Lung Cancer Assistant: a hybrid clinical decision support application for lung cancer care

Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings are becoming the model of care for cancer patients worldwide. While MDTs have improved the quality of cancer care, the meetings impose substantial time pressure on the members, who generally attend several such MDTs. We describe Lung Cancer Assistant (LCA), a clinical decision support (CDS) prototype designed to assist the experts in the treatment selection decisions in the lung cancer MDTs. A novel feature of LCA is its ability to provide rule-based and probabilistic decision support within a single platform. The guideline-based CDS is based on clinical guideline rules, while the probabilistic CDS is based on a Bayesian network trained on the English Lung Cancer Audit Database (LUCADA). We assess rule-based and probabilistic recommendations based on their concordances with the treatments recorded in LUCADA. Our results reveal that the guideline rule-based recommendations perform well in simulating the recorded treatments with exact and partial concordance rates of 0.57 and 0.79, respectively. On the other hand, the exact and partial concordance rates achieved with probabilistic results are relatively poorer with 0.27 and 0.76. However, probabilistic decision support fulfils a complementary role in providing accurate survival estimations. Compared to recorded treatments, both CDS approaches promote higher resection rates and multimodality treatments.     

Gangliosides in Podocyte Biology and Disease

Gangliosides constitute a subgroup of glycosphingolipids characterized by the presence of sialic acid residues in their structure. As constituents of cellular membranes, in particular of raft microdomains, they exert multiple functions, some of them capital in cell homeostasis. Their presence in cells is tightly regulated by a balanced expression and function of the enzymes responsible for their biosynthesis, ganglioside synthases, and their degradation, glycosidases. The dysregulation of their abundance results in rare and common diseases. In this review, we make a point on the relevance of gangliosides and some of their metabolic precursors, such as ceramides, in the function of podocytes, the main cellular component of the glomerular filtration barrier, as well as their implications in podocytopathies. The results presented in this review suggest the pertinence of clinical lipidomic studies targeting these metabolites.     

Biosorption of lanthanum and cerium from aqueous solutions by Platanus orientalis leaf powder

The biosorption of lanthanum and cerium by leaves powder of Platanus orientalis was separately determined at varying experimental conditions using a batch technique. The effects of initial pH, contact time, initial metal ion concentration and temperature were investigated. The Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were applied to represent the adsorption process. Langmuir isotherm fits the experimental data quite well. The Langmuir monolayer capacity of the sorbent is 28.65mg g^− 1 and 32.05mg g^− 1 for La and Ce(III), respectively. Thermodynamic parameters such as standard enthalpy (ΔH°), entropy (ΔS°) and free energy (ΔG°) were calculated from the slope and intercept of the plots of lnK_d versus 1/T. The results indicated that sorption was endothermic and spontaneous in nature. The work reveals that powdered leaf of Platanus orientalis is a good choice as a biosorbent for the recovery of lanthanum and cerium from aqueous solution.     

Adsorption of trypsin onto magnetic ion‐exchange beads of poly(glycidylmethacrylate‐co‐ethyleneglycoldimethacrylate)

Magnetic beads were prepared from glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), and ethyleneglycol dimethylmethacrylate (EGDMA) in the presence of Fe₃O₄ nano‐powder via suspension polymerization. The magnetic beads were characterized by surface area measurement, electron spin resonance (ESR), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). ESR data revealed that the beads were highly super‐paramagnetic. The effects of contact time, pH, ionic strength, and temperature on the adsorption process have been studied. Adsorption equilibrium was established in about 120 min. The maximum adsorption of trypsin on the magnetic beads was obtained as 84.96 mg g^?1 at around pH 7.0. At increased ionic strength, the contribution of the electrostatic component to the overall binding decreased, and so the adsorption capacity. The experimental equilibrium data obtained trypsin adsorption onto magnetic beads fitted well to the Langmuir isotherm model. The result of kinetic analyzed for trypsin adsorption onto magnetic ion‐exchange beads showed that the second order rate equation was favorable. It was observed that after six adsorption–elution cycle, magnetic beads can be used without significant loss in trypsin adsorption capacity. Finally, the magnetic beads were used for separation of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and trypsin from binary solution in a batch system. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Ultimate loads for eccentrically loaded model shallow strip footings on geotextile-reinforced sand

A series of tests were carried out with an eccentrically loaded model surface shallow strip footing on reinforced dense sand to investigate the decrease of the ultimate loads with increasing eccentricity and to compare the experimental results with commonly used approaches such as Meyerhof's effective width concept and the customary analysis. An experimental system was produced and used to run the tests. The experimental system consists of a tank, model footing, sand, loading mechanism, etc. A single woven geotextile sheet was placed horizontally below the footing's base at a depth of half of the footing's width. Geotextile reinforcement increased ultimate loads when compared to the unreinforced cases. This contribution decreases with increasing eccentricity. The measured decreases in ultimate loads with increasing eccentricities in the unreinforced tests within the core (kern, middle third) are in good agreement with Meyerhof's approach, while customary analysis is a little on the conservative side. Outside the core, Meyerhof's approach is on the conservative side in this case. Decreasing ultimate loads with increasing eccentricity for the reinforced tests cases were in general agreement with customary analysis, although they are slightly greater.     

Power Adaptation for Cognitive Radio Systems Under an Average SINR Loss Constraint in the Absence of Path Loss Information

An upper bound is derived on the capacity of a cognitive radio system by considering the effects of path loss and log-normal shadowing simultaneously for a single-cell network. Assuming that the cognitive radio is informed only of the shadow fading between the secondary (cognitive) transmitter and primary receiver, the capacity is achieved via the water-filling power allocation strategy under an average primary signal to secondary interference plus noise ratio loss constraint. Contrary to the perfect channel state information requirement at the secondary system (SS), the transmit power control of the SS is accomplished in the absence of any path loss estimates. For this purpose, a method for estimating the instantaneous value of the shadow fading is also presented. A detailed analysis of the proposed power adaptation strategy is conducted through various numerical simulations.     

Implementation of the inverse circular radon transform‐based imaging approach for breast cancer screening

In this article, the approach based on the inverse circular radon transform technique (ICRT) is proposed to obtain the image of the breast cancer screening based on microwaves. A simplified numerical breast model is constructed and computational results are obtained with the use of synthetic aperture radar principle. A tumor phantom is produced and the experimental results are acquired by using sand, screw and phantoms with the use of an experimental setup prototype that is also presented in this study. The simulation results are verified and validated by experimental results. The resultant images generated using the simulated and experimental data show a good agreement with the designed scenarios.