Distributed Reasoning in a Peer-to-Peer Setting: Application to the Semantic Web

In a peer-to-peer inference system, each peer can reason locally but can also solicit some of its acquaintances, which are peers sharing part of its vocabulary. In this paper, we consider peer-to-peer inference systems in which the local theory of each peer is a set of propositional clauses defined upon a local vocabulary. An important characteristic of peer-to-peer inference systems is that the global theory (the union of all peer theories) is not known (as opposed to partition-based reasoning systems). The main contribution of this paper is to provide the first consequence finding algorithm in a peer-to-peer setting: DeCA. It is anytime and computes consequences gradually from the solicited peer to peers that are more and more distant. We exhibit a sufficient condition on the acquaintance graph of the peer-to-peer inference system for guaranteeing the completeness of this algorithm. Another important contribution is to apply this general distributed reasoning setting to the setting of the Semantic Web through the Somewhere semantic peer-to-peer data management system. The last contribution of this paper is to provide an experimental analysis of the scalability of the peer-to-peer infrastructure that we propose, on large networks of 1000 peers

Adjuvant treatment patterns and outcomes in patients with stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom based on the LuCaBIS burden of illness study

OBJECTIVES: To inform health-technology assessments of new adjuvant treatments, we describe treatment patterns in patients with complete resection of stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were collected via medical record abstraction. Patients were aged ≥18 years with completely resected stage IB-IIIA NSCLC, diagnosed between 01 January 2009 and 31 December 2011. Median follow-up was 26 months. Adjuvant treatment patterns and clinical outcomes were summarized descriptively. RESULTS: Among the 831 patients studied, 239 (29%) had stage IB disease, 179 (22%) had stage IIA disease, 165 (20%) had stage IIB disease, and 248 (30%) had stage IIIA disease. Adjuvant systemic therapy was received by 402 patients (48.4%), (France, 61.8%; Germany, 51.9%; UK, 33.4%). Use of adjuvant therapy increased with increasing stage of disease. Cisplatin/vinorelbine and carboplatin/vinorelbine were the most frequently prescribed adjuvant regimens. Median disease-free survival was 48.0 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 42.3-not estimable); the 25th percentile was 13.2 months (95% CI, 11.0-15.3). 204 patients (24%) died during the follow-up period. The median overall survival was not reached, the 25th percentile was 31.2 months (95% CI 26.8-36.0 months). 272 patients (33%) had disease recurrence during the follow-up period. For 86 of those patients, the first recurrence was local or regional with no distant metastasis and 14 had further progression to metastatic disease during the follow-up time. For the other 186 patients, the first recurrence involved distant metastases. A total of 200 patients had metastatic disease at any time during study follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Less than half the patients with stage IB-IIIA NSCLC in this observational study received adjuvant systemic therapy. A high rate of first recurrence with distant metastatic disease was observed, emphasising the need for more effective systemic adjuvant therapies in this population

Economic burden of resected (stage IB-IIIA) non-small cell lung cancer in France, Germany and the United Kingdom: A retrospective observational study (LuCaBIS)

OBJECTIVES: New adjuvant treatments are being developed for patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Due to scarcity of real-world data available for treatment costs and resource utilization, health technology and cost-effectiveness assessments can be limited. We estimated the burden and cost-of-illness associated with completely resected stage IB-IIIA NSCLC in France, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eligible patients were aged ≥18 years with completely resected stage IB-IIIA NSCLC between August 2009 and July 2012. Patients (living or deceased) were enrolled at clinical sites by a systematic sampling method. Data were obtained from medical records and patient surveys. Direct, indirect and patient out-of-pocket expenses were estimated by multiplying resource use by country-specific unit costs. National annual costs were estimated based on disease prevalence data available from published sources. RESULTS: 39 centers provided data from 831 patients of whom patient surveys were evaluable in 306 patients. Median follow-up was 26 months. The mean total direct costs per patient during follow-up were: €19,057 (France), €14,185 (Germany), and €8377 (UK). The largest cost drivers were associated with therapies received (€12,375 France; €3694 UK), and hospitalization/emergency costs (€7706 Germany). Monthly direct costs per patient were the highest during the distant metastasis/terminal illness phase in France (€15,562) and Germany (€6047) and during the adjuvant treatment period in the UK (€2790). Estimated mean total indirect costs per patient were: €696 (France), €2476 (Germany), and €1414 (UK). Estimates for the annual national direct cost were €478.4 million (France), €574.6 million (Germany) and €325.8 million (UK). CONCLUSION: To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study describing the burden of illness for patients with completely resected stage IB-IIIA NSCLC. The economic burden was substantial in all three countries. Treatment of NSCLC is associated with large annual national costs, mainly incurred during disease progression

An Ontology-based Mediation Architecture for E-commerce Applications

International audienc

Linking data to ontologies

Abstract. Many organizations nowadays face the problem of accessing existing data sources by means of flexible mechanisms that are both powerful and efficient. Ontologies are widely considered as a suitable formal tool for sophisticated data access. The ontology expresses the domain of interest of the information system at a high level of abstraction, and the relationship between data at the sources and instances of concepts and roles in the ontology is expressed by means of mappings. In this paper we present a solution to the problem of designing effective systems for ontology-based data access. Our solution is based on three main ingredients. First, we present a new ontology language, based on Description Logics, that is particularly suited to reason with large amounts of instances. The second ingredient is a novel mapping language that is able to deal with the so-called impedance mismatch problem, i.e., the problem arising from the difference between the basic elements managed by the sources, namely data, and the elements managed by the ontology, namely objects. The third ingredient is the query answering method, that combines reasoning at the level of the ontology with specific mechanisms for both taking into account the mappings and efficiently accessing the data at the sources

Vie r\ue9elle apr\ue8s l\u2019implantation d\u2019une neuromodulation sacr\ue9e : taux, raisons et facteurs de risque d\u2019interruption du suivi \ue0 mi-parcours

Abstract: Objectives. - To evaluate follow-up after implantation of a sacral nerve modulation implantable pulse generator (IPG) and to investigate the reasons and risk factors for follow-up discontinuation. Materials and methods. - All patients who underwent an IPG implantation to treat lower urinary tract symptoms between 2014-2019 within 6 hospital centers located in the district of "Hauts-de-France" (France) were systematically called during the year 2020 for a standardized (tele)consultation. Patients were divided into 3 distinct profiles according to the regularity of their 5-year postoperative follow-up: "Regular follow-up", "Irregular follow-up" and "Lost to follow-up". The primary outcome was the change in the annual proportion of the 3 follow-up profiles over the 5 years following IPG implantation. As secondary outcomes we described the reasons reported for follow-up discontinuation and looked for risk factors associated with. Results. - Overall, 259 patients were included. At the time of data collection, after a mean follow-up of 28.4 (+/- 19.8) months, 139 patients (53.7%) had a "Regular follow-up", 54 (20.8%) had an "Irregular follow-up" and 66 (25.5%) were "Lost to follow-up". The proportion of patients with a "Regular follow-up" decreased year by year, representing only 46.2% of patients at five-years. 175 patients (67.6%) underwent a standardized (tele)consultation. In multivariate analysis, only "lack of knowledge of the follow-up protocol" was statistically associated with follow-up discontinuation (OR = 5.16; 95% CI [2.12-13.57]). Conclusion. - The proportion of patients followed up after IPG implantation decreased steadily over the years, often related to a lack of therapeutic education. Level of evidence.- 4. (c) 2023 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved