A retrospective analysis of the activity and safety of oral Etoposide in heavily pretreated metastatic breast cancer patients.

Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients derive benefit from chemotherapy, but options become limited after several prior chemotherapeutic regimens. Oral etoposide (VP-16) has previously been found to be clinically active in MBC patients in phase II trials. However, with increasing availability of other drugs, etoposide use has declined in spite of its unfavorable toxicity profile probably being overestimated. We therefore evaluated the clinical benefit and safety of oral etoposide in a population of MBC patients who had failed multiple regimens of currently used therapies. Sixty-six patients with MBC previously treated with a median of eight (range 2-13) regimens of therapy were eligible for the study. Patients received 50 mg/day oral etoposide in 20-day cycles with 1-week of rest. All patients were evaluated for clinical benefit (clinical benefit rate [CBR], complete response, partial response, and disease stabilization >24 weeks), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and toxicities. Median PFS was 4 months, CBR was 18% (overall response rate 4%), and median OS from the start of treatment was 11 months. Little clinically significant or high-grade toxicity were observed. No patients withdrew from treatment due to etoposide-induced toxicity. The favorable clinical response, low toxicity, and low cost of the drug suggest that etoposide is a viable option for patients with heavily pretreated MBC

Segmentation of remotely sensed images with a neuro-fuzzy inference system

The semantic segmentation of remotely sensed images is a difficult task because the images do not represent well-defined objects. To tackle this task, fuzzy logic represents a valid alternative to convolutional neural networks—especially in the presence of very limited data—, as it allows to classify these objects with a degree of uncertainty. Unfortunately, the fuzzy rules for doing this have to be defined by hand. To overcome this limitation, in this work we propose to use an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), which automatically infers the fuzzy rules that classify the pixels of the remotely sensed images, thus realizing their semantic segmentation. The resulting fuzzy model guarantees a good level of accuracy in the classification of pixels despite the few input features and the limited number of images used for training. Moreover, unlike the classic deep learning approaches, it is also explanatory, since the classification rules produced are similar to the way of thinking of human beings

Metastability in the Hamiltonian Mean Field model and Kuramoto model

We briefly discuss the state of the art on the anomalous dynamics of the Hamiltonian Mean Field model. We stress the important role of the initial conditions for understanding the microscopic nature of the intriguing metastable quasi stationary states observed in the model and the connections to Tsallis statistics and glassy dynamics. We also present new results on the existence of metastable states in the Kuramoto model and discuss the similarities with those found in the HMF model. The existence of metastability seem to be quite a common phenomenon in fully coupled systems, whose origin could be also interpreted as a dynamical mechanism preventing or hindering sinchronization.Comment: 5 pages 3 figures. Talk presented at the international conference NEXT Sigma Phi 05, 13-18 August 2005 Kolymbari, Crete. To be published in the volume of the proceeding

EGAsubmitter: A software to automate submission of nucleic acid sequencing data to the European Genome-phenome Archive

Making raw data available to the research community is one of the pillars of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse (FAIR) research. However, the submission of raw data to public databases still involves many manually operated procedures that are intrinsically time-consuming and error-prone, which raises potential reliability issues for both the data themselves and the ensuing metadata. For example, submitting sequencing data to the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) is estimated to take 1 month overall, and mainly relies on a web interface for metadata management that requires manual completion of forms and the upload of several comma separated values (CSV) files, which are not structured from a formal point of view. To tackle these limitations, here we present EGAsubmitter, a Snakemake-based pipeline that guides the user across all the submission steps, ranging from files encryption and upload, to metadata submission. EGASubmitter is expected to streamline the automated submission of sequencing data to EGA, minimizing user errors and ensuring higher end product fidelity

Work stress and burnout among physicians and nurses in Internal and Emergency Departments

Burnout has been defined as loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. Work environment and working conditions exposes the individual to numerous factors of stress. Stress-related diseases are defined as burnout. The increased workload, the repeated reorganizations in the hospital with iterative downsizing suggestions and budget cuts, without any perspective of career progression, with a social culture of bureaucracy and blame, resulting both in subtracting direct care time with patients and in the fear by healthcare professionals from the burden of their responsibility, are the backgrounds on which more and more frequent cases of burnout may develop. We need to establish homogenous standards all over the national territory on workload and about the procedures that have to be implemented for the prevention of burnout in our wards

Effective evaluation of clustering algorithms on single-cell CNA data

Clustering methods are increasingly applied to single-cell DNA sequencing (scDNAseq) data to infer the subclonal structure of cancer. However, the complexity of these data exacerbates some data-science issues and affects clustering results. Additionally, determining whether such inferences are accurate and clusters recapitulate the real cell phylogeny is not trivial, mainly because ground truth information is not available for most experimental settings. Here, by exploiting simulated sequencing data representing known phylogenies of cancer cells, we propose a formal and systematic assessment of well-known clustering methods to study their performance and identify the approach providing the most accurate reconstruction of phylogenetic relationships

Use of selected lactic acid bacteria and carob flour for the production of a high-fibre and “clean label” plant-based yogurt-like product

Carob, an underutilized crop with several ecological and economic advantages, was traditionally used as animal feed and excluded from the human diet. Yet, nowadays, its beneficial effects on health are making it an interesting candidate as a food ingredient. In this study, a carob-based yogurt-like product was designed and fermented with six lactic acid bacteria strains, whose performances after fermentation and during shelf life were assessed through microbial and biochemical characterization. The strains showed different aptitudes to ferment the rice–carob matrix. Particularly, Lactiplantibacillus plantarum T6B10 was among the strains with the lowest latency phase and highest acidification at the end of fermentation. T6B10 also showed discrete proteolysis during storage, so free amino acids were up to 3-fold higher compared to the beverages fermented with the other strains. Overall, fermentation resulted in the inhibition of spoilage microorganisms, while an increase in yeasts was found in the chemically acidified control. The yogurt-like product was characterized by high-fiber and low-fat content; moreover, compared to the control, fermentation decreased the predicted glycemic index (−9%) and improved the sensory acceptability. Thus, this work demonstrated that the combination of carob flour and fermentation with selected lactic acid bacteria strains represents a sustainable and effective option to obtain safe and nutritious yogurt-like products

Effetti di diverse tipologie di inerbimento sugli aspetti qualitativi della cultivar Italia in provincia di Bari

Il sud Italia, in modo particolare Puglia e Sicilia , rappresenta il principale areale di coltivazione dell'uva da tavola con oltre il 90 % della produzione nazionale. AI fine di ottenere una gestione sempre più sostenibile sia dal punto di vista ambientale sia economico e nello stesso tempo ottenere produzioni di qualità, negli ultimi anni sono state avviate delle sperimentazioni per una gestione del terreno eco-compatibile con pratiche quali inerbimento, pacciamatura, ecc . Da anni sono disponibili risultati di sperimentazioni e applicazioni su vite da vino specialmente in ambienti settentrionali; invece molto limitate e quasi scarse sono le infoomazioni per la viticoltura da tavola. Attualmente si sta diffondendo, anche negli ambienti del meridione d'Italia, la tecnica dell'inerbimento sia naturale sia artificiale per diverse specie arboree da frutto. Sulla base di queste considerazioni si è pensato di impostare una prova di inerbimento in un vigneto di vite ad uva da tavola in Puglia. La prova è iniziata nell'annata 2009/2010 in un vigneto commerciale di cinque anni condotto in irriguo e sito in agro di Acquaviva delle Fonti (BA). La cultivar utilizzata nella prova è Italia, innestata su 1103P, e la fooma di allevamento il tendone. Le tesi messe a confronto sono state: TI, inerbimento con trifoglio sotterraneo (Trifolium subterraneum L.); T2, inerbimento con festuca (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.); TI , inerbimento naturale; T4 , controllo lavorato. I risultati del primo anno della sperimentazione, tuttora in corso, mostrano che non sono emerse differenze significative tra le tesi a confronto per le caratteristiche biometriche della bacca e per la produzione di uva/ceppo, quest'ultima variata tra i 23,03 kg del controllo lavorato ed i 25,76 kg dell'inerbimento naturale. La colorazione della buccia della bacca ha presentato invece delle differenze statisticamente significative: il valore della luminosità (L*) nelle tesi inerbite con trifoglio (41,59) e festuca (41 ,03) è stato superiore rispetto all'inerbimento naturale (39,63) ed al controllo lavorato (40,41). La saturazione (C*) è risultata significativamente più bassa nel controllo lavorato rispetto alle tesi inerbite , mentre la tinta (h°) non ha mostrato differenze tra le tesi. L'inerbimento non ha influito, in generale, sulla consistenza della bacca ed anche per gli altri parametri chimici (°Brix, pH, acidità titolabile) non sono state rilevate differenze degne di rilievo tra i dati ottenuti per le diverse tesi

Single-cell DNA Sequencing Data: a Pipeline for Multi-Sample Analysis

In order to help cancer researchers in understanding tumor heterogeneity and its evolutionary dynamics, we propose a software pipeline to explore intra-tumor heterogeneity by means of scDNA sequencing data

Exploitation of wasted bread as substrate for polyhydroxyalkanoates production through the use of Haloferax mediterranei and seawater

The use of the halophile microorganism Haloferax mediterranei, able to synthesize poly(hydroxybutyrate-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), is considered as a promising tool for the industrial production of bioplastic through bioprocessing. A consistent supplementation of the growth substrate in carbohydrates and minerals is overall necessary to allow its PHBV production. In this work, wasted bread was used as substrate for bioplastic production by microbial fermentation. Instead of the consistent and expensive minerals supplement required for Hfx. mediterranei DSM1411 growth, microfiltered seawater was added to the wasted bread-derived substrate. The suitable ratio of wasted bread homogenate and seawater, corresponding to 40:60, was selected. The addition of proteases and amylase to the bread homogenate promoted the microbial growth but it did not correspond to the increase of bioplastic production by the microorganism, that reach, under the experimental conditions, 1.53 g/L. An extraction procedure of the PHBV from cells, based on repeated washing with water, followed or not by a purification through ethanol precipitation, was applied instead of the conventional extraction with chloroform. Yield of PHBV obtained using the different extraction methods were 21.6 ± 3.6 (standard extraction/purification procedure with CHCl3:H2O mixture), 24.8 ± 3.0 (water-based extraction), and 19.8 ± 3.3 mg PHAs/g of wasted bread (water-based extraction followed by ethanol purification). Slightly higher hydroxyvalerate content (12.95 vs 10.78%, w/w) was found in PHBV obtained through the water-based extraction compared to the conventional one, moreover, the former was characterized by purity of 100% (w/w). Results demonstrated the suitability of wasted bread, supplemented with seawater, to be used as substrate for bioplastic production through fermentation. Results moreover demonstrated that a solvent-free extraction, exclusively based on osmotic shock, could be used to recover the bioplastic from cells