Publications by authors named "Sierd Waanders"

This paper explores the influence of various camera settings on the quality of 3D reconstructions, particularly in indoor crime scene investigations. Utilizing Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and Gaussian Splatting for 3D reconstruction, we analyzed the impact of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings on the quality of the resulting 3D reconstructions. By conducting controlled experiments in a meeting room setup, we identified optimal settings that minimize noise and artifacts while maximizing detail and brightness.

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  • Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is unexplained in 20% of patients, and this study investigates the use of massively parallel sequencing (MPS) as a diagnostic tool for these cases.
  • The study found that in 340 participants, a genetic diagnosis was identified in 17% of cases, leading to clinical consequences in 73% of those diagnosed.
  • Barriers to implementation of genetic testing included genetic illiteracy among nephrologists, difficulties in test selection, and lack of time, highlighting the need for better education in genetics.
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Background: The gift of postmortem tissue donation is critical to pediatric central nervous system (CNS) research. As a "Center of Excellence" for the Gift from a Child Program, our institution has a well-established postmortem tissue donation program. Our objective was to determine if differences exist between patients who participated in and those that declined research-based autopsy.

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  • Semaglutide, a drug for type 2 diabetes, shows promise in reducing albuminuria and slowing kidney disease progression in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) in a double-blind clinical trial.
  • The study involved 101 participants, comparing those receiving 2.4 mg of semaglutide weekly to a placebo, with a focus on changes in urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio after 24 weeks.
  • Results indicated a significant 52.1% reduction in albuminuria for the semaglutide group, although gastrointestinal side effects were more common compared to the placebo group.
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  • Diffuse hemispheric gliomas, specifically H3G34R/V-mutant, are aggressive brain tumors with no current targeted therapies and come from neural precursor cells.
  • Researchers found that these tumors display developmental patterns similar to healthy brain interneurons and identified key genes that these tumor cells depend on, especially CDK6.
  • Targeting CDK6 with inhibitors showed promising results in reducing tumor growth and improving survival in experimental models, with one patient showing a significant response to treatment.
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Pediatric low-grade glioma (pLGG) is the most common childhood brain tumor group. The natural history, when curative resection is not possible, is one of a chronic disease with periods of tumor stability and episodes of tumor progression. While there is a high overall survival rate, many patients experience significant and potentially lifelong morbidities.

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Pediatric brain and spinal cancers remain the leading cause of cancer-related death in children. Advancements in clinical decision-support in pediatric neuro-oncology utilizing the wealth of radiology imaging data collected through standard care, however, has significantly lagged other domains. Such data is ripe for use with predictive analytics such as artificial intelligence (AI) methods, which require large datasets.

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  • The trial demonstrated an overall response rate of 67% and a median duration of response of 16.6 months based on RANO-HGG criteria, while the RAPNO criteria showed an overall response rate of 51% and median duration of response of 13.8 months.
  • Common treatment-related side effects included hair color changes (76%), elevated creatine phosphokinase
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An insightful attempt has been made in this review and the primary objective was to meticulously provide an update on the sustainabilities, advances and challenges pertaining the removal of ammonia from water and wastewater. Specifically, ammonia is a versatile compound that prevails in various spheres of the environment, and if not properly managed, this chemical species could pose severe ecological pressure and toxicity to different receiving environments and its biota. The notorious footprints of ammonia could be traced to anoxic conditions, an infestation of aquatic ecosystems, hyperactivity, convulsion, and methaemoglobin, popularly known as the "blue baby syndrome".

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Pediatric brain and spinal cancers are collectively the leading disease-related cause of death in children; thus, we urgently need curative therapeutic strategies for these tumors. To accelerate such discoveries, the Children's Brain Tumor Network (CBTN) and Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) created a systematic process for tumor biobanking, model generation, and sequencing with immediate access to harmonized data. We leverage these data to establish OpenPBTA, an open collaborative project with over 40 scalable analysis modules that genomically characterize 1,074 pediatric brain tumors.

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Communication skills are an important part of patient care, but an often neglected part of residency training. Longitudinal active coaching of communication has the potential to effectively improve communication curricula. A novel communication coach curriculum was implemented with approximately half of a pediatric residency class.

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Background: Fatigue is an important symptom for many patients, including patients with kidney disease. Cognitive biases, such as attentional bias and self-identity bias, are thought to influence fatigue. Cognitive bias modification (CBM) training is a promising technique to counter fatigue.

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Background: Interferon (IFN)-β induction via activation of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway has shown promising results in tumor models. STING is activated by cyclic dinucleotides such as cyclic GMP-AMP dinucleotides with phosphodiester linkages 2'-5' and 3'-5' (cGAMPs), that are produced by cyclic GMP-AMP synthetase (cGAS). However, delivery of STING pathway agonists to the tumor site is a challenge.

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The ever-growing contamination of surface water due to various catchment activities poses threats and stress to downstream water treatment entities. Specifically, the presence of ammonia, microbial contaminants, organic matter, and heavy metals has been an issue of paramount concern to water treatment entities since stringent regulatory frameworks require these pollutants to be removed prior to water consumption. Herein, a hybrid approach that integrates struvite crystallization (precipitation) and breakpoint chlorination (stripping) for the removal of ammonia from aqueous solution was evaluated.

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Although hematologic malignancies (HM) are no longer considered exclusively sporadic, additional awareness of familial cases has yet to be created. Individuals carrying a (likely) pathogenic germline variant (e.g.

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Despite significant improvements in pediatric cancer survival outcomes, there remain glaring disparities in under-represented racial and ethnic groups that warrant mitigation by the scientific and clinical community. To address and work towards eliminating such disparities, the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) and Children's Brain Tumor Network (CBTN) established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) working group in 2020. The DEI working group is dedicated to improving access to care for all pediatric patients with central nervous system (CNS) tumors, broadening diversity within the research community, and providing sustainable data-driven solutions.

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Background: To achieve replicative immortality, most cancers develop a telomere maintenance mechanism, such as reactivation of telomerase or alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT). There are limited data on the prevalence and clinical significance of ALT in pediatric brain tumors, and ALT-directed therapy is not available.

Methods: We performed C-circle analysis (CCA) on 579 pediatric brain tumors that had corresponding tumor/normal whole genome sequencing through the Open Pediatric Brain Tumor Atlas (OpenPBTA).

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In this commentary, we highlight the central role that data standards play in facilitating data-driven efforts to advance research in pediatric oncology. We discuss the current state of data standards for pediatric oncology and propose five steps to achieve an improved future state with benefits for clinicians, researchers, and patients.

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Pediatric brain tumors are the leading cause of cancer-related death in children in the United States and contribute a disproportionate number of potential years of life lost compared to adult cancers. Moreover, survivors frequently suffer long-term side effects, including secondary cancers. The Children's Brain Tumor Network (CBTN) is a multi-institutional international clinical research consortium created to advance therapeutic development through the collection and rapid distribution of biospecimens and data via open-science research platforms for real-time access and use by the global research community.

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Introduction: Kidney failure negatively affects opportunities for work participation. Little is known about work functioning of employed CKD patients. This study investigates work-related outcomes, and examines associations between patient characteristics and employment status.

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Angiosarcomas are rare, malignant soft tissue tumors in children that arise in a wide range of anatomical locations and have limited targeted therapies available. Here, we report a rare case of a pediatric angiosarcoma (pAS) with Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) expressing a novel gene fusion. Although both and are established proto-oncogenes, our study is the first to describe the mechanistic role of - fusion arising via intrachromosomal rearrangement.

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