A Nasal Brush-based Classifier of Asthma Identified by Machine Learning Analysis of Nasal RNA Sequence Data.

Asthma is a common, under-diagnosed disease affecting all ages. We sought to identify a nasal brush-based classifier of mild/moderate asthma. 190 subjects with mild/moderate asthma and controls underwent nasal brushing and RNA sequencing of nasal samples. A machine learning-based pipeline identified an asthma classifier consisting of 90 genes interpreted via an L2-regularized logistic regression classification model. This classifier performed with strong predictive value and sensitivity across eight test sets, including (1) a test set of independent asthmatic and control subjects profiled by RNA sequencing (positive and negative predictive values of 1.00 and 0.96, respectively; AUC of 0.994), (2) two independent case-control cohorts of asthma profiled by microarray, and (3) five cohorts with other respiratory conditions (allergic rhinitis, upper respiratory infection, cystic fibrosis, smoking), where the classifier had a low to zero misclassification rate. Following validation in large, prospective cohorts, this classifier could be developed into a nasal biomarker of asthma.

Using machine learning to identify air pollution exposure profiles associated with early cognitive skills among U.S. children.

Data-driven machine learning methods present an opportunity to simultaneously assess the impact of multiple air pollutants on health outcomes. The goal of this study was to apply a two-stage, data-driven approach to identify associations between air pollutant exposure profiles and children's cognitive skills. Data from 6900 children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, a national study of children born in 2001 and followed through kindergarten, were linked to estimated concentrations of 104 ambient air toxics in the 2002 National Air Toxics Assessment using ZIP code of residence at age 9 months. In the first-stage, 100 regression trees were learned to identify ambient air pollutant exposure profiles most closely associated with scores on a standardized mathematics test administered to children in kindergarten. In the second-stage, the exposure profiles frequently predicting lower math scores were included within linear regression models and adjusted for confounders in order to estimate the magnitude of their effect on math scores. This approach was applied to the full population, and then to the populations living in urban and highly-populated urban areas. Our first-stage results in the full population suggested children with low trichloroethylene exposure had significantly lower math scores. This association was not observed for children living in urban communities, suggesting that confounding related to urbanicity needs to be considered within the first-stage. When restricting our analysis to populations living in urban and highly-populated urban areas, high isophorone levels were found to predict lower math scores. Within adjusted regression models of children in highly-populated urban areas, the estimated effect of higher isophorone exposure on math scores was -1.19 points (95% CI -1.94, -0.44). Similar results were observed for the overall population of urban children. This data-driven, two-stage approach can be applied to other populations, exposures and outcomes to generate hypotheses within high-dimensional exposure data.

A review of bioactive glasses: Their structure, properties, fabrication and apatite formation.

Bioactive glass and glass-ceramics are used in bone repair applications and are being developed for tissue engineering applications. Bioactive glasses/Bioglass are very attractive materials for producing scaffolds devoted to bone regeneration due to their versatile properties, which can be properly designed depending on their composition. An important feature of bioactive glasses, which enables them to work for applications in bone tissue engineering, is their ability to enhance revascularization, osteoblast adhesion, enzyme activity and differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells as well as osteoprogenitor cells. An extensive amount of research work has been carried out to develop silicate, borate/borosilicate bioactive glasses and phosphate glasses. Along with this, some metallic glasses have also been investigated for biomedical and technological applications in tissue engineering. Many trace elements have also been incorporated in the glass network to obtain the desired properties, which have beneficial effects on bone remodeling and/or associated angiogenesis. The motivation of this review is to provide an overview of the general requirements, composition, structure-property relationship with hydroxyapatite formation and future perspectives of bioglasses.Attention has also been given to developments of metallic glasses and doped bioglasses along with the techniques used for their fabrication.

Lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) derivatives with dithiocarbamates derived from alpha-amino acids.

Lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) complexes with dithiocarbamates have been synthesized by the reactions of lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) chloride with barium dithiocarbamate and complexes of type [LnCl(L)H2O]n have been obtained (where Ln=La(III) or Pr(III); L=barium salt of dithiocarbamate derived from glycine, L-leucine, L-valine, DL-alanine). The complexes have been characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductance, electronic absorption and fluorescence, infrared, far infrared, 1H NMR spectral studies. The presence of coordinated water molecule is inferred from thermogravimetric analysis which indicates the loss of one water molecule at 150-170 degrees C. The oscillator strength, Judd-Ofelt intensity parameter, stimulated emission cross-section, etc. have been obtained for different transitions of Pr3+.

Lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) complexes with isatin thiosemicarbazones.

Ten new lanthanum(III) and praseodymium(III) complexes of the general formula Na[La(L)2H2O] (Ln=La(III) or Pr(III); LH2=thiosemicarbazones) derived from the condensation of isatin with 4-phenyl thiosemicarbazide, 4-(4-chlorophenyl) thiosemicarbazide, 4-(2-nitrophenyl) thiosemicarbazide, 4-(2-bromophenyl) thiosemicarbazide and 4-(2-methylphenyl) thiosemicarbazide, have been synthesized in methanol in presence of sodium hydroxide. The XRD spectra of the complexes were monitored to verify complex formation. The complexes have also been characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductance, electronic absorption and fluorescence, infrared, far infrared, 1H and 13C NMR spectral studies. Thermal studies of these complexes have been carried out in the temperature range 25-800 degrees C using TG, DTG and DTA techniques. All these complexes decompose gradually with the formation of Ln2O3 as the end product. The Judd-ofelt intensity parameter, oscillator strength, transition probability, stimulated emission cross section for different transitions of Pr3+ for 4-phenyl thiosemicarbazones have been calculated.