NCBO Ontology Recommender 2.0: An Enhanced Approach for Biomedical Ontology Recommendation

Biomedical researchers use ontologies to annotate their data with ontology terms, enabling better data integration and interoperability. However, the number, variety and complexity of current biomedical ontologies make it cumbersome for researchers to determine which ones to reuse for their specific needs. To overcome this problem, in 2010 the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) released the Ontology Recommender, which is a service that receives a biomedical text corpus or a list of keywords and suggests ontologies appropriate for referencing the indicated terms. We developed a new version of the NCBO Ontology Recommender. Called Ontology Recommender 2.0, it uses a new recommendation approach that evaluates the relevance of an ontology to biomedical text data according to four criteria: (1) the extent to which the ontology covers the input data; (2) the acceptance of the ontology in the biomedical community; (3) the level of detail of the ontology classes that cover the input data; and (4) the specialization of the ontology to the domain of the input data. Our evaluation shows that the enhanced recommender provides higher quality suggestions than the original approach, providing better coverage of the input data, more detailed information about their concepts, increased specialization for the domain of the input data, and greater acceptance and use in the community. In addition, it provides users with more explanatory information, along with suggestions of not only individual ontologies but also groups of ontologies. It also can be customized to fit the needs of different scenarios. Ontology Recommender 2.0 combines the strengths of its predecessor with a range of adjustments and new features that improve its reliability and usefulness. Ontology Recommender 2.0 recommends over 500 biomedical ontologies from the NCBO BioPortal platform, where it is openly available.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, 11 table

Is It Feasible to Use CMV-Specific T-Cell Adoptive Transfer as Treatment Against Infection in SOT Recipients?

During the last decade, many studies have demonstrated the role of CMV specific T-cell immune response on controlling CMV replication and dissemination. In fact, it is well established that transplanted patients lacking CMV-specific T-cell immunity have an increased occurrence of CMV replication episodes and CMV-related complications. In this context, the use of adoptive transfer of CMV-specific T-cells has been widely investigated and applied to Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant patients and may be useful as a therapeutic alternative, to reconstitute the CMV specific T-cell response and to control CMV viremia in patients receiving a transplantation. However, only few authors have explored the use of T-cell adoptive transfer in SOT recipients. We propose a novel review in which we provide an overview of the impact of using CMV-specific T-cell adoptive transfer on the control of CMV infection in SOT recipients, the different approaches to stimulate, isolate and expand CMV-specific T-cells developed over the years and a discussion of the possible use of CMV adoptive cellular therapy in this SOT population. Given the timeliness and importance of this topic, we believe that such an analysis will provide important insights into CMV infection and its treatment/prevention.This study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University, Instituto de Salud Carlos III Grant/Award Numbers: PI17CIII-00014 (MPY110/18); DTS18CIII/00006 (MPY127/19); PI20-009 (MPY303/20). This work was supported by Plan Nacional de I + D+i 2013‐2016 and Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Subdirección General de Redes y Centros de Investigación Cooperativa, Ministry of Science, Innovation and University, Spanish Network for Research in Infectious Diseases (REIPI RD16/0016/0009), co-financed by European Development Regional Fund ‘A way to achieve Europe’. EG-R is supported by the Sara Borrell Program (CD18CIII/00007), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. FM is supported by the PFIS Program (F18III/00013), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. MN is supported by the FPU program (FPU19/05927), Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades.S

A new approach to study the relative age effect with the use of additive logistic regression models: a case of study of FIFA football tournaments (1908-2012)

[Abstract]: The relative age effect plays an important role in the pursuit of excellence, providing advantage to athletes born at the beginning of the year or near the cut-off date. This phenomenon has been observed in areas such as sports, education or business. Traditionally, the chisquare test has been used to analyze whether there are statistically significant differences in the distribution of births in each of the four quarters of the year. However, this approach is limited, focusing only on the analysis of the response variable, without taking into account the effect of a set of predictive variables. In this paper a new approach is proposed to study the relative age effect with the use of a logistic regression additive model. The new method has been evaluated with a sample of 21,639 players involved in football tournaments organized by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) between 1908 and 2012. New conclusions have been established that the relative age effect exists regarding player age and the year of the competition in male FIFA competitions and its effect is dynamic and complex.Xunta de Galicia; ED431G/0

Características del pensamiento relacional de niños con discapacidad intelectual

El presente trabajo tuvo la finalidad de promover un pensamiento relacional por medio de los patrones figurales lineales. Para lo anterior, se caracterizaron los desempeños que mostraron los alumnos (con discapacidad intelectual en nivel moderado y leve): formas de pensamiento y uso de esquemas compensatorios para establecer tipos y niveles de compresión matemática. Los resultados de esta investigación cualitativa pretenden ser un apoyo para el docente frente a grupo que tenga en su aula alumnos con estas características y así aportar estrategias didácticas para potenciar las capacidades de los niños

Deciphering the Potential Coding of Human Cytomegalovirus: New Predicted Transmembrane Proteome

CMV is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised individuals that will benefit from the availability of a vaccine. Despite the efforts made during the last decade, no CMV vaccine is available. An ideal CMV vaccine should elicit a broad immune response against multiple viral antigens including proteins involved in virus-cell interaction and entry. However, the therapeutic use of neutralizing antibodies targeting glycoproteins involved in viral entry achieved only partial protection against infection. In this scenario, a better understanding of the CMV prote-ome potentially involved in viral entry may provide novel candidates to include in new potential vaccine design. In this study, we aimed to explore the CMV genome to identify proteins with puta-tive transmembrane domains to identify new potential viral envelope proteins. We have performed in silico analysis using the genome sequences of nine different CMV strains to predict the trans-membrane domains of the encoded proteins. We have identified 77 proteins with transmembrane domains, 39 of which were present in all the strains and were highly conserved. Among the core proteins, 17 of them such as UL10, UL139 or US33A have no ascribed function and may be good candidates for further mechanistic studies

Mejoras a un algoritmo de programación dinámica para el problema del viajante de comercio con un drone

En la última década surgieron distintos problemas de ruteo en los que una flota de camiones y drones se agrupan para realizar envíos al consumidor en problemas de logística de última milla. La idea es aprovechar las ventajas de ambos tipos de vehículos: los camiones transportan una gran cantidad de mercadería aunque se mueven lentamente por la red de tráfico; los drones se desplazan velozmente por moverse fuera de la red de tráfico, aunque tienen menor capacidad y autonomía. En este contexto, los problemas más simples consisten en la generación de una única ruta en la que un camión y un drone se unen para atender a un conjunto de clientes. En el problema de viajante de comercio con un drone (TSP-D) el camión parte de un depósito llevando un drone en su interior. Cada vez que el camión visita un cliente v, puede optar por lanzar el drone con un único paquete para visitar un cliente w que no va a ser visitado por el camión. Luego, el camión y el drone continúan sus rutas por separado. Una vez que el drone atiende a w, el mismo viaja a la ubicación de otro cliente z / r donde se encuentra con el camión nuevamente para continuar con la ruta en forma conjunta. El objetivo es minimizar el tiempo que demoran el camión y el drone en atender a todos los clientes y volver al depósito, sin tener en cuenta los tiempos de servicio, carga del drone o sincronización entre ambos vehículos. Recientemente Roberti y Ruthmair (Exact methods for the traveling salesman problem with drone. Transp. Sci., 55(2): 315-335, 2021) propusieron un algoritmo de programación dinámica, basado en un esquema de labeling, para resolver TSP-D. Embebiendo una versión relajada del mismo dentro de un algoritmo de tipo branch- cut-and-price pudieron resolver todas las instancias (de prueba) con 19 clientes, la mayoría con 29 clientes y algunas con 39 clientes. En esta charla mostramos nuevas reglas de dominación para mejorar la eficiencia del algoritmo de labeling. Asimismo, estudiamos distintas opciones para la relajación del algoritmo que permiten mejorar las cotas inferiores al resolver cada nodo del árbol de branching. El nuevo algoritmo resuelve varias de las instancias (de prueba) previamente no resueltas en la misma cantidad de tiempo.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Production and characterization of new fibrinolytic protease from Mucor subtillissimus UCP 1262 in solid-state fermentation

Fibrinolytic enzymes have received attention regarding their medicinal potential for thrombolytic diseases, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Various natural enzymes purified from animal, plant and microbial sources have been extensively studied. The aim of this work was to produce fibrinolytic protease by solid state fermentation using agro industrial substrates. Rhizopus arrhizus var. arrhizus UCP 1295 and Mucor subtillissimus UCP 1262 filamentous fungi species isolated from soil of Caatinga-PE, Brasil, were used as producer microorganisms. Wheat bran was shown to be the best substrate for the production of the enzyme and by using a 23 full factorial design the main effects and interactions of the quantity of the substrate wheat bran, moisture and temperature on the fibrinolytic enzyme production and protease were evaluated. The best results for fibrinolytic and protease activities, 144.58 U/mL and 48.33 U/mL, respectively, were obtained with Mucor subtillissimus UCP 1262 using as culture medium 3 g wheat bran, 50% moisture at a temperature of 25˚C for 72 hours. The optimum temperature for the produced enzyme was 45˚C and most of its original activity was retained after being subjected to 80˚C for 120 min. The protease activity was enhanced by K+, Ca+ and Mn+; but with Cu+ there was an inhibition. The specificity to chromogenic substrate and the inhibition by PMSF indicates that it is a chymotrypsin-like serine protease. Presented results suggest that this enzyme produced by solid-state fermentation is an interesting alternative as a candidate for thrombolytic therapy