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A key consideration during the preparatory phase project DiSSCo Prepare – which laid the foundations for the future Research Infrastructure DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) – was the need to establish a small number of alternative viable financial contribution models and a scalable formula which could be presented to potential funders, with a view to obtaining the minimum financial contribution necessary for DiSSCo to operate, as well as considering how the RI could grow with increased national funding. This report briefly explains the ERIC funding framework – as chosen for DiSSCo – and its legal constraints, in order to explain the key role played by national member contributions in the viability of an ERIC. An essential annex of the statutes that will be signed by all members of the ERIC is the member fee calculation. A proposal for the DiSSCo member fee calculation is set out in this document and is based on three main indicators: economic power (GDP), annual spending in research and development and population size. In the context of DiSSCo – and to ensure the ERIC can function – these indicators are connected to a fixed baseline fee of €50,000, in order to guarantee a minimum significant annual contribution from each participating country and avoid contributions that will be more expensive to manage than to benefit from. This baseline is multiplied by contribution factors which propose different ways to weight the various indicators. The method is established on an ideal scenario, whereby all 27 EU members, as well as the UK, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland sign the DiSSCo statutes and agree to the proposed member contribution calculation, amounting to €4.5 million for the annual budget of the ERIC. This scenario remains highly unlikely; therefore, a scaled approach has been envisaged, meaning the initial engagement of some countries will allow DiSSCo to begin its operation and implement its business strategy, whilst the growth of the ERIC and its activities is likely to evolve proportionally to the number of national members it is able to engage. This report also looks at the ways in which funding could be distributed amongst the DiSSCo members in order to implement decentralised services.

Biobanks can have a pivotal role in elucidating disease etiology, translation, and advancing public health. However, meeting these challenges hinges on a critical shift in the way science is conducted and requires biobank harmonization. There is growing recognition that a common strategy is imperative to develop biobanking globally and effectively. To help guide this strategy, we articulate key principles, goals, and priorities underpinning a roadmap for global biobanking to accelerate health science, patient care, and public health. The need to manage and share very large amounts of data has driven innovations on many fronts. Although technological solutions are allowing biobanks to reach new levels of integration, increasingly powerful data-collection tools, analytical techniques, and the results they generate raise new ethical and legal issues and challenges, necessitating a reconsideration of previous policies, practices, and ethical norms. These manifold advances and the investments that support them are also fueling opportunities for biobanks to ultimately become integral parts of health-care systems in many countries. International harmonization to increase interoperability and sustainability are two strategic priorities for biobanking. Tackling these issues requires an environment favorably inclined toward scientific funding and equipped to address socio-ethical challenges. Cooperation and collaboration must extend beyond systems to enable the exchange of data and samples to strategic alliances between many organizations, including governmental bodies, funding agencies, public and private science enterprises, and other stakeholders, including patients. A common vision is required and we articulate the essential basis of such a vision herein.

Genome research is a central area both for progress in scientific findings in life sciences and for the innovative capacity in medical science, and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The research findings obtained by interdisciplinary cooperation are of paramount epistemological importance. They will establish a new understanding of biology. In this context, there will be revolutionary opportunities for new medical therapies, for instance, or for keeping plants and animals healthy. Austria will participate in this science and innovation field and will use the resulting opportunities for scientific and economic development as well as for overall social prosperity. For this pupose, Austria has developed the 'Austrian Genome Research Programme', a 'programme of the future' for Austria. This program will be based on the good foundations that genome research has already established in Austria.

Bioresources need to be easily accessible to facilitate advancement of research. Besides technical and ethical aspects, a major obstacle for sharing them is the absence of recognition of the effort behind establishing and maintaining such resources.

[...] national bodies that have worked to regulate the sunbed market, and organisations that have issued recommendations on facility operation and information to consumers, do not seem to have been involved in projects related to the Prosafe surveys.11,12 Second, the indoor tanning industry should not be responsible for issuing a code of conduct without the involvement of independent experts when concerns have been raised about the use of advertising claims to attract people to tanning salons.13,14 Third, regulations do not turn a carcinogenic agent into a healthy one.

We present a novel setup for treating sepsis using distributional reinforcement learning (RL). Sepsis is a life-threatening medical emergency. Its treatment is considered to be a challenging high-stakes decision-making problem, which has to procedurally account for risk. Treating sepsis by machine learning algorithms is difficult due to a couple of reasons: There is limited and error-afflicted initial data in a highly complex biological system combined with the need to make robust, transparent and safe decisions. We demonstrate a suitable method that combines data imputation by a kNN model using a custom distance with state representation by discretization using clustering, and that enables superhuman decision-making using speedy Q -learning in the framework of distributional RL. Compared to clinicians, the recovery rate is increased by more than 3% on the test data set. Our results illustrate how risk-aware RL agents can play a decisive role in critical situations such as the treatment of sepsis patients, a situation acerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Martineau 2020). In addition, we emphasize the tractability of the methodology and the learning behavior while addressing some criticisms of the previous work (Komorowski et al. 2018) on this topic.

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disorder associated with increased cardiovascular mortality. Psoriasis affects high-density lipoprotein (HDL) composition, generating dysfunctional HDL particles. However, data regarding the impact of anti-psoriatic therapy on HDL composition and function are not available. HDL was isolated from 15 psoriatic patients at baseline and after effective topical and/or systemic anti-psoriatic therapy and from 15 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. HDL from psoriatic patients showed a significantly impaired capability to mobilize cholesterol from macrophages (6.4 vs. 8.0% [3H]cholesterol efflux, P<0.001), low paraoxonase (217 vs. 350 μM−1 minute−1 mg−1 protein, P=0.011) and increased Lp-PLA2 activities (19.9 vs. 12.1 nM−1 minute−1 mg−1 protein, P=0.028). Of particular interest, the anti-psoriatic therapy significantly improved serum lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase activity and decreased total serum lipolytic activity but did not affect serum levels of HDL-cholesterol. Most importantly, these changes were associated with a significantly improved HDL-cholesterol efflux capability. Our results provide evidence that effective anti-psoriatic therapy recovers HDL composition and function, independent of serum HDL-cholesterol levels, and support to the emerging concept that HDL function may be a better marker of cardiovascular risk than HDL-cholesterol levels.

Plasma advanced oxidation protein products (AOPPs), a class of pro-inflammatory pathogenic mediators, accumulate in subjects with chronic kidney disease. Whether AOPPs contribute to coagulation abnormalities, which are frequently seen in uremic patients, is unknown. Here we report that AOPPs activate platelets via a CD36-mediated signaling pathway. Activation of signaling pathways by AOPP-platelet interaction resulted in the expression of several platelet activation markers and rapidly induced the expression of CD40 ligand, triggering platelet adhesion to endothelial cells and promoting endothelial tissue factor expression. AOPPs and serum tissue factor levels were considerably increased in end stage renal disease patients on hemodialysis and a significant correlation of AOPPs and serum tissue factor was found. Interestingly, serum levels of AOPPs and tissue factor were substantially lower in stable kidney transplant patients when compared with hemodialysis patients. Given that CD36 is known to transduce the effects of oxidized lipids into platelet hyperactivity, our findings reveal previously unknown pro-thrombotic activities of oxidized plasma albumin via a CD36 dependent pathway.