Effect of Deficit Irrigation and Root-Zone Drying Irrigation Technique under Different Nitrogen Rates on Water Use Efficiency for Potato (Solanum Tuberosum L.) in Semi-arid Conditions (I)

An investigation was carried out at the Technical Center of Potato and Artichoke CTPTA in the region of Saida, located in the lower valley of Medjerda river during the season of 2017. The objective was to evaluate the effects of deficit irrigation (DI) and the root-zone drying irrigation technique (PRD) under different nitrogen rates on total dry matter production (TDM), water consumption (WC) and water use efficiency of potato (Solanum Tuberosum L. VS. Spunta). Three water treatments (T1 = FI = 100% ETC, T2 = DI = 75% ETC and T3 = PRD50) and three nitrogen rates (F1 = N150: 150 kg N ha-1, F2 = N75: 75kg N ha-1, F3 = N0: 0kg N ha-1) were applied since the tuber initiation (55 days after planting) to maturity (100 days after planting). The results showed that the water regime affected negatively the total dry matter accumulation. A decline of 7 and 18.6% was registered in the two treatments T2 and T3 compared to the control T1. The WC decreased during water restriction respectively by 16; 33 and 29% for the T2 and T3 (PRD50 left) and T3 (PRD50 right) compared to T1. For the three nitrogen treatments (F1, F2 and F3) the water restriction has increased the WUE. The best values was recorded in the treatment T2 and then in the treatment T3 from where this increase compared to T1 was equal to (22.6% and 12.9%), (24.1% and 12, 4%) and (21.9% and 15.3%) respectively

Impact of Deficit Irrigation (DI) and Root-Zone Drying Irrigation Technique (PRD) under Different Nitrogen Rates on Radiation Use Efficiency for Potato (Solanum Tuberosum L.) in Semi-arid Conditions (II)

The study was carried out at the Technical Center of Potato and Artichoke CTPTA located in the lower valley of Medjerda river of Tunisia during the season of 2017. The purpose was to estimate the impact of deficit irrigation (DI) and the root-zone drying irrigation technique (PRD) under different nitrogen rates on photo synthetically active radiation absorbed and radiation use efficiency for Potato (Solanum Tuberosum L. VS. Spunta). Three water treatments (T1= 100% ETC, T2 = DI = 75% ETC and T3 = PRD50) and three nitrogen rates (F1 = N150: 150 kg N ha-1, F2 = N75: 75kg N ha-1, F3 = N0: 0kg N ha-1) were applied since the tuber initiation (55 days after planting) to maturity (100 days after planting). The deficit irrigation T2 has no effect on PARabs. Besides, the PRD50 has led to a reduction in PARabs. This decrease compare to T1 was equal to (8.9; 9.9 and 7.9%) respectively for the three treatments (F1; F2 and F3). The nitrogen deficit affects negatively the PARabs. An improvement of 13.2%, 11.2% and 12.2% of the F1 compared to the F3, respectively for the three water treatments (T1, T2 and T3). The T2 has no effect on RUE TDM. Conversely, the PRD50 has led to a reduction in RUE TDM. This decline referee against T1 was equal to (12.7; 17.4 and 21.5%) respectively for the three treatments (F1; F2 and F3). For RUEGY statistical analysis showed significant (P < 0.05) difference between the three irrigation treatments (T0, T1 and T2) for the three nitrogen treatments (F1; F2 and F3). The T2 and the PRD50 has led to a reduction in RUE GY. This decrease judge against T1 respectively for the two treatments (F2 and F3) was equal to (14.9 and 21.5%) and (19.6 and 31.2%)

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

EEG feature learning with Intrinsic Plasticity based Deep Echo State Network

Fourati R, Ammar B, Jin Y, Alimi AM. EEG feature learning with Intrinsic Plasticity based Deep Echo State Network. In: 2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). IEEE; 2020: 1-8.In this paper, deep EEG feature learning method is proposed for emotion recognition. It is well known that EEG signals dramatically vary from person to person, thereby making subject-independent emotion recognition very challenging. To address the above challenge, this work presents a deep echo state network (DeepESN) to learn temporal representation from raw EEG data. DeepESN as an input-driven discrete time non-linear dynamical system allows to process the temporal information at each time step in a deep temporal fashion by means of a hierarchical composition of multiple levels of recurrent neurons. To make the DeepESN robust, we pre-train the reservoir connections with an unsupervised intrinsic plasticity rule to generate activities following a desired Gaussian distribution. Then, we propose a hybrid learning algorithm for training the output weights which benefits from both the ridge regression and the online delta rule. Our leaky DeepESN achieved encouraging results when tested on the well-known affective benchmarks DEAP and DREAMER

Numerical Study of Entropy Generation in Mixed MHD Convection in a Square Lid-Driven Cavity Filled with Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer Porous Medium

This investigation deals with the numerical simulation of entropy generation at mixed convection flow in a lid-driven saturated porous cavity submitted to a magnetic field. The magnetic field is applied in the direction that is normal to the cavity cross section. The governing equations, written in the Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer formulation, are solved using a numerical code based on the Control Volume Finite Element Method. The flow structure and heat transfer are presented in the form of streamlines, isotherms and average Nusselt number. The entropy generation was studied for various values of Darcy number (10−3 ≤ Da ≤ 1) and for a range of Hartmann number (0 ≤ Ha ≤ 102). It was found that entropy generation is affected by the variations of the considered dimensionless physical parameters. Moreover, the form drag related to the Forchheimer effect remains significant until a critical Hartmann number value