CLaRO: a Controlled Language for Authoring Competency Questions

Competency Questions (CQs) assist in the development and maintenance of ontologies and similar knowledge organisation systems. The absence of tools to support the authoring of CQs has hampered their effective use. The few existing question templates have limited coverage of sentence constructions and are restricted to OWL. We aim to address this by proposing the \cqcnl~template-based CNL to author CQs. For its design, we exploited a new dataset of 234 CQs that had been processed automatically into 106 patterns, which we analysed and used to design a template-based CNL, with an additional CNL model and XML serialisation. The CNL was evaluated, showing coverage of about 90\% with the 93 templates and their 41 variants. \cqcnl~has the potential to facilitate streamlining formalising ontology content requirements and, given that about one third of the CQs in the test sets turned out to be invalid questions, assist in writing good questions

Gastrointestinal stromal tumours: ESMO-EURACAN-GENTURIS Clinical Practice Guidelines for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up

Gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) are malignant mesenchymal tumours with a variable clinical behaviour, marked by differentiation towards the interstitial cells of Cajal. GISTs belong to the family of soft tissue sarcomas (STSs) but are treated separately due to their peculiar histogenesis, clinical behaviour and specific therapy. This European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)–European Reference Network for Rare Adult Solid Cancers (EURACAN)–European Reference Network for Genetic Tumour Risk Syndromes (GENTURIS) Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) will cover GISTs while other STSs are covered in the ESMO–EURACAN–European Reference Network for Paediatric Oncology (ERN PaedCan)–GENTURIS STS CPG

Soft tissue and visceral sarcomas: ESMO-EURACAN-GENTURIS Clinical Practice Guidelines for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up

Soft tissue sarcomas (STSs) comprise ∼80 entities defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) classification based on a combination of distinctive morphological, immunohistochemical and molecular features.1 These ESMO–EURACAN–GENTURIS (European Society for Medical Oncology; European Reference Network for Rare Adult Solid Cancers; European Reference Network for Genetic Tumour Risk Syndromes) Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) will cover STSs, with the exception of gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) that are covered in the ESMO–EURACAN–GENTURIS GIST CPGs.2 EURACAN and GENTURIS are the European Reference Networks connecting European institutions, appointed by their governments, to cover rare adult solid cancers and genetic cancer risk syndromes, respectively. Extraskeletal Ewing sarcoma, round cell sarcoma with EWSR1-non-ETS fusion and sarcomas with CIC rearrangements and BCOR genetic alterations are covered by the ESMO–EURACAN–GENTURIS–ERN PaedCan (European Reference Network for Paediatric Oncology) bone sarcomas CPG.3 Kaposi's sarcoma, embryonal and alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma are not discussed in this manuscript, while pleomorphic rhabdomyosarcoma is viewed as a high-grade, adult-type STS. Finally, extraskeletal osteosarcoma is also a considered a high-grade STS, whose clinical resemblance with osteosarcoma of bone is doubtful. The methodology followed during the consensus meeting is specified at the end of the manuscript in a dedicated paragraph

Bone sarcomas: ESMO-EURACAN-GENTURIS-ERN PaedCan Clinical Practice Guideline for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up

This Clinical Practice Guideline provides key recommendations on the management of bone sarcomas. // Recommendations have been agreed following a consensus meeting of representatives from ESMO, EURACAN, GENTURIS and ERNPaedCan. // Authorship includes a multidisciplinary group of experts from different institutions and countries worldwide

Mycosynthesis of iron nanoparticles by Alternaria alternata and its antibacterial activity

Nanotechnology is one of the most emerging fields in the recent years. In the current investigation, we report the biosynthesis of iron nanoparticles (Fe-NPs) employing Alternaria alternata fungus, which is an eco-friendly process for the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles. Fe-NPs were synthesized through the reduction of aqueous Fe3+ ion in the dark conditions. Ultraviolet–visible spectrum of the aqueous medium containing iron ion showed a peak at 238 nm and another peak at 265 nm. The forming of nanoparticles was confirmed by transmission electron microscope, scanning electron microscope and energy-dispersive x-ray. The morphology of nanoparticles is found to be cubic shapes mostly and the average particle diameter as determined by scanning electron microscope was found to be 9±3 nm. Fe-NPs showed antibacterial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria used in this study due to its oxidative damage for bacterial cell wall. Iron nanoparticles show more antimicrobial activity to Bacillus subtilis than Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  Key words: Mycosynthesis, Alternaria alternata, iron nanoparticles, antibacteria