Implementation of cloud computing in the German healthcare system.

With the advent of artificial intelligence and Big Data - projects, the necessity for a transition from analog medicine to modern-day solutions such as cloud computing becomes unavoidable. Even though this need is now common knowledge, the process is not always easy to start. Legislative changes, for example at the level of the European Union, are helping the respective healthcare systems to take the necessary steps. This article provides an overview of how a German university hospital is dealing with European data protection laws on the integration of cloud computing into everyday clinical practice. By describing our model approach, we aim to identify opportunities and possible pitfalls to sustainably influence digitization in Germany.

Comparison of serum levels of hepcidin and pro-hepcidin in hemodialysis patients and healthy subjects.

Hepcidin prevents absorption of iron from the intestine and inhibits release of iron from macrophages and hepatocytes. For this reason, it seems that high levels of hepcidin are a predisposing factor for anemia in chronic inflammatory conditions such as chronic kidney disease and dialysis patients. This study was designed to determine the role of changes in the level of serum hepcidin in the management of hemodialysis patients. This study included 44 dialysis patients and 44 controls. The hepcidin and pro-hepcidin levels were measured by the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay method. The serum ferritin level was measured by the chemiluminescence method. The mean hepcidin level was 999.3 ± 996.7 ng/mL in the case group and 770.4 ± 815.9 ng/mL in the control group (P = 0.25). The mean pro-hepcidin level was, respectively, 186.1 ± 220.3 pg/mL and 150.87 ± 207.7 pg/mL, in the case group and control groups (P = 0.45). The mean (standard deviation) ferritin level was 816.4 ± 379.4 ng/mL in the case group and 193 ± 171.8 ng/mL in the control group (P < 0.001). In the case group, the correlation between serum ferritin and hepcidin was not significant (r = 0.6, P = 0.08). Also, there was no significant correlation between serum ferritin and pro-hepcidin levels (r = 0.6, P = 0.08). A positive correlation was seen between pro-hepcidin and hepcidin levels (r = 0.92, P < 0.01). In this study, the results showed that the serum hepcidin levels are high in dialysis patients and that there was no correlation with the serum ferritin levels.

Feasibility of blind source separation methods for the denoising of dense-array EEG.

High-density electroencephalographic recordings have recently been proved to bring useful information during the pre-surgical evaluation of patients suffering from drug-resistant epilepsy. However, these recordings can be particularly obscured by noise and artifacts. This paper focuses on the denoising of dense-array EEG data (e.g. 257 channels) contaminated with muscle artifacts. In this context, we compared the efficiency of several Independent Component Analysis (ICA) methods, namely SOBI, SOBIrob, PICA, InfoMax, two different implementations of FastICA, COM2, ERICA, and SIMBEC, as well as that of Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA). We evaluated the performance using the Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE) criterion and calculated the numerical complexity. Quantitative results obtained on realistic simulated data show that some of the ICA methods as well as CCA can properly remove muscular artifacts from dense-array EEG.

Aflatoxin contamination in wheat flour samples from golestan province, northeast of iran.

BACKGROUND: Due to the high toxicity of aflatoxin and its effects on public health, determination of aflatoxin level in Wheat flour samples in the Golestan province, north of Iran was investigated. To examine the effect of seasonal changes, summer and winter sampling was performed with standard sampling methods. METHODS: A total of 200 flour samples were collected from 25 factories. HPLC method with immunoaffinity chromatography was used to measure aflatoxin types (G2, G1, B2 and B1). Statistical analysis was performed by the Pearson correlation test, One-way ANOVA and multivariate regression analysis. RESULTS: Mean total aflatoxin levels of samples were 0.82 and 1.99 ng/g in summer and winter, respectively. Aflatoxin B1 levels were detected in 3.1%, 7.4% over permissible limits by worldwide regulations in samples collected in summer and winter, respectively. Aflatoxins in winter were higher than summer. The highest frequency of aflatoxin contamination in winter was B2 (98%) and in summer G1 (51%). The relationship between humidity and rate of aflatoxin B1 and total aflatoxin was significant in winter. Results of multivariate regression were showed the strongest relationship with humidity and aflatoxin level. Despite the contamination of flour samples, there was no contamination higher than the standard limit of Iran Standard Institute. But it was significantly higher than similar studies from other regions. CONCLUSIONS: Therefore, with regard to negative impacts of aflatoxin on health, aflatoxin contamination should be considered in future programs. Decrease of aflatoxin contamination may be made practical through reducing wheat storage duration and controlling humidity.

Observation of turbulent-driven shear flow in a cylindrical laboratory plasma device.

An azimuthally symmetric radially sheared plasma fluid flow is observed to spontaneously form in a cylindrical magnetized helicon plasma device with no external sources of momentum input. A turbulent momentum conservation analysis shows that this shear flow is sustained by the Reynolds stress generated by collisional drift turbulence in the device. The results provide direct experimental support for the basic theoretical picture of drift-wave-shear-flow interactions.

Asymmetrically localized Bud8p and Bud9p proteins control yeast cell polarity and development.

Diploid strains of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae change the pattern of cell division from bipolar to unipolar when switching growth from the unicellular yeast form (YF) to filamentous, pseudohyphal (PH) cells in response to nitrogen starvation. The functions of two transmembrane proteins, Bud8p and Bud9p, in regulating YF and PH cell polarity were investigated. Bud8p is highly concentrated at the distal pole of both YF and PH cells, where it directs initiation of cell division. Asymmetric localization of Bud8p is independent of the Rsr1p/Bud1p GTPase. rsr1/bud1 mutations are epistatic to bud8 mutations, placing Rsr1p/Bud1p downstream of Bud8p. In YF cells, Bud9p is also localized at the distal pole, yet deletion of BUD9 favours distal bud initiation. In PH cells, nutritional starvation for nitrogen efficiently prevents distal localization of Bud9p. Because Bud8p and Bud9p proteins associate in vivo, we propose Bud8p as a landmark for bud initiation at the distal cell pole, where Bud9p acts as inhibitor. In response to nitrogen starvation, asymmetric localization of Bud9p is averted, favouring Bud8p-mediated cell division at the distal pole.