Stromal control of oncogenic traits expressed in response to the overexpression of GLI2, a pleiotropic oncogene.

Hedgehog signaling is often activated in tumors, yet it remains unclear how GLI2, a transcription factor activated by this pathway, acts as an oncogene. We show that GLI2 is a pleiotropic oncogene. The overexpression induces genomic instability and blocks differentiation, likely mediated in part by enhanced expression of the stem cell gene SOX2. GLI2 also induces transforming growth factor (TGF)B1-dependent transdifferentiation of foreskin and tongue, but not gingival fibroblasts into myofibroblasts, creating an environment permissive for invasion by keratinocytes, which are in various stages of differentiation having downregulated GLI2. Thus, upregulated GLI2 expression is sufficient to induce a number of the acquired characteristics of tumor cells; however, the stroma, in a tissue-specific manner, determines whether certain GLI2 oncogenic traits are expressed

Content-Based Video Retrieval in Historical Collections of the German Broadcasting Archive

The German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) maintains the cultural heritage of radio and television broadcasts of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The uniqueness and importance of the video material stimulates a large scientific interest in the video content. In this paper, we present an automatic video analysis and retrieval system for searching in historical collections of GDR television recordings. It consists of video analysis algorithms for shot boundary detection, concept classification, person recognition, text recognition and similarity search. The performance of the system is evaluated from a technical and an archival perspective on 2,500 hours of GDR television recordings.Comment: TPDL 2016, Hannover, Germany. Final version is available at Springer via DO

How Does Restored Habitat For Chinook Salmon ( Oncorhynchus Tshawytscha ) In The Merced River In California Compare With Other Chinook Streams?

The amount of time and money spent on restoring rivers for declining populations of salmon has grown substantially in recent decades. But despite the infusion of resources, many studies suggest that salmon populations are continuing to decline, leading some to question the effectiveness of restoration efforts. Here we examine whether a particular form of salmon restoration—channel reconfiguration with gravel augmentation—generates physical and biological habitat that is comparable with other streams that support salmon. We compared a suite of habitat features known to influence the various life stages of Chinook salmon in a restoration project in California's Merced River with 19 other streams that also support Chinook that we surveyed in the same geographic region. Our survey showed that riffle habitats in the restored site of the Merced River have flow discharge and depth, substrate and food web characteristics that cannot be distinguished from other streams that support Chinook, suggesting that these factors are unlikely to be bottlenecks to salmon recovery in the Merced. However, compared with other streams in the region, the Merced has minimal riparian cover, fewer undercut banks, less woody debris and higher water temperatures, suggesting that these factors might limit salmon recovery. After identifying aspects in the Merced that differ from other streams, we used principal components analysis to correlate salmon densities to independent axes of environmental variation measured during our survey. These analyses suggested that salmon densities tend to be greatest in streams that have more undercut banks and woody debris and lower water temperatures. These are the same environmental factors that appear to be missing from the Merced River restoration effort. Collectively, our results narrow the set of candidate factors that may limit salmon recovery in channel reconfiguration restoration efforts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97512/1/rra1604.pd

The Amateur Sky Survey Mark III Project

The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS) is a loose confederation of amateur and professional astronomers. We describe the design and construction of our Mark III system, a set of wide-field drift-scan CCD cameras which monitor the celestial equator down to thirteenth magnitude in several passbands. We explain the methods by which images are gathered, processed, and reduced into lists of stellar positions and magnitudes. Over the period October, 1996, to November, 1998, we compiled a large database of photometric measurements. One of our results is the "tenxcat" catalog, which contains measurements on the standard Johnson-Cousins system for 367,241 stars; it contains links to the light curves of these stars as well.Comment: 20 pages, including 4 figures; additional JPEG files for Figures 1, 2. Submitted to PAS

Boxicity of graphs on surfaces

The boxicity of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is the least integer $k$ for which there exist $k$ interval graphs $G_i=(V,E_i)$, $1 \le i \le k$, such that $E=E_1 \cap ... \cap E_k$. Scheinerman proved in 1984 that outerplanar graphs have boxicity at most two and Thomassen proved in 1986 that planar graphs have boxicity at most three. In this note we prove that the boxicity of toroidal graphs is at most 7, and that the boxicity of graphs embeddable in a surface $\Sigma$ of genus $g$ is at most $5g+3$. This result yields improved bounds on the dimension of the adjacency poset of graphs on surfaces.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

A Metastasis or a Second Independent Cancer? Evaluating the Clonal Origin of Tumors Using Array-CGH Data

When a cancer patient develops a new tumor it is necessary to determine if this is a recurrence (metastasis) of the original cancer, or an entirely new occurrence of the disease. This is accomplished by assessing the histo-pathology of the lesions, and it is frequently relatively straightforward. However, there are many clinical scenarios in which this pathological diagnosis is difficult. Since each tumor is characterized by a genetic fingerprint of somatic mutations, a more definitive diagnosis is possible in principle in these difficult clinical scenarios by comparing the fingerprints. In this article we develop and evaluate a statistical strategy for this comparison when the data are derived from array comparative genomic hybridization, a technique designed to identify all of the somatic allelic gains and losses across the genome. Our method involves several stages. First a segmentation algorithm is used to estimate the regions of allelic gain and loss. Then the broad correlation in these patterns between the two tumors is assessed, leading to an initial likelihood ratio for the two diagnoses. This is then further refined by comparing in detail each plausibly clonal mutation within individual chromosome arms, and the results are aggregated to determine a final likelihood ratio. The method is employed to diagnose patients from several clinical scenarios, and the results show that in many cases a strong clonal signal emerges, occasionally contradicting the clinical diagnosis. The “quality” of the arrays can be summarized by a parameter that characterizes the clarity with which allelic changes are detected. Sensitivity analyses show that most of the diagnoses are robust when the data are of high quality

Approximate min-max relations on plane graphs

Let G be a plane graph, let τ(G) (resp. τ′(G)) be the minimum number of vertices (resp. edges) that meet all cycles of G, and let ν(G) (resp. ν′(G)) be the maximum number of vertex-disjoint (resp. edge-disjoint) cycles in G. In this note we show that τ(G)≤3 ν(G) and τ′(G)≤4 ν′(G)-1; our proofs are constructive, which yield polynomial-time algorithms for finding corresponding objects with the desired properties. © 2011 The Author(s).published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 28 May 201

Pregnancy and childbirth in English prisons : institutional ignominy and the pains of imprisonment

© 2020 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL.With a prison population of approximately 9000 women in England, it is estimated that approximately 600 pregnancies and 100 births occur annually. Despite an extensive literature on the sociology of reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth among women prisoners is under‐researched. This article reports an ethnographic study in three English prisons undertaken in 2015‐2016, including interviews with 22 prisoners, six women released from prison and 10 staff members. Pregnant prisoners experience numerous additional difficulties in prison including the ambiguous status of a pregnant prisoner, physical aspects of pregnancy and the degradation of the handcuffed or chained prisoner during visits to the more public setting of hospital. This article draws on Erving Goffman's concepts of closed institutions, dramaturgy and mortification of self, Crewe et al.'s work on the gendered pains of imprisonment and Crawley's notion of ‘institutional thoughtlessness’, and proposes a new concept of institutional ignominy to understand the embodied situation of the pregnant prisoner.Peer reviewe

Revisiting the Local Scaling Hypothesis in Stably Stratified Atmospheric Boundary Layer Turbulence: an Integration of Field and Laboratory Measurements with Large-eddy Simulations

The `local scaling' hypothesis, first introduced by Nieuwstadt two decades ago, describes the turbulence structure of stable boundary layers in a very succinct way and is an integral part of numerous local closure-based numerical weather prediction models. However, the validity of this hypothesis under very stable conditions is a subject of on-going debate. In this work, we attempt to address this controversial issue by performing extensive analyses of turbulence data from several field campaigns, wind-tunnel experiments and large-eddy simulations. Wide range of stabilities, diverse field conditions and a comprehensive set of turbulence statistics make this study distinct

Integrative analyses identify modulators of response to neoadjuvant aromatase inhibitors in patients with early breast cancer

Introduction Aromatase inhibitors (AIs) are a vital component of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer treatment. De novo and acquired resistance, however, is common. The aims of this study were to relate patterns of copy number aberrations to molecular and proliferative response to AIs, to study differences in the patterns of copy number aberrations between breast cancer samples pre- and post-AI neoadjuvant therapy, and to identify putative biomarkers for resistance to neoadjuvant AI therapy using an integrative analysis approach. Methods Samples from 84 patients derived from two neoadjuvant AI therapy trials were subjected to copy number profiling by microarray-based comparative genomic hybridisation (aCGH, n = 84), gene expression profiling (n = 47), matched pre- and post-AI aCGH (n = 19 pairs) and Ki67-based AI-response analysis (n = 39). Results Integrative analysis of these datasets identified a set of nine genes that, when amplified, were associated with a poor response to AIs, and were significantly overexpressed when amplified, including CHKA, LRP5 and SAPS3. Functional validation in vitro, using cell lines with and without amplification of these genes (SUM44, MDA-MB134-VI, T47D and MCF7) and a model of acquired AI-resistance (MCF7-LTED) identified CHKA as a gene that when amplified modulates estrogen receptor (ER)-driven proliferation, ER/estrogen response element (ERE) transactivation, expression of ER-regulated genes and phosphorylation of V-AKT murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 1 (AKT1). Conclusions These data provide a rationale for investigation of the role of CHKA in further models of de novo and acquired resistance to AIs, and provide proof of concept that integrative genomic analyses can identify biologically relevant modulators of AI response