Premalignant Oral Lesion Immunobiology: Immune Modulation and Vaccination

While studies have indicated that squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC) is associated with immune suppression, these studies did not analyze the immune response at the dysplastic stage. This study utilized a mouse model of 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide (4NQO)-induced oral carcinogenesis to examine the alterations in immune phenotype at the premalignant and malignant stages of HNSCC. Cervical lymph nodes of HNSCC-bearing mice were found to contain a greater number of cells, including a greater number of conventional (Tconv) and regulatory (Treg) T cells, compared to lymph nodes of control and premalignant lesion-bearing mice. Premalignant lesion-bearing mouse lymph nodes consist of a greater percentage of Tconv cells expressing markers for activation, memory, and exhaustion compared to both control and HNSCC-bearing mice. Lymph nodes from both premalignant lesion-bearing and HNSCC-bearing mice include increased numbers of Th1, Tc1 and Th17 cells compared to control mice. The data show that while there is the expected increase in Tregs in lymph nodes when HNSCC is present, there is also an unexpected increase in immune populations usually associated with a beneficial anti-tumor response. In addition, the results demonstrate that the premalignant stage of HNSCC development is associated with a robust immune response involving an increase in inflammatory cells. The use of dendritic cell (DC) vaccines as treatment for malignancy is complicated by the immune evasion tactics often employed by carcinomas such as HNSCC. This study aims to determine if an immune response can be elicited by administering a DC vaccine during the premalignant stages of HNSCC, prior to development of immune escape. Bone marrow-derived DCs were pulsed with premalignant lesion lysate (DCpm) and administered to 4NQO-treated mice exhibiting premalignant lesions. Endoscopic examination revealed that DCpm vaccination and control vaccination with dendritic cells pulsed with normal tongue epithelium lysate (DCnt) significantly decreased lesion burden. Analysis of lymph node cells revealed that while DCnt vaccination resulted in a rapid increase in total lymphocyte count, levels of activated Tconv cells, and Th1, Tel, Th17, Te17, and Th2 cells, DCpm vaccination results in a delayed, yet substantial, increase in these immune effector mechanisms. This suggests that dendritic cell vaccination may have a beneficial effect on clinical outcome regardless of type of antigenic stimulation, and DCs pulsed with premalignant lysate rather than normal tongue epithelium lysate result in a delayed immune effector response upon vaccination of premalignant lesion-bearing mice

Thermal imprinting modifies adult stress and innate immune responsiveness in the teleost sea bream

The impact of thermal imprinting on the plasticity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal (HPI) axis and stress response in an adult ectotherm, the gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata, L.), during its development was assessed. Fish were reared under 4 thermal regimes, and the resulting adults exposed to acute confinement stress and plasma cortisol levels and genes of the HPI axis were monitored. Changes in immune function, a common result of stress, were also evaluated using histomorphometric measurements of melanomacrophages centers (MMCs) in the head kidney and by monitoring macrophage-related transcripts. Thermal history significantly modified the HPI responsiveness in adult sea bream when eggs and larvae were reared at a higher than optimal temperature (HT, 22 degrees C), and they had a reduced amplitude in their cortisol response and significantly upregulated pituitary pomc and head kidney star transcripts. Additionally, after an acute stress challenge, immune function was modified and the head kidney of adult fish reared during development at high temperatures (HT and LHT, 18-22 degrees C) had a decreased number of MMCs and a significant downregulation of dopachrome tautomerase. Thermal imprinting during development influenced adult sea bream physiology and increased plasma levels of glucose and sodium even in the absence of an acute stress in fish reared under a high-low thermal regime (HLT, 22-18 degrees C). Overall, the results demonstrate that temperature during early development influences the adult HPI axis and immune function in a teleost fish.project Lifecycle EU-FP7 [222719]FCT- Foundation for Science and Technology [CCMAR/Multi/04326/2013]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Using parallel pivot vs. clustering-based techniques for web engines

Web Engines are a useful tool for searching information in the Web. But a great part of this information is non-textual and for that case a metric space is used. A metric space is a set where a notion of distance (called a metric) between elements of the set is defined. In this paper we present an efficient parallelization of a pivot-based method devised for this purpose which is called the Sparse Spatial Selection (SSS) strategy and we compare it with a clustering-based method, a parallel implementation of the Spatial Approximation Tree (SAT). We show that SAT compares favourably against the pivot data structures SSS. The experimental results were obtained on a highperformance cluster and using several metric spaces, that shows load balance parallel strategies for the SAT. The implementations are built upon the BSP parallel computing model, which shows efficient performance for this application domain and allows a precise evaluation of algorithms.VIII Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y ParaleloRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Using parallel pivot vs. clustering-based techniques for web engines

Web Engines are a useful tool for searching information in the Web. But a great part of this information is non-textual and for that case a metric space is used. A metric space is a set where a notion of distance (called a metric) between elements of the set is defined. In this paper we present an efficient parallelization of a pivot-based method devised for this purpose which is called the Sparse Spatial Selection (SSS) strategy and we compare it with a clustering-based method, a parallel implementation of the Spatial Approximation Tree (SAT). We show that SAT compares favourably against the pivot data structures SSS. The experimental results were obtained on a highperformance cluster and using several metric spaces, that shows load balance parallel strategies for the SAT. The implementations are built upon the BSP parallel computing model, which shows efficient performance for this application domain and allows a precise evaluation of algorithms.VIII Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y ParaleloRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Suffix Array Performance Analysis for Multi-Core Platforms

Performance analysis helps to understand how a particular invocation of an algorithm executes. Using the information provided by specific tools like the profiler tool Perf or the Performance Application Programming Interface (PAPI), the performance analysis process provides a bridging relationship between the algorithm execution and processor events according to the metrics defined by the developer. It is also useful to find performance limitations which depend exclusively on the code. Furthermore, to change an algorithm in order to optimize the code requires more than understanding of the obtained performance. It requires understanding the problem being solved. In this work we evaluate the performance achieved by a suffix array over a 32-core platform. Suffix arrays are efficient data structures for solving complex queries in a number of applications related to text databases, for instance, biological databases. We perform experiments to evaluate hardware features directly aimed to parallelize computation. Moreover, according to the results obtained by the performance evaluation tools, we propose an optimization technique to improve the use of the cache memory. In particular, we aim to reduce the number of cache memory replacement performed each time a new query is processed.Fil: Gil Costa, Graciela Verónica. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Inv.en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina;Fil: Ochoa, Cesar. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Inv.en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina;Fil: Printista, Alicia Marcela. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas y Naturales. Laboratorio de Inv.en Inteligencia Artificial; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

Intensification strategies for thermal H2O2-based advanced oxidation processes: Current trends and future perspectives

H2O2-based advanced oxidation technologies, commonly Fenton process or Catalytic Wet Peroxide Oxidation (CWPO), have been widely studied and applied over the past decades for wastewater treatment due to their ability to generate highly oxidizing species, HO• and HOO• radicals, along with a low selectivity which allow the degradation of a wide range of pollutants . Nonetheless, these technologies present some limitations. In the case of Fenton, the requirement of acidic media (pH: 3), the loss of catalyst at the end of reaction because it is dissolved, and the catalyst inactivation caused by certain reaction intermediates (i.e. oxalic acid) that forms complexes compromising its efficiency. For CWPO, the main drawbacks in this heterogeneous process are mainly associated to the relative low activity and stability of the catalysts employed. All these shortcomings can be solved through process intensification, which generally involves in Fenton and CWPO increasing the temperature or the application of an external radiation, being the most interesting ones UV–vis radiation (photo-assisted technologies), and microwave radiation, which inherently presents the advantages of working at high temperature. This paper gathers the most recent advances explored in thermal-intensified H2O2–based advanced oxidation technologies, summarizing the main results obtained for each intensification strategy and outlining where future efforts should be focuse

A parallel view for search engines

To engineer a search engine is a challenging task. Search engines index tens to hundreds of millions of web pages involving a comparable number of distinct terms. They answer tens of n-tillions of queries every day. Despite the importance of large-scale search engines on the Web, very little academic research has been done on them. Furthermore, due to rapid advance in technology and web proliferation, creating a web search engine today is very different from years ago. In most papers the index simply ”is”, without discussion of how it was created. But for a indexing scheme to be useful it must be possible for the index to be constructed in a reasonable amount of time, and so papers describing complex indexing methods should also describe and analyze a mechanism whereby the index can be built. Scalability is of concern during index construction as well as during query processing. This paper describes the cooperative work between the Crawler, Indexer and the Searcher.VI Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y Paralelo (WPDP)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Estudio de vibraciones transversales en vigas dañadas

Como se expuso en el primer capítulo, este proyecto nace con el objetivo de hacer un estudio sobre cómo afecta un daño definido para distintas frecuencias en una viga apoyada. Me he basado en el método de simulación por redes” MSR”, simulación numérica de fenómenos ondulatorios y vibratorios, en concreto al proceso físico de vibraciones transversales en barras. Para ello he utilizado el programa Pspice. El primer objetivo que me planteé fue estudiar cómo afectan distintas frecuencias a una viga con un daño y una fuerza determinados, por medio del programa Pspice. Cogí cinco puntos de la viga (10, 50, 75, 100 y 125) e hice la simulación con daños y sin daño en cada uno de ellos y para cada una de las frecuencias elegidas (5, 10, 15, 25 y 40). A continuación, me centré en cuatro puntos de la viga (15, 50, 90 y 125), estudié en cuál de ellos se producía más daño y en cuál menos. Para ello resté ambas gráficas de cada punto y frecuencia e hice una tabla donde recogía los resultados hallados, máximos y mínimos valores de daño. Luego, realice lo mismo, pero esta vez en todos los puntos de la viga y solo me centré en seis intervalos de tiempo elegidos aleatoriamente (3.00E-02, 1.50E-01, 3.00E-01, 8.00E-01, 1.00E+00, 1.40E+00). En otras tablas acoté cuando la vibración era nula en cada una de las frecuencias y para esos intervalos de tiempo. La conclusión que hallo de esto es que, dependiendo del intervalo de tiempo que cojamos cambian el máximo y mínimo valor en nuestros puntos de daño. Esto es debido a que dependiendo del tiempo puede subir más bruscamente el daño, por lo tanto, no podemos compararlo bien con nuestros datos primarios. También se puede observar que cuanto más tiempo pasa, la amplitud del daño es mayor y todas siguen la misma grafica. Respecto a la frecuencia, conforme esta es mayor, las graficas tienen más cortes con el eje X, como podríamos esperar. Todos los puntos siguen la misma grafica, menos cuando situamos el daño en el punto 75 que en las frecuencias 5, 10 y 15 no corta al eje X. Como conclusión final y una de las más importantes, ya que sobre esta se basa mi proyecto es que la amplitud de cada una de las frecuencias varia con el punto donde situemos el daño y del punto de donde observamos, la amplitud puede aumentar, disminuir o seguir una tendencia constante. Por lo tanto, es necesario considerar el comportamiento en varios puntos de la viga para poder realizar una evaluación del daño.Escuela de Ingeniería de Caminos, Canales y Puertos y de Ingeniería de MinasUniversidad Politécnica de Cartagen