The management of primary central nervous system (PCNSL) is one of the most controversial topics in neuro-oncology because of the complexity of the disease and the limited number of controlled ...studies available. In 2021, given recent advances and the publication of practice-changing randomized trials, the European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO) created a multidisciplinary task force to update the previously published evidence-based guidelines for immunocompetent adult patients with PCNSL and added a section on immunosuppressed patients. The guideline provides consensus considerations and recommendations for the treatment of PCNSL, including intraocular manifestations and specific management of the elderly. The main changes from the previous guideline include strengthened evidence for the consolidation with ASCT in first-line treatment, prospectively assessed chemotherapy combinations for both young and elderly patients, clarification of the role of rituximab even though the data remain inconclusive, of the role of new agents, and the incorporation of immunosuppressed patients and primary ocular lymphoma. The guideline should aid the clinicians in everyday practice and decision making and serve as a basis for future research in the field.
Pediatric high-grade glioma (pHGG) and diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs) are aggressive pediatric brain tumors in desperate need of a curative treatment. Oncolytic virotherapy is emerging as ...a solid therapeutic approach. Delta-24-RGD is a replication competent adenovirus engineered to replicate in tumor cells with an aberrant RB pathway. This virus has proven to be safe and effective in adult gliomas. Here we report that the administration of Delta-24-RGD is safe in mice and results in a significant increase in survival in immunodeficient and immunocompetent models of pHGG and DIPGs. Our results show that the Delta-24-RGD antiglioma effect is mediated by the oncolytic effect and the immune response elicited against the tumor. Altogether, our data highlight the potential of this virus as treatment for patients with these tumors. Of clinical significance, these data have led to the start of a phase I/II clinical trial at our institution for newly diagnosed DIPG (NCT03178032).
We review the concept of presence in virtual reality, normally thought of as the sense of “being there” in the virtual world. We argued in a 2009 paper that presence consists of two orthogonal ...illusions that we refer to as Place Illusion (PI, the illusion of being in the place depicted by the VR) and Plausibility (Psi, the illusion that the virtual situations and events are really happening). Both are with the proviso that the participant in the virtual reality knows for sure that these are illusions. Presence (PI and Psi) together with the illusion of ownership over the virtual body that self-represents the participant, are the three key illusions of virtual reality. Copresence, togetherness with others in the virtual world, can be a consequence in the context of interaction between remotely located participants in the same shared virtual environments, or between participants and virtual humans. We then review several different methods of measuring presence: questionnaires, physiological and behavioural measures, breaks in presence, and a psychophysics method based on transitions between different system configurations. Presence is not the only way to assess the responses of people to virtual reality experiences, and we present methods that rely solely on participant preferences, including the use of sentiment analysis that allows participants to express their experience in their own words rather than be required to adopt the terminology and concepts of researchers. We discuss several open questions and controversies that exist in this field, providing an update to the 2009 paper, in particular with respect to models of Plausibility. We argue that Plausibility is the most interesting and complex illusion to understand and is worthy of significant more research. Regarding measurement we conclude that the ideal method would be a combination of a psychophysical method and qualitative methods including sentiment analysis.
Ce-promoted Ni/Mg–Al catalysts were synthesized by means of a methodology that involves the doping of Ni–Mg–Al mixed oxides derived from hydrotalcites with Ce(EDTA)
− and subsequent thermal ...decomposition. The effect of the nominal load of Ce in the catalytic performance of the materials was studied. The solids were characterized by means of XRD, BET area, TPR-H
2, TPD-CO
2, chemical analysis by ICPs, TGA, SEM and TEM and were evaluated in CO
2 reforming of methane at 700
°C. The results indicate the partial reconstruction of the periclase phase during the doping with Ce(EDTA)
− and the formation of a mixture of crystalline periclase and fluorite phases after the calcination. Catalysts with particle sizes of Ni
0 between 5 and 9
nm were obtained. Ce presents a promote effect in the degree of reduction of Ni and the amount and strength of the basic sites. It was evident a beneficial effect of cerium in the catalytic activity and selectivity of the doped materials. The increase of the nominal Ce load between 1 and 10% causes no considerable effect in the catalytic activity and selectivity or in the size of crystallite in these materials but in the inhibition of the coke formation. The catalysts show excellent catalytic performance under drastic conditions of reaction and long operation times. The Ce-doped Ni/Mg–Al catalyst is stable up to 100
h of reaction using a feed mixture of CH
4/CO
2/He 10/10/80 at 24
L
g
−1
h
−1, up to 20
h of reaction using CO
2/CH
4 20/20 at 48
L
g
−1
h
−1 and up to 15
h of reaction using CO
2/CH
4 40/40 at 96
L
g
−1
h
−1. The filamentous coke formation is demonstrated on the surface of the catalyst when gas of dilution in the reactants is not used. The developed method of synthesis becomes an interesting methodology for obtaining catalysts for CO
2 reforming of methane.
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•Crop Water Stress Index is used in deficit irrigation in precision agriculture.•Crop canopy temperature measurement is necessary, and thermography is employed.•Image segmentation is needed to ...consider the indicator only in the region of interest.•Development of an intelligent automatic sensor based in a low-cost thermal camera.•Results on almond trees comparing our system with a commercial thermal camera.
Crop canopy temperature measurement is necessary for monitoring water stress indicators such as the Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI). Water stress indicators are very useful for irrigation strategies management in the precision agriculture context. For this purpose, one of the techniques used is thermography, which allows remote temperature measurement. However, the applicability of these techniques depends on being affordable, allowing continuous monitoring over multiple field measurement. In this article, the development of a sensor capable of automatically measuring the crop canopy temperature by means of a low-cost thermal camera and the implementation of artificial intelligence-based image segmentation models is presented. In addition, we provide results on almond trees comparing our system with a commercial thermal camera, in which an R-squared of 0.75 is obtained.
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This article presents a novel multiple organ localization and tracking technique applied to spleen and kidney regions in computed tomography images. The proposed solution is based on a unique ...approach to classify regions in different spatial projections (e.g., side projection) using convolutional neural networks. Our procedure merges classification results from different projection resulting in a 3D segmentation. The proposed system is able to recognize the contour of the organ with an accuracy of 88-89% depending on the body organ. Research has shown that the use of a single method can be useful for the detection of different organs: kidney and spleen. Our solution can compete with U-Net based solutions in terms of hardware requirements, as it has significantly lower demands. Additionally, it gives better results in small data sets. Another advantage of our solution is a significantly lower training time on an equally sized data set and more capabilities to parallelize calculations. The proposed system enables visualization, localization and tracking of organs and is therefore a valuable tool in medical diagnostic problems.
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•O-vacancies and Ag(s) over La0.7Ag0.3MnO3 are the most active sites for NO and oxygen adsorption.•Chelating and bridging nitrates along with Ag-nitrites are the primary reaction ...intermediates for the NO oxidation.•Monodentate nitrates and Ag-nitrates were considered NOx storage species over 400 °C.•A reaction pathway for soot and NO removal over La0.7Ag0.3MnO3 was proposed based on DRIFT results.•The silver-free catalyst was less active than its counterpart due to changes in nitrogenous species distribution.
The microwave-synthesized-LaAgMnO3-catalyst can eliminate soot and NOx simultaneously below 400 °C. To get some insight about the chemical species formed on catalyst and soot surfaces, in situ diffuse reflectanced infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectroscopy under NO, O2, and NO/O2 atmospheres was performed. The DRIFTS results indicated that over 200 °C, at least four types of nitrate-species, mono- and bi-dentate nitrates (bridging and chelating) on the perovskite, as well as Ag-nitrite/nitrate, with different thermos-stabilities were formed. The decomposition of less stable surface nitrates/nitrites accounts for NO2 formation which assisted soot oxidation. The transformation-decomposition of nitrite/nitrate compounds coincided with the appearance of CO2 and carbonate-species coming from re-adsorption of soot combustion products. Monodentate nitrates, which are more stable nitrate-species, were considered NOx storage-species over 400 °C. Chelating- and bi-dentate nitrates formed on perovskite oxygen vacancies appear to be the primary reaction intermediates for the NO oxidation reaction over the Ag-doped perovskite catalyst.
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Water scarcity in arid and semi-arid areas has led to the development of regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) strategies on most species of fruit trees in order to improve water productivity. For a ...successful implementation, these strategies require continuous feedback of the soil and crop water status. This feedback is provided by physical indicators from the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, as is the case of the crop canopy temperature, which can be used for the indirect estimation of crop water stress. Infrared Radiometers (IRs) are considered as the reference tool for temperature-based water status monitoring in crops. Alternatively, in this paper, we assess the performance of a low-cost thermal sensor based on thermographic imaging technology for the same purpose. The thermal sensor was tested in field conditions by performing continuous measurements on pomegranate trees (
L. 'Wonderful') and was compared with a commercial IR. A strong correlation (R
= 0.976) between the two sensors was obtained, demonstrating the suitability of the experimental thermal sensor to monitor the crop canopy temperature for irrigation management.
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Catalysts are very important in controlling the pollutant emissions and are used for hundreds of chemical processes. Currently, noble metal-based catalysts are being replaced for other kinds of ...materials. In this study, three lanthanum-based perovskite-like oxides were synthesized (LaCo, LaCoMn, and LaMn) by the glycine-combustion method. The powder catalysts obtained were supported onto cordierite ceramic monoliths using an optimized washcoating methodology to obtain the subsequent monolithic catalysts (LaCo-S, LaCoMn-S, and LaMn-S). Sample characterization confirmed the formation of the perovskite-like phase in the powder materials as well as the presence of the perovskite phase after supporting it onto the monolithic structure. The XPS analysis showed a general decrease in lattice oxygen species for monolithic catalysts, mainly caused by the colloidal silica used as a binder agent during the washcoating process. Additionally, some variations in the oxidation state distribution for elements in Co-containing systems suggest a stronger interaction between cordierite and such catalysts. The catalytic activity results indicated that powder and monolithic catalysts were active for single-component VOC oxidation in the following order: 2-propanol > n-hexane ≅ mixture > toluene, and there was no evidence of loss of catalytic activity after supporting the catalysts. However, LaMn-S had a better catalytic performance for all VOC tested under dry conditions, achieving oxidation temperatures between 230–420 °C. The oxidation efficiency for the VOC mixture was strongly affected by the presence of moisture linking the oxidation efficiency at wet conditions to the VOC chemical nature. Additionally, for higher VOC concentrations, the catalyst efficiency decreased due to the limited number of active sites.
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•A new handheld open-source low-cost device for soil frequency domain reflectometry.•nanoVNA provides affordable and accurate broadband complex permittivity measurement.•nanoVNA-H accuracy is limited ...above 700 MHz.•The operating frequency of dielectric soil moisture sensors affects calibration.
The performance of a handheld Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), the nanoVNA, a low-cost, open-source instrument, was evaluated. The instrument measures the complex permittivity of dielectric media from 1-port reflection parameters in the 1 – 900 MHz bandwidth. We manufactured an open-ended coaxial probe using a SMA-N coaxial adapter to perform dielectric measurements. The accuracy of the nanoVNA was comparable to that of a commercial VNA between 1 and 500 MHz according to tests in reference organic liquids, while a lack of stability was found beyond 700 MHz. The self-manufactured open-ended coaxial probe was subjected to a Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis and its electromagnetic (EM) field penetration depth was determined to be 1.5 mm at 100 MHz, being reduced to 1.3 at 900 MHz and thus demonstrating a frequency-dependent support volume. The broadband complex permittivity of three mineral soils of varied textures was obtained for a range of bulk densities and water contents from dry to water-saturated conditions. The dielectric response of the soils approximated the well-known Topp et al. (1980) equation at high frequencies. At lower frequency however, higher permittivities were exhibited due to dielectric dispersion, which emphasizes the importance of EM-based soil moisture sensor operating frequency when considering sensor calibration or comparing the response of different sensors.
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