A comparison between ARC and gLite for medical image processing on Grids

Medical imaging tasks often require large amounts of computing power or they could be improved if more computing power were available. Many medical institutions do not have any dedicated computing infrastructure for research and a way to cope with this is the use of computational Grids. These Grids can be used internally if the data can not leave the hospital network or from external infrastructure providers. Choosing/maintaining a Grid infrastructure can be a tedious tasks for researchers, as well as adapting existing applications for parallel computation on the Grid. Based on medical imaging use-cases, this article compares two widely-used middleware solutions, namely gLite and ARC (Advanced Resource Connector). Interoperability is enabled at the application level and the resulting setup is demonstrated on two use–cases combining resources from both Grids. In addition, experimental results show a simple performance comparison of data transfers and job submissions.

Point of care ultrasound in geriatric patients: prospective evaluation of a portable handheld ultrasound device

Purpose: The aim of the current study was to evaluate point of care ultrasound (POCUS) in geriatric patients by echoscopy using a handheld ultrasound device (HHUSD, VScan) at bedside in comparison to a high-end ultrasound system (HEUS) as the gold standard. Materials and Methods: Prospective observational study with a total of 112 geriatric patients. The ultrasound examinations were independently performed by two experienced blinded examiners with a portable handheld device and a high-end ultrasound device. The findings were compared with respect to diagnostic findings and therapeutic implications. Results: The main indications for the ultrasound examinations were dyspnea (44.6 %), fall (frailty) (24.1 %) and fever (21.4 %). The most frequently found diagnoses were cystic lesions 32.1 % (35/109), hepatic vein congestion 19.3 % (21/109) and ascites 13.6 % (15/110). HHUSD delivered 13 false-negative findings in the abdomen resulting in an "overall sensitivity" of 89.5 %. The respective "overall specificity" was 99.6 % (7 false-positive diagnoses). HHUSD (versus HEUS data) resulted in 13.6 % (17.3 %) diagnostically relevant procedures in the abdomen and 0.9 % (0.9 %) in the thorax. Without HHUSD (HEUS) 95.7 % (100 %) of important pathological findings would have been missed. Conclusion: The small HHUSD tool improves clinical decision-making in immobile geriatric patients at the point of care (geriatric ward). In most cases, HHUSD allows sufficiently accurate yes/no diagnoses already at the bedside, thereby clarifying the leading symptoms for early clinical decision-making

Synthesis and Characterization of PEGylated and Fluorinated Chitosans: Application to the Synthesis of Targeted Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery

To synthesize chitosan nanoparticles (CS NPs), ionic gelation is a very attractive method. It relies on the spontaneous supramolecular assembly of cationic CS with anionic compounds, which leads to nanohydrogels. To extend ionic gelation to functionalized CS, the assessment of CS degree of substitution (DS_CS) is a key step. In this paper, we have developed a hyphenated strategy for functionalized CS characterization, based upon ¹H, DOSY and, when relevant, 1D diffusion-filtered ¹⁹F NMR spectroscopies. For that, we have synthesized two series of water-soluble CS via amidation of CS amino groups with mPEG₂₀₀₀-COOH or fluorinated synthons (TFB-COOH). The aforementioned NMR techniques helped to discriminate between ungrafted and grafted synthons and finally to determine DS_CS. According to DS_CS values, the selection of CS–mPEG₂₀₀₀ or CS–TFB copolymers can be made to obtain, in the presence of hyaluronic acid (HA) and tripolyphosphate (TPP), CS–mPEG₂₀₀₀–TPP/HA or CS–TFB–TPP/HA nanohydrogels suitable for drug delivery

Functional interactions of DNA topoisomerases with a human replication origin

The human DNA replication origin, located in the lamin B2 gene, interacts with the DNA topoisomerases I and II in a cell cycle-modulated manner. The topoisomerases interact in vivo and in vitro with precise bonds ahead of the start sites of bidirectional replication, within the pre-replicative complex region; topoisomerase I is bound in M, early G1 and G1/S border and topoisomerase II in M and the middle of G1. The Orc2 protein competes for the same sites of the origin bound by either topoisomerase in different moments of the cell cycle; furthermore, it interacts on the DNA with topoisomerase II during the assembly of the pre-replicative complex and with DNA-bound topoisomerase I at the G1/S border. Inhibition of topoisomerase I activity abolishes origin firing. Thus, the two topoisomerases are closely associated with the replicative complexes, and DNA topology plays an essential functional role in origin activation

Transverse momentum and pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in pp collisions at (s)\sqrt(s) = 0.9 and 2.36 TeV

Measurements of inclusive charged-hadron transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity distributions are presented for proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9 and 2.36 TeV. The data were collected with the CMS detector during the LHC commissioning in December 2009. For non-single-diffractive interactions, the average charged-hadron transverse momentum is measured to be 0.46 +/- 0.01 (stat.) +/- 0.01 (syst.) GeV/c at 0.9 TeV and 0.50 +/- 0.01 (stat.) +/- 0.01 (syst.) GeV/c at 2.36 TeV, for pseudorapidities between -2.4 and +2.4. At these energies, the measured pseudorapidity densities in the central region, dN(charged)/d(eta) for |eta| < 0.5, are 3.48 +/- 0.02 (stat.) +/- 0.13 (syst.) and 4.47 +/- 0.04 (stat.) +/- 0.16 (syst.), respectively. The results at 0.9 TeV are in agreement with previous measurements and confirm the expectation of near equal hadron production in p-pbar and pp collisions. The results at 2.36 TeV represent the highest-energy measurements at a particle collider to date

Measurement of Dijet Angular Distributions and Search for Quark Compositeness in pp Collisions at sqrts=7sqrt{s} = 7 TeV

Dijet angular distributions are measured over a wide range of dijet invariant masses in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, at the CERN LHC. The event sample, recorded with the CMS detector, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 36 inverse picobarns. The data are found to be in good agreement with the predictions of perturbative QCD, and yield no evidence of quark compositeness. With a modified frequentist approach, a lower limit on the contact interaction scale for left-handed quarks of Lambda = 5.6 TeV is obtained at the 95% confidence level