Architectuur en beschaving

recensie van: Wijburg, G. (2014) Architectuur en beschaving: Het smaakoffensief van de Moderne Beweging. Amsterdam: Stichting de Driehoek

Természettudományos nevelés ma: megújult pedagógia Európa jövőjéért. Vezetői összefoglaló

Az utóbbi években több tanulmány rámutatott, hogy aggasztóan visszaesett a fiatalság érdeklődése a kulcsfontosságú természettudományok (2) és a matematika iránt. Annak ellenére, hogy számos projekt és kezdeményezés van folyamatban a trend megfordítására, egyelőre csak a fejlődés visszafogott jelei mutatkoznak. Ha nem kerül sor hatékonyabb fellépésre, Európa hosszú távú kapacitásai az innováció, valamint az innovációhoz szükséges kutatások terén hanyatlani fognak. Ezen felül a népesség egészét nézve, egy olyan társadalomban, amely egyre nagyobb mértékben támaszkodik a tudás felhasználására, a mindennapi élethez szükséges készségek megszerzését is egyre nagyobb veszélyben látjuk

Természettudományos nevelés ma: megújult pedagógia Európa jövőjéért. Vezetői összefoglaló

Formación militar a un costado del Capitolio Nacional, durante la ceremonia de trasmisión de mando.Enrique Olaya Herrera (Guateque, noviembre 12 de 1880 - Roma, febrero 18 de 1937) ocupó la presidencia de Colombia en el periodo 1930-1934. Sucedió en el cargo al conservador Miguel Abadía Méndez. La elección presidencial de Olaya significó la caída de la hegemonía conservadora y el inició de la llamada República Liberal (1930-1946). Gumersindo Cuéllar registro la trasmisión del mando, llevada a cabo el 7 de agosto de 1930. Durante el gobierno de Olaya, se adelantaron reformas sociales, en especial relacionadas con la protección a los sectores obreros y campesinos; se fomentó la industria nacional; se adelantaron importantes obras públicas; se apoyó el desarrollo de la infraestructura de transporte, por medio de la construcción de carreteras, fomento del sistema de ferrocarriles, y el impulso a la infraestructura portuaria; también se estimuló la educación pública; entre otros aspectos. Reformas que luego se adelantaría, de manera más radical, durante la llamada “Revolución en marcha”, nombre con el que se conoció el primer periodo presidencial de Alfonso López Pumarejo (1934-1938)

Feature engineering for ICU mortality prediction based on hourly to bi-hourly measurements

Mortality prediction for intensive care unit (ICU) patients is a challenging problem that requires extracting discriminative and informative features. This study presents a proof of concept for exploring features that can provide clinical insight. Through a feature engineering approach, it is attempted to improve ICU mortality prediction in field conditions with low frequently measured data (i.e., hourly to bi-hourly). Features are explored by investigating the vital signs measurements of ICU patients, labelled with mortality or survival at discharge. The vital signs of interest in this study are heart and respiration rate, oxygen saturation and blood pressure. The latter comprises systolic, diastolic and mean arterial pressure. In the feature exploration process, it is aimed to extract simple and interpretable features that can provide clinical insight. For this purpose, a classifier is required that maximises the margin between the two classes (i.e., survival and mortality) with minimum tolerance to misclassification errors. Moreover, it preferably has to provide a linear decision surface in the original feature space without mapping to an unlimited dimensionality feature space. Therefore, a linear hard margin support vector machine (SVM) classifier is suggested. The extracted features are grouped in three categories: statistical, dynamic and physiological. Each category plays an important role in enhancing classification error performance. After extracting several features within the three categories, a manual feature fine-tuning is applied to consider only the most efficient features. The final classification, considering mortality as the positive class, resulted in an accuracy of 91.56%, sensitivity of 90.59%, precision of 86.52% and F-1-score of 88.50%. The obtained results show that the proposed feature engineering approach and the extracted features are valid to be considered and further enhanced for the mortality prediction purpose. Moreover, the proposed feature engineering approach moved the modelling methodology from black-box modelling to grey-box modelling in combination with the powerful classifier of SVMs

GRB Repetition Limits from Current BATSE Observations

Revised upper limits on gamma-ray burst repetition rates are found using the BATSE 3B and 4B catalogs. A statistical repetition model is assumed in which sources burst at a mean rate but in which BATSE observes bursts randomly from each source

Természettudományos nevelés ma: megújult pedagógia Európa jövőjéért : vezetői összefoglaló

Az utóbbi években több tanulmány rámutatott, hogy aggasztóan visszaesett a fiatalság érdeklődése a kulcsfontosságú természettudományok (2) és a matematika iránt. Annak ellenére, hogy számos projekt és kezdeményezés van folyamatban a trend megfordítására, egyelőre csak a fejlődés visszafogott jelei mutatkoznak. Ha nem kerül sor hatékonyabb fellépésre, Európa hosszú távú kapacitásai az innováció, valamint az innovációhoz szükséges kutatások terén hanyatlani fognak. Ezen felül a népesség egészét nézve, egy olyan társadalomban, amely egyre nagyobb mértékben támaszkodik a tudás felhasználására, a mindennapi élethez szükséges készségek megszerzését is egyre nagyobb veszélyben látjuk

Newly established human retinoblastoma cell lines exhibit an "immortalized" but not an invasive phenotype in vitro

Retinoblastoma (RB), an intraocular childhood tumor occurring in a hereditary (mostly bilateral) or non-hereditary (unilateral) form, is associated with the inactivation of both alleles of a putative tumor suppressor gene (RB-I) located on chromosome 13q14. Both the process of RB development and the biological characteristics of RB cells are as yet poorly understood. We have established 7 new RBL lines (RBL13, RBL14, RBL18 and RBL30, derived from unilateral RB; and RBL7, RBL15 and RBL20, derived from bilateral RB). Southern blot analyses of restriction fragment length polymorphisms in DNA samples from 6 cell lines revealed loss of constitutional heterozygosity at one or several polymorphic locion chromosome 13 in 4 cases. Gross deletions involving the RB-1 locus and amplification of the N-myc gene were not detected in any of the RBL lines. The phenotypic properties of the RBL lines were analyzed in comparison with cells from the original RB tumors, with 4 RB lines established by others (RB383, RB355, RB247C3 and Y79) and with the adenovirus-EIA-transformed human retinoblast line HER-Xhol-CC2. It was found that RB tumors consist of phenotypically heterogeneous cell subpopulations with varying nutrient requirements and differentiation potential in vitro. All cell lines showed the typical characteristics of established (immortalized) cells. In some cases, cells from original RB tumors or cell lines were able to form colonies when cell aggregates of 2-10 cells were suspended in semi-solid agar medium; however, anchorage-independent colonies never developed from single cells. Cell lines RBL13, RBL18, RB247C3, RB355, RB383 and Y79 were tested for invasion into embryonic chick heart fragments in vitro and found to be non-invasive. None of the RBL or RB lines were tumorigenic in nu/nu (T-) mice. Y79 cells (propagated in culture for many years) exhibited properties distinctly different from those of the other cell lines, and thus cannot be considered phenotypically representative of RB cells

High prevalence of falsely declaring nicotine abstinence in lung transplant candidates

Tobacco use after lung transplantation is associated with adverse outcome. Therefore, active smoking is regarded as a contraindication for lung transplantation and should be excluded prior to placement on the waiting list. The aim of the study was to compare self-reporting with a systematic cotinine based screening approach to identify patients with active nicotine abuse. Nicotine use was systematically assessed by interviews and cotinine test in all lung transplant candidates at every visit in our center. Patients were classified according to the stage prior to transplantation and cotinine test results were compared to self-reports and retrospectively analyzed until June 2019. Of 620 lung transplant candidates, 92 patients (14.8%) had at least one positive cotinine test. COPD as underlying disease (OR 2.102, CI 1.110-3.981;p = 0.023), number of pack years (OR 1.014, CI 1.000-1.028;p = 0.047) and a time of cessation less than one year (OR 2.413, CI 1.410-4.128;p = 0.001) were associated with a positive cotinine test in multivariable regression analysis. The majority of non-COPD patients (n = 13, 72.2%) with a positive test had a cessation time of less than one year. 78 patients (84.7%) falsely declared not consuming any nicotine-based products prior to the test. Finally, all never smokers were test negative. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that active nicotine use is prevalent in transplant candidates with a high prevalence of falsely declaring nicotine abstinence. COPD was the main diagnosis in affected patients. Short cessation time and a high number of pack years are risk factors for continued nicotine abuse

Long non-coding RNAs as novel therapeutic targets in juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia

Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML) treatment primarily relies on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and results in long-term overall survival of 50-60%, demonstrating a need to develop novel treatments. Dysregulation of the non-coding RNA transcriptome has been demonstrated before in this rare and unique disorder of early childhood. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic potential of targeting overexpressed long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in JMML. Total RNA sequencing of bone marrow and peripheral blood mononuclear cell preparations from 19 untreated JMML patients and three healthy children revealed 185 differentially expressed lncRNA genes (131 up- and 54 downregulated). LNA GapmeRs were designed for 10 overexpressed and validated lncRNAs. Molecular knockdown (>= 70% compared to mock control) after 24 h of incubation was observed with two or more independent GapmeRs in 6 of them. For three lncRNAs (lnc-THADA-4, lnc-ACOT9-1 and NRIR) knockdown resulted in a significant decrease of cell viability after 72 h of incubation in primary cultures of JMML mononuclear cells, respectively. Importantly, the extent of cellular damage correlated with the expression level of the lncRNA of interest. In conclusion, we demonstrated in primary JMML cell cultures that knockdown of overexpressed lncRNAs such as lnc-THADA-4, lnc-ACOT9-1 and NRIR may be a feasible therapeutic strategy

Maternal education and cognitive development in 15 European very-preterm birth cohorts from the RECAP Preterm platform

Background: Studies are sparse and inconclusive about the association between maternal education and cognitive development among children born very preterm (VPT). Although this association is well established in the general population, questions remain about its magnitude among children born VPT whose risks of medical and developmental complications are high. We investigated the association of maternal education with cognitive outcomes in European VPT birth cohorts. Methods: We used harmonized aggregated data from 15 population-based cohorts of children born at = 37 weeks of GA) were available in eight cohorts. Maternal education was classified as: low (primary/lower secondary); medium (upper secondary/short tertiary); high (bachelor's/higher). Pooled standardized mean differences (SMDs) in cognitive scores were estimated (reference: high educational level) for children assessed at ages 2-3, 4-7 and 8-15 years. Results: The study included 10 145 VPT children from 12 cohorts at 2-3 years, 8829 from 12 cohorts at 4-7 years and 1865 children from 6 cohorts at 8-15 years. Children whose mothers had low, compared with high, educational attainment scored lower on cognitive measures [pooled unadjusted SMDs: 2-3 years = -0.32 (95% confidence intervals: -0.43 to -0.21); 4-7 years = -0.57 (-0.67; -0.47); 8-15 years = -0.54 (-0.72; -0.37)]. Analyses by GA subgroups (= 27 weeks) in children without severe neonatal morbidity and term controls yielded similar results. Conclusions: Across diverse settings and regardless of the degree of prematurity, low maternal education was associated with lower cognition.Peer reviewe