Personalized therapy for mycophenolate: consensus report by the International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology

When mycophenolic acid (MPA) was originally marketed for immunosuppressive therapy, fixed doses were recommended by the manufacturer. Awareness of the potential for a more personalized dosing has led to development of methods to estimate MPA area under the curve based on the measurement of drug concentrations in only a few samples. This approach is feasible in the clinical routine and has proven successful in terms of correlation with outcome. However, the search for superior correlates has continued, and numerous studies in search of biomarkers that could better predict the perfect dosage for the individual patient have been published. As it was considered timely for an updated and comprehensive presentation of consensus on the status for personalized treatment with MPA, this report was prepared following an initiative from members of the International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology (IATDMCT). Topics included are the criteria for analytics, methods to estimate exposure including pharmacometrics, the potential influence of pharmacogenetics, development of biomarkers, and the practical aspects of implementation of target concentration intervention. For selected topics with sufficient evidence, such as the application of limited sampling strategies for MPA area under the curve, graded recommendations on target ranges are presented. To provide a comprehensive review, this report also includes updates on the status of potential biomarkers including those which may be promising but with a low level of evidence. In view of the fact that there are very few new immunosuppressive drugs under development for the transplant field, it is likely that MPA will continue to be prescribed on a large scale in the upcoming years. Discontinuation of therapy due to adverse effects is relatively common, increasing the risk for late rejections, which may contribute to graft loss. Therefore, the continued search for innovative methods to better personalize MPA dosage is warranted.Personalised Therapeutic

GCK-Maps: A Scene Unbiased Representation for Efficient Human Action Recognition

Human action recognition from visual data is a popular topic in Computer Vision, applied in a wide range of domains. State-of-the-art solutions often include deep-learning approaches based on RGB videos and pre-computed optical flow maps. Recently, 3D Gray-Code Kernels projections have been assessed as an alternative way of representing motion, being able to efficiently capture space-time structures. In this work, we investigate the use of GCK pooling maps, which we called GCK-Maps, as input for addressing Human Action Recognition with CNNs. We provide an experimental comparison with RGB and optical flow in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and scene-bias dependency. Our results show that GCK-Maps generally represent a valuable alternative to optical flow and RGB frames, with a significant reduction of the computational burden

Improved catalysts and method

An improved catalyst and method for the oxyhydrochlorination of methane is disclosed. The catalyst includes a pyrogenic porous support on which is layered as active material, cobalt chloride in major proportion, and minor proportions of an alkali metal chloride and of a rare earth chloride. On contact of the catalyst with a gas flow of methane, HCl and oxygen, more than 60% of the methane is converted and of that converted more than 40% occurs as monochloromethane. Advantageously, the monochloromethane can be used to produce gasoline boiling range hydrocarbons with the recycle of HCl for further reaction. This catalyst is also of value for the production of formic acid as are analogous catalysts with lead, silver or nickel chlorides substituted for the cobalt chloride. 8 figs., 3 tabs

Method for the photocatalytic conversion of methane

The invention relates to a method for converting methane and water to methanol and hydrogen using visible light and a catalyst

Positive technology for elderly well-being: A review

In the last decades, given the necessity of assisting fragile citizens, of which elderly represent a signifi-cant portion, a considerable research effort has been devoted to the use of information and communica-tion technologies (ICT) in daily living to promote activity, social connections, and independence. Withsimilar purposes, in recent years psychologists proposed the novel paradigm ofPositive Psychology(PP), the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels. The jointeffort between ICT and PP has led to the definition of the emerging field ofPositive Technology(PT),with the aim of developing technology consciously designed to foster well-being in individuals andgroups. In this paper we review PT focusing on frameworks involving computer vision and machinelearning for promoting cognitive, physical, emotional and social elderly well-being. Our discussionhighlights a significant gap between theoretical needs and technological systems availability, suggest-ing future lines of research