showing 36 of ~574560 from 574555 documents
A narrative review on the implementation of liquid biopsy as a diagnostic tool in thoracic tumors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2021
Objective: In this review, we evaluate the role of liquid biopsy in managing lung cancer patients during the still ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) healthcare emergency. Background: The novel influenza coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus or SARSCoV-2) has upended several aspects of our lives, including medical activities. In this setting, many routine cancer diagnostic and therapeutic procedures have been suspended, leading to delays in diagnosis, treatments, and, ultimately, increases in cancer mortality rates. Equally drastic has been the impact of COVID-19 on clinical trials, many of which have been stalled or have never begun. This has left many patient…
Physical activity and risk of atrial fibrillation in the general population : meta-analysis of 23 cohort studies involving about 2 million participan…
2021
Regular physical activity is well established to be associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease outcomes. Whether physical activity is associated with the future risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) remains a controversy. Using a systematic review and meta-analysis of published observational cohort studies in general populations with at least one-year of follow-up, we aimed to evaluate the association between regular physical activity and the risk of AF. Relevant studies were sought from inception until October 2020 in MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and manual search of relevant articles. Extracted relative risks (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the maximum versus the …
The Vatican Opinion on Gender Theory
2021
This article is a reasoned response to the article by Timothy F. Murphy, recently published in the prestigious journal Bioethics, on the supposed opposition between the views of the Catholic Church and what he calls “contemporary science” in relation to certain anthropological issues linked to the gender perspective. To point to “the Vatican” as anchored in an unscientific and anachronistic position, using the term contemporary science to which he attributes a unanimous representation of current scientific thinking on the subject is, in our view, unfounded and completely unacceptable. In his reflection, he does not adequately distinguish between intersex and transgenderism, two clearly dif…
Design, upgrade and characterization of the silicon photomultiplier front-end for the AMIGA detector at the Pierre Auger Observatory
2021
The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malargue. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina -Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica; Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargue; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia -the Australian Research Council; Braz…
Disordered sodium alkoxides from powder data: crystal structures of sodium ethoxide, propoxide, butoxide and pentoxide, and some of their solvates
2021
The crystal structures of NaOEt, NaOPr, NaOBu and NaOAm (Am = amyl = pentyl) were determined from powder data. These compounds crystallize in an anti-PbO structure in the space groups P 21 m and P4/nmm. Additionally, solvates with the composition NaOEt·2EtOH, NaOPr·2PrOH, NaOiPr·5iPrOH and NaOtAm·tAmOH were synthesized, and their structures were determined from single crystals. They form interesting chain structures of different compositions and topologies.
Does neoadjuvant FOLFOX chemotherapy improve the prognosis of high‐risk Stage II and III colon cancers? Three years' follow‐up results of the PRODIGE…
2021
International audience; Aim Neoadjuvant chemotherapy has proven valuable in locally advanced resectable colon cancer (CC) but its effect on oncological outcomes is uncertain. The aim of the present paper was to report 3-year oncological outcomes, representing the secondary endpoints of the PRODIGE 22 trial. Method PRODIGE 22 was a randomized multicentre phase II trial in high-risk T3, T4 and/or N2 CC patients on CT scan. Patients were randomized between 6 months of adjuvant FOLFOX (upfront surgery) or perioperative FOLFOX (four cycles before surgery and eight cycles after; FOLFOX perioperative). In wild-type RAS patients, a third arm testing perioperative FOLFOX-cetuximab was added. The pri…
An experimental and kinetic modeling study on the oxidation of 1,3-dioxolane
2021
International audience; The modern catalytic or enzymatic advances allow the production of novel biofuel. Among them, 1,3dioxolane can be produced from formaldehyde and ethylene glycol, both can be obtained from biomass. In this study, the oxidation of 1,3-dioxolane is studied at stoichiometric conditions. The ignition delay times of 1,3-dioxolane/O 2 /inert mixtures were measured in a shock tube and in a rapid compression machine at pressures of 20 to 40 bar and temperatures ranging from 630 to 1300 K. The pressure profiles recorded in the rapid compression machine show a first stage of ignition enlightening the influence of the low temperature chemistry of combustion. Furthermore, mole fr…
The influence of university brand image, satisfaction, and university identification on alumni WOM intentions
2021
This study investigates the influence of university brand image, satisfaction, and alumni’s university identification on positive word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. The model is tested using data coll...
Long-Term Prognostic Value of Cognitive Impairment on Top of Frailty in Older Adults after Acute Coronary Syndrome
2021
Frailty is a marker of poor prognosis in older adults after acute coronary syndrome. We investigated whether cognitive impairment provides additional prognostic information. The study population consisted of a prospective cohort of 342 older (>
Parathyroid hormone serum concentration kinetic profile in critically ill patients undergoing continuous renal replacement therapies: a prospective o…
2021
Introduction: Elevated serum parathormone (PTH) levels have been observed in acute kidney injury and are related to calcium-phosphate metabolism disturbance, decreased renal production of 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3, impaired renal PTH excretion, and other renal-independent factors. There are no data regarding PTH concentration kinetics in critically ill patients undergoing continuous renal replacement therapies (CRRT) in an intensive care setting. The primary objective of this study was to investigate trends in PTH serum levels in critically ill patients with multiorgan failure undergoing CRRT, by performing periodic PTH measurements in the acute phase of critical illness. Material and method…
Time structure in men’s professional doubles tennis: does team experience allow finishing the points faster?
2021
This article provides information on the time structure of the doubles game in tennis and studies the influence of team experience on this time structure. The sample consisted of 2339 points corres...
Green LAI Mapping and Cloud Gap-Filling Using Gaussian Process Regression in Google Earth Engine
2021
For the last decade, Gaussian process regression (GPR) proved to be a competitive machine learning regression algorithm for Earth observation applications, with attractive unique properties such as band relevance ranking and uncertainty estimates. More recently, GPR also proved to be a proficient time series processor to fill up gaps in optical imagery, typically due to cloud cover. This makes GPR perfectly suited for large-scale spatiotemporal processing of satellite imageries into cloud-free products of biophysical variables. With the advent of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform, new opportunities emerged to process local-to-planetary scale satellite data using advanced machine …
Excessive Focus on Risk? Non-performing Loans and Efficiency of Microfinance Institutions
2021
The joint sets on the Lilstock Benches, UK. Observations based on mapping a full resolution UAV-based image
2021
Outcrop studies of fracture networks are important to understand fractured reservoirs in the subsurface, but complete maps of all fractures in large outcrops are rare due to limitations of outcrop and image resolution. We manually mapped the first full-resolution UAV-based, Gigapixel dataset and DEM of the wave-cut Lilstock Benches in the southern Bristol Channel basin, a classic outcrop of layer-bound fracture networks in limestones. We present a map of the patterns and age relationships of successive sets of joints in dm-thick limestone layers separated by claystone beds. Using interpretation criteria based on crosscutting relationships, abutting and joint length, up to eight successive s…
One and Two Dimensional Convolutional Neural Networks for Seizure Detection Using EEG Signals
2021
Deep learning for the automated detection of epileptic seizures has received much attention during recent years. In this work, one dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) and two dimensional convolutional neural network (2D-CNN) are simultaneously used on electroencephalogram (EEG) data for seizure detection. Firstly, using sliding windows without overlap on raw EEG to obtain the definite one-dimension time EEG segments (1D-T), and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for 1D-T signals to obtain the two-dimension time-frequency representations (2D-TF). Then, 1D-CNN and 2D-CNN model architectures are used on 1D-T and 2D-TF signals for automatic classification, respectively. Finally, t…
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospitalizations for acute coronary syndromes: a multinational study
2021
Abstract Background COVID-19 has challenged the health system organization requiring a fast reorganization of diagnostic/therapeutic pathways for patients affected by time-dependent diseases such as acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Aim To describe ACS hospitalizations, management, and complication rate before and after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. Design Ecological retrospective study. Methods: We analyzed aggregated epidemiological data of all patients > 18 years old admitted for ACS in twenty-nine hub cardiac centers from 17 Countries across 4 continents, from December 1st, 2019 to April 15th, 2020. Data from December 2018 to April 2019 were used as historical period. Results…
Metabolic and Functional Improvements in a Patient with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Type 2 after EGCG Administration: A Case Report.
2021
Background and objectives: The aim of this study was to report a case of a patient with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2 (CMT2) treated with epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) for 4 months in order to assess its therapeutic potential in CMT2. Materials and Methods: The study included a brother and a sister who have CMT2. The sister received 800 mg of EGCG for 4 months, while her brother received placebo for the same period of time. Both participants were assessed before and after daily administration by means of anthropometry; analysis of inflammatory and oxidation markers of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and paraoxonase 1 (PON1) in the blood sample; and motor tests: 2-min walk test (2MWT), 10-m walk…
Oxidation of pentan-2-ol – Part II: Experimental and modeling study
2021
International audience
Molecular mimicry in the post-COVID-19 signs and symptoms of neurovegetative disorders?
2021
Many individuals who have severe forms of COVID-19 experience a suite of neurovegetative signs and symptoms (eg, tachycardia) after their recovery, suggesting that the imbalance of the sympathetic-parasympathetic activity of the autonomic nervous system1 could continue for many weeks or months after respiratory symptoms stop. Moreover, a reduction of the parasympathetic tone could have a role in restricting the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, thus favouring hyperinflammation and cytokine storm in the most severe phases of the disease. As reported by Guglielmo Lucchese in The Lancet Microbe,2 SARS-CoV-2 can damage the nervous system via an indirect mechanism, resulting in a high preva…
The stigma of feminism: disclosures and silences regarding female disadvantage in the video game industry in US and Finnish media stories
2021
This article examines how the issue of gender, particularly women’s (under)representation in the video game industry, is framed in US and Finnish media. Building on the notion of stigma surrounding feminism, the article examines discourse practices as acts of managing the image of feminism. The findings illustrate five stigma management strategies that offer the possibility of maintaining socially accepted ways of discussing gender inequality and portraying women in mainstream media. Using critical discourse analysis, the paper addresses how the use of these stigma management strategies connects with different contemporary feminisms. The strategies used and their ideological backgrounds var…
A Deep Learning Model for Automatic Sleep Scoring using Multimodality Time Series
2021
Sleep scoring is a fundamental but time-consuming process in any sleep laboratory. Automatic sleep scoring is crucial and urgent to help address the increasing unmet need for sleep research. Therefore, this paper aims to develop an end-to-end deep learning architecture using raw polysomnographic recordings to automate sleep scoring. The proposed model adopts two-dimensional convolutional neural networks (2D-CNN) to automatically learn features from multi-modality signals, together with a "squeeze and excitation" block for recalibrating channel-wise feature responses. The learnt representations are finally fed to a softmax classifier to generate predictions for each sleep stage. The model pe…
Nomenclatural synopsis of cirsium sect. Eriolepis (asteraceae) in Italy
2021
The names of the Italian taxa in Cirsium sect. Eriolepis are discussed. The accepted names are: Cirsium echinatum, C. eriophorum subsp. eriophorum, C. eriophorum subsp. spathulatum, C. ferox, C. italicum, C. lacaitae, C. lobelii, C. morisianum, C. scabrum, C. tenoreanum, C. vallis-demonii subsp. vallis-demonii, C. vallis-demonii subsp. calabrum comb. nov., and C. vulgare (= C. crinitum, C. sylvaticum). Four accepted names are typified by specimens preserved at FI (one lectotype), G (one lectotype and one neotype), P (one lectotype), and by illustrations (two lectotypes). Several other heterotypic synonyms of taxa described from Italy are discussed and six of them are typified. A new combina…
Group Nonnegative Matrix Factorization with Sparse Regularization in Multi-set Data
2021
Constrained joint analysis of data from multiple sources has received widespread attention for that it allows us to explore potential connections and extract meaningful hidden components. In this paper, we formulate a flexible joint source separation model termed as group nonnegative matrix factorization with sparse regularization (GNMF-SR), which aims to jointly analyze the partially coupled multi-set data. In the GNMF-SR model, common and individual patterns of particular underlying factors can be extracted simultaneously with imposing nonnegative constraint and sparse penalty. Alternating optimization and alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) are combined to solve the GNMF-S…
Testing different methodologies for Granger causality estimation: A simulation study
2021
Granger causality (GC) is a method for determining whether and how two time series exert causal influences one over the other. As it is easy to implement through vector autoregressive (VAR) models and can be generalized to the multivariate case, GC has spread in many different areas of research such as neuroscience and network physiology. In its basic formulation, the computation of GC involves two different regressions, taking respectively into account the whole past history of the investigated multivariate time series (full model) and the past of all time series except the putatively causal time series (restricted model). However, the restricted model cannot be represented through a finit…
Online Hyperparameter Search Interleaved with Proximal Parameter Updates
2021
There is a clear need for efficient hyperparameter optimization (HO) algorithms for statistical learning, since commonly applied search methods (such as grid search with N-fold cross-validation) are inefficient and/or approximate. Previously existing gradient-based HO algorithms that rely on the smoothness of the cost function cannot be applied in problems such as Lasso regression. In this contribution, we develop a HO method that relies on the structure of proximal gradient methods and does not require a smooth cost function. Such a method is applied to Leave-one-out (LOO)-validated Lasso and Group Lasso, and an online variant is proposed. Numerical experiments corroborate the convergence …
Inclusion of Instantaneous Influences in the Spectral Decomposition of Causality: Application to the Control Mechanisms of Heart Rate Variability
2021
Heart rate variability is the result of several physiological regulation mechanisms, including cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory interactions. Since instantaneous influences occurring within the same cardiac beat are commonplace in this regulation, their inclusion is mandatory to get a realistic model of physiological causal interactions. Here we exploit a recently proposed framework for the spectral decomposition of causal influences between autoregressive processes [2] and generalize it by introducing instantaneous couplings in the vector autoregressive model (VAR). We show the effectiveness of the proposed approach on a toy model, and on real data consisting of heart period (RR), syst…
Trends in soil mercury stock associated with pollution sources on a Mediterranean island (Majorca, Spain)
2021
8 Pág. Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas
Information – theoretic characterization of concurrent activity of neural spike trains
2021
The analysis of massively parallel spike train recordings facilitates investigation of communications and synchronization in neural networks. In this work we develop and evaluate a measure of concurrent neural activity, which is based on intrinsic firing properties of the recorded neural units. An overall single neuron activity is unfolded in time and decomposed into working and non-firing state, providing a coarse, binary representation of the neurons functional state. We propose a modified measure of mutual information to reflect the degree of simultaneous activation and concurrency in neural firing patterns. The measure is shown to be sensitive to both correlations and anti-correlations,…
The effect of exercise training on blood pressure in menopause and postmenopausal women: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials
2021
The prevalence of hypertension is higher in postmenopausal than in premenopausal women. Regular exercise training has been shown to be effective in addressing hypertension. The aim of this systematic review was to synthesize the effect of exercise training on systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) in menopausal and postmenopausal women. This review was reported according to the PRISMA statement and registered in PROSPERO. The literature search was done in MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL and ClinicalTrials. Randomized controlled trials involving menopausal and postmenopausal women undergoing exercise training were included. Two blinde…
Notre muse : Sylvia Plath comme figure fictionnelle
2021
International audience; No abstract.
Determinant factors in the expression of the pronominal subject in spoken Spanish of Valencia
2021
En el presente artículo se estudian los factores determinantes de la presencia del sujeto pronominal en el área metropolitana de Valencia (España). Analizamos fragmentos de habla de un corpus de 72 entrevistas pertenecientes al corpus PRESEVAL, adscrito al grupo PRESEEA. Los resultados muestran la baja tendencia a utilizar la forma expresa (21,8 %). La aparición del sujeto pronominal se ve favorecida por la persona gramatical, muy especialmente la primera del singular, y la clase semántica de los verbos, sobre todo aquellos que indican estados mentales y actividades. Las variables sociales no son especialmente relevantes, si bien el nivel sociocultural y la lengua utilizada (es una comunida…
Increased muscle sympathetic nerve activity and impaired baroreflex control in isolated REM-sleep behavior disorder.
2021
Changes in baroreflex sensitivity have been reported in patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). We sought to investigate the hypothesis that patients with isolated rapid eye movement (REM)-sleep behavior disorder (iRBD), known to be a prodromal stage for PD, will show abnormalities in baroreflex control.Ten iRBD patients were compared to 10 sex- and age-matched healthy controls. Their cardiovascular parameters and muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) were evaluated at rest and during baroreflex stimulation.MSNA at rest was higher in iRBD patients (burst frequency [BF]: 44 ± 3 bursts/min; burst incidence [BI]: 60 ± 8 bursts/100 heartbeats) as compared to the controls (BF: 29 ±…
Amelioration of the abnormal phenotype of a new L1 syndrome mouse mutation with L1 mimetics
2021
L1 syndrome is a rare developmental disorder characterized by hydrocephalus of varying severity, intellectual deficits, spasticity of the legs, and adducted thumbs. Therapy is limited to symptomatic relief. Numerous gene mutations in the L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM, hereafter abbreviated L1) were identified in L1 syndrome patients, and those affecting the extracellular domain of this transmembrane type 1 glycoprotein show the most severe phenotypes. Previously analyzed rodent models of the L1 syndrome focused on L1-deficient animals or mouse mutants with abrogated cell surface expression of L1, making it difficult to test L1 function-triggering mimetic compounds with potential therapeu…
Implementation of the norwegian ‘Starting right’ child health service innovation: implementation adjustments, adoption, and acceptability
2021
Abstract Background An increased and/or stable proportion of the child and adolescent population reports symptoms of impaired health, and the symptoms can be identified early. Therefore, structured child- and parent-reported outcome measures need to be implemented in child and school health services for decision support and identification of children at risk. We aimed to (a) qualitatively examine adjustments of active implementation from the pilot implementation of the Norwegian ‘Starting Right’ health service innovation including an online child health assessment tool and practical routines, and (b) measure practitioners´ adoption and parental acceptability. Methods We used a mixed-methods…
Use of Biologics to Treat Relapsing and/or Refractory Eosinophilic Granulomatosis With Polyangiitis: Data From a European Collaborative Study.
2021
OBJECTIVE To describe the efficacy and safety of biologics for the treatment of eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA). METHODS A retrospective European collaborative study was conducted in patients with EGPA who received treatment with biologics for refractory and/or relapsing disease. RESULTS Among the 147 patients with EGPA included in the study, 63 received rituximab (RTX), 51 received mepolizumab (MEPO), and 33 received omalizumab (OMA). At the time of inclusion, the median Birmingham Vasculitis Activity Score (BVAS) was 8.5 (interquartile range [IQR] 5-13) in the RTX group, while the median BVAS in the OMA group was 2 (IQR 1-4.5) and the median BVAS in the MEPO group was…
Psychotherapeutically Oriented Vibroacoustic Therapy for Functional Neurological Disorder: A Pilot Study
2021
Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) affects a significant number of people worldwide. Previously referred to as conversion disorder, FND is a disorder of the communication between mind and body resulting in the experience of neurological symptoms incompatible with neurological or medical diagnoses. FND patients account for a notable portion of neurologists' patients, and yet these patients are still considered some of the most difficult to diagnose and treat. This pilot case study utilized a psychotherapeutically oriented approach to vibroacoustic therapy and active music therapy methodology in the therapy process of a patient diagnosed with FND. The treatment protocol used in this study…