Gene Mutation Profiles in Primary Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma of Central Nervous System: Next Generation Sequencing Analyses

The existence of a potential primary central nervous system lymphoma-specific genomic signature that differs from the systemic form of diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) has been suggested, but is still controversial. We investigated 19 patients with primary DLBCL of central nervous system (DLBCL CNS) using the TruSeq Amplicon Cancer Panel (TSACP) for 48 cancer-related genes. Next generation sequencing (NGS) analyses have revealed that over 80% of potentially protein-changing mutations were located in eight genes (CTNNB1, PIK3CA, PTEN, ATM, KRAS, PTPN11, TP53 and JAK3), pointing to the potential role of these genes in lymphomagenesis. TP53 was the only gene harboring mutations in all 19 patients. In addition, the presence of mutated TP53 and ATM genes correlated with a higher total number of mutations in other analyzed genes. Furthermore, the presence of mutated ATM correlated with poorer event-free survival (EFS) (p = 0.036). The presence of the mutated SMO gene correlated with earlier disease relapse (p = 0.023), inferior event-free survival (p = 0.011) and overall survival (OS) (p = 0.017), while mutations in the PTEN gene were associated with inferior OS (p = 0.048). Our findings suggest that the TP53 and ATM genes could be involved in the molecular pathophysiology of primary DLBCL CNS, whereas mutations in the PTEN and SMO genes could affect survival regardless of the initial treatment approach.     

Field induced magnetic phase transition as a magnon Bose Einstein condensation

We report specific heat, magnetocaloric effect and magnetization measurements on single crystals of the frustrated quasi-2D spin antiferromagnet Cs₂CuCl₄ in the external magnetic field along a-axis and in the temperature range . Decreasing the applied magnetic field B from high fields leads to the closure of the field induced gap in the magnon spectrum at a critical field and a long-range incommensurate state below B_c. In the vicinity of B_c, the phase transition boundary is well described by the power law T_N∼(B_c-B)^1/φ with the measured critical exponent φ?1.5. These findings provide experimental evidence that the scaling law of the transition temperature T_N can be described by the universality class of 3D Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of magnons.     

Applications of Nanomaterials in Cell Stem Therapies and the Onset of Nanomedicine

Stem cells hold enormous potential in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, cirrhosis, spinal cord injury, and Alzheimer's disease, due to their unique ability to differentiate into various cell lines and tissues and integrate seamlessly into damaged or diseased tissue. The use of nanoparticles as bioactive molecules is still considered a nascent science, but their unique physical and chemical properties hold great hopes for drug delivery, cancer targeting, and bioimaging. There is active worldwide ongoing research to generate advanced therapeutic compounds for incurable diseases, combining the unique properties of nanomaterials and stem cells. The present review will cover emerging areas of nanotechnology applications in stem cell therapy, one of the next frontiers of medical science.     

Principles and methods for automatic and semi-automatic tissue segmentation in MRI data

The development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revolutionized both the medical and scientific worlds. A large variety of MRI options have generated a huge amount of image data to interpret. The investigation of a specific tissue in 3D or 4D MR images can be facilitated by image processing techniques, such as segmentation and registration. In this work, we provide a brief review of the principles and methods that are commonly applied to achieve superior tissue segmentation results in MRI. The impacts of MR image acquisition on segmentation outcome and the principles of selecting and exploiting segmentation techniques tailored for specific tissue identification tasks are discussed. In the end, two exemplary applications, breast and fibroglandular tissue segmentation in MRI and myocardium segmentation in short-axis cine and real-time MRI, are discussed to explain the typical challenges that can be posed in practical segmentation tasks in MRI data. The corresponding solutions that are adopted to deal with these challenges of the two practical segmentation tasks are thoroughly reviewed.     

Machine learning as a service for enabling Internet of Things and People

The future Internet is expected to connect billions of people, things and services having the potential to deliver a new set of applications by deriving new insights from the data generated from these diverse data sources. This highly interconnected global network brings new types of challenges in analysing and making sense of data. This is why machine learning is expected to be a crucial technology in the future, in making sense of data, in improving business and decision making, and in doing so, providing the potential to solve a wide range of problems in health care, telecommunications, urban computing, and others. Machine learning algorithms can learn how to perform certain tasks by generalizing examples from a range of sampling. This is a totally different paradigm than traditional programming language approaches, which are based on writing programs that process data to produce an output. However, choosing a suitable machine learning algorithm for a particular application requires a substantial amount of time and effort that is hard to undertake even with excellent research papers and textbooks. In order to reduce the time and effort, this paper introduces the TCDC (train, compare, decide, and change) approach, which can be thought as a ‘Machine Learning as a Service’ approach, to aid machine learning researchers and practitioners to choose the optimum machine learning model to use for achieving the best trade-off between accuracy and interpretability, computational complexity, and ease of implementation. The paper includes the results of testing and evaluating the recommenders based on the TCDC approach (in comparison with the traditional default approach) applied to 12 datasets that are available as open-source datasets drawn from diverse domains including health care, agriculture, aerodynamics and others. Our results indicate that the proposed approach selects the best model in terms of predictive accuracy in 62.5 % for regression tests performed and 75 % for classification tests.     

A comparative study on the effect of some antioxidants on the lipid and pigment oxidation in dry-fermented sausages

A comparative study on the effect of antioxidants on the lipid and pigment oxidation in Bulgarian dry‐fermented sausage type lukanka is described. A commercial mix of antioxidants, called ‘grindox 1021’ (GR), restricted the development of the peroxidation processes in dry‐fermented sausages (type lukanka) to a greater extent than either rosemary (RS), rutine (RT), sodium erythrobate (SE) or l ‐ascorbic acid, when applied at the same concentration. The latter compounds did not effectively stabilize lipids in sausages against oxidation; they only slowed down the lypolysis and did not greatly change the colour of the cross‐sectional surface. However, the sausage lipids were best stabilized when 1 g kg^?1 GR, RS or RT was added. The addition of 1 g kg^?1 RS and GR most efficiently suppressed the hydroperoxides – primary derivatives of lipid peroxidation, while the secondary derivatives in the final product were most reduced when 1 g kg^?1 GR and SE were added.     

Malayaite ceramic pigments: A combined optical spectroscopy and neutron/X-ray diffraction study

Ceramic pigments based on the Cr-doped malayaite structure were synthesized by solid state reaction and characterized by optical spectroscopy and combined X-ray and neutron powder diffraction in order to elucidate the still unclear chromium substitution mechanisms. The results show that coloration is actually due to simultaneous occurrence of Cr⁴⁺ and Cr³⁺ ions in the crystal lattice. Spectroscopy data confirm that Cr⁴⁺ is replacing Sn⁴⁺ in the octahedral site and, in minor amount, Si⁴⁺ in the tetrahedral site. In addition, neutron powder diffraction data suggest that Cr³⁺ substitution for octahedral Sn⁴⁺ is charge balanced by the formation of oxygen vacancies with no preference over the different oxygen sites. Upon incorporation of Cr ion, the SnO₆ octahedra exhibit an off-centre displacement of central cation which in turn induces a rearrangement of both the octahedral and tetrahedral coordination shells.