Adverse drug events associated with vitamin K antagonists: factors of therapeutic imbalance

Nancy El-Helou, Amal Al-Hajje, Rola Ajrouche, Sanaa Awada, Samar Rachidi, Salam Zein, Pascale SalamehClinical and Epidemiological Research Laboratory, Faculty of Pharmacy, Lebanese University, Beirut, LebanonBackground: Adverse drug events (ADE) occur frequently during treatment with vitamin K antagonists (AVK) and contribute to increase hemorrhagic risks.Methods: A retrospective study was conducted over a period of 2 years. Patients treated with AVK and admitted to the emergency room of a tertiary care hospital in Beirut were included. The aim of the study was to identify ADE characterized by a high international normalized ratio (INR) and to determine the predictive factors responsible for these events. Statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS statistical package.Results: We included 148 patients. Sixty-seven patients (47.3%) with an INR above the therapeutic range were identified as cases. The control group consisted of 81 patients (54.7%) with an INR within the therapeutic range. Hemorrhagic complications were observed in 53.7% of cases versus 6.2% of controls (P < 0.0001). No significant difference was noticed between cases and controls regarding the indication and the dose of AVK. Patients aged over 75 years were more likely to present an INR above the therapeutic range (58.2%, P = 0.049). Recent infection was present in 40.3% of cases versus 6.2% of controls (P < 0.0001) and hypoalbuminemia in 37.3% of cases versus 6.1% of controls (P < 0.0001). Treatment with antibiotics, amiodarone, and anti-inflammatory drugs were also factors of imbalance (P < 0.0001).Conclusion: Many factors may be associated with ADE related to AVK. Monitoring of INR and its stabilization in the therapeutic range are important for preventing these events.Keywords: adverse drug events, vitamin K antagonists, bleeding risks, therapeutic imbalanc

Context-Sensitive Awareness Services for Communities of Practice

The eLogbook is a Web-Based collaborative environment particularly adapted to the needs of communities of practice. It is deployed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and developed within the framework of the Palette European Project. This paper presents the eLogbook “Context- Sensitive View” intended to increase the environment usability and acceptability by communities of practice and to support collaboration and communication by embedding different types of awareness “cues” within an innovative user- friendly interface

The eLogBook Framework: Sustaining Interaction, Collaboration, and Learning in Laboratory-Oriented CoPs

Convinced by the important role of CoPs (communities of practice) and the innovative learning modality they offer, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is currently developing a framework to sustain interaction, collaboration, and learning in laboratory-oriented CoPs, namely the eLogBook. This paper describes the services provided by this framework, the 3A model on which it is based, and the main features it presents. The eLogBook presents several innovative features that make it different from other classical collaboration workspaces. The eLogBook offers a high level of flexibility and adaptability so that it can fit the requirements of various CoPs. It allows CoPs' members to define their own rules, protocols, and vocabularies. The eLogBook also focus on usability and user acceptance thanks to its personalization and contextualization mechanisms. Finally, the eLogBook provides a community's members with ubiquitous services thanks to its multiple views and its advanced awareness services

Challenges in context-aware mobile language learning: the MASELTOV approach

Smartphones, as highly portable networked computing devices with embedded sensors including GPS receivers, are ideal platforms to support context-aware language learning. They can enable learning when the user is en-gaged in everyday activities while out and about, complementing formal language classes. A significant challenge, however, has been the practical implementation of services that can accurately identify and make use of context, particularly location, to offer meaningful language learning recommendations to users. In this paper we review a range of approaches to identifying context to support mobile language learning. We consider how dynamically changing aspects of context may influence the quality of recommendations presented to a user. We introduce the MASELTOV project’s use of context awareness combined with a rules-based recommendation engine to present suitable learning content to recent immigrants in urban areas; a group that may benefit from contextual support and can use the city as a learning environment

Participatory Design for Awareness Features: Enhancing Interaction in Communities of Practice

In the framework of the European Integrated Project PALETTE, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Patras are developing mediation services. These services aim at sustaining collaboration, supporting tacit and explicit knowledge management and enhancing individual and organizational learning in communities of practice (CoPs). Defined by Dourish and Belloti as "an understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for one's own activity", awareness is one of the most crucial needs expressed by communities of practice in the framework of the participatory design process implemented within the Palette project. Awareness of past and current actions in shared environments and over shared artifacts motivates participation and guides the members' decisions and course of actions. This paper describes the approach adopted by two Web-based collaboration support applications, namely eLogbook and CoPe_it!, for developing awareness services. CoPs needs, in terms of awareness, were identified through the participatory design approach. Then, a combination of relevant awareness types found in the literature was adopted in order to address the identified awareness requirements. The resulting awareness services implemented by Palette's mediation services (eLogbook and CoPe_it!) are presented. In particular, the kind of awareness information provided and its rendering means are described. For each tool, the available awareness functionality is related to the awareness type it contributes

W2S: Microscopy Data with Joint Denoising and Super-Resolution for Widefield to SIM Mapping

In fluorescence microscopy live-cell imaging, there is a critical trade-off between the signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution on one side, and the integrity of the biological sample on the other side. To obtain clean high-resolution (HR) images, one can either use microscopy techniques, such as structured-illumination microscopy (SIM), or apply denoising and super-resolution (SR) algorithms. However, the former option requires multiple shots that can damage the samples, and although efficient deep learning based algorithms exist for the latter option, no benchmark exists to evaluate these algorithms on the joint denoising and SR (JDSR) tasks. To study JDSR on microscopy data, we propose such a novel JDSR dataset, Widefield2SIM (W2S), acquired using a conventional fluorescence widefield and SIM imaging. W2S includes 144,000 real fluorescence microscopy images, resulting in a total of 360 sets of images. A set is comprised of noisy low-resolution (LR) widefield images with different noise levels, a noise-free LR image, and a corresponding high-quality HR SIM image. W2S allows us to benchmark the combinations of 6 denoising methods and 6 SR methods. We show that state-of-the-art SR networks perform very poorly on noisy inputs. Our evaluation also reveals that applying the best denoiser in terms of reconstruction error followed by the best SR method does not necessarily yield the best final result. Both quantitative and qualitative results show that SR networks are sensitive to noise and the sequential application of denoising and SR algorithms is sub-optimal. Lastly, we demonstrate that SR networks retrained end-to-end for JDSR outperform any combination of state-of-the-art deep denoising and SR networksComment: ECCVW 2020. Project page: \<https://github.com/ivrl/w2s

Tackling Acceptability Issues in Communities of Practice by Providing a Lightweight Email-based Interface to eLogbook: a Web 2.0 Collaborative Activity and Asset Management System

eLogbook is a Web-based collaborative environment designed for communities of practice. It enables users to manage joint activities, share related assets and get contextual awareness. In addition to the original Web- based access, an email-based eLogbook interface is under development. The purpose of this lightweight interface is twofold. First, it eases eLogbook access when using smart phones or PDA. Second, it eases eLogbook acceptance for community members hesitating to learn an additional Web environment. Thanks to the proposed interface, members of a community can benefit from the ease of use of an email client combined with the power of an activity and asset management system without burden. The Web-based eLogbook access can be kept for supporting further community evolutions, when participation becomes more regular and activities become more complex. This paper presents the motivation, the design and the incentives of the email-based eLogbook interface

Pre-cooling for endurance exercise performance in the heat: a systematic review.

PMCID: PMC3568721The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/166. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Endurance exercise capacity diminishes under hot environmental conditions. Time to exhaustion can be increased by lowering body temperature prior to exercise (pre-cooling). This systematic literature review synthesizes the current findings of the effects of pre-cooling on endurance exercise performance, providing guidance for clinical practice and further research