Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Associated with Brucellosis in Two Patients with Fever and Pancytopenia

Brucellosis is a disease involving the lymphoproliferative system, which may lead to changes in the hematological parameters; however, pancytopenia is a rare finding. However, malignant diseases in association with brucellosis are rarely the cause of pancytopenia. Herein, two cases with fever and pancytopenia, diagnosed as simultaneous acute lymphoblastic leukemia and brucellosis are presented. Anti-leukemic therapy and brucellosis treatment were administered simultaneously, and normal blood parameters obtained. The first patient is in complete remission; the other recovered from the brucellosis, but later died due to a leukemic relapse

Embedded hardware for closing the gap between research and industry in the assistive powered wheelchair market

Literature is abound with smart wheelchair platforms of various developments, yet to date there has been little technology find its way to the market place. Many trials and much research has taken place over the last few decades however the end user has benefited precious little. There exists two fundamental difficulties when developing a smart powered wheelchair assistive system, the first is need for the system to be fully compatible with all of the manufacturers, and the second is to produce a technology and business model which is marketable and therefore desirable to the manufacturers. However this requires the researchers to have access to hardware which can be used to develop practical systems which integrate and communicate seamlessly with current manufacturer’s wheelchair systems. We present our powered wheelchair system which integrates with 95% of the powered wheelchair controller market; our system allows researchers to access the low level embedded system with more powerful computational devices running sophisticated software enabling rapid development of algorithms and techniques. When they have been evaluated they can be easily ported to the embedded processor for real-time evaluation and clinical trial

Encoding and maintaining reference in oral discourse.

International audienceThis study deals with information management and reference encoding modes in oral discourse production. Three potentially influential factors were the distance between the first occurrence of an item and its later occurrences, a topic change that takes the focus off that item, and the span of the conceptual information available for verbalization. French-speaking adult subjects were asked to tell stories from comic strips to a listener who was unfamiliar with them. The frames in each strip were presented simultaneously or in succession. Four versions were generated for each comic strip: a given version was either short (three frames) or long (eight frames), and either did or did not have a topic change. The results showed that the target character was usually marked as a given, regardless of the version. This was more often true, however, when the topic did not change. When the character was treated as a given, referent accessibility marking was dependent on (1) topic change alone when the frames were presented simultaneously, and (2) topic change and comic strip length when the frames were presented in succession. The discussion analyzes the results in terms of the allocation of cognitive resources to maintaining coreference and to assisting addressees in their processing

BCL-3 expression promotes colorectal tumorigenesis through activation of AKT signalling

Objective Colorectal cancer remains the fourth most common cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Here we investigate the role of nuclear factor-?B (NF-?B) co-factor B-cell CLL/lymphoma 3 (BCL-3) in promoting colorectal tumour cell survival. Design Immunohistochemistry was carried out on 47 tumour samples and normal tissue from resection margins. The role of BCL-3/NF-?B complexes on cell growth was studied in vivo and in vitro using an siRNA approach and exogenous BCL-3 expression in colorectal adenoma and carcinoma cells. The question whether BCL-3 activated the AKT/protein kinase B (PKB) pathway in colorectal tumour cells was addressed by western blotting and confocal microscopy, and the ability of 5- aminosalicylic acid (5-ASA) to suppress BCL-3 expression was also investigated. Results We report increased BCL-3 expression in human colorectal cancers and demonstrate that BCL-3 expression promotes tumour cell survival in vitro and tumour growth in mouse xenografts in vivo, dependent on interaction with NF-?B p50 or p52 homodimers. We show that BCL-3 promotes cell survival under conditions relevant to the tumour microenvironment, protecting both colorectal adenoma and carcinoma cells from apoptosis via activation of the AKT survival pathway: AKT activation is mediated via both PI3K and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathways, leading to phosphorylation of downstream targets GSK- 3 and FoxO1/3a. Treatment with 5-ASA suppressed BCL-3 expression in colorectal cancer cells. Conclusions Our study helps to unravel the mechanism by which BCL-3 is linked to poor prognosis in colorectal cancer; we suggest that targeting BCL-3 activity represents an exciting therapeutic opportunity potentially increasing the sensitivity of tumour cells to conventional therapy

Developing Istanbul into a regional business hub

MBA Professional ReportGlobalization has urged many big corporations to operate in foreign countries in order to access world markets and produce at lower costs. Many countries and cities compete with each other for becoming business hubs in their regions in order to benefit from huge FDI inflows. In this study we used the Value Net analysis to uncover Istanbul's position by the means of attracting foreign investors, and the SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis to examine Istanbul's capabilities, advantages, weaknesses, threats and opportunities on its way to become a regional business hub. We found that Istanbul has a great potential and many advantages to become a regional business hub for MNCs that want access to huge markets in Europe, Caucasia and the Middle East as well as the emerging market in Turkey itself. However, Istanbul also possesses several weaknesses and faces some threats causing the inward FDI flows remain at much lower than the desired levels. Political and economic stability is the biggest obstacle facing Turkey (and Istanbul) in terms of attracting foreign investors. We recommend that the governments should avoid populist policies and focus more on structural and economic reforms.http://archive.org/details/developingistanb109459889Lieutenant, Turkish NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Effect of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor in experimental methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus sepsis

Background: Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is the leading pathogenic cause of nosocomial infections, especially in bacteraemia and sepsis. The essential therapy for MRSA infection is glycopeptides. Therapeutic failure can be seen with this therapy and the mortality is still high. The aim of this study was to evaluate the additional effect of G-CSF on the traditional antibiotic treatment in an experimental MRSA sepsis

Perinatal expression of HSP70 and VEGF in neonatal rat lung vessels exposed to nicotine during gestation

We assessed the influence of maternal nicotine exposure during gestation on perinatal expression of HSP70 and VEGF in rat lung parenchyma and lung vessels. Adult white Sprague-Dawley virgin rats were mated with adult male rats over 2 days, with two females for every male. After confirming pregnancy, 30 gravid rats (dams) were then randomly assigned to two equal groups (one experimental and one control; n=15 in each). Experimental dams were treated with subcutaneus (s.c.) (-)-nicotine tartrate, 3 mg/kg body weight/day, during pregnancy from gestational days 9 through 21. After sacrifice, lungs were removed en bloc and formalin-fixed, and paraffinembedded tissue sections were evaluated by immunohistochemistry using a three-step streptavidin-biotin-peroxidase method with monoclonal antibodies directed against HSP70 or VEGF. HSP70 and VEGF expression was increased in the vascular smooth muscle cells of the experimental group (t1) compared to the control group (t(2))t(1)=7.593, t(2)=4.666, p < 0.05). The number of bronchioles that stained positively with HSP70 was higher in the nicotineexposed group than in the control group (t(1)=9.274, t(2)=6.956, p < 0.05). In conclusion, gestational nicotine exposure increased the expression of VEGF and HSP70 in rat lung parenchyma, especially in the airway epithelium and vascular smooth muscle cells. In vascular smooth muscle cells, these molecules may contribute to nicotine-related hypoxic pulmonary hypertension

Relationship of intraoperative ultrasound characteristics with pathological grades and Ki-67 proliferation index in intracranial gliomas

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the intraoperative ultrasonographic appearances and the histopathological characteristics of glial tumors using the pathological grading system and the Ki-67 proliferation index