Mutant IDH Inhibitors Induce Lineage Differentiation in IDH-mutant Oligodendroglioma

Recent data showed promising signs of objective tumor responses in subsets of patients with low grade glioma treated with inhibitors of mutant IDH (IDHi). However, the molecular and cellular underpinnings of such responses are not known. Here, we profiled 6,039 transcriptomes by single-cell or single-nucleus RNA-sequencing isolated from three IDH-mutant oligodendroglioma patients with clinical response to IDHi. Importantly, the tissues were sampled on-drug, four weeks from treatment initiation and our dataset includes a matched pre- and on-treatment sample pair. We integrate our findings with analysis of 8,241 transcriptomes from seven untreated samples, 134 bulk samples from the TCGA and experimental models. We find that IDHi treatment induces a robust differentiation towards glial lineages, accompanied by a depletion of stem-like cells and a reduction of cell proliferation. Our study provides the first evidence in patients of the differentiating potential of IDHi on the cellular hierarchies that drive oligodendrogliomas.

Distinctive determinants of financial indebtedness: evidence from Slovak and Czech enterprises

Research background: Indebtedness indicators are used to monitor the structure of corporate financial resources. The company's share of its own and foreign resources affects the financial stability of the company. A high share of own re-sources makes the company stable, and independent. With a low share, on the contrary, the company is unstable, market fluctuations and credit uncertainty can have serious consequences. However, foreign capital is cheaper, and too high indebtedness ratios can jeopardize the existence of enterprises. Purpose of the article: In general, the economic recession worsens the capital structure of enterprises, especially their debt management. Thus, the paper aims to apply the set of 13 indebtedness ratios to a sample of 779 Slovak and Czech enterprises from the construction sector to determine key microeconomic determinants that may influence the level of indebtedness. Methods: A non-parametric one-way analysis of variance ? the Kruskal-Wallis test ? was used to determine whether the set of indebtedness ratios is the same across countries, districts, and sizes. For analyzing the specific sample pair of stochastic dominance, the pairwise comparison was realized using the Dunn'stest with Bonferonni correction. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the differences in the set of indebtedness ratios between two independent groups of enterprises, based on their legal form and country. Findings & value added: The level of total indebtedness ratio and the self-financing ratio depends on the region as well as on the size of the enterprise and the legal form. In the case of credit indebtedness and debt-to-cash-flow indebted-ness, their dependence on the size of the enterprise and the legal form is obvious. The importance of the region and the legal form of enterprises, vice versa, affect the level of the financial independence ratio. These outputs are relevant for au-thorities, policy makers, or financial institutions to identify financial constraints that construction enterprises face and, as a result, make a long-term contribution to theory in this field.

Comparison between modified LST Fastfloat and conventional HF methods for pollen preparation in highly minerogenic sediments

Pollen analysis is a commonly used method to interpret vegetation and environmental change. The standard pollen preparation technique in minerogenic sediments involves the use of hydrofluoric acid (HF) which is highly toxic. Currently the European legislation requires that hazardous chemicals should be substituted with less hazardous or non-toxic chemicals if possible. In the present paper the authors introduce a safer pollen preparation method, based on the use of low-toxic heavy liquid lithium heteropoly-tungstate (LST Fastfloat) and provide instructions for pollen preparation with the LSTFastflow method. Furthermore, five paired samples were processed from clayey and silty sediments with LST Fastfloat and conventional HF methods and the pollen and spore counting results obtained from these two methods were compared to test if there is statistically significant differences between the taxa. Calculation of the 95% confidence interval revealed statistical agreement in all studied taxa except one taxon in one sample pair. However, the study revealed systematic differences within two taxa, Betula and Pinus. Thus caution is needed when comparing results obtained by HF and heavy liquid (LST Fastfloat) methods.

Discrimination Ability of Assessors in Check-All-That-Apply Tests: Method and Product Development

Binary similarity measures have been used in several research fields, but their application in sensory data analysis is limited as of yet. Since check-all-that-apply (CATA) data consist of binary answers from the participants, binary similarity measures seem to be a natural choice for their evaluation. This work aims to define the discrimination ability of CATA participants by calculating the consensus values of 44 binary similarity measures. The proposed methodology consists of three steps: (i) calculating the binary similarity values of the assessors, sample pair-wise; (ii) clustering participants into good and poor discriminators based on their binary similarity values; (iii) performing correspondence analysis on the CATA data of the two clusters. Results of three case studies are presented, highlighting that a simple clustering based on the computed binary similarity measures results in higher quality correspondence analysis with more significant attributes, as well as better sample discrimination (even according to overall liking).

A Novel Robust Fuzzy Rough Set Model for Feature Selection

The existing fuzzy rough set (FRS) models all believe that the decision attribute divides the sample set into several “clear” decision classes, and this data processing method makes the model sensitive to noise information when conducting feature selection. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a robust fuzzy rough set model (RS-FRS) based on representative samples. Firstly, the fuzzy membership degree of the samples is defined to reflect its fuzziness and uncertainty, and RS-FRS model is constructed to reduce the influence of the noise samples. RS-FRS model does not need to set parameters for the model in advance and can effectively reduce the complexity of the model and human intervention. On this basis, the related properties of RS-FRS model are studied, and the sample pair selection algorithm (SPS) based on RS-FRS is used for feature selection. In this paper, RS-FRS is tested and analysed on the open 12 datasets. The experimental results show that RS-FRS model proposed can effectively select the most relevant features and has certain robustness to the noise information. The proposed model has a good applicability for data processing and can effectively improve the performance of feature selection.

Physicochemical Characterization of Home-Made Soap from Waste-Used Frying Oils

The study aimed to describe the utilization of waste frying oils, originated mainly from households, in home-made soap production and to emphasize the advantages of soap biodegradation in comparison to biological treatment of oils. The physicochemical analyses of soaps were used to check the differences between the samples made of fresh and fried oils. Significant (p < 0.05) difference between the soaps made of fresh/fried olive oil pair was obtained, while the rapeseed sample pair did not differ significantly (p < 0.05). Malondialdehyde (MDA) exhibited notable differences with an increase from 1.94 μg/g to 2.33 μg/g for olive oil fresh/fried pair and from 3.43 μg/g to 4.10 μg/g for rapeseed–palm oil fresh/fried pair. The studies addressing the soap biodegradation process revealed that soaps are degrading up to four times faster than oils in waste processing plants. Literature data showed the syntrophic ways of soap degradation and degradation solely done by sulfate-reducing bacteria. Obtained results, same as literature data, indicated that soaps produced from fried plant oils represent acceptable products from the economic and environmental point of view. Soap production can be considered one of the possible ways toward reduction of waste oil disposal.

Comparing Semantic Differential Methods in Affective Engineering Processes: A Case Study on Vehicle Instrument Panels

When developing a user-oriented product, it is crucial to consider users’ affective needs. Various semantic differential (SD) methods have been used to identify affect regarding materials, and this is the most important property in products. This study aims to determine which of the three conventional SD methods (absolute evaluation 1 [AE 1], absolute evaluation 2 [AE 2], or relative evaluation [RE]) is most effective for affective evaluation. Affective evaluation was performed for vehicle instrument panels by each of these three SD methods. Two quantitative analysis methods (correlation analysis and repeated-measures ANOVA) were used to examine the performance (sample distinguishability) of each evaluation method, and it was found that both AE 2 and RE produced better results than AE 1. The correlation coefficients and p-values in correlation analysis were slightly better for RE than for AE 2. In conclusion, an affective evaluation produced better results when pairwise samples (especially one sample pair) were presented, indicating that maintaining distinct samples is very important. The clearer the difference in comparison targets is, the more accurate the evaluation results.

Sensitivity of Nasopharyngeal Swabs and Saliva for the Detection of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2

We enrolled 91 consecutive inpatients with COVID-19 at 6 hospitals in Toronto, Canada, and tested 1 nasopharyngeal swab/saliva sample pair from each patient using real-time RT-PCR for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Sensitivity was 89% for nasopharyngeal swabs and 72% for saliva (P = .02). Difference in sensitivity was greatest for sample pairs collected later in illness.

Sensitivity of nasopharyngeal swabs and saliva for the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

We enrolled 53 consecutive in-patients with COVID-19 at six hospitals in Toronto, Canada, and tested one nasopharyngeal swab/saliva sample pair from each patient for SARS-CoV-2. Overall, sensitivity was 89% for nasopharyngeal swabs and 77% for saliva (p=NS); difference in sensitivity was greatest for sample pairs collected later in illness.