338 research outputs found
The Self-reported Health of Immigrant Groups in Switzerland
Background: More than 20% of people living in Switzerland are immigrants, defined as people with foreign nationality. This study examines health disparities between the main immigrant groups in Switzerland and the majority Swiss population. Methods: Epidemiological analysis of the 2002 Swiss Health Survey (SHS): the SHS contains health-related information about 19,706 people who were randomly sampled from among people living in Switzerland. Bi-variate and multivariate analyses of six variables on self-reported health were performed. Findings: The data from the 2002 Swiss Health Survey provide some evidence of health disparities between Swiss people and immigrants. Although the self-reported health of "Northern immigrantsâ (people from Germany and France) does not differ significantly from that of the majority Swiss population, "Southern immigrantsâ (people from Italy, Former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Spain and Turkey) report lower levels of health in several areas. Lower levels of health are particularly likely to be reported by Italian men and women. Conclusion: The self-reported health of immigrants is currently inferior to that of the Swiss. If it is the position of the Swiss health care system to ensure equal health provision for all Swiss residents, including immigrant groups, and to strive for equal health outcomes for all, self-reported ill health among immigrants is a useful basis for health policy and plannin
Applications and Challenges of Task Mining: A Literature Review
Task mining is a technological innovation that combines current developments in process mining and data mining. Using task mining, the interactions of workers with their workstations can be recorded, processed, and linked with the business data of the organization. The approach can provide a holistic picture of the business processes and related tasks. Currently, there is no overview of application scenarios and the challenges of task mining. In our work, we reflect application scenarios as well as technological, legal, and organizational challenges of task mining using a structured literature review. The application areas include discovery of automation potentials, monitoring, as well as optimization of business processes. The challenges include the cleansing, collection, data protection, explainability, merging, organization, processing, and segmentation of task mining data
Towards Weakly-Supervised Hate Speech Classification Across Datasets
As pointed out by several scholars, current research on hate speech (HS)
recognition is characterized by unsystematic data creation strategies and
diverging annotation schemata. Subsequently, supervised-learning models tend to
generalize poorly to datasets they were not trained on, and the performance of
the models trained on datasets labeled using different HS taxonomies cannot be
compared. To ease this problem, we propose applying extremely weak supervision
that only relies on the class name rather than on class samples from the
annotated data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of a state-of-the-art
weakly-supervised text classification model in various in-dataset and
cross-dataset settings. Furthermore, we conduct an in-depth quantitative and
qualitative analysis of the source of poor generalizability of HS
classification models.Comment: Accepted to WOAH 7@ACL 202
Rosiglitazone Affects Nitric Oxide Synthases and Improves Renal Outcome in a Rat Model of Severe Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury
Background. Nitric oxide (NO)-signal transduction plays an important role in renal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. NO produced by endothelial NO-synthase (eNOS) has protective functions whereas NO from inducible NO-synthase (iNOS) induces impairment. Rosiglitazone (RGZ), a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-Îł agonist exerted beneficial effects after renal I/R injury, so we investigated whether this might be causally linked with NOS imbalance. Methods. RGZ (5âmg/kg) was administered i.p. to SD-rats (f) subjected to bilateral renal ischemia (60âmin). Following 24âh of reperfusion, inulin- and PAH-clearance as well as PAH-net secretion were determined. Morphological alterations were graded by histopathological scoring. Plasma NOx-production was measured. eNOS and iNOS expression was analyzed by qPCR. Cleaved caspase 3 (CC3) was determined as an apoptosis indicator and ED1 as a marker of macrophage infiltration in renal tissue. Results. RGZ improves renal function after renal I/R injury (PAH-/inulin-clearance, PAH-net secretion) and reduces histomorphological injury. Additionally, RGZ reduces NOx plasma levels, ED-1 positive cell infiltration and CC3 expression. iNOS-mRNA is reduced whereas eNOS-mRNA is increased by RGZ. Conclusion. RGZ has protective properties after severe renal I/R injury. Alterations of the NO pathway regarding eNOS and iNOS could be an explanation of the underlying mechanism of RGZ protection in renal I/R injury
QUANOMET : Eine Forschungslinie der strategischen Allianz Braunschweig - Hannover
Die Quanten- und Nanometrologie (QUANOMET) verfolgt die methodische Weiterentwicklung und Innovation immer präziserer und empfindlicherer Messverfahren und ist eine von drei Forschungslinien eines Wissenschaftsbßndnisses zwischen der Leibniz Universität Hannover und der Technischen Universität Braunschweig. Wissenschaftler beider Hochschulen berichten, wie das Projekt entstanden ist und welche Ziele es hat
Integrativer Ansatz zum Ausbau berufsrelevanter SchlĂźsselkompetenzen in der Ingenieurausbildung
Durch den Bologna-Prozess gewann die insbesondere in den IngenieurwissenÂschafÂten existierende Forderung nach fachĂźbergreifenden Studieninhalten eine neue Dynamik. Im Rahmen der Modifizierung und Neugestaltung der Curricula fĂźr Bachelor- und MasterabschlĂźsse entstanden MĂśglichkeiten, den Erwerb von SchlĂźsÂÂselkompetenzen in die universitäre Ausbildung zu integrieren. In diesem Zug wurden im Rahmen des Maschinenbau-Studiums am Karlsruher Institut fĂźr TechÂnologie (KIT) Ansätze zur integrativen VermittÂlung dieser Kompetenzen entÂwickelt, die in die Konzeption einer Lehrveranstaltung mit dem Titel "ArbeitsÂtechÂniken fĂźr den MaschiÂnenbau" mĂźndeten, deren Konzept und Umsetzung hier erläuÂtert wird.
19.10.2012 | Katja Poser, Katrin Klink, Anke Diez & Alexander Wanner (Karlsruhe
Von (Quanten)-Optik bis Schwerelosforschung : Optimierung von Experimenten durch Maschinelles Lernen
GroĂe ForschungsverbĂźnde wie das Quantum Valley Lower Saxony (QVLS) oder das Exzellenzcluster QuantumFrontiers bringen viele verschiedene Forschungsbereiche zusammen und ermĂśglichen einen engen Austausch unterschiedlicher Forschungsdisziplinen. Die folgenden Beispiele demonstrieren den alltäglichen Umgang mit Methoden des maschinellen Lernens (Machine Learning) im Kontext zweier ausgewählter Forschungsbereiche
Detection of Viral Infection and Bacterial Coinfection and Superinfection in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients Presenting to the Emergency Department Using the 29-mRNA Host Response Classifier IMX-BVN-3: A Multicenter Study.
Background
Identification of bacterial coinfection in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) facilitates appropriate initiation or withholding of antibiotics. The Inflammatix Bacterial Viral Noninfected (IMX-BVN) classifier determines the likelihood of bacterial and viral infections. In a multicenter study, we investigated whether IMX-BVN version 3 (IMX-BVN-3) identifies patients with COVID-19 and bacterial coinfections or superinfections.
Methods
Patients with polymerase chain reaction-confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled in Berlin, Germany; Basel, Switzerland; and Cleveland, Ohio upon emergency department or hospital admission. PAXgene Blood RNA was extracted and 29 host mRNAs were quantified. IMX-BVN-3 categorized patients into very unlikely, unlikely, possible, and very likely bacterial and viral interpretation bands. IMX-BVN-3 results were compared with clinically adjudicated infection status.
Results
IMX-BVN-3 categorized 102 of 111 (91.9%) COVID-19 patients into very likely or possible, 7 (6.3%) into unlikely, and 2 (1.8%) into very unlikely viral bands. Approximately 94% of patients had IMX-BVN-3 unlikely or very unlikely bacterial results. Among 7 (6.3%) patients with possible (n = 4) or very likely (n = 3) bacterial results, 6 (85.7%) had clinically adjudicated bacterial coinfection or superinfection. Overall, 19 of 111 subjects for whom adjudication was performed had a bacterial infection; 7 of these showed a very likely or likely bacterial result in IMX-BVN-3.
Conclusions
IMX-BVN-3 identified COVID-19 patients as virally infected and identified bacterial coinfections and superinfections. Future studies will determine whether a point-of-care version of the classifier may improve the management of COVID-19 patients, including appropriate antibiotic use
Functional Comparison of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell- and Blood-Derived GPIIbIIIa Deficient Platelets
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) represent a versatile tool to model genetic diseases and are a potential source for cell transfusion therapies. However, it remains elusive to which extent patient-specific hiPSC-derived cells functionally resemble their native counterparts. Here, we generated a hiPSC model of the primary platelet disease Glanzmann thrombasthenia (GT), characterized by dysfunction of the integrin receptor GPIIbIIIa, and compared side-by-side healthy and diseased hiPSC-derived platelets with peripheral blood platelets. Both GT-hiPSC-derived platelets and their peripheral blood equivalents showed absence of membrane expression of GPIIbIIIa, a reduction of PAC-1 binding, surface spreading and adherence to fibrinogen. We demonstrated that GT-hiPSC-derived platelets recapitulate molecular and functional aspects of the disease and show comparable behavior to their native counterparts encouraging the further use of hiPSC-based disease models as well as the transition towards a clinical application
Hydrothermal carbonization of sewage sludge : new improvements in phosphatic fertilizer production and process water treatment using freeze concentration
In recent years, promising developments in the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of sewage sludge, as well as the potential to reclaim phosphorus and nitrogen, have emerged. In this study, the HTC of digested sewage sludge (DSS) was investigated for the downstream production of heavy metal (HM)-free fertilizer and the use of freeze concentration (FC) as a novel technology for process water treatment. To obtain clean fertilizer, phosphatic acid extracts were first treated with ion-exchange resins to remove dissolved HM, as well as phosphorus precipitating agents (i.e., aluminum and iron). Over 98% of the aluminum (Al) and 97% of the iron (Fe) could be removed in a single treatment step. The purified extract was then used for the precipitation of HM-free struvite crystals, with P-recovery rates exceeding 89%. Process water (PW) makes up the largest share of the two main HTC-products (i.e., hydrochar and PW) and is very rich in organic compounds. Compared to evaporation or membrane separation, FC is a promising technology for concentrating solutes from PW. Separation experiments resulted in the recovery of over 90% of the dissolved compounds in the concentrate. In our study, the concentrate was later utilized as an ammonium source for struvite precipitation, and the subsequent aerobic digestion of the remaining ice water resulted in an 85% reduction in chemical oxygen demand (COD) in 15 days
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