9,767 research outputs found

    Central nervous system lupus: a clinical approach to therapy.

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    Management of central nervous system (CNS) involvement still remains one of the most challenging problems in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The best available evidence for the treatment of CNS lupus is largely based on retrospective series, case reports and expert opinion. Current therapy is empirical and tailored to the individual patient. Symptomatic, immunosuppressive and anticoagulant therapies are the main strategies for the management of CNS lupus. The choice depends on the most probable underlying pathogenic mechanism and the severity of the presenting neuropsychiatric symptoms. Thrombotic and nonthrombotic CNS disease needs to be differentiated and requires different management strategies. However, this is often challenging since many, if not most CNS manifestations, may be due to a combination of different pathogenic mechanisms and multiple CNS events may occur in the individual patient. Patients with mild manifestations may need symptomatic treatment only, whereas more severe acute nonthrombotic CNS manifestations may require pulse intravenous cyclophosphamide. Plasmapheresis may also be added in patients with more severe illness refractory to conventional treatment. Recently, the use of intrathecal methotrexate and dexamethasone has been reported in a small series of patients, with a good outcome in patients with severe CNS manifestations. Anticoagulation is warranted in patients with thrombotic disease, particularly in those with the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). This article reviews the clinical approach to therapy in patients with CNS lupus

    Metadata Representations for Queryable ML Model Zoos

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    Machine learning (ML) practitioners and organizations are building model zoos of pre-trained models, containing metadata describing properties of the ML models and datasets that are useful for reporting, auditing, reproducibility, and interpretability purposes. The metatada is currently not standardised; its expressivity is limited; and there is no interoperable way to store and query it. Consequently, model search, reuse, comparison, and composition are hindered. In this paper, we advocate for standardized ML model metadata representation and management, proposing a toolkit supported to help practitioners manage and query that metadata.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc

    A Manifesto of Nodalism

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    This paper proposes the notion of Nodalism as a means describing contemporary culture and of understanding my own creative practice in electronic music composition. It draws on theories and ideas from Kirby, Bauman, Bourriaud, Deleuze, Guatarri, and Gochenour, to demonstrate how networks of ideas or connectionist neural models of cognitive behaviour can be used to contextualize, understand and become a creative tool for the creation of contemporary electronic music

    Optimizing ML Inference Queries Under Constraints

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    The proliferation of pre-trained ML models in public Web-based model zoos facilitates the engineering of ML pipelines to address complex inference queries over datasets and streams of unstructured content. Constructing optimal plan for a query is hard, especially when constraints (e.g. accuracy or execution time) must be taken into consideration, and the complexity of the inference query increases. To address this issue, we propose a method for optimizing ML inference queries that selects the most suitable ML models to use, as well as the order in which those models are executed. We formally define the constraint-based ML inference query optimization problem, formulate it as a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) problem, and develop an optimizer that maximizes accuracy given constraints. This optimizer is capable of navigating a large search space to identify optimal query plans on various model zoos.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc

    Antiphospholipid antibodies in patients with scleroderma : prevalence and clinical significance

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    Antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) are detected in a variety of autoimmune disorders, most commonly systemic lupus erythematosus, but also in some infectious diseases, lymphoproliferative disorders, and even in apparently healthy people. Although a wide prevalence of aPL in systemic sclerosis has been reported (between 0 and 41%), most studies have focused on anticardiolipin antibodies (aCL) and very little is known about other aPL in this disease. We determined the prevalence and clinical significance of aCL, antibodies to β2-glycoprotein I (anti-β2GPI), and antibodies to phosphatidylserine-prothrombin complex (aPS-PT) in 25 patients with scleroderma (18 with limited and 7 with diffuse scleroderma, as defined by LeRoy et al1) (table 1). Twenty four patients were female (median age 50 years (range 28–70), median disease duration 3 years (range 1–20)). ..

    Treatment of Chylothorax after Lung Resection: Indications, Timing, and Outcomes

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    Background: Chylothorax following pulmonary resection and lymphadenectomy for cancer is a potential severe complication in thoracic surgery. In the present study, we investigated the efficacy of the nonsurgical approach as well as the need for reoperation after conservative approach failure. Methods: Chylothorax was diagnosed when chylous leakage from the chest drainage was observed and confirmed by the presence of triglycerides in the pleural fluid. We initially treated all the patients conservatively with complete oral intake cessation and total parenteral nutrition; if drainage output remained more than 800 mL/d after the first 5 days or major pleural effusion was observed at chest X-ray after chest tube removal, surgical treatment of chylothorax was indicated. Results: Between January 1998 and December 2018, 5,072 patients underwent standard anatomical resection and mediastinal lymph node dissection for cancer at our institution. Among them, 30 patients (0.6%) developed chylothorax: 20 patients were effectively treated only by nil per os and low-fat diet, while 10 patients (33.3%) required surgical treatment. Mean age was 63 years; there were 24 male patients (80%); right-sided chylothorax was more frequent than left-sided chylothorax (22 vs. 8, respectively) although not statistically significant (p = 0.38); the only factor that seems to influence the need for reoperation is chylothorax flow rate during conservative treatment (p = 0.06). Conclusion: Conservative treatment is effective in the case of low flow-rate chylothorax (< 800 mL/d); in the case of a higher flow rate, surgical exploration is needed and thoracic duct ligation-with or without lymphatic sites clipping-provides definitive lymphostasis

    Treatment of Chylothorax after Lung Resection: Indications, Timing, and Outcomes

    No full text
    Background Chylothorax following pulmonary resection and lymphadenectomy for cancer is a potential severe complication in thoracic surgery. In the present study, we investigated the efficacy of the nonsurgical approach as well as the need for reoperation after conservative approach failure. Methods Chylothorax was diagnosed when chylous leakage from the chest drainage was observed and confirmed by the presence of triglycerides in the pleural fluid. We initially treated all the patients conservatively with complete oral intake cessation and total parenteral nutrition; if drainage output remained more than 800 mL/d after the first 5 days or major pleural effusion was observed at chest X-ray after chest tube removal, surgical treatment of chylothorax was indicated. Results Between January 1998 and December 2018, 5,072 patients underwent standard anatomical resection and mediastinal lymph node dissection for cancer at our institution. Among them, 30 patients (0.6%) developed chylothorax: 20 patients were effectively treated only by nil per os and low-fat diet, while 10 patients (33.3%) required surgical treatment. Mean age was 63 years; there were 24 male patients (80%); right-sided chylothorax was more frequent than left-sided chylothorax (22 vs. 8, respectively) although not statistically significant (p = 0.38); the only factor that seems to influence the need for reoperation is chylothorax flow rate during conservative treatment (p = 0.06). Conclusion Conservative treatment is effective in the case of low flow-rate chylothorax (< 800 mL/d); in the case of a higher flow rate, surgical exploration is needed and thoracic duct ligation-with or without lymphatic sites clipping-provides definitive lymphostasis

    Building a generalisable ML pipeline at ING

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    Advances in data science have caused an increase in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Machine Learning (ML), throughout various fields. Not only in research but in the industry as well, has ML been receiving increasing amounts of interest. Many companies rely on ML models to increase the efficiency of existing processes or offer new services and products. The industry, however, is facing several additional challenges compared to the academic context. One of those challenges is applying the Development Operations (DevOps) model to an ML application, also referred to as MLOps. This thesis sets out to find the specific challenges that practitioners encounter while operationalising ML models. To do so, we perform a single-case case study on an ML pipeline built by the Trade & Communication Surveillance team at the ING bank. This case study consists of conducting a set of interviews and performing a manual code inspection of the pipeline. The team faces challenges ranging from having insufficient time for operationalising each ML project individually to operating in the highlyregulated fintech context. Their pipeline is able to deploy a single ML model but it does not generalise well to other projects. We present the first version of an application that mitigates these challenges. The application is able to deploy ML models to the development environment at ING and can be operated by data scientists to reduce the effort of operationalising an ML model. Computer Science | Software Technolog

    'Project smells' - Experiences in Analysing the Software Quality of ML Projects with mllint

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    Machine Learning (ML) projects incur novel challenges in their development and productionisation over traditional software applications, though established principles and best practices in ensuring the project's software quality still apply. While using static analysis to catch code smells has been shown to improve software quality attributes, it is only a small piece of the software quality puzzle, especially in the case of ML projects given their additional challenges and lower degree of Software Engineering (SE) experience in the data scientists that develop them. We introduce the novel concept of project smells which consider deficits in project management as a more holistic perspective on software quality in ML projects. An open-source static analysis tool mllint was also implemented to help detect and mitigate these. Our research evaluates this novel concept of project smells in the industrial context of ING, a global bank and large software- and data-intensive organisation. We also investigate the perceived importance of these project smells for proof-of-concept versus production-ready ML projects, as well as the perceived obstructions and benefits to using static analysis tools such as mllint. Our findings indicate a need for context-aware static analysis tools, that fit the needs of the project at its current stage of development, while requiring minimal configuration effort from the user. Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Software EngineeringSoftware Technolog
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