The efforts of a multidisciplinary approach in a rehabilitation institute for deaf children: a psychosocial intervention aimed at breaking the pattern of stalled productivity

Introduction The multidisciplinary approach for the treatment of hearing impaired children exposes the work group to several tasks: the group needs to integrate different competencies and techniques, to share common treatment goals, to manage the relational dynamics with the children and with their parents, to explore the families’ expectancies. These efforts can put the work group in stressful conditions and, consequently, can negatively affect the quality of the intervention to be carried out. Aim Our aim was to illustrate a psychosocial analysis performed in a religious Institute for hearing impaired children, aimed at breaking the stalled productivity of the Institute, at avoiding inefficient and fragmented treatments, at preventing unelaborated relational dynamics within the staff and between the staff and the children’s families. Methodology Through the Content Analysis of semi-structured interviews administered to staff-members and families we analyzed the quality of the teamwork, the relational arrangements towards the families and local services (25 interview with 5 staff members); the family-Institute relationship and the family’s representation and satisfaction of the Institute (7 interview with 13 hearing and hearing impaired parents). Results The institute action seems to be more characterized by the maintenance of the relationship with the families per se, than oriented to productive goals.The hearing parents seem to be more satisfied than the hearing-impaired parents, possibly because the first are more prepared to receive the Institute's help. Conclusions The stalled productivity can be overcome only with the elaboration of those relational/emotional dynamics which prevent staff members and children’s parents from focusing on productive goals. The staff-members’ training should be improved in order to develop specific competencies to perform an integrated, multidisciplinary approach in treatments, to negotiate with the families, and share with them, work program and objectives of the treatment

The microRNA analysis portal is a next-generation tool for exploring and analyzing miRNA-focused data in the literature.

MicroRNAs constitute a class of noncoding small RNAs involved in the posttranscriptional regulation of many biological pathways. In recent years, microRNAs have also been associated with regulation across kingdoms, demonstrating that exogenous miRNAs can function in mammals in a fashion similar to mammalian miRNAs. The growing interest in microRNAs and the increasing amount of literature and molecular and biomedical data available make it difficult to identify records of interest and keep up to date with novel findings. For these reasons, we developed the microRNA Analysis Portal (MAP). MAP selects relevant miRNA-focused articles from PubMed, links biomedical and molecular data and applies bioinformatics modules. At the time of this writing, MAP represents the richest, most complete and integrated database focused on microRNAs. MAP also integrates an updated version of MirCompare (2.0), a computational platform used for selecting plant microRNAs on the basis of their ability to regulate mammalian genes. Both MAP and MirCompare functionalities were used to predict that microRNAs from Moringa oleifera have putative roles across kingdoms by regulating human genes coding for proteins of the immune system. Starting from a selection of 94 human microRNAs, MirCompare selected 6 Moringa oleifera functional homologs. The subsequent prediction of human targets and areas of functional enrichment highlighted the central involvement of these genes in regulating immune system processes, particularly the host-virus interaction processes in hepatitis B, cytomegalovirus, papillomavirus and coronavirus. This case of use showed how MAP can help to perform complex queries without any computational background. MAP is available at http://stablab.uniroma2.it/MAP

The Transcriptomic Landscape of Prostate Cancer Development and Progression: An Integrative Analysis

Next-generation sequencing of primary tumors is now standard for transcriptomic studies, but microarray-based data still constitute the majority of available information on other clinically valuable samples, including archive material. Using prostate cancer (PC) as a model, we developed a robust analytical framework to integrate data across different technical platforms and disease subtypes to connect distinct disease stages and reveal potentially relevant genes not identifiable from single studies alone. We reconstructed the molecular profile of PC to yield the first comprehensive insight into its development, by tracking changes in mRNA levels from normal prostate to high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia, and metastatic disease. A total of nine previously unreported stage-specific candidate genes with prognostic significance were also found. Here, we integrate gene expression data from disparate sample types, disease stages and technical platforms into one coherent whole, to give a global view of the expression changes associated with the development and progression of PC from normal tissue through to metastatic disease. Summary and individual data are available online at the Prostate Integrative Expression Database (PIXdb), a user-friendly interface designed for clinicians and laboratory researchers to facilitate translational research

Completeness Management for RDF Data Sources

The Semantic Web is commonly interpreted under the open-world assumption meaning that information available (e.g., in a data source) only captures a subset of the reality. Therefore, there is no certainty about whether the available information provides a complete representation of the reality. The broad aim of this paper is to contribute a formal study of how to describe the completeness of parts of the Semantic Web stored in RDF data sources. We introduce a theoretical framework allowing to augment RDF data sources with statements, also expressed in RDF, about their completeness. One immediate benefit of this framework is that now query answers can be complemented with information about their completeness. We study the impact of completeness statements on the complexity of query answering by considering different fragments of the SPARQL language, including the RDFS entailment regime, and the federated scenario. We implement an efficient method for reasoning about query completeness and provide an experimental evaluation in the presence of large sets of completeness statements

Identification of microRNAs and relative target genes in Moringa oleifera leaf and callus

MicroRNAs, a class of small, non-coding RNAs, play important roles in plant growth, development and stress response by negatively regulating gene expression. Moringa oleifera Lam. plant has many medical and nutritional uses; however, little attention has been dedicated to its potential for the bio production of active compounds. In this study, 431 conserved and 392 novel microRNA families were identified and 9 novel small RNA libraries constructed from leaf, and cold stress treated callus, using high-throughput sequencing technology. Based on the M. oleifera genome, the microRNA repertoire of the seed was re-evaluated. qRT-PCR analysis confirmed the expression pattern of 11 conserved microRNAs in all groups. MicroRNA159 was found to be the most abundant conserved microRNA in leaf and callus, while microRNA393 was most abundantly expressed in the seed. The majority of predicted microRNA target genes were transcriptional factors involved in plant reproduction, growth/development and abiotic/biotic stress response. In conclusion, this is the first comprehensive analysis of microRNAs in M. oleifera leaf and callus which represents an important addition to the existing M. oleifera seed microRNA database and allows for possible exploitation of plant microRNAs induced with abiotic stress, as a tool for bio-enrichment with pharmacologically important phytochemicals