electroencephalography (EEG) signals is widely researched, the underlying learning processes remain unexplored. Variational autoencoders can capture the underlying meaning of data by encoding it into a low-dimensional space. Regularizing this space furthermore enables the generation of realistic representations of data from latent space samples. We aimed to show that this model is able to generate realistic sleep EEG. In addition, the generated sequences from different areas of the latent space are shown to have inherent meaning. The current results show the potential of variational autoencoders in understanding sleep EEG data from the perspective of unsupervised machine learning
High tumor mutation burden predicts favorable outcome among patients with aggressive histological subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma : A population-based single-institution study
Objectives: Tumor mutation burden (TMB) is an emerging predictive cancer biomarker. Few studies have addressed the prognostic role of TMB in non-small cell lung carcinoma, with conflicting results. Moreover, the association of TMB with different histological subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma has hitherto not been systematically evaluated. Here we studied the prognostic value of TMB and its distribution in different histological subtypes of lung adenocarcinomas in a retrospective cohort using the most recent updated classification guidelines. Materials and methods: 176 surgically resected stage I-IV lung adenocarcinomas were histologically reclassified according to WHO 2015 guidelines. A modified classification subdividing the acinar subtype into classic acinar, complex glandular and cribriform subtypes was further applied and potentially prognostic histopathological characteristics such as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were evaluated. 148 patients with stage I-III tumors and complete follow-up data were included in the survival analyses. TMB was determined by a commercial next generation sequencing panel from 131 tumors, out of which 105 had survival data available. Results: Predominant micropapillary, solid and complex glandular as well as nonpredominant cribriform histological subtypes were associated with significantly shorter survival. High TMB concentrated in micropapillary, solid and acinar predominant subtypes. Interestingly, TMB >= 14 mutations/MB conferred a stage- and histology-independent survival benefit compared to TMB <14 in multivariable analysis for overall (HR 0.284, 95% CI 0.14-0.59, P=0.001) and disease-specific survival (HR 0.213, 95% CI 0.08-0.56, P=0.002). Conclusion: TMB was an independent biomarker of favorable prognosis in our cohort of lung adenocarcinoma despite being associated with predominant histological subtypes considered aggressive.Peer reviewe
Beat-to-beat cardiac repolarization lability increases during hypoxemia and arousals in obstructive sleep apnea patients
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with the progression of cardiovascular diseases, arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death (SCD). However, the acute impacts of OSA and its consequences on heart function are not yet fully elucidated. We hypothesized that desaturation events acutely destabilize ventricular repolarization, and the presence of accompanying arousals magnifies this destabilization. Ventricular repolarization lability measures, comprising heart rate corrected QT (QTc), short-time-variability of QT (STVQT), and QT variability index (QTVI), were calculated before, during, and after 20,955 desaturations from lead II electrocardiography signals of 492 patients with suspected OSA (52% men). Variations in repolarization parameters were assessed during and after desaturations, both with and without accompanying arousals, and groupwise comparisons were performed based on desaturation duration and depth. Regression analyses were used to investigate the influence of confounding factors, comorbidities, and medications. The standard deviation (SD) of QT, mean QTc, SDQTc, and STVQT increased significantly (P < 0.01), whereas QTVI decreased (P < 0.01) during and after desaturations. The changes in SDQT, mean QTc, SDQTc, and QTVI were significantly amplified (P < 0.01) in the presence of accompanying arousals. Desaturation depth was an independent predictor of increased SDQTc (β = 0.405, P < 0.01), STVQT (β = 0.151, P < 0.01), and QTVI (β = 0.009, P < 0.01) during desaturation. Desaturations cause acute changes in ventricular repolarization, with deeper desaturations and accompanying arousals independently contributing to increased ventricular repolarization lability. This may partially explain the increased risk of arrhythmias and SCD in patients with OSA, especially when the OSA phenotype includes high hypoxic load and fragmented sleep
Formin Proteins FHOD1 and INF2 in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Association With Basal Markers and Functional Activities
Basal-like breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer with limited treatment options. The subgroup can be identified immunohistochemically, by lack of hormone receptor expression combined with expression of basal markers such as CK5/6 and/or epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). In vitro, several regulators of the actin cytoskeleton are essential for efficient invasion of basal-like breast cancer cell lines. Whether these proteins are expressed in vivo determines the applicability of these findings in clinical settings. The actin-regulating formin protein FHOD1 participates in invasion of the triple-negative breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231. Here, we measure the expression of FHOD1 protein in clinical triple-negative breast cancers by using immunohistochemistry and further characterize the expression of another formin protein, INF2. We report that basal-like breast cancers frequently overexpress formin proteins FHOD1 and INF2. In cell studies using basal-like breast cancer cell lines, we show that knockdown of FHOD1 or INF2 interferes with very similar processes: maintenance of cell shape, migration, invasion, and proliferation. Inhibition of EGFR, PI3K, or mitogen-activated protein kinase activity does not alter the expression of FHOD1 and INF2 in these cell lines. We conclude that the experimental studies on these formins have implications in the clinical behavior of basal-like breast cancer.</p
Gastric cancer : immunohistochemical classification of molecular subtypes and their association with clinicopathological characteristics
Gastric cancer is traditionally divided into intestinal and diffuse histological subtypes, but recent molecular analyses have led to novel classification proposals based on genomic alterations. While the intestinal- and diffuse-type tumours are distinguishable from each other at the molecular level, intestinal-type tumours have more diverse molecular profile. The technology required for comprehensive molecular analysis is expensive and not applicable for routine clinical diagnostics. In this study, we have used immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridisation in molecular classification of gastric adenocarcinomas with an emphasis on the intestinal subtype. A tissue microarray consisting of 244 gastric adenocarcinomas was constructed, and the tumours were divided into four subgroups based on the presence of Epstein-Barr virus, TP53 aberrations and microsatellite instability. The intestinal- and diffuse-type tumours were separately examined. The distribution of EGFR and HER2 gene amplifications was studied in the intestinal-type tumours. Epstein-Barr virus positive intestinal-type tumours were more common in male patients (p = 0.035) and most often found in the gastric corpus (p = 0.011). The majority of the intestinal-type tumours with TP53 aberrations were proximally located (p = 0.010). All tumours with microsatellite instability showed intestinal-type histology (p = 0.017) and were associated with increased overall survival both in the univariate (p = 0.040) and multivariate analysis (p = 0.015). In conclusion, this study shows that gastric adenocarcinomas can be classified into biologically and clinically different subgroups by using a simple method also applicable for clinical diagnostics.Peer reviewe
Gastric cancer: immunohistochemical classification of molecular subtypes and their association with clinicopathological characteristics
Gastric cancer is traditionally divided into intestinal and diffuse
histological subtypes, but recent molecular analyses have led to novel
classification proposals based on genomic alterations. While the
intestinal- and diffuse-type tumours are distinguishable from each other
at the molecular level, intestinal-type tumours have more diverse
molecular profile. The technology required for comprehensive molecular
analysis is expensive and not applicable for routine clinical
diagnostics. In this study, we have used immunohistochemistry and in
situ hybridisation in molecular classification of gastric
adenocarcinomas with an emphasis on the intestinal subtype. A tissue
microarray consisting of 244 gastric adenocarcinomas was constructed,
and the tumours were divided into four subgroups based on the presence
of Epstein-Barr virus, TP53 aberrations and microsatellite instability.
The intestinal- and diffuse-type tumours were separately examined. The
distribution of EGFR and HER2 gene amplifications was studied in the
intestinal-type tumours. Epstein-Barr virus positive intestinal-type
tumours were more common in male patients (p = 0.035) and most often
found in the gastric corpus (p = 0.011). The majority of the
intestinal-type tumours with TP53 aberrations were proximally located
(p = 0.010). All tumours with microsatellite instability showed
intestinal-type histology (p = 0.017) and were associated with increased
overall survival both in the univariate (p = 0.040) and multivariate
analysis (p = 0.015). In conclusion, this study shows that gastric
adenocarcinomas can be classified into biologically and clinically
different subgroups by using a simple method also applicable for
clinical diagnostics.</p
Copernicus Ocean State Report, issue 6
The 6th issue of the Copernicus OSR incorporates a large range of topics for the blue, white and green ocean for all European regional seas, and the global ocean over 1993–2020 with a special focus on 2020
Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data