Comillas Pontificial University

The effectiveness of anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF) therapy in spondyloarthritis is traditionally associated with factors such as age, obesity and disease subtypes. However, less-explored aspects, such as mental health, socioeconomic status and work type may also play a crucial role in determining inflammatory activity and therapeutic response.

To identify the most significant factors explaining inflammatory activity levels in patients treated with anti-TNF therapy and to develop an interpretable machine-learning model with good performance and minimal overfitting.

This is an observational, cross-sectional and multicentre study with socio-demographical and clinical data extracted from the Registry of Spondyloarthritis of Spanish Rheumatology (REGISPONSER) and Ibero-American Registry of Spondyloarthropathies (RESPONDIA) registries.

We selected patients receiving anti-TNF therapy and applied five feature selection methods to identify key factors. We evaluated these factors using 182 machine learning models, and, finally, we selected a decision tree model that offered comparable performance with reduced overfitting.

Activity levels appear strongly influenced by quality-of-life indicators, particularly the SF-12 physical and mental components and Ankylosing Spondylitis Quality of Life scores. While factors such as age, weight, years of treatment and age at diagnosis have relevance, they are not necessary to obtain a pruned tree with similar cross-validated mean accuracy.

Recognizing the central role of physical and mental well-being in managing disease activity can lead to better therapeutic strategies for chronic disease management.

An alternative use of end-of-life reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is proposed for forward osmosis (FO) application as recycled FO (RFO) membranes and transformed recycled FO (TRFO) membranes.Different passive cleaning protocols in pilot plant and laboratory scale were followed using sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) at different concentrations and exposure time.The RFO with the best performance was selected for its transformation by interfacial polymerization (IP) technique to improve further the FO performance.Both the morphol. structure and transport properties of the RFO and TRFO membranes were studied by means of different characterization techniques.Although the RFO membranes are suitable for FO, the TRFO membranes are more competitive.The highest FO water permeate fluxes (12.21 kg/m²·h and 15.12 kg/m²·h) were obtained for the membrane recycled applying the highest NaClO exposure dose applied in pilot plant (106 ppm·h) followed by IP of a thin polyamide layer.These permeate fluxes were better or at least comparable to com. membranes used under the same FO conditions.The results indicated that it is possible to use discarded RO membranes in FO technol. for wastewater treatment after adequate treatment procedures extending their lifetime and contributing to a circular economy and sustainability in membrane science and related materials.

Modification of the surface composition, stoichiometry, morphol., and structure of HfO₂ ultra-thin layers upon exposure to at. hydrogen beams has been investigated by a combination of time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) depth profile anal., angle-resolved XPS (ARXPS), at. force microscopy (AFM) imaging, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).The etching reaction has been found to be thermally activated (Ea = 96 kJ/mol) and governed by the expression Retch(Å/h) = 3.03 x 10⁸e-((1.15x104)/T) within the 350-400°C temperature range.The rate law determined exptl., i.e., Retch(Å/h) = 1.07 x 10-1[H2]1/2, is consistent with a reaction mechanism that involves the formation of a volatile hafnium dihydroxide, Hf(OH)₂ in two successive elementary steps.Precise control of the etching conditions allows to reach atomically smooth HfO₂ surfaces having r.m.s. roughness below 0.2 nm, with no evidence of Hf metal formation derived from the reaction with at. H.Elimination of C, Cl, F, and S contaminants from the HfO2 surface through the formation of the corresponding volatile hydrides has proved to be generally most effective at high temperatures and H2 flow rates.