Introduction: Electroencephalography can also be used to monitor long-term recovery of the patient after acute phase of the disease. Impaired neurocognitive function after infection, similar to brain injury, may present a transient but also prolonged problem for the functioning of an individual. Some studies have shown that importance of EEG may not be significant in sequel monitoring, because the extensive changes in EEG seen with severe forms of CNS infection do not necessarily imply a longer-term poor outcome. Aim: To examine the predictive potential of electroencephalography (EEG) in regard to the emergence of neurological and cognitive sequelae of acute central nervous system (CNS) infection. Methods: The study included 62 patients treated at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases, Clinical Center of Sarajevo University, who were diagnosed with acute CNS infection. The EEG record was characterized as: normal, non-specific changes of mild, moderate and severe degree and specific changes. The sequelae (headache, cognitive dysfunction, neurological and neurophysiological disorders, audiological and behavioral disorders) was evaluated by combining neurological, psychiatric, pediatric, otolaryngological, ophthalmic and infectological examination in the Neuroinfective Counseling Department for up to 6 months after discharge. Results: After a treatment of an acute CNS infection 25 (40.3%) patients had no sequelae and 37 (59.7%) were with sequelae. The EEG in the initial stage of the disease (Wald’s coefficient = 12.8), followed by the age of the patients (Wald = 6.4), had the greatest influence on the prediction of sequela (p=0.0001). For each additional degree of verified pathological changes in the EEG, the risk of sequelae was increased by 5 degrees (OR = 5.3), respectively. There was no statistically significant association between changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) findings, meningeal symptoms, and signs with sequelae development. Conclusion: Younger age, as well as severe clinical status of a patient, which implies a disorder of consciousness and seizures on admission, are associated with irreversible consequences on a previously mentally healthy individual. Pathological changes (Delta and Theta waves, spike slow complex wave) on the EEG finding significantly predicted presence of sequelae. .

Abstract Background In head and neck cancers, the number of intra-tumoral lymphocytes associates with improved survival. The impact of the exact cellular composition and localization of these lymphocytes, however, is less well studied. In the current study, we assessed the prognostic values of density, localization and cellular networks of defined lymphocyte populations in early-stage oral tongue cancer. Methods Patient with T1-T2, primary oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma and treated with surgical resections and without any peri-operative (chemo) radiotherapy were included in a discovery cohort (n = 47). Multiplexed in-situ immunofluorescent staining was performed using FFPE sections for CD4, CD8, CD20, pan-cytokeratin and cellular nuclei (DAPI); and spatial distributions of 3 lymphocyte populations were assessed in the tumour and stromal compartments, both at the invasive margin (IM) and the center of tumours (CT). Using algorithm-based pathology and nearest neighbor analysis (NNA), we have computed cellular densities and networks for lymphocytes and related these immune parameters to overall survival (OS). Findings were validated using another cohort of patients with identical clinical characteristics (n = 91). Results In our discovery cohort, we observed a high stromal density of CD20-positive B cells at IM but not CT, which correlated with OS (p = 0.005, HR 0.225). NNA demonstrated that survival benefit particularly related to the number of CD20 cells in the vicinity of CD4 cells and the frequency of B cells touching each other. The prognostic value of B cell-rich areas was validated in a second cohort, but only for those patients with low stromal densities of CD4 T cells (in accordance to discovery cohort, p = 0.007, HR = 0.275). Conclusion Our study highlights the prognosis of B cell-rich areas in early-stage oral-tongue cancer patients, particularly in the context of low intra-tumoral CD4 T cell densities. Legal entity responsible for the study The authors. Funding Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands and HRH Princess Chulabhorn College of Medical Science, Bangkok, Thailand. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

To deliver on the 2030 Agenda and the seventeen development goals, while facing complex health challenges, we need research and education that extend across multiple scientific fields. This will enable researchers from a variety of disciplines to meet, identify research issues, apply for funding, and conduct interdisciplinary research. In addition, student involvement is key in achieving the 2030 Agenda’s global goals – and beyond. Challenges include, climate change and child health, non-peaceful societies, gender inequalities and health. The Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation (SIGHT) was founded in 2017 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. SIGHT’s mission is to promote an interdisciplinary approach in research and education in the field of global health. In order to deliver on the commitment to global health among researchers and students in various scientific fields and at universities and colleges across Sweden, SIGHT has established SIGHT Fellows, a mentoring programme for academic researchers. In collaboration with universities, established research institutions, and other stakeholders, SIGHT Student Network holds dynamic meetings for students from a variety of disciplines and universities to contribute to delivering the UN’s sustainability goals.

The neuropeptides oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (VP) and their G protein-coupled receptors OTR, V1aR, V1bR, and V2R form an important and widely-distributed neuroendocrine signaling system. In mammals, this signaling system regulates water homeostasis, blood pressure, reproduction, as well as social behaviors such as pair bonding, trust and aggression. There exists high demand for ligands with differing pharmacological profiles to study the physiological and pathological functions of the individual receptor subtypes. Here, we present the pharmacological characterization of an arthropod (Metaseiulus occidentalis) OT/VP-like nonapeptide across the human OT/VP receptors. I8-arachnotocin is a full agonist with respect to second messenger signaling at human V2R (EC50 34 nM) and V1bR (EC50 1.2 µM), a partial agonist at OTR (EC50 790 nM), and a competitive antagonist at V1aR [pA2 6.25 (558 nM)]. Intriguingly, I8-arachnotocin activated the Gαs pathway of V2R without recruiting either β-arrestin-1 or β-arrestin-2. I8-arachnotocin might thus be a novel pharmacological tool to study the (patho)physiological relevance of β-arrestin-1 or -2 recruitment to the V2R. These findings furthermore highlight arthropods as a novel, vast and untapped source for the discovery of novel pharmacological probes and potential drug leads targeting neurohormone receptors.

An important aspect of managing multi access point (AP) IEEE 802.11 networks is the support for mobility management by controlling the handover process. Most handover algorithms, residing on the client station (STA), are reactive and take a long time to converge, and thus severely impact Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE). Centralized approaches to mobility and handover management are mostly proprietary, reactive and require changes to the client STA. In this paper, we first created an Software-Defined Networking (SDN) modular handover management framework called HuMOR, which can create, validate and evaluate handover algorithms that preserve QoS. Relying on the capabilities of HuMOR, we introduce ABRAHAM, a machine learning backed, proactive, handover algorithm that uses multiple metrics to predict the future state of the network and optimize the load to ensure the preservation of QoS. We compare ABRAHAM to a number of alternative handover algorithms in a comprehensive QoS study, and demonstrate that it outperforms them with an average throughput improvement of up to 139%, while statistical analysis shows that there is significant statistical difference between ABRAHAM and the rest of the algorithms.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

We propose a novel triggering policy to implement state-feedback controllers for nonlinear systems via packet-based communication networks. The idea is to generate transmissions between the plant and the controller only when a state-dependent rule has been satisfied for a given amount of time. We refer to this new paradigm as event-holding control, in which a clock variable is thus only running when a state-dependent criterion is verified. This is different from time-regularized event-triggered control, where the clock variable keeps running after each transmission instant until it is reset to zero at the moment a state-based condition is verified. We approach the problem of designing an event-holding controller via emulation. We first synthesize a state-feedback law, which stabilizes the closed-loop system in the absence of the communication network. We then design the event-holding triggering mechanism under a set of general assumptions. The results are applied to two case studies consisting of linear systems and a class of nonlinear systems controlled by backstepping. We also provide a numerical backstepping control example, which demonstrates that the event-holding behaviour can reduce the number of transmissions.

Value iteration is a method to generate optimal control inputs for generic nonlinear systems and cost functions. Its implementation typically leads to approximation errors, which may have a major impact on the closed-loop system performance. We talk in this case of approximate value iteration (AVI). In this paper, we investigate the stability of systems for which the inputs are obtained by AVI. We consider deterministic discrete-time nonlinear plants and a class of general, possibly discounted, costs. We model the closed-loop system as a family of systems parameterized by tunable parameters, which are used for the approximation of the value function at different iterations, the discount factor and the iteration step at which we stop running the algorithm. It is shown, under natural stabilizability and detectability properties as well as mild conditions on the approximation errors, that the family of closed-loop systems exhibit local practical stability properties. The analysis is based on the construction of a Lyapunov function given by the sum of the approximate value function and the Lyapunov-like function that characterizes the detectability of the system. By strengthening our conditions, asymptotic and exponential stability properties are guaranteed.

Most extremum-seeking control approaches focus solely on the problem of finding the extremum of some unknown, steady-state performance map. However, many industrial applications also have to deal with constraints on operating conditions due to, e.g., actuator limitations, limitations on design or tunable system parameters, or constraints on measurable signals. These constraints, which can be unknown a-priori, may conflict with the otherwise optimal operational condition, and should be taken into account in performance optimization. In this work, we propose a sampled-data extremum-seeking approach for optimization of constrained dynamical systems using barrier function methods, where both the objective function and the constraint function are available through measurement only. We show that, under the assumption that initialization does not violate constraints, the interconnection between a constrained dynamical system and optimization algorithms that employ barrier function methods is stable, the constraints are satisfied, and optimization is achieved. We illustrate the results by means of a numerical example.

Most emulation-based results in networked control systems rely on a bound on the maximal allowable transmission interval (MATI) under which stability is preserved. However, having only such a MATI condition can lead to conservative results, as large values of transmission intervals may only occur sporadically, while the typical transmission interval is much smaller. In this paper, we therefore propose, in addition to the existence of a MATI, to also impose a bound on the average allowable transmission interval, expressed in terms of a reverse average dwell-time (RADT) condition on the transmission intervals. We provide joint conditions on the RADT and the MATI such that stability of the NCS can still be guaranteed, which can, in addition, lead to significant higher values of the MATI itself. The strengths of these new results are illustrated on a numerical example, showing a 484% improvement of the MATI, while still guaranteeing stability.

We study a class of distributed optimization problems of minimizing the sum of potentially non-differentiable convex objective functions (without requiring strong convexity). A novel approach to the analysis of asynchronous distributed optimization is developed. An iterative algorithm based on dual decomposition and block coordinate ascent is implemented in an edge based manner. We extend available results in the literature by allowing multiple and potentially overlapping blocks to be updated at the same time with non-uniform probabilities assigned to different blocks. Sublinear convergence with probability one is proved for the algorithm under the aforementioned weak assumptions. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.

geopolitical the definitions. The concept of the book consists of seven chapters: Introduction , Model and Theory , Several Geopolitical Approaches in the Recent Past , Classical Geopolitical Assumptions , Classical Geopolitical Theories, Applications of the Model, Setting the Course for a Rejuvenated Geopolitics , and Annex: Classical Geopolitical Concepts / Theories , Notes and Index . Following an overview of the development of geopolitics, the book introduces us to the history of geopolitics, but also its directions and scholars along two lines. The first line would be an organic, reflected by German concern about scientific laws, which contributed to the survival of states in an increasingly volatile world, with his two scholars Friedrich Ratzel and Rudolf Kjellén. Another would be the geostrategic British and North American interest, through the depicted geographical position of states and regions as a condition of foreign action with Alfred Thayer Mahan, Halford Mackinder, and Nicholas Spykman as their standard bearers. After World War II, these classical directions were exposed to great influence by the alleged connection with General Karl Haushofer and his geopolitical school in Munich as well as the aggression of Adolf Hitler, both directions in promoting war and racism. The book is structured to follow three main goals: first, purpose; constructed classical geopolitical model, second, objective; by its construction it outlines the usefulness and legitimacy of classical geopolitics as an important model of international relations, third, access; listed three ways that will show the benefit of classical geopolitics. Phil Kelly separates the model from theory and its application. Theory and the model are different, first, the theory is part of the second, the model. It lists sixty theories in our geopolitical model. These theories can be used to interpret actions and policies in the field of international relations