Purpose We evaluated the long-term outcome after 1 cycle of adjuvant modified bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin chemotherapy in patients who underwent orchiectomy for high risk clinical stage I ...nonseminomatous germ cell tumor of the testis. Materials and Methods Between 1995 and 1999 a consecutive series of 44 patients underwent orchiectomy for clinical stage I nonseminomatous germ cell tumor of the testis, followed by a single postoperative cycle of adjuvant modified bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin for vascular or lymphatic tumor invasion, and/or a predominance (50% or greater) of embryonal carcinoma. Results Four of the 44 patients were excluded from analysis. Of the patients 35 had no evidence of disease at a median followup of 99 months (range 60 to 134). One patient with progression after 13 months showed complete remission after 3 cycles of salvage bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin chemotherapy but he died of pneumonia 4 weeks after the third course. Two patients underwent orchiectomy for contralateral testis cancer at 18 and 42 months, respectively, followed by an additional 3 cycles of adjuvant chemotherapy. They remained relapse-free for 4 and 92 months, respectively. The former patient was lost to followup after 4 months. Two other patients were disease-free at 10 and 31 months, respectively, and were lost to followup thereafter. Late side effects were tinnitus in 3 patients and involuntary childlessness in 3, of whom 2 had cryptorchidism of the contralateral testis. Nine patients fathered children. Conclusions One cycle of bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin effectively decreases the risk of relapse in patients with high risk stage I nonseminomatous germ cell tumor of the testis. It has minimal side effects and can be a valuable alternative to retroperitoneal lymph node dissection.
Recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) in horses is a naturally occurring dust-induced disease mainly characterized by bronchiolitis which shows histological and pathophysiological similarities to human ...chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In human COPD previous investigations indicated an association with Chlamydophila psittaci infection. The present study was designed (1) to clarify a possible role of this infectious agent in RAO and (2) to investigate the suitability of this equine disorder as a model for human COPD.
Clinico-pathological parameters of a total of 45 horses (25 horses with clinical signs of RAO and 20 clinically healthy controls) were compared to histological findings in lung tissue samples and infection by Chlamydiaceae using light microscopy, immunohistochemistry, and PCR.
Horses with clinical signs of RAO vs. controls revealed more inflammatory changes in histology (p = 0.01), and a higher detection rate of Chlamydia psittaci antigens in all cells (p < 0.001) and bronchiolar epithelial cells alone (p < 0.001) by immunohistochemistry. The abundance of chlamydial inclusions increased with the severity of disease. PCR was positive in 60% of horses with RAO vs. 45% of the controls (p = 0.316). OmpA sequencing identified Chlamydophila psittaci (n = 9) and Chlamydophila abortus (n = 13) in both groups with no significant differences. Within the group of clinically healthy horses subgroups with no changes (n = 15) and slight inflammation of the small airways (n = 5) were identified. Also in the group of animals with RAO subgroups with slight (n = 16) and severe (n = 9) bronchiolitis could be formed. These four subgroups can be separated in parts by the number of cells positive for Chlamydia psittaci antigens.
Chlamydophila psittaci or abortus were present in the lung of both clinically healthy horses and those with RAO. Immunohistochemistry revealed acute chlamydial infections with inflammation in RAO horses, whereas in clinically healthy animals mostly persistent chlamydial infection and no inflammatory reactions were seen. Stable dust as the known fundamental abiotic factor in RAO is comparable to smoking in human disease. These results show that RAO can be used as a model for human COPD.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
An ever-growing amount of digitized content urges libraries and archives to integrate new media types from a large number of origins such as publishers, record labels and film archives, into their ...existing collections. This is a challenging task, since the multimedia content itself as well as the associated metadata is inherently heterogeneous—the different sources lead to different data structures, data quality and trustworthiness. This paper presents the
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approach towards an automated media processing chain for cultural heritage organizations and content holders. Our workflow allows for unattended processing from media ingest to availability thorough our search and retrieval interface. We aim to provide a set of tools for the processing of digitized print media, audio/visual, speech and musical recordings. Media specific functionalities include quality control for digitization of still image and audio/visual media and restoration of the most common quality issues encountered with these media. Furthermore, the
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tools include modules for content analysis like segmentation of printed, audio and audio/visual media, optical character recognition (OCR), speech-to-text transcription, speaker recognition and the extraction of musical features from audio recordings, all aimed at a textual representation of information inherent within the media assets. Once the information is extracted and transcribed in textual form, media independent processing modules offer extraction and disambiguation of named entities and text classification. All
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modules are designed to be flexibly recombined within a scalable workflow environment using cloud computing techniques. In the next step analyzed media assets can be retrieved and consumed through a search interface using all available metadata. The search engine combines Semantic Web technologies for representing relations between the media and entities such as persons, locations and organizations with a full-text approach for searching within transcribed information gathered through the preceding processing steps. The
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unified search interface integrates text, images, audio and audio/visual content. Queries can be narrowed and expanded in an exploratory manner, search results can be refined by disambiguating entities and topics. Further, semantic relationships become not only apparent, but can also be navigated.
A recombinant immunotoxin was constructed by fusing a single chain fragment variable antibody fragment, specific for the melanoma-associated chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan (MCSP), to a truncated ...variant of Pseudomonas exotoxin A (ETA'), carrying a C-terminal KDEL-peptide for improved retrograde intracellular transport. The resulting immunotoxin MCSP-ETA' was periplasmatically expressed in Escherichia coli and purified under native conditions by affinity chromatography resulting in a yield of approximately 30 mug/l bacterial culture. This immunotoxin induced antigen-specific apoptosis in the cultured human melanoma-derived cell lines A2058 and A375M, and treatment with a single dose of the agent eliminated up to 80% of these cells within 72 h. The dose needed for half-maximum killing (EC50) was approximately 1 nmol/l for both cell lines. MCSP-ETA' also displayed cytotoxic activity against cultured primary melanoma cells from patients with advanced disease (pathologic stages IIIC and IV), with net cell death reaching up to 70% within 96 h after treatment with a single dose of 14 nmol/l. MCSP-ETA' induced cell death synergistically with cyclosporin A, both in established human melanoma cell lines and cultured primary melanoma cells. The distinctive antigen-restricted induction of apoptosis and the synergy with cyclosporin A justify further evaluation of this novel agent with regard to its potential application for the treatment of malignant melanoma.
From September 1987 to February 1994, we treated 147 patients ranging between 11 and 82 years old with different mechanical circulatory support systems. The applied devices were the Bio-Medicus ...centrifugal pump in 61 patients, the Abiomed BVS System 5000 in 49 patients, the Thoratec ventricular assist device in 42 patients, and the Novacor left ventricular assist device in 7 patients. On the basis of indication for mechanical circulatory support, the patients were divided into three groups: group 1 consisted of 72 patients with postcardiotomy cardiogenic shock; group 2, 50 patients in whom mechanical support was used as a bridge to cardiac transplantation; and group 3 (miscellaneous), 25 patients in cardiogenic shock resulting from acute myocardial infarction (n = 14), acute fulminant myocarditis (n = 3), primary graft failure (n = 2), right heart failure after heart transplantation (n = 3), and acute rejection (n = 3). Time of support ranged from 1 hour to 97 days (mean duration, 10.8 days). Seventy-five patients (51%) were discharged from the hospital. The best survival rate was achieved in group 2 with 72%, followed by group 1 with 44% and then group 3 with 28%. The most frequent complications in group 1 were bleeding (44%), multiple-organ failure (24%), neurologic disorders (18%), and acute renal failure (15%). In group 2, the major complications were bleeding (34%) and cerebrovascular disorders (22%) and in group 3, multiple-organ failure and sepsis (60%) and bleeding (32%).
The International VLBI Service for Geodesy & Astrometry (IVS) regularly provides high-quality data to produce Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP), and for the maintenance and realization of the ...International Terrestrial and Celestial Reference Frames, ITRF and ICRF. The first iteration of the celestial reference frame (CRF) at radio wavelengths, the ICRF1, was adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1997 to replace the FK5 optical frame. Soon after, the IVS began official operations and in 2009 there was a significant increase in data sufficient to warrant a second iteration of the CRF, ICRF2. The most recent ICRF3, was adopted by the IAU in 2018. However, due to the geographic distribution of observing stations being concentrated in the Northern hemisphere, CRFs are generally weaker in the South due to there being fewer Southern Hemisphere observations. To increase the Southern Hemisphere observations, and the density, precision of the sources, a series of deep South observing sessions was initiated in 1995. This initiative in 2004 became the IVS Celestial Reference Frame Deep South (IVS-CRDS) observing program. This paper covers the evolution of the CRDS observing program for the period 1995 to 2021, details the data products and results, and concludes with a summary of upcoming improvements to this ongoing project.
A recombinant immunotoxin was constructed by fusing a single-chain Fv (scFv) antibody fragment, specific for the melanoma-associated chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan (MCSP), to a truncated variant of
...Pseudomonas
Exotoxin A (ETA’), carrying a C-terminal KDEL peptide for improved intracellular transport. The resulting immunotoxin, MCSP-ETA’, induced antigen-specific, potent apoptosis in the cultured human melanoma-derived cell lines A2058 and A375M, and treatment with a single dose of the agent eliminated up to 80 % of these cells within 72 h. The dose needed for half-maximum killing (EC50) was approximately 1 nM for both cell lines. MCSP-ETA’ also displayed cytotoxic activity against cultured primary melanoma cells from patients with advanced disease, with net cell death reaching up to 70 % within 96 h after treatment with a single dose of 14 nM. MCSP-ETA’ induced cell death synergistically with Cyclosporin A (CsA), both in established human melanoma cell lines and cultured primary melanoma cells. The distinctive antigen-restricted induction of apoptosis and the synergy with CsA justify further evaluation of this novel agent with regard to its potential applications for the treatment of melanoma and other MCSP-positive malignancies.
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