The Frequency of the Passive Voice in Freshman Academic Books

The use of passive voice has long been an area of difficulty for English learners. Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman (2015) noted that it is learning when to use the English passive that presents the greatest long-term challenge to ESL/EFL students (p. 352). Because textbooks are a source of language input for English learners, this study investigated the frequency of passive voice verbs in samples from four academic textbooks in courses commonly taken by freshmen. The study also examined whether there are significant differences between the frequencies by textbook. The data was collected from four General Education Plan (GEP) subject textbooks used in freshman classes at a large metropolitan university in the southeastern United States, namely English composition, history, psychology, and biology. The data was then compiled into a corpus of approximately 20,000 words created specifically for the current study, with 5,000 words randomly and sequentially selected from each of the four textbooks. The study utilized a table created by Folse (2009) to analyze differences between the basic passive voice tenses found in the textbooks. The study examined the be-passives, get-passives, and have-passives and their frequency in different tenses. The findings revealed that passive voice occurred in academic textbooks with an overall frequency of 7.06% (of all conjugated verbs). The results also found significant differences between the academic genres (p lt& 0.05). In this particular corpus, passive voice occurred more in biology than in the other subjects. Therefore, the results of the study indicated a need to explicitly teach the basic be-passive voice to English language learners to all English learners, but teachers also need to be especially aware that certain university subjects (e.g., biology) use more passive voice verb forms than others

Towards an improvement of patient safety: A framework for Clinical Decision Support Systems

Patient safety is a very important issue. The patient’s expectations are a correct diagnosis and an efficient and effective treatment plan, while healthcare providers are balancing costs with the quality of the services. The payers are interested to getting the maximum return for their investments and operational costs. All these issues point to the fact that healthcare providers should follow best practices and resources allocation of resources must be planned according to the predicted needs. Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) can recommend practices according to accepted guidelines that have been previously defined, validated and approved and these systems should be the “compass” for health professionals. The guidelines should be uploaded to the health facility computer systems and written in languages that can be shareable and processed by different software applications. This paper presents a case study that includes a review of the main features of a syntax to describe clinical guidelines and a framework of concepts, methodologies and technologies to improve the clinical decision support systems (CDSS).

Fruits and Vegetables in the Management of Underlying Conditions for COVID-19 High-Risk Groups

: SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus, which is the cause of the current pandemic with 107,411,561 infections and 2,351,195 death worldwide so far. There are multiple symptoms that are linked with the infection of COVID-19 such as coughing, shortness of breath, congestion together with fatigue, fever, loss of taste or smell, headaches, diarrhea, vomiting, and loss of appetite. The lack of or early stage of development of a cure for COVID-19 illness, there is need for insuring the best possible position of health to be able to fight the virus naturally through a robust immune system to limit severe complication. In this article, we have discussed the role of fruits and vegetables consumption to boost the immune system and major emphasis has been given to high risk group. We have taken into consideration a number of underlying conditions such as people with cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney disease, hemoglobin disorder such as sickle cell disease, weakened immune system due to organ transplant. Furthermore, factors to improve the immune system, risks associated with quarantine and lifestyle and food handling during COVID-19 has been discussed

Combination of IFN-α/Gm-CSF as a Maintenance Therapy for Multiple Myeloma Patients After Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation (ASCT): A Prospective Phase II Study

Interferon alpha (IFN-α) has been used as a maintenance therapy after autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) for multiple myeloma (MM) patients. In this study, we combined GM-CSF with IFN-α in order to improve IFN tolerance in post-ASCT myeloma patients. Primary aims were to evaluate myelotoxicity and effectiveness of this maintenance therapy. The treatment included 4 × 106 units of IFN-α and 125 μg/m2 of GM-CSF given three times a week for twelve months. Twenty seven patients were enrolled within 120 days after ASCT. One patient discontinued treatment due to thrombocytopenia and seven others were taken off study due to flu-like symptoms and/or increase in liver enzymes. With a median follow-up of 45.5 months, the median overall survival was not reached while the median progression-free survival was 28 months. Eleven patients (42%) have remained in very good partial remission or complete remission since ASCT. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that maintenance with GM-CSF and IFN-α is safe and effective

Long-Term Outcome after Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation with Adequate Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Mobilization Using Plerixafor and G-CSF in Poor Mobilizer Lymphoma and Myeloma Patients

Poor peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) mobilization predicts worse outcome for myeloma and lymphoma patients post autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT). We hypothesize that PBSC harvest using plerixafor and G-CSF in poor mobilizers may improve long-term outcome. We retrospectively analyzed the data on patients who had second PBSC mobilization using plerixafor and G-CSF as a rescue. Nine lymphoma and 8 multiple myeloma (MM) patients received the drug. A control group of 25 MM and lymphoma patients who were good mobilizers with G-CSF only was used for comparison. Sixteen of the 17 poor mobilizers proceeded to ASCT, and one MM patient had tandem transplants. Length of hospital stay, infection incidence, granulocyte engraftment, and long-term hematopoietic recovery were not significantly different between the two groups. In conclusion, all poor mobilizers were able to obtain adequate stem cells transplant dose and had similar transplant course and long-term outcome to that of the control good mobilizers group

Ex vivo development, expansion and in vivo analysis of a novel lineage of dendritic cells from hematopoietic stem cells

Dendritic cells (DCs) play a key role in innate and adaptive immunity but the access to sufficient amount of DCs for basic and translational research has been limited

Aldehyde dehydrogenase 1A1 and gelsolin identified as novel invasion-modulating factors in conditioned medium of pancreatic cancer cells

Conditioned medium (CM) from clonal sub-populations of the pancreatic cancer cell line, MiaPaCa-2 with differing invasive abilities, were examined for their effect on in vitro invasion. Conditioned medium from Clone #3 (CM#3) strongly promoted invasion, while CM from Clone #8 (CM#8) inhibited invasion in vitro. 2D DIGE followed by MALDI-TOF MS analysis of CM#3 and CM#8 identified 41 proteins which were differentially regulated; 27 proteins were down-regulated and 14 proteins up-regulated in the invasion-promoting CM#3 when compared to CM#8. Western blotting analysis confirmed the down-regulated expression of gelsolin and the up-regulation of aldehyde dehydrogenase 1A1 in CM#3. Down-regulation of aldehyde dehydrogenase 1A1 in Clone #3 CM and gelsolin levels in Clone #8 CM by siRNA transfection revealed an important involvement of these proteins in promoting and inhibiting invasion in these pancreatic cancer cell lines

MOMENTUM: Microbial Optimization via Metabolic Network Minimization

We report a high-throughput metabolic engineering platform enabling the rapid optimization of microbial production strains. The platform, which bridges a gap between current in vivo and in vitro bio-production approaches, relies on dynamic minimization of the active metabolic network and is implemented in the context of standardized 2-stage bio-processes. Dynamic metabolic network minimization is accomplished using combinations of CRISPR interference and controlled proteolysis to reduce the activity of multiple enzymes in essential central metabolism. This approach not only results in a design space with greatly reduced complexity, but also in increased metabolic fluxes and production rates as well as in strains which are robust to environmental conditions. Robustness leads to predictable scalability from high-throughput µL-scale screens, to fully instrumented L-scale bioreactors. Predictive high-throughput approaches are critical for metabolic engineering programs to truly take advantage of the rapidly increasing throughput and decreasing costs of synthetic biology. We have not only demonstrated proof of principle for this approach in two common industrial microbes: E. coli and S. cerevisiae, but also have validated this approach with the rapid optimization of E. coli strains producing two important industrial chemicals: alanine and mevalonic acid, at commercially meaningful rates, titers (147 g/L and 97 g/L, respectively), and yields.1 References: Ye, Z., Burg, J.M., Poplyk, M.R., Moreb, E.A., Trahan, A.D., Rodrigiuez, D.L., Sheikh, W., Kelly, G.M., Luo, M.L., Beisel C.L., and Lynch, M.D. (2017) MOMENTuM: Microbial Optimization via MEtabolic NeTwork Minimization., Nature Biotechnology in review

Long-Term Outcome after Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation with Adequate Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Mobilization Using Plerixafor and G-CSF in Poor Mobilizer Lymphoma and Myeloma Patients

Poor peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) mobilization predicts worse outcome for myeloma and lymphoma patients post autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT). We hypothesize that PBSC harvest using plerixafor and G-CSF in poor mobilizers may improve long-term outcome. We retrospectively analyzed the data on patients who had second PBSC mobilization using plerixafor and G-CSF as a rescue. Nine lymphoma and 8 multiple myeloma (MM) patients received the drug. A control group of 25 MM and lymphoma patients who were good mobilizers with G-CSF only was used for comparison. Sixteen of the 17 poor mobilizers proceeded to ASCT, and one MM patient had tandem transplants. Length of hospital stay, infection incidence, granulocyte engraftment, and long-term hematopoietic recovery were not significantly different between the two groups. In conclusion, all poor mobilizers were able to obtain adequate stem cells transplant dose and had similar transplant course and long-term outcome to that of the control good mobilizers group