Agent Based Model of Cavitation in Spinal Cord Injury

Annually, approximately 375,000 people suffer from spinal cord injury (SCI) worldwide and many SCI patients develop secondary health conditions such as respiratory, cardiovascular, and urinary/bowel complications which negatively impact their daily lives. SCI occurs when there is damage to the spinal cord resulting in decreased motor functions, decreased sensory functions, or paralysis. Days to weeks after initial impact, the lesion (area of injury) continues to increase in size in a process called progressive cavitation which demyelinates axons and inhibits effective axonal regeneration. In an in vitro model of progressive cavitation, Fitch et al. showed that activated macrophages cause cavities to form (areas devoid of cells) in astrocyte monolayers (Fitch et al. 1999). In this senior project, I developed an agent based model that replicates the process of cavitation as described in the in vitro experiment. My results showed that, similar to Fitch et al’s results, cavity size and astrocyte density increase with increasing cell speed. Due to the time, effort, ethics, and cost involved with in vivo studies, this model provides an alternative approach to predicting optimal treatments leading to a more guided exploration of treatments that target and reduce progressive cavitation

Patient Factors Associaed With Adherence And Change In Cardiac Risk Factors Among Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients In Qatar

Background: cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in Qatar. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a cost-effective model of care shown to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality by 20%. However, it is vastly underutilized with low enrollment and adherence rates. This study aimed to (a) examine the association between number of sessions attended and change in cardiac risk factors after completion of CR program, and (b) investigate factors associated with adherence Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study, consisted of 714 cardiac patients, aged ≥18 years, referred to a cardiac rehabilitation program in Qatar. A simple linear regression analysis (unadjusted model) was used to assess the association between the mean change in each of the following risk factors: cholestrol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and body mass index (BMI and number of sessions attended. Then, we adjusted for clinical and sociodemographic factors that affect the outcome variable via multiple linear regression analyses. Logistic regression model was used to assess factors associated with adherence. Additionally, a paired sample t-test was used to identify mean change in cardiac risk factors pre-post CR and link this change to clinical significant cut off values in the literature. An independent sample t-test was used to identify change between groups (adherence vs. no adherence). Result: The mean age of the population was 52.7±10.1 years (mean ± SD). Patients referred to CR program were mostly males (n= 641, 89.8%) and non-Qatari (n= 596, 83.5%), almost one fourth were smokers (n=185, 25.91%), and one fifth (n=128, 18.8%) were diagnosed with severe depression. The main positive predictor for adherence was AACVPR moderate risk [OR=12.71, 95%CI= 7.81-20.68] and high-risk level [OR=10, 95%CI= 6.44-17.44]. PCI [OR=0.39, 95%CI= 0.17-0.89] and musculoskeletal disease [OR=0.17, 95%CI= 0.03-0.95] were negatively associated with adherence. We found clinically significant improvements among adherents to CR; 10% reduction in total cholesterol level and 15% reduction in low-density lipoproteins. Conclusion: This study provides new insights in Qatar setting into the factors that lead patients to adhere to their CR sessions. These patient-level variables associated with adherence represent opportunities for program directors in identifying patients who are less likely to adhere to the program; therefore, develope effective interventions to target these patients and consequently improve their health status

Microbial diversity and community structure in sediments associated with the Seagrass (Thallassia testudinum) in Apalachicola Bay, Florida

Seagrass is an angiosperm which provides many ecosystem services in coastal areas, such as providing food, shelter and nurseries for many species, and decreasing the impact of waves on shorelines. A global assessment reported that 29% of known seagrass meadows are in a state of decline due to the effects of human activity. Seagrass is commonly found in shallow marine waters where they form meadows containing a microbiome that plays an important role in providing nutrients for seagrass growth, though little is known about the microorganisms within the seagrass meadow sediments. Our project collected sediments from seagrass meadows and adjacent unvegetated areas around Apalachicola Bay, Florida. We sequenced the bacterial communities present and compared the communities, which provided data that indicated that the differences in bacterial communities were primarily between sites and that vegetated and unvegetated plots within the same collection site were similar

Guano among bat species from two regions shows influence of geography and diet on bacterial community

Studies of bat guano have shown that the diversity and structure of associated microbial communities can be related to factors such as host phylogeny, life history and reproductive stage, geography, and diet. Many insectivorous bat species in the southeastern U.S. have generalist diets that may shift seasonally to take advantage of abundant prey species or maximize caloric intake. Seasonal shifts in prey availability or consumption should be reflected in a guano microbiome change. We also expected to detect distinct guano microbiomes within species. Within species, distinct microbial communities related to geography, and finally life history and reproductive stage. We compared the bacterial communities in bat guano collected directly from five species and two regions of the USA. Guano was collected opportunistically during netting events from May to October from the Appalachian foothills (Rome, GA), and the coastal plain (Bluffton, SC). DNA was extracted from 160 samples. DNA elutions were pooled for samples based on collection time and species ID. We sequenced the 16S rDNA barcode regions (V3, V4). Qiime2 was used to filter reads and assign taxonomy (green genes reference classifier). The bacterial community detected in the Rome samples showed a seasonal shift related to diet shift in big brown bat and red bat samples. Samples from Rome had greater bacterial diversity among species; whereas, samples from Palmetto Bluff were more similar to each other. Overall geography and diet were important factors related to the diversity and structure of the guano bacterial community

The Effects of Factorizing Root and Pattern Mapping in Bidirectional Tunisian - Standard Arabic Machine Translation

International audienceThe development of natural language processing tools for dialects faces the severe problem of lack of resources. In cases of diglossia, as in Arabic, one variant, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), has many resources that can be used to build natural language processing tools. Whereas other variants, Arabic dialects, are resource poor. Taking advantage of the closeness of MSA and its dialects, one way to solve the problem of limited resources, consists in performing a translation of the dialect into MSA in order to use the tools developed for MSA. We describe in this paper an architecture for such a translation and we evaluate it on Tunisian Arabic verbs. Our approach relies on modeling the translation process over the deep morphological representations of roots and patterns, commonly used to model Semitic morphology. We compare different techniques for how to perform the cross-lingual mapping. Our evaluation demonstrates that the use of a decent coverage root+pattern lexicon of Tunisian and MSA with a backoff that assumes independence of mapping roots and patterns is optimal in reducing overall ambiguity and increasing recall

Un système de traduction de verbes entre arabe standard et arabe dialectal par analyse morphologique profonde

International audienceThe developpment of NLP tools for dialects faces the severe problem of lack of resources for such dialects. In the case of diglossia, as in arabic, a variant of arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, exists, for which many resources have been developped which can be used to build NLP tools. Taking advantage of the closeness of MSA and dialects, one way to solve the problem consist in performing a surfacic translation of the dialect into MSA in order to use the tools developped for MSA. We describe in this paper an achitecture for such a translation and we evaluate it on arabic verbs

Diagnostic Study Of Bladder Cancer Using Urine Methylation Biomarkers Of Iraqi Patients

Background: Bladder cancer (BC) is the 4th most frequently occurring malignancy and the 9th most common cause of death worldwide in men. The invasive and metastatic form of the cancer is the main cause of death or unfavorable prognosis for BC patients. The presence of a bladder tumor is often discovered after episodes of painless macroscopic hematuria. At initial diagnosis, the disease is non-muscle-invasive in approximately 75% of patients. In recent years, detecting aberrantly methylated DNA in urine has emerged as a promising and noninvasive approach to aid BC diagnosis. Objective: To detect bladder tumors in Iraqi patients. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, sixty cases were suspected of having bladder tumors according to the opinion of the physician and some signs and symptoms, the best sign was hematuria in urine (per diagnosis). An additional 30 healthy controls with similar age and sex were recruited as control groups, with an average age of 37_85 years.  from Baghdad Medical City / Ghazi al–Hariri Teaching Hospital and AlKindi Specialized Hospital during the period from September / 2023 to April / 2024. Using molecular polymerase chain reaction (high-resolution melting-PCR). Results: Out of 60 bladder inflammations, the result of hypermethylation genes ZNF154, EOMES, and POU4F2, Sensitivity were (71.7, 85, and 75) %, and Specificity (60, 33.3, and 50) % respectively with high significant differences (p < 0.01). In addition. Conclusions: Detecting DNA hypermethylation is considered a good diagnosis method for bladder tumors

Strategies for luminiscence analysis of alternaria mycotoxins using molecularly imprinted polymers as recognition elements

Tesis de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Departamento de Química Orgánica I, leída el 06-07-2017La contaminación de alimentos por hongos no es únicamente un inconveniente en lo que respecta a su comercialización debido a que provoca su deterioro, –con las consecuentes pérdidas económicas–, sino que también representa una amenaza para la salud animal y humana. Algunos de los metabolitos secundarios producidos por dichos hongos presentan una toxicidad aguda o crónica. Estos metabolitos se conocen como micotoxinas, y normalmente son moléculas de pequeño a mediano tamaño que son bastante estables a las condiciones de cocinado o de congelado. Por esa razón, no son fáciles de eliminar de los alimentos una vez que se han producido. Se requieren por tanto controles de calidad que permitan evitar ominimizar la introducción de estas sustancias tóxicas en la cadena alimentaria. Las toxinasmás comunes en productos de agricultura son producidas por las familias de hongos Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium o Alternaria. La última familia, Alternaria, produce varias micotoxinas de diversos tipos estructurales, de las cuales, las cinco principales son: alternariol, alternariol monometil éter y altenueno como benzopironas; ácido tenuazónico,como ácido tetrámico, y altertoxina-I, que es un derivado de tipo perileno. Estas toxinas pueden encontrarse en cereales, granos, frutas y vegetales, y también en comida procesada como cerveza, vino o derivados de tomate.Food contamination with fungi is not only an inconvenience for food marketing because itcauses food decay, –with the consequent economic losses–, but it also brings about animaland human health hazards. Some of the secondary metabolites produced by fungi have acuteor chronic toxicity. These metabolites are known as mycotoxins and are normally small tomedium size molecules that are rather stable to storage or cooking conditions. For this reason,they are not easy to eliminate from food once they are produced. Food quality controls arerequired in order to avoid or minimize the introduction of these toxic substances in the foodchain. The most common toxins in agricultural goods are produced by the Aspergillus,Penicillium, Fusarium or Alternaria fungi families. The latter family, Alternaria, produces anumber of mycotoxins, belonging to different structural classes, the five major compounds ofwhich are alternariol, alternariol methyl ether and altenuene, as benzopyrone derivatives;tenuazonic acid, which is a tetramic acid derivative, and altertoxin-I, a perylene derivative.These products can be found in cereals, grains, fruits and vegetables, and also in processedfoods such as beer, wine or tomato produces. Recent studies have pointed out that most ofthese substances are mutagenic, teratogenic and/or carcinogenic so that mycotoxins havebecome a major concern for public health. Both alternariol and alternariol monomethyl ether,which are frequently found in combination, were found to be mutagenic. Alternariol is alsoinvolved in the development of squamous cell carcinoma and has been linked to precancerouschanges associated with the oesophagal mucosa in mice.Depto. de Química OrgánicaFac. de Ciencias QuímicasTRUEunpu