Chemotherapy-free innovations in locally advanced head and neck cancer: a comprehensive review

The treatment of locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (LA-HNSCC) has traditionally relied on a multimodal approach, combining surgery, radiation therapy (RT), and chemotherapy. While chemotherapy plays a critical role in improving cure rates and functional outcomes, its substantial toxicity remains a major concern, particularly in older patients. These challenges are especially relevant for those who are unfit for chemotherapy or decline conventional concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT), highlighting the need for alternative therapeutic options. Many patients are at high risk for severe side effects, often preventing them from completing the full chemotherapy regimen. This review explores alternative strategies to definitive CCRT of carcinomas of the larynx, hypopharynx and oropharynx, aiming to optimize treatment outcomes while minimizing toxicity. We discuss altered fractionation strategies as a promising alternative to conventional RT, offering a balance between treatment efficacy and quality of life. Additionally, we examine emerging approaches, including the combining of targeted therapies, immunotherapy, hyperthermia, photodynamic therapy and nanoparticle-based treatments with RT, which provide alternative or complementary options to traditional therapies in the management of LA-HNSCC

An IoT Application Business-Model on Top of Cloud and Fog Nodes

This paper discusses the design of a business model dedicated for IoT applications that would be deployed on top of cloud and fog resources. This business model features 2 constructs, flow (specialized into data and collaboration) and placement (specialized into processing and storage). On the one hand, the flow construct is about who sends what and to whom, who collaborates with whom, and what restrictions exist on what to send, to whom to send, and with whom to collaborate. On the other hand, the placement construct is about what and how to fragment, where to store, and what restrictions exist on what and how to fragment, and where to store. The paper also discusses the development of a system built-upon a deep learning model that recommends how the different flows and placements should be formed. These recommendations consider the technical capabilities of cloud and fog resources as well as the networking topology connecting these resources to things

Haematological and Demographic Study in Children Infected with Enterobiasis in Al Diwaniyah Province, Iraq

     Enterobius vermicularis infection is considered as one of the important causes of anaemia and malnutrition among children. This topic has recently received an increased amount of attention.  The objective of this study is to evaluate the demographical, anthropometrical, nutritional, and  haematological status of E. vermicularis infection among children. This study was conducted in Al Diwaniyah province, south of Iraq, for the period of October 2020 to the end of January 2021. The study included 122 children from both genders (males, n= 61, and females, n=61) and their ages ranged between 1 and 14 years. Nutritional status, body mass index (BMI), BMI percentile, and weight- for- age Z score were evaluated for some participants. In addition, samples of cellophane tape and blood were collected from all participants. The cellophane tape samples were examined microscopically for E. vermicularis detection, whereas blood samples were processed to evaluate several parameters, which were hemoglobin, serum iron, and total iron binding capacity (TIBC), ferritin, and vitamin B12. The results revealed a high infection rate (73.77%) among the studied population. The results also showed a significant correlation between gender and the occurrence of E. vermicularis infection. Males showed a higher risk of enterobiasis than females. While no association was noticed between each of age, nutritional status, and enterobiasis. Also, a significant correlation was recorded between E. vermicularis positive status and anaemia. The results showed that each of BMI, weight- for- age Z score, haemoglobin, serum iron, total iron binding capacity (TIBC), and ferritin had significantly lower values among those who were positive for E. vermicularis. Finally, the level of vitamin B12 was insignificantly decreased in children with enteroniasis. These findings indicate that more hematological changes are expected to occur in children with enterobiasis. Therefore, further consideration and investigation would be required on this topic in Iraq.</jats:p

Thing Artifact-based Design of IoT Ecosystems

International audienceAbstract This paper sheds light on the complexity of designing Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems where a high number of things reside and thus must collaborate despite their reduced size, restricted connectivity, and constrained storage limitations. To address this complexity, a novel concept referred to as thing artifact is devised abstracting the roles that things play in an IoT ecosystem. The abstraction focuses on 3 crosscutting aspects, namely functionality in terms of what to perform, life cycle in terms of how to behave, and interaction flow in terms of with whom to exchange. Building upon the concept of data artifact commonly used in data-driven business applications design, thing artifacts engage in relations with peers to coordinate their individual behaviors and hence avoid conflicts that could result from the quality of exchanged data. Putting functionality, life cycle, interaction flow, and relation together contributes to abstracting IoT ecosystems design. A system implementing a thing artifact-based ecosystem along with some experiments is presented in the paper as well

Time-centric and resource-driven composition for the Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT), one of the fastest growing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), is playing a major role in provisioning contextualized, smart services to end-users and organizations. To sustain this role, many challenges must be tackled with focus in this paper on the design and development of thing composition. The complex nature of today’s needs requires groups of things, and not separate things, to work together to satisfy these needs. By analogy with other ICTs like Web services, thing composition is specified with a model that uses dependencies to decide upon things that will do what, where, when, and why. Two types of dependencies are adopted, regular that schedule the execution chronology of things and special that coordinate the operations of things when they run into obstacles like unavailability of resources to use. Both resource use and resource availability are specified in compliance with Allen’s time intervals upon which reasoning takes place. This reasoning is technically demonstrated through a system extending EdgeCloudSim and backed with a set of experiments

Thing Artifact-based Design of IoT Ecosystems

This paper sheds light on the complexity of designing Internet-of-Things (IoT) ecosystems where a high number of things reside and thus, must collaborate despite their reduced size, restricted connectivity, and constrained storage limi- tations. To address this complexity, a novel concept referred to as thing artifact is devised abstracting the roles that things play in an IoT ecosystem. The abstraction focuses on 3 cross-cutting aspects namely, functionality in term of what to perform, lifecycle in term of how to behave, and interaction flow in term of with whom to exchange. Building upon the concept of data artifact commonly used in data-driven business applications design, thing artifacts en- gage in relations with peers to coordinate their individual behaviors and hence, avoid conflicts that could result from the quality of exchanged data. Putting functionality, lifecycle, interaction flow, and relation together contributes to ab- stracting IoT ecosystems design. A system implementing a thing artifact-based IoT ecosystem along with some experiments are presented in the paper as well

Thing Artifact-based Design of IoT Ecosystems

This paper sheds light on the complexity of designing Internet-of-Things (IoT) ecosystems where a high number of things reside and thus, must collaborate despite their reduced size, restricted connectivity, and constrained storage limi- tations. To address this complexity, a novel concept referred to as thing artifact is devised abstracting the roles that things play in an IoT ecosystem. The abstraction focuses on 3 cross-cutting aspects namely, functionality in term of what to perform, lifecycle in term of how to behave, and interaction flow in term of with whom to exchange. Building upon the concept of data artifact commonly used in data-driven business applications design, thing artifacts en- gage in relations with peers to coordinate their individual behaviors and hence, avoid conflicts that could result from the quality of exchanged data. Putting functionality, lifecycle, interaction flow, and relation together contributes to ab- stracting IoT ecosystems design. A system implementing a thing artifact-based IoT ecosystem along with some experiments are presented in the paper as well

An IoT Application Business-Model on Top of Cloud and Fog Nodes

This paper discusses the design of a business model dedicated for IoT applications that would be deployed on top of cloud and fog resources. This business model features 2 constructs, flow (specialized into data and collaboration) and placement (specialized into processing and storage). On the one hand, the flow construct is about who sends what and to whom, who collaborates with whom, and what restrictions exist on what to send, to whom to send, and with whom to collaborate. On the other hand, the placement construct is about what and how to fragment, where to store, and what restrictions exist on what and how to fragment, and where to store. The paper also discusses the development of a system built-upon a deep learning model that recommends how the different flows and placements should be formed. These recommendations consider the technical capabilities of cloud and fog resources as well as the networking topology connecting these resources to things.</p