Summary
Activated platelets are implicated in the development of premature arterial vascular diseases, in particular ischemic stroke. Since elevated cytosolic Ca
2+
i
is an integrative marker of ...platelet activation, we determined the generation of Ca
2+
signal in stimulated platelets from 26 young patients recuperating from stroke, 20 patients with symptomatic peripheral arterial disease, and 56 healthy volunteers. Even in the presence of aspirin, the platelets from various individuals showed highly different thrombin-induced Ca
2+
responses. On average, the thrombin-induced Ca
2+
response was increased for platelets from either patient group in comparison to the controls (P <0.04). Relatively more stroke patients had high-responsive platelets (27%, 7/26) than patients with peripheral arterial disease (10%, 2/20) or healthy subjects (4%, 2/56). The average prothrombinase activities of platelets from patients and controls were similar, but 3 out of 6 patients with increased thrombin-induced Ca
2+
responses also exhibited high prothrombinase activity. In a follow-up study, the subject-dependent thrombin-induced Ca
2+
response was found to correlate strongly with the platelet response to protease-activated receptor 1 (PAR1) agonist (
r
= 0.91), but was not linked to the Pl
A1/2
polymorphism. It is concluded that a significant part of young patients with stroke have platelets with hyperactivity toward thrombin, which is not normalised by aspirin treatment. Furthermore, the subject-dependent variation in thrombin-induced signalling is likely to involve PAR1-mediated platelet activation.
Uveal melanoma is one of the most frequently occurring primary intraocular malignancies in the Western world. Cytogenetically these tumors are characterized by typical chromosomal losses and gains, ...such as loss of 1p, 3, and 6q and gain of 6p and 8q. Whereas most studies focus on known aberrations, in this one, cytogenetic changes were characterized and correlated with clinical and histopathologic parameters.
Karyotypes of 74 primary uveal melanomas were analyzed with respect to the presence or absence of chromosomal gains and losses. In the analysis, classic clinical and histopathologic parameters were analyzed together with the chromosomal aberrations.
At a median follow-up of 43 months, 34 patients had died or had metastatic disease. Clonal chromosomal abnormalities were present in 59 tumors. The most frequent chromosomal abnormalities involved chromosome 8 (53%); loss of chromosome 3, p-arm (41%) and q-arm (42%); partial loss of chromosome 1, p-arm (24%); and abnormalities in chromosome 6 that resulted in gain of 6p (18%) and/or loss of 6q (28%). Less-frequent aberrations were abnormalities in chromosome 16, in particular loss of chromosome 16 q-arm (16%). In the univariate analysis, loss of chromosome 3, largest tumor diameter, gain in 8q, and mixed/epithelioid cell type in the tumor compared with tumors without these chromosomal changes or with a spindle cell type was associated with decreased disease-free survival. When corrected for confounding variables, significance of gain of 8q and cell type was decreased, whereas the significance of loss of chromosome 3p or 3q and largest tumor diameter remained the same.
Monosomy 3 and largest tumor diameter are the most significant in determining survival of patients with uveal melanoma. Abnormalities in the q-arm of chromosome 16 are relatively common in uveal melanoma, but are not associated with survival or other cytogenetic or histopathologic parameters.
Case law retrieval by concept search and visualization Uijttenbroek, Elisabeth M.; Klein, Michel C. A.; Lodder, Arno R. ...
Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law,
06/2007
Conference Proceeding
Open access
The BEST-project (BATNA Establishment using Semantic web Technology, http://best-project.nl) strives to provide disputing parties with information about their legal position in a liability case. Our ...assumption is that through intelligent disclosure of Dutch Tort Law cases, laymen can estimate their chances: information derived from previous court decisions can help to obtain insight into BATNAs (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), alternatives a party has if negotiation fails. Information BATNAs also contributes to determining the room left for negotiation.
Research abstracts 1: Case law retrieval by concept search and visualization Uijttenbroek, Elisabeth M; Klein, Michel C A; Lodder, Arno R ...
International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law; 04-08 June 2007,
06/2007
Conference Proceeding
The BEST-project (BATNA Establishment using Semantic web Technology, http://best-project.nl) strives to provide disputing parties with information about their legal position in a liability case. Our ...assumption is that through intelligent disclosure of Dutch Tort Law cases, laymen can estimate their chances: information derived from previous court decisions can help to obtain insight into BATNAs (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), alternatives a party has if negotiation fails. Information BATNAs also contributes to determining the room left for negotiation.
This paper describes the experiments carried out in the context of the BEST-project, an interdisciplinary project with researchers from the Law faculty and the AI department of the VU University ...Amsterdam. The aim of the project is to provide laymen with information about their legal position in a liability case, based on retrieved case law. The process basically comes down to (1) analyzing the input of a layman in terms of a layman ontology, (2) mapping this ontology to a legal ontology, (3) retrieve relevant case law based, and finally (4) present the results in a comprehensible way to the layman. This paper describes the experiments undertaken regarding step 4, and in particular step 3.
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