On the exponential ergodicity of the McKean-Vlasov SDE depending on a polynomial interaction

In this paper, we study the long time behaviour of the Fokker-Planck and the kinetic Fokker-Planck equations with many body interaction, more precisely with interaction defined by U-statistics, whose macroscopic limits are often called McKean-Vlasov and Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equations respectively. In the continuity of the recent papers [63, [43],[42]] and [44, [74],[75]], we establish nonlinear functional inequalities for the limiting McKean-Vlasov SDEs related to our particle systems. In the first order case, our results rely on large deviations for U-statistics and a uniform logarithmic Sobolev inequality in the number of particles for the invariant measure of the particle system. In the kinetic case, we first prove a uniform (in the number of particles) exponential convergence to equilibrium for the solutions in the weighted Sobolev space H 1 ($\mu$) with a rate of convergence which is explicitly computable and independent of the number of particles. In a second time, we quantitatively establish an exponential return to equilibrium in Wasserstein's W 2 --metric for the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation

Clinical outcomes of laparoscopic versus open appendectomy for acute appendicitis in a resource-limited setting

Background: Acute appendicitis is the most common cause of the acute abdomen; thus, appendectomy is part of most daily emergency surgical duties. It is conducted through either open or laparoscopic approach. Methods: A prospective hospital-based study compared the clinical outcomes of open versus laparoscopic appendectomy for patients with acute appendicitis in El-Mek Nimir University Hospital, Sudan. Results: A total of 550 cases of acute appendicitis were studied, of which 328 (59.6%) underwent open appendectomy surgery and 222 (39.4%) underwent laparoscopic appendectomy. The majority of the study’s population was female.Laparoscopic appendectomy generally involved a longer operation time than open appendectomy (mean duration, 42.4±12.5 vs. 29±16 minutes), lesser incidence of severe pain postoperatively (3% vs. 11%; p=0.000), shorter hospital stay (i.e., <24 hours; 96% vs.77%; p=0.000), and a higher rate of patient return to normal activities within 1 week (92% vs.15%; p=0.000). Differences in the occurrence of bleeding, wound infection, or intra-abdominal septic collection were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Both open and laparoscopic appendectomy procedures are safe for the management of acute appendicitis; however, laparoscopic appendectomy is associated with fewer complications and a faster recovery

Potential Dependent Frictional Schrodinger Equation

By treating particles as harmonic oscillator is obtained the friction energy related to the momentum. The energy and the corresponding Newtonian operator is found. This result in a new Schrodinger equation accounting for the effect of friction. This new equation shows that the energy and mass are quantized, if one treats particles as strings. The radioactive decay law and collision probability is also derived

Inflammatory immune mediators and Plasmodium falciparum infection: a cross-sectional study among Sudanese patients with severe and uncomplicated malaria

Aim: A number of questions remain unanswered concerning how infected individuals regulate their immune response to Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) parasites at varying levels of exposure. Due to the interactions of inflammatory mediators and cytokines with the P. falciparum parasite complex density, several mediators influence parasitaemia and may give some indications of disease severity and represent effective signs in clinical manifestations of malaria disease. Methods: In this study, various levels of immune response mediators of interleukin 8 (IL-8), tumor necrosis factor-beta (TNF-β, also known as lymphotoxin-α), interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), IL-6, and IL-10 were investigated to the different phases of infection with P. falciparum in hyperendemic states in Sudan (White Nile, Blue Nile). This study vetted the association between certain inflammatory mediators during malaria infection and parasite density. This study was based on a total of 108 cases, in which 86 patients (62.0%) were uncomplicated and (17.6%) were severe, all met the diagnostic criteria and were clinically admitted for malaria infections. Commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits were employed to determine the inflammatory mediator’s serum concentration. Results: The analysis of data indicated that older infected children had substantially raised levels of IFN-γ (P < 0.05), among study groups, levels of IFN-γ, TNF-β, and IL-8 were strongly linked with the severity of malaria, in severe and uncomplicated cases (P < 0.001), IL-6 and IL-10 were significantly associated with severe malaria cases uniquely (P < 0.001). Furthermore, we reported a positive correlation between IL-8 and TNF-β during all infection cases (r = 0.760, P < 0.001). Additionally, in severe malaria cases IL-6 was positively correlated with IL-10 (r = 0.575, P = 0.010). Conclusions: Eliminating P. falciparum blood-stage infection needs effective, specific, and tuned immune response strategies, which may present in the mediator’s correlations and depend on the density of the infection. Besides the effective levels contribution of certain cytokines that play protective roles during different stages of an infection

Organizing gene literature retrieval, profiling, and visualization training workshops for early career researchers

Developing the skills needed to effectively search and extract information from biomedical literature is essential for early-career researchers. It is, for instance, on this basis that the novelty of experimental results, and therefore publishing opportunities, can be evaluated. Given the unprecedented volume of publications in the field of biomedical research, new systematic approaches need to be devised and adopted for the retrieval and curation of literature relevant to a specific theme. Here we describe a hands-on training curriculum aimed at retrieval, profiling, and visualization of literature associated with a given topic. This curriculum was implemented in a workshop in January 2021. We provide supporting material and step-by-step implementation guidelines with the ISG15 gene literature serving as an illustrative use case. Through participation in such a workshop, trainees can learn: 1) to build and troubleshoot PubMed queries in order to retrieve the literature associated with a gene of interest; 2) to identify key concepts relevant to given themes (such as cell types, diseases, and biological processes); 3) to measure the prevalence of these concepts in the gene literature; 4) to extract key information from relevant articles, and 5) to develop a background section or summary on the basis of this information. Finally, trainees can learn to consolidate the structured information captured through this process for presentation via an interactive web application

A modular framework for the development of targeted Covid-19 blood transcript profiling panels

Covid-19 morbidity and mortality are associated with a dysregulated immune response. Tools are needed to enhance existing immune profiling capabilities in affected patients. Here we aimed to develop an approach to support the design of targeted blood transcriptome panels for profiling the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.; We designed a pool of candidates based on a pre-existing and well-characterized repertoire of blood transcriptional modules. Available Covid-19 blood transcriptome data was also used to guide this process. Further selection steps relied on expert curation. Additionally, we developed several custom web applications to support the evaluation of candidates.; As a proof of principle, we designed three targeted blood transcript panels, each with a different translational connotation: immunological relevance, therapeutic development relevance and SARS biology relevance.; Altogether the work presented here may contribute to the future expansion of immune profiling capabilities via targeted profiling of blood transcript abundance in Covid-19 patients

Development of a fixed module repertoire for the analysis and interpretation of blood transcriptome data.

As the capacity for generating large-scale molecular profiling data continues to grow, the ability to extract meaningful biological knowledge from it remains a limitation. Here, we describe the development of a new fixed repertoire of transcriptional modules, BloodGen3, that is designed to serve as a stable reusable framework for the analysis and interpretation of blood transcriptome data. The construction of this repertoire is based on co-clustering patterns observed across sixteen immunological and physiological states encompassing 985 blood transcriptome profiles. Interpretation is supported by customized resources, including module-level analysis workflows, fingerprint grid plot visualizations, interactive web applications and an extensive annotation framework comprising functional profiling reports and reference transcriptional profiles. Taken together, this well-characterized and well-supported transcriptional module repertoire can be employed for the interpretation and benchmarking of blood transcriptome profiles within and across patient cohorts. Blood transcriptome fingerprints for the 16 reference cohorts can be accessed interactively via: https://drinchai.shinyapps.io/BloodGen3Module/

A review of elderly transplantation regarding complications, outcomes, and survival

Background: Renal transplant adds survival benefits to end-stage renal disease patients over dialysis, and a similar concept applies to elderly patients. Some of the challenges of transplanting old patients may involve age-related cancers and comorbid conditions such as cardiovascular disease. Studies had shown that advanced age is associated with better outcomes compared to dialysis despite receiving poorer quality organs. Aim: This extended literature review aims to identify the common complications, outcomes, and survival benefits of kidney transplantation in the elderly population. Methods: An extended literature review was done to identify studies that compared elderly transplant recipients with the younger kidney transplant recipient population. The study population included elderly kidney recipients aged sixty and above and younger kidney recipients below the age of sixty. This literature review aims to discuss complications facing elderly kidney recipients and compare transplant outcomes to younger kidney recipients. PubMed, Midline, and google scholar databases were searched and papers meeting the pre-set inclusion criteria were identified. Results: A total of 212 papers were identified. After screening the results, 12 papers met the inclusion criteria and were included for review. 10/12 papers included patients' age cutoff point, one paper had cut-off age between 60 and 80 years, while the last paper recruited patients with ages above 70. Most of the studies mentioned young group age as below 60, 2/12 papers divided the young group into further subgroups of age. Two studies used paired donor organs for both young and elderly groups to eliminate donor bias. While other studies used living, deceased, or both living and deceased donors for both elderly and young groups. One study matched donor type and gender in both groups. The studies looked at patient and graft survival and complications. Elderly transplant patients suffered more hospitalization, infections, cardiovascular complications, malignancy, and surgical complications. Post-transplant diabetes was higher in the young recipient group in one study. Conclusion: In the case of elderly renal transplant recipients, the cut-off point for age to perform renal transplant is not clear but studies showed better survival and cost-effectiveness in elderly patients compared to patients on the waiting list even in older patient cohort

Solving the pooling problem with LMI relaxations

We consider the standard pooling problem with a single quality parameter, which is a polynomial global optimization problem occurring among other places in the oil industry. In this paper, we show that if the feasible set has a nonempty interior, the problem can be solved by a hierarchy of semidefinite relaxations in which the resulting sequences of their optimal values converge to the global optimum. For a fixed relaxation order, this technique provides tight lower bounds for the global objective function value. Based on the experiments, for low order relaxations, the lower bound provided by this method matches the true global optimum in several instances

Role of political and social bilateral relations between Sudan and Malaysia in Sudan's economic development

This thesis examines the role of politics and social bilateral relations between Sudan and Malaysia in the context of Sudan’s economic development within the framework of international relations based on the cooperation between the two countries from 1996-2010. The research thus looks at the political, social and economic ties that have been developed and further examine how the political and social matters between the two countries can influence development of Sudan’s economy. The importance of this bilateral relation between Malaysia and the Government of Sudan (GOS) is probably one of the most significant factors to consider when investigating the economic collaboration between the two countries in terms of trade,development of the oil sector, infrastructural projects and financial assistance. It is very much a symbiotic relationship, where Malaysia is in need of a secure source of oil over the long term, while Sudan needs the external credit, investment and market for its oil. Despite their connection in the Islamic religion and common membership of both countries in organizations such as the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and others, there is no strong trade and economic cooperation between the two countries through these organizations. This study attempts to explore the fundamental changes and challenges faced by the two countries and how they can be addressed through economic relations. The basic purpose of this study was three: (a) to investigate the aspects of relationship between Sudan and Malaysia such as cultural and political, (b) to examine how these aspects can strengthen economic relations between the two countries, and (c) to evaluate how Sudan can benefit from Malaysia in terms of economic development based on the bilateral relations between the two countries. Since the subject matter concerns an in-depth study of bilateral relations between the two countries, therefore a qualitative method was deemed more appropriate to undertake such a study using unstructured interview technique and documents to collect the primary and other secondary data. This research was conducted within the framework of Africa-Asia relations and South-South cooperation. The significance of Malaysia’s involvement in facilitating to jump-start Sudan’s economy can be realized through the presence, since 1997, of PETRONAS, Malaysia’s national petroleum company in Sudan’s oil sector. Politically and diplomatically, Sudan and Malaysia have supported each other on issues like human rights in the international arena and Malaysia has been largely instrumental in helping to extend Sudan’s presence internationally, especially within the political grouping of ASEAN. The Sudan-Malaysia bilateral relation over the years has developed to become an outstanding example of a successful South-South cooperation