First record of Derelomus piriformis (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), an alien species associated with palm trees, in Greece

The tribe Derelomini Lacordaire, 1865 includes 13 species in the Palearctic region, including Derelomus piriformis (Hoffmann, 1938), a species introduced to Southern Europe through the horticultural pathway alongside its host plant Phoenix canariensis H. Wildpret. Most records of the species correspond to Western European countries and Israel at the eastern borders of the Mediterranean. In this publication, the alien D. piriformis is recorded as present in Greece for the first time, constituting the only known representative of the genus Derelomus in the country. Three specimens were collected from the Greek mainland, the Cyclades and the North-Eastern Aegean, extending our knowledge regarding the distribution of this alien species and raising the number of alien Curculionoidea in Greece to 11. Although the species is speculated to have minor socioeconomic impacts, further research is due in order to guard against any potential negative environmental impacts on the native palm tree Phoenix theophrasti Greuter

Contribution to the Salpingidae (Coleoptera, Tenebrionoidea) of Greece including new faunistic records and ecological data on a poorly studied family

Salpingidae are a small family of beetles living mainly under the bark of deciduous forest trees and conifers, feeding on fungi, organic matter and other insects. A total of 23 species are known in the Western Palearctic out of which only six have been recorded in Greece. Material surveys of the first author during the last decades unveil ten species of Salpingidae for the country. Four species, Salpingus ruficollis (Linnaeus, 1760), Sphaeriestes castaneus (Panzer, 1796), Sphaeriestes exsanguis (Abeille de Perrin, 1870) and Vincenzellus ruficollis (Panzer, 1794) are reported from Greece for the first time. These records are presented alongside a literature survey regarding Greek Salpingidae, their overall distribution, ecology, host-plants and conservation status in the country

Building a semantically annotated corpus of clinical texts

In this paper, we describe the construction of a semantically annotated corpus of clinical texts for use in the development and evaluation of systems for automatically extracting clinically significant information from the textual component of patient records. The paper details the sampling of textual material from a collection of 20,000 cancer patient records, the development of a semantic annotation scheme, the annotation methodology, the distribution of annotations in the final corpus, and the use of the corpus for development of an adaptive information extraction system. The resulting corpus is the most richly semantically annotated resource for clinical text processing built to date, whose value has been demonstrated through its use in developing an effective information extraction system. The detailed presentation of our corpus construction and annotation methodology will be of value to others seeking to build high-quality semantically annotated corpora in biomedical domains

Cognitive and Personality Predictors of School Performance From Preschool to Secondary School : An Overarching Model

In this article, existing research investigating how school performance relates to cognitive, selfawareness, language, and personality processes is reviewed. We outline the architecture of the mind, involving a general factor, g, that underlies distinct mental processes (i.e., executive, reasoning, language, cognizance, and personality processes). From preschool to adolescence, g shifts from executive to reasoning and cognizance processes; personality also changes, consolidating in adolescence. There are three major trends in the existing literature: (a) All processes are highly predictive of school achievement if measured alone, each accounting for ∼20% of its variance; (b) when measured together, cognitive processes (executive functions and representational awareness in preschool and fluid intelligence after late primary school) dominate as predictors (over ∼50%), drastically absorbing self-concepts and personality dispositions that drop to ∼3%–5%; and (c) predictive power changes according to the processes forming g at successive levels: attention control and representational awareness in preschool (∼85%); fluid intelligence, language, and working memory in primary school (∼53%); fluid intelligence, language, self-evaluation, and school-specific self-concepts in secondary school (∼70%). Stability and plasticity of personality emerge as predictors in secondary school. A theory of educational priorities is proposed, arguing that (a) executive and awareness processes; (b) information management; and (c) reasoning, self-evaluation, and flexibility in knowledge building must dominate in preschool, primary, and secondary school, respectively.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Effects of vitamin D-2 or D-3 supplementation on glycaemic control and cardiometabolic risk among people at risk of type 2 diabetes: results of a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Wiley via https://doi.org/10.1111/dom.12625$\textbf{Aims:}$ To investigate the effect of short-term vitamin D supplementation on cardiometabolic outcomes among individuals with an elevated risk of diabetes. $\textbf{Methods:}$ In a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial, 340 adults who had an elevated risk of type 2 diabetes (non-diabetic hyperglycaemia or positive diabetes risk score) were randomized to either placebo, 100 000 IU vitamin D$_2$ (ergocalciferol) or 100 000 IU vitamin D$_3$ (cholecalciferol), orally administered monthly for 4 months. The primary outcome was change in glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) between baseline and 4 months, adjusted for baseline. Secondary outcomes included: blood pressure; lipid levels; apolipoprotein levels; C-reactive protein levels; pulse wave velocity (PWV); anthropometric measures; and safety of the supplementation. $\textbf{Results:}$ The mean [standard deviation (s.d.)] 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D]$_2$ concentration increased from 5.2 (4.1) to 53.9 (18.5) nmol/l in the D$_2$ group, and the mean (s.d.) 25(OH)D$_3$ concentration increased from 45.8 (22.6) to 83.8 (22.7) nmol/l in the D$_3$ group. There was no effect of vitamin D supplementation on HbA1c: D$_2$ versus placebo: −0.05% [95% confidence interval (CI) −0.11, 0.02] or −0.51 mmol/mol (95% CI −1.16, 0.14; p=0.13); D$_3$ versus placebo: 0.02% (95% CI −0.04, 0.08) or 0.19 mmol/mol (95% CI −0.46, 0.83; p=0.57). There were no clinically meaningful effects on secondary outcomes, except PWV [D$_2$ versus placebo: −0.68 m/s (95% CI −1.31, −0.05); D$_3$ versus placebo −0.73 m/s (95% CI −1.42, −0.03)]. No important safety issues were identified. $\textbf{Conclusions:}$ Short-term supplementation with vitamin D$_2$ or D$_3$ had no effect on HbA1c. The modest reduction in PWV with both D$_2$ and D$_3$ relative to placebo suggests that vitamin D supplementation has a beneficial effect on arterial stiffness.The trial was jointly sponsored by Queen Mary University of London and the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge. The trial was funded from a block grant from the NHS Tower Hamlets Primary Care NHS Trust and East London CLRN, and from MRC Epidemiology Unit core funding (MC_UP_A100_1003, MC_U106179474, MC_UU_12015/5 and MC_UU_12015/4)

A case study on sepsis using PubMed and Deep Learning for ontology learning

We investigate the application of distributional semantics models for facilitating unsupervised extraction of biomedical terms from unannotated corpora.Term extraction is used as the first step of an ontology learning process that aims to (semi-)automatic annotation of biomedical concepts and relations from more than 300K PubMed titles and abstracts. We experimented with both traditional distributional semantics methods such as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) as well as the neural language models CBOW and Skip-gram from Deep Learning. The evaluation conducted concentrates on sepsis, a major life-threatening condition, and shows that Deep Learning models outperform LSA and LDA with much higher precision

Human serum fetuin A/α2HS-glycoprotein level is associated with long-term survival in patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis, comparison with the Child-Pugh and MELD scores

BACKGROUND: Serum concentration of fetuin A/α2HS-glycoprotein (AHSG) is a good indicator of liver cell function and 1-month mortality in patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. We intended to determine whether decreased serum AHSG levels are associated with long-term mortality and whether the follow-up of serum AHSG levels can add to the predictive value of the Child-Pugh (CP) and MELD scores. METHODS: We determined serum AHSG concentrations in 89 patients by radial immunodiffusion. Samples were taken at the time of enrolment and in the 1(st), 3(rd), 6(th), and the 12(th )month thereafter. RESULTS: Forty-one patients died during the 1-year follow-up period, 37 of them had liver failure. Data of these patients were analysed further. Deceased patients had lower baseline AHSG levels than the 52 patients who survived (293 ± 77 vs. 490 ± 106 μg/ml, mean ± SD, p < 0.001). Of all laboratory parameters serum AHSG level, CP and MELD scores showed the greatest difference between deceased and survived patients. The cutoff AHSG level 365 μg/ml could differentiate between deceased and survived patients (AUC: 0.937 ± 0.025, p < 0.001, sensitivity: 0.865, specificity: 0.942) better than the MELD score of 20 (AUC: 0.739 ± 0.052, p < 0.001, sensitivity: 0.595, specificity: 0.729). Initial AHSG concentrations < 365 μg/ml were associated with high mortality rate (91.4%, relative risk: 9.874, 95% C.I.: 4.258–22.898, p < 0.001) compared to those with ≥ 365 μg/ml (9.3%). Fourteen out of these 37 fatalities occurred during the first month of observation. During months 1–12 low AHSG concentration proved to be a strong indicator of mortality (relative risk: 9.257, 95% C.I.: 3.945–21.724, p < 0.001). Multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that decrease of serum AHSG concentration was independent of all variables that differed between survived and deceased patients during univariate analysis. Multivariate analysis showed that correlation of low serum AHSG levels with mortality was stronger than that with CP and MELD scores. Patients with AHSG < 365 μg/ml had significantly shortened survival both in groups with MELD < 20 and MELD ≥ 20 (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.0014, respectively). CONCLUSION: Serum AHSG concentration is a reliable and sensitive indicator of 1-year mortality in patients with alcoholic liver cirrhosis that compares well to the predictive value of CP score and may further improve that of MELD score