“Give me happy pop songs in C major and with a fast tempo”: A vocal assistant for content-based queries to online music repositories

This paper presents an Internet of Musical Things system devised to support recreational music-making, improvisation, composition, and music learning via vocal queries to an online music repository. The system involves a commercial voice-based interface and the Jamendo cloud-based repository of Creative Commons music content. Thanks to the system the user can query the Jamendo music repository by six content-based features and each combination thereof: mood, genre, tempo, chords, key and tuning. Such queries differ from the conventional methods for music retrieval, which are based on the piece's title and the artist's name. These features were identified following a survey with 112 musicians, which preliminary validated the concept underlying the proposed system. A user study with 20 musicians showed that the system was deemed usable, able to provide a satisfactory user experience, and useful in a variety of musical activities. Differences in the participants’ needs were identified, which highlighted the need for personalization mechanisms based on the expertise level of the user. Importantly, the system was seen as a concrete solution to physical encumbrances that arise from the concurrent use of the instrument and devices providing interactive media resources. Finally, the system offers benefits to visually-impaired musicians

Looking for a new panacea in ALK-rearranged NSCLC: may be Ceritinib?

In the past decade, the advent of targeted therapy led to a silent revolution in the war against lung cancer and a significant evolution on the concept of Phase I clinical trials design. Thanks to the specificity of their target, the new drugs have radically changed NSCLC treatment, leading to the development of personalized strategies. The accelerated approval of the first ALK-inhibitor, Crizotinib and more recently Ceritinib, without a Phase III randomized, clinical trial, has been an amazing success story in lung cancer research, marking the beginning of a new decade of targeted drugs development, characterized by modern, biomarker-driven, early clinical trial design and shorter times for clinical approval. Is Ceritinib a new panacea for the treatment of ALK-rearranged NSCLC? We aimed to discuss the reasons of such success, including the new emerging questions, regarding mechanisms of acquired resistance, and the best treatment algorithm for ALK-rearranged NSCLC patients

The Abbey of the Dunes (Koksijde) and Noordduinen: the environmental link restored

The Abbey of the Dunes (Ten Duinen) at Koksijde, founded in the 12th century and abandoned around 1600, forms the subject of a land use planning project realized by the Flemish Land Agency (Vlaamse Landmaatschappij). Initially the project focussed on the museum and the integration of the abbey ruins in an open-air museum. However the site presented an opportunity to involve the Noordduinen, bordering on the abbey park, in a nature restoration project. The key intention was to restore the landscape connection between the abbey and the dunes, as it was in the Middle Ages. The proposed actions consist of breaking up a road, deviation of the traffic, upgrading the abbey park and start of a nature restoration project in the Noordduinen. The main bottlenecks were deviation of the traffic, excavation and preservation of archaeological finds and intensive recreational use of the Noordduinen. Continuous consultation and deliberation with all involved authorities and with the local inhabitants of Koksijde resulted in a plan supported by the majority of the community

Impact of climate change on groundwater point discharge: backflooding of karstic springs (Loiret, France)

Under certain hydrological conditions it is possible for spring flow in karst systems to be reversed. When this occurs, the resulting invasion by surface water, i.e. the backflooding, represents a serious threat to groundwater quality because the surface water could well be contaminated. Here we examine the possible impact of future climate change on the occurrences of backflooding in a specific karst system, having first established the occurrence of such events in the selected study area over the past 40 years. It would appear that backflooding has been more frequent since the 1980s, and that it is apparently linked to river flow variability on the pluri-annual scale. The avenue that we adopt here for studying recent and future variations of these events is based on a downscaling algorithm relating large-scale atmospheric circulation to local precipitation spatial patterns. The large-scale atmospheric circulation is viewed as a set of quasi-stationary and recurrent states, called weather types, and its variability as the transition between them. Based on a set of climate model projections, simulated changes in weather-type occurrence for the end of the century suggests that backflooding events can be expected to decrease in 2075–2099. If such is the case, then the potential risk for groundwater quality in the area will be greatly reduced compared to the current situation. Finally, our results also show the potential interest of the weather-type based downscaling approach for examining the impact of climate change on hydrological systems

Exosomal microRNAs in liquid biopsies: future biomarkers for prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is the second most diagnosed cancer in males in the world. Plasma quantification of prostate-specific antigen substantially improved the early detection of prostate cancer, but still lacks the required specificity. Clinical management of prostate cancer needs advances in the development of new non-invasive biomarkers, ameliorating current diagnosis and prognosis and guiding therapeutic decisions. microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. These miRNAs are expressed in the cells and are also present in cell-derived extracellular vesicles such as exosomes. Exosomes have been shown to act as mediators for cell to cell communication because of the regulatory functions of their content. High levels of exosomes are found in several body fluids from cancer patients and could be a potential source of non-invasive biomarkers. In this review, we summarize the diagnostic and prognostic utility of exosomal miRNAs in prostate cancer