Sequential intraluminal endoscopic and laparoscopic treatment for bile duct stones associated with gallstones

BACKGROUND: On the basis of a flowchart including prior or current jaundice or pancreatitis, abnormal liver function, ultrasound or IV cholangiography, bile duct (BD) stones were suspected in 71/593 patients referred for gallstones. METHODS: When endoscopic retrograde cholangiography detected BD stones, endoscopic sphincterotomy (ES) and endoscopic BD clearance were attempted, followed by laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). BD stones were found in 44/71 patients. The sensitivity values of preoperative conditions were: 92% for IV cholangiography, 88% for abnormal liver function, 50% for ultrasound, and 37% for jaundice at admission. RESULTS: Endoscopic clearance succeeded in 37 patients and LC was completed in 33 patients. Conversion to open surgery (9%) was comparable with the rate in patients without BD stones. The median hospital stay for the sequential endoscopic and laparoscopic treatments was 13 days (range 4-54) or 22 days if open surgery was used. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, BD stones can be endoscopically cleared preoperatively in most patients without interfering with LC.     

Host Restriction Factors Modulating HIV Latency and Replication in Macrophages

In addition to CD4⁺ T lymphocytes, myeloid cells and, particularly, differentiated macrophages are targets of human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) infection via the interaction of gp120Env with CD4 and CCR5 or CXCR4. Both T cells and macrophages support virus replication, although with substantial differences. In contrast to activated CD4⁺ T lymphocytes, HIV-1 replication in macrophages occurs in nondividing cells and it is characterized by the virtual absence of cytopathicity both in vitro and in vivo. These general features should be considered in evaluating the role of cell-associated restriction factors aiming at preventing or curtailing virus replication in macrophages and T cells, particularly in the context of designing strategies to tackle the viral reservoir in infected individuals receiving combination antiretroviral therapy. In this regard, we will here also discuss a model of reversible HIV-1 latency in primary human macrophages and the role of host factors determining the restriction or reactivation of virus replication in these cells.     

Recommending people to people: the nature of reciprocal recommenders with a case study in online dating

People-to-people recommenders constitute an important class of recommender systems. Examples include online dating, where people have the common goal of finding a partner, and employment websites where one group of users needs to find a job (employer) and another group needs to find an employee. People-to-people recommenders differ from the traditional items-to-people recommenders as they must satisfy both parties; we call this type of recommender reciprocal. This article is the first to present a comprehensive view of this important recommender class. We first identify the characteristics of reciprocal recommenders and compare them with traditional recommenders, which are widely used in e-commerce websites. We then present a series of studies and evaluations of a content-based reciprocal recommender in the domain of online dating. It uses a large dataset from a major online dating website. We use this case study to illustrate the distinctive requirements of reciprocal recommenders and highlight important challenges, such as the need to avoid bad recommendations since they may make users to feel rejected. Our experiments indicate that, by considering reciprocity, the rate of successful connections can be significantly improved. They also show that, despite the existence of rich explicit profiles, the use of implicit profiles provides more effective recommendations. We conclude with a discussion, linking our work in online dating to the many other domains that require reciprocal recommenders. Our key contributions are the recognition of the reciprocal recommender as an important class of recommender, the identification of its distinctive characteristics and the exploration of how these impact the recommendation process in an extensive case study in the domain of online dating.     

Data processing software for electrophysiological visual exploration

The software we have developed originated after careful study of a routine functional visual processing session. It has three objectives: (i) to have available a large library of data processing programs; (ii) to add to these electrophysiological results, automatically transferred into a file, a clinical record card, creating a personalized file for study of visual characteristics of each patient; (iii) to allow programs providing statistical studies, creation of groups based on the same clinical features and various comparisons between files or groups. The database now contains 5000 different files and the results of its use are very encouraging. Some results are presented, especially those of a study on multiple sclerosis. The goal of the operation is the creation, in the future, of an expert system.     

Multistakeholder recommendation: Survey and research directions

Recommender systems provide personalized information access to users of Internet services from social networks to e-commerce to media and entertainment. As is appropriate for research in a field with a focus on personalization, academic studies of recommender systems have largely concentrated on optimizing for user experience when designing, implementing and evaluating their algorithms and systems. However, this concentration on the user has meant that the field has lacked a systematic exploration of other aspects of recommender system outcomes. A user-centric approach limits the ability to incorporate system objectives, such as fairness, balance, and profitability, and obscures concerns that might come from other stakeholders, such as the providers or sellers of items being recommended. Multistakeholder recommendation has emerged as a unifying framework for describing and understanding recommendation settings where the end user is not the sole focus. This article outlines the multistakeholder perspective on recommendation, highlighting example research areas and discussing important issues, open questions, and prospective research directions.