CD20-targeting in B-cell malignancies: novel prospects for antibodies and combination therapies

Expression of CD20 antigen by the most of transformed B cells is believed to be the driving force for targeting this molecule by using anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies. While it is true that most lymphoma/leukemia patients can be cured, these regimens are limited by the emergence of treatment resistance. Based on these observations, development of anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies and combination therapies have been recently proposed, in particular with the aim to optimize the cytotoxic activity. Here we outline a range of new experimental agents concerning the CD20 positive B-cell tumors which provide high benefit from conventional therapy. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York

Epidemiology and the agreement rate of serological tests in human brucellosis in North East of Iran

Background: Brucellosis still remains a major health problem with different symptoms and various diagnostic methods. Diagnostic methods of brucellosis are usually based on detecting specific antibodies in the patient’s serum. Nowadays, many serological tests are applied for the diagnosis of human brucellosis. Most routine tests are serum agglutination tests based on Wright and 2-Mercaptoethanol (2-ME). Objectives: The aim of this study (cross sectional study) was to evaluate the prevalence of brucellosis and assess the degree of agreement among serum samples of suspected brucellosis serological tests routinely performed in Mashhad, Iran. Patients and Methods: This study was conducted in Mashhad from August 2011 to September 2012. Sera (2 - 3 mL) were collected from 83 cases suspected of brucellosis among 594 patients. Ten serum samples were collected from healthy subjects as control sera. Rose Bengal test for initial screening and Wright and 2 ME as standard tests were conducted to determine antibody titers. Thereafter, IgG and IgM levels were determined by the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) method. Results: Among 83 serum samples, Rose Bengal test was able to identify 20 (12%) positive specimens; the standard tube agglutination test was able to detect 30 (18%) positive samples, and the ELISA IgG and ELISA IgM were able to trace 42 (21%) and 13 (6.5%) positive samples, respectively. Ten control samples had negative results for the ELISA method. The results were calculated by the Kappa formula. The highest level of agreement was among 1 = KRB-SAT tests and the lowest level of agreement was among tests K ELISA IgM-IgG = 0.30. Conclusions: According to the results, brucellosis has remained endemic in this region. Most cases were detected by ELISA IgG. The highest kappa agreements were between tests KRB-SAT, KRB-IgG and KSAT-IgG, while the lowest levels of agreement were between tests SAT-IgM and ELISA IgM-IgG. Considering that ELISA IgM results are covered by SAT and ELISA IgG test results, applications of this test do not seem necessary. © 2015, Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine Research Center

How much should you worry about contaminant neutrons in spatially fractionated grid radiation therapy?

Objectives: Telehealth monitoring applications are latency-sensitive. The current fog-based telehealth monitoring models are mainly focused on the role of the fog computing in improving response time and latency. In this paper, we have introduced a new service called “priority queue” in fog layer, which is programmed to prioritize the events sent by different sources in different environments to assist the cloud layer with reducing response time and latency. Material and Methods: We analyzed the performance of the proposed model in a fog-enabled cloud environment with the IFogSim toolkit. To provide a comparison of cloud and fog computing environments, three parameters namely response time, latency, and network usage were used. We used the Pima Indian diabetes dataset to evaluate the model. Result: The fog layer proved to be very effective in improving the response time while handling emergencies using priority queues. The proposed model reduces response time by 25.8%, latency by 36.18%, bandwidth by 28.17%, and network usage time by 41.4% as compared to the cloud. Conclusion: By combining priority queues, and fog computing in this study, the network usage, latency time, bandwidth, and response time were significantly reduced as compared to cloud computing

The effect of occupational therapy on some aspects of quality of life in schizophrenic patients

چکیده: زمینه و هدف: بیماری اسکیزوفرنیا شدیدترین و مزمن شونده ترین بیماری روانپزشکی است که با اختلال در تواناییهای اجتماعی و شغلی همراه است. کار درمانی باعث افزایش اعتماد به نفس، خودسازی و تقویت رفتارهای کاری در بیمار می شود. این پژوهش با هدف تعیین تاثیر کاردرمانی بر ابعاد مختلف کیفیت زندگی بیماران اسکیزوفرنیک مزمن بستری در بیمارستان سینا انجام شده است. روش بررسی: این پژوهش یک مطالعه کار آزمایی بالینی است که ابتدا بیماران اسکیزوفرن مزمن بستری در بیمارستان سینای فارسان در استان چهارمحال و بختیاری بصورت سرشماری انتخاب و کیفیت زندگی آنان بوسیله پرسشنامه کیفیت زندگی بررسی و سپس بیماران بصورت تصادفی به دو گروه مورد (32 نفر) و شاهد (30 نفر) تقسیم گردیدند. کاردرمانی به مدت 20 ساعت در هفته در طی 6 ماه برای گروه مورد اجرا شد. بعد از اجرای کاردرمانی مجدداً کیفیت زندگی بیماران بررسی و اطلاعات با استفاده از آمار توصیفی و استنباطی (t مستقل) تجزیه و تحلیل شد. یافته ها: نتایج نشان داد در بدو مطالعه، تفاوت معنی داری بین میانگین نمره کیفیت زندگی گروه مورد و شاهد، وجود نداشت، بعد از مطالعه این تفاوت در حیطه انگیزه و انرژی و نمره کل کیفیت زندگی بین گروه مورد و شاهد معنی دار بود (001/0

DrugMiner: comparative analysis of machine learning algorithms for prediction of potential druggable proteins

Abstract not availableAli Akbar Jamali, Reza Ferdousi, Saeed Razzaghi, Jiuyong Li, Reza Safdari, and Esmaeil Ebrahimi

Основні віхи розвитку української гірничої термінології

Ідеться про розвиток термінології й номенклатури гірничої справи, зокрема частково шахтобудування, яка активно розвивалася впродовж 20–З0-х рр. ХХ ст. Наголошено на спірних моментах в історії становлення цієї лексичної групи. Зроблено висновок про те, що нині гірнича термінологія української мови практично повністю унормована завдяки ретельній праці лексикографів та фахівців-гірників.The paper examines the ways mining terminology and nomenclature was developed. Special attention is drawn to the period of the 20th – 30th of the 20th century, when the term system was formed. The research focuses on disputable moments in the history of lexical group development; it concludes that mining terminology is normalized in the present-day Ukrainian language thanks to the careful work of lexicographers and mining specialist

The treatment of printing and packaging wastewater by electrocoagulation– flotation: the simultaneous efficacy of critical parameters and economics

In this work, electrocoagulation–flotation (ECF) following sedimentation was applied as a printing and packaging wastewater treatment using four Al electrodes with a parallel monopolar configuration. A sedimentation process was applied after the ECF as a post-treatment phase to remove large pollutants. The simultaneous efficacy of the operating parameters initial color content (1,843.44–12,156.56 ADMI), initial pH (3.56–10.44), current density (6.02–22.18 mA/cm2), and treatment time (5.62–74.38 min) on color and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies were evaluated alongside processing costs. Response surface methodology (RSM) and central composite design (CCD) optimized these key parameters to achieve the highest removal efficiencies and lowest operating costs. Based on the results analyzed by RSM-CCD, using initial color content of 5,576.38 ADMI, initial pH of 7.29, the current density of 18.49 mA/cm2, and treatment time of 59.76 min as optimum operational conditions can result in 97.8% and 92.1% for color and COD removal efficiencies, respectively. At these optimum conditions, operating costs (OPCs), including electrodes material and energy consumption, were 0.07 US$/(kg color removed) and 0.4 US$/(kg COD removed). The results confirm ECF-sedimentation as a promising and costeffective tool for the treatment of printing and packaging wastewater

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Pharmacological treatments of COVID-19

The viral infection due to the new coronavirus or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which was reported for the first time in December 2019, was named by the World Health Organization (WHO) as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2), because of the very similar genome and also its related symptoms to SARS-CoV1. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with significant mortality, morbidity, and socioeconomic impact is considered by the WHO as a global public health emergency. Since there is no specific treatment available for SARS-CoV2 infection, and or COVID-19, several clinical and sub-clinical studies are currently undertaken to find a gold-standard therapeutic regimen with high efficacy and low side effect. Based on the published scientific evidence published to date, we summarized herein the effects of different potential therapies and up-to-date clinical trials. The review is intended to help readers aware of potentially effective COVID-19 treatment and provide useful references for future studies. © 2020, Maj Institute of Pharmacology Polish Academy of Sciences