SARSMutOnto: An Ontology for SARS-CoV-2 Lineages and Mutations.

Mutations allow viruses to continuously evolve by changing their genetic code to adapt to the hosts they infect. It is an adaptive and evolutionary mechanism that helps viruses acquire characteristics favoring their survival and propagation. The COVID-19 pandemic declared by the WHO in March 2020 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The non-stop adaptive mutations of this virus and the emergence of several variants over time with characteristics favoring their spread constitute one of the biggest obstacles that researchers face in controlling this pandemic. Understanding the mutation mechanism allows for the adoption of anticipatory measures and the proposal of strategies to control its propagation. In this study, we focus on the mutations of this virus, and we propose the SARSMutOnto ontology to model SARS-CoV-2 mutations reported by Pango researchers. A detailed description is given for each mutation. The genes where the mutations occur and the genomic structure of this virus are also included. The sub-lineages and the recombinant sub-lineages resulting from these mutations are additionally represented while maintaining their hierarchy. We developed a Python-based tool to automatically generate this ontology from various published Pango source files. At the end of this paper, we provide some examples of SPARQL queries that can be used to exploit this ontology. SARSMutOnto might become a 'wet bench' machine learning tool for predicting likely future mutations based on previous mutations.

Endotype of Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps in Morocco.

BACKGROUND: With the advent of biotherapies, endotyping of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is becoming more and more important to optimize therapeutic management. While the majority of CRSwNPs in the United States, Europe, and Japan exhibit type 2 eosinophil-dominant inflammation response, other parts of Asia display mixed patterns including neutrophil-dominant inflammation. Until now, no study has focused on the proportion of inflammation patterns in Morocco or anywhere on the African continent. We aim to fill this gap by studying tissue inflammatory response in our operated patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: After searching the database of the pathology department, we retrieved from the archives the stained pathology slides of all our patients who underwent surgery for CRSwNP over 5 years from 2017 to 2021. We counted then the number of eosinophils in the lamina propria at high-power magnification to determine the predominant inflammatory pattern. RESULTS: A total of 35 reports were collected. We found that eosinophilic inflammation was predominant, accounting for 97% of the cases. CONCLUSIONS: The CRSwNP endotype in our region would mainly be type 2. However, our results must be confirmed by multicenter studies involving a large number of patients.

Optimization of Imbalanced and Multidimensional Learning Under Bayes Minimum Risk and Savings Measure.

The full potential of data analysis is crippled by imbalanced and high-dimensional data, which makes these topics significantly important. Consequently, substantial research efforts have been directed to obtain dimension reduction and resolve data imbalance, especially in the context of fraud detection analysis. This work aims to investigate the effectiveness of hybrid learning methods for alleviating the class imbalance and integrating dimensionality reduction techniques. In this regard, the current study examines different classification combinations to achieve optimal savings and improve classification performance. Against this background, several well-known machine learning models are selected such as logistic regression, random forest, CatBoost (CB), and XGBoost. These models are constructed and optimized based on Bayes minimum risk (BMR) associated with the oversampling method synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and different feature selection (FS) techniques, both univariate and multivariate. To investigate the performance of the proposed approach, different possible scenarios are analyzed both with and without balancing, with and without FS, and optimization using BMR. With a major insight about the best method to use, BMR shows a good optimization when used with SMOTE, symmetrical uncertainty for FS, and CB as a boosted classifier, principally in terms of F1 score and savings metrics.

The impact of the ultrasound classification on the rate of thyroid surgery indications: a 577 cases series.

OBJECTIVES: Nodules of the thyroid gland are common but rarely malignant. Their management can range from simple monitoring to surgery. The use of ultrasound and fine needle aspiration can reduce the rate of unnecessary surgeries. However, there is a risk of false positives and false negatives of malignancy that only pathology can avoid. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of ultrasound classification on the rate of surgical indications. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Between 2013 and 2017, the ultrasound classification was gradually adopted in our daily practice to become now routine. During this period, we conducted a retrospective study of all the patients who presented to our department for one or more thyroid nodules. RESULTS: A total of 577 patients were included in the study. We compared two groups, a first where the ultrasound classification was used and a second where this classification was not used. In the end, we found that this classification significantly reduced the surgical indication by 19% while increasing the malignancy detection rate in operated patients by 21%. CONCLUSIONS: The use of ultrasound classification reduces the indications for surgery while increasing the rate of malignancy in operated patients. The generalization of the use of the ultrasound classification score is strongly recommended in daily practice.

Acute miliary tuberculosis of the pharynx (Isambert disease): case report.

Miliary pharyngeal tuberculosis or Isambert disease is a rare form of tuberculosis. It can be isolated or more often associated with lung damage. We report the case of a 25-year-old patient referred for deep asthenia with fever, sweating and weight loss, all associated with dysphagia and hearing loss. The pharyngeal examination found an oropharyngeal miliary and an involvement of the cavum. Chest computed tomography (CT) showed excavated lesions suggestive of tuberculosis. The clinical situation clearly improved with anti-tuberculous treatment. Isambert disease is a rare pharyngeal disorder occurring especially at extreme ages or in immunocompromised patients. The contamination is either direct or hematogenous. The pharyngeal examination finds grayish tubers on an often congestive mucosa. The diagnosis is bacteriological and/or histological. Treatment is mainly medical, more rarely surgical. The general assessment aims to find other locations. The miliary pharyngeal tuberculosis is rare and must make seek other locations. The diagnosis is easy and treatment mainly medical. The consequences can be significant.

Prognostic factors of myringoplasty: study of a 140 cases series and review of the literature.

Myringoplasty is one of the most frequent interventions in otology. It aims to restore the eardrum in order to protect against extrinsic contamination by water and to improve hearing. Our study aimed to analyze the factors that may affect anatomical and functional results of myringoplasty or type I tympanoplasty. A retrospective study was performed of a series of 140 cases of myringoplasty over a 6-years period from 2010 to 2015. The approach was post-auricular in 69% of cases and all the patients underwent an underlay technique. Temporal fascia was used in 90.71% of the cases. After an average follow-up of 13 months, the anatomical and functional results were acceptable, with a tympanic closure rate of 88% and an average audiometric gain of 14.22 dB. Several factors affected our results, including the location of the perforation, the active or inactive status of the chronic otitis media, the condition of the opposite ear and the graft material. In light of our results and those of the literature, we believe that the middle ear should be dry at least two months prior to surgery, use of cartilaginous graft material and underlay technique should be preferred and special precautions should be taken in case of anterior or contralateral perforation.

[Surgical management of hyperthyroidism: about 60 cases]. / Chirurgie des hyperthyroïdies: à propos de 60 cas.

Hyperthyroidism includes several diseases characterized by high level of circulating thyroid hormones. Thyroidectomy is one of the main treatment options. We conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the epidemiological, clinical, therapeutic, evolutionary features of patients who had undergone surgery for hyperthyroidism in the ENT Department at the Avicenne Military Hospital in Marrakech. Data were collected from medical records of 60 patients. There was a female predominance and the average age was 52 years. Clinical manifestations were dominated by thyrotoxicosis in all patients. Clinical examination allowed the identification of 47 cases of toxic or pretoxic multiheteronodular goitre (78.33% of cases), 5 cases of Graves disease (8.33% of cases) and 8 cases of toxic adenoma (13.33% of cases). All patients underwent medical preparation. Total thyroidectomy was performed in 50 patients (83.33%) and loboisthmectomy in 10 patients (16.33%). Postoperative complications were: transient laryngeal paralysis in one case (1.6%), transient hypoparathyroidism in nine cases (15%), definitive hypoparathyroidism in one case (1.6%) and compressive hematoma in one case (1.6% of cases). Surgical treatment of bleeding and adherent toxic goiters should be performed by an experienced surgeon who must remain vigilant to minimize morbidity mainly caused by laryngeal paralysis and hypoparathyroidism.

Multi-criteria decision support framework for sustainable implementation of effective green supply chain management practices.

At present, environmental issues become real critical barriers for many supply chain corporations concerning the sustainability of their businesses. In this context, several studies have been proposed from both academia and industry trying to develop new measurements related to green supply chain management (GSCM) practices to overcome these barriers, which will help create new environmental strategies, implementing those practices in their manufacturing processes. The objective of this study is to present the technical and analytical contribution that multi-criteria decision making analysis (MCDA) can bring to environmental decision making problems, and especially to GSCM field. For this reason, a multi-criteria decision-making methodology, combining fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (fuzzy TOPSIS), is proposed to contribute to a better understanding of new sustainable strategies through the identification and evaluation of the most appropriate GSCM practices to be adopted by industrial organizations. The fuzzy AHP process is used to construct hierarchies of the influential criteria, and then identify the importance weights of the selected criteria, while the fuzzy TOPSIS process employs these weighted criteria as inputs to evaluate and measure the performance of each alternative. To illustrate the effectiveness and performance of our MCDA approach, we have applied it to a chemical industry corporation located in Safi, Morocco.

A new web-based framework development for fuzzy multi-criteria group decision-making.

Fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making (FMCGDM) process is usually used when a group of decision-makers faces imprecise data or linguistic variables to solve the problems. However, this process contains many methods that require many time-consuming calculations depending on the number of criteria, alternatives and decision-makers in order to reach the optimal solution. In this study, a web-based FMCGDM framework that offers decision-makers a fast and reliable response service is proposed. The proposed framework includes commonly used tools for multi-criteria decision-making problems such as fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS methods. The integration of these methods enables taking advantages of the strengths and complements each method's weakness. Finally, a case study of location selection for landfill waste in Morocco is performed to demonstrate how this framework can facilitate decision-making process. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework can successfully accomplish the goal of this study.

Comparison of fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TODIM methods for landfill location selection.

Landfill location selection is a multi-criteria decision problem and has a strategic importance for many regions. The conventional methods for landfill location selection are insufficient in dealing with the vague or imprecise nature of linguistic assessment. To resolve this problem, fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods are proposed. The aim of this paper is to use fuzzy TODIM (the acronym for Interactive and Multi-criteria Decision Making in Portuguese) and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methods for the selection of landfill location. The proposed methods have been applied to a landfill location selection problem in the region of Casablanca, Morocco. After determining the criteria affecting the landfill location decisions, fuzzy TODIM and fuzzy AHP methods are applied to the problem and results are presented. The comparisons of these two methods are also discussed.

Application of an integrated multi-criteria decision making AHP-TOPSIS methodology for ETL software selection.

Actually, a set of ETL software (Extract, Transform and Load) is available to constitute a major investment market. Each ETL uses its own techniques for extracting, transforming and loading data into data warehouse, which makes the task of evaluating ETL software very difficult. However, choosing the right software of ETL is critical to the success or failure of any Business Intelligence project. As there are many impacting factors in the selection of ETL software, the same process is considered as a complex multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. In this study, an application of decision-making methodology that employs the two well-known MCDM techniques, namely Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods is designed. In this respect, the aim of using AHP is to analyze the structure of the ETL software selection problem and obtain weights of the selected criteria. Then, TOPSIS technique is used to calculate the alternatives' ratings. An example is given to illustrate the proposed methodology. Finally, a software prototype for demonstrating both methods is implemented.

An improved hybrid multi-criteria/multidimensional model for strategic industrial location selection: Casablanca industrial zones as a case study.

In this paper, we examine the issue of strategic industrial location selection in uncertain decision making environments for implanting new industrial corporation. In fact, the industrial location issue is typically considered as a crucial factor in business research field which is related to many calculations about natural resources, distributors, suppliers, customers, and most other things. Based on the integration of environmental, economic and social decisive elements of sustainable development, this paper presents a hybrid decision making model combining fuzzy multi-criteria analysis with analytical capabilities that OLAP systems can provide for successful and optimal industrial location selection. The proposed model mainly consists in three stages. In the first stage, a decision-making committee has been established to identify the evaluation criteria impacting the location selection process. In the second stage, we develop fuzzy AHP software based on the extent analysis method to assign the importance weights to the selected criteria, which allows us to model the linguistic vagueness, ambiguity, and incomplete knowledge. In the last stage, OLAP analysis integrated with multi-criteria analysis employs these weighted criteria as inputs to evaluate, rank and select the strategic industrial location for implanting new business corporation in the region of Casablanca, Morocco. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of criteria weights and the preferences given by decision makers on the final rankings of strategic industrial locations.