Fully reduced HMGB1 accelerates the regeneration of multiple tissues by transitioning stem cells to G(ALERT)

A major discovery of recent decades has been the existence of stem cells and their potential to repair many, if not most, tissues. With the aging population, many attempts have been made to use exogenous stem cells to promote tissue repair, so far with limited success. An alternative approach, which may be more effective and far less costly, is to promote tissue regeneration by targeting endogenous stem cells. However, ways of enhancing endogenous stem cell function remain poorly defined. Injury leads to the release of danger signals which are known to modulate the immune response, but their role in stem cell-mediated repair in vivo remains to be clarified. Here we show that high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) is released following fracture in both humans and mice, forms a heterocomplex with CXCL12, and acts via CXCR4 to accelerate skeletal, hematopoietic, and muscle regeneration in vivo. Pretreatment with HMGB1 2 wk before injury also accelerated tissue regeneration, indicating an acquired proregenerative signature. HMGB1 led to sustained increase in cell cycling in vivo, and using Hmgb1 -/- mice we identified the underlying mechanism as the transition of multiple quiescent stem cells from G0 to GAlert HMGB1 also transitions human stem and progenitor cells to GAlert Therefore, exogenous HMGB1 may benefit patients in many clinical scenarios, including trauma, chemotherapy, and elective surgery

Radiomics of Lung Nodules: A Multi-Institutional Study of Robustness and Agreement of Quantitative Imaging Features.

Radiomics is to provide quantitative descriptors of normal and abnormal tissues during classification and prediction tasks in radiology and oncology. Quantitative Imaging Network members are developing radiomic "feature" sets to characterize tumors, in general, the size, shape, texture, intensity, margin, and other aspects of the imaging features of nodules and lesions. Efforts are ongoing for developing an ontology to describe radiomic features for lung nodules, with the main classes consisting of size, local and global shape descriptors, margin, intensity, and texture-based features, which are based on wavelets, Laplacian of Gaussians, Law's features, gray-level co-occurrence matrices, and run-length features. The purpose of this study is to investigate the sensitivity of quantitative descriptors of pulmonary nodules to segmentations and to illustrate comparisons across different feature types and features computed by different implementations of feature extraction algorithms. We calculated the concordance correlation coefficients of the features as a measure of their stability with the underlying segmentation; 68% of the 830 features in this study had a concordance CC of ≥0.75. Pairwise correlation coefficients between pairs of features were used to uncover associations between features, particularly as measured by different participants. A graphical model approach was used to enumerate the number of uncorrelated feature groups at given thresholds of correlation. At a threshold of 0.75 and 0.95, there were 75 and 246 subgroups, respectively, providing a measure for the features' redundancy

Electronic government procurement adoption behavior amongst Malaysian SMEs

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between a model of electronic procurement (e-procurement) adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst Small Medium Enterprise (SME) in Malaysia. Data was collected through questionnaires that were distributed to SME selected randomly in all SME in Malaysia.The data were analyzed using factor analysis, reliability analysis, independent-sample t-test, descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation and multiple regressions. Regression results reveals that ‘power’, ‘trust’ and ‘value’ have a positive relationship with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia.All dimensions, namely; the power of supplier, power of procurement, trust on supplier, trust on information technology, value of implementation system efficiency and value of cost efficiency were also correlated with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME. Past studies on e-procurement are beset by problems of buyer-seller relationship perspective.In addition, these studies are skewed towards Government-SME relationship perspective which the Government possesses more power than SME and provide a better incentive to educate and influence SME to adopt e-procurement.In investigation the relationship between a model of e-procurement adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia, this study also tries to provides recommendation to Malaysian government for improving the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME

Free-Decay Heave Motion of a Spherical Buoy

We examined the heave motion of a spherical buoy during a free-decay drop test. A comprehensive approach was adopted to study the oscillations of the buoy involving experimental measurements and complementary numerical simulations. The experiments were performed in a wave tank equipped with an array of high-speed motion-capture cameras and a set of high-precision wave gauges. The simulations included three sets of calculations with varying levels of sophistication. Specifically, in one set, the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method was used to solve the incompressible, two-phase, Navier–Stokes equations on an overset grid, whereas the calculations in other sets were based on Cummins and mass-spring-damper models that are both rooted in the linear potential flow theory. Excellent agreements were observed between the experimental data and the results of VOF simulations. Although less accurate, the predictions of the two reduced-order models were found to be quite credible, too. Regarding the motion of the buoy, the obtained results indicate that, after being released from a height approximately equal to its draft at static equilibrium (which is about 60% of its radius), the buoy underwent nearly harmonic damped oscillations. The conducted analysis reveals that the draft length of the buoy has a profound effect on the frequency and attenuation rate of the oscillations. For example, compared to a spherical buoy of the same size that is half submerged at equilibrium (i.e., the draft is equal to the radius), the tested buoy oscillated with a period that was roughly 20% shorter, and its amplitude of oscillations decayed almost twice faster per period. Overall, the presented study provides additional insights into the motion response of a floating sphere that can be used for optimal buoy design for energy extraction

On Volatility Spillovers and Dominant Effects in East Asian: Before and After the 911

The present paper examines the dynamic effects of volatility spillovers and dominant role (the second-moment) of the US, Japan and Hong Kong in the East Asian equity markets. To evaluate the recent September 11 (911) impact, two sub periods – before and after the tragedy, are being considered based on daily market returns. The upshots of our findings are five-fold. First, for all markets the constant risk components, as well as the ARCH and GARCH effects are significantly detected, implying the persistency of volatility in East Asian equity markets. Nevertheless, not all indexes show asymmetrical news effects. Though all indexes show leverage effects, they are significant only for certain countries including the US and Japan, which is consistent with empirical literature. Second, the volatilities of these equity markets are bounded in common stochastic trends, at least in the long run. Third, the Hong Kong long run coefficients are more significant than that of US or Japan before the 911 calamity. Nonetheless, there is sufficient evidence showing that the US spillovers were transmitted via Hong Kong. After the 911, the Hong Kong’s spillovers trim down while Japanese influence enhance as in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. Taken as a whole (1998-2002), Japanese spillovers are relatively small and nonsignificant in some East Asian equity markets. Fourth, the ECT coefficients are significant but small (except for Hong Kong). The East Asian equity markets are thereby endogenously determined and the volatility adjustments to the long run equilibrium are slow, once being shocked. The ECT coefficients slightly improved after 911. Fifth, volatilities in the East Asian equity markets are attributed mainly to the shocks of local and regional factors rather than the world factor. In a nutshell, the volatility spillovers and the Hong Kong- and US-dominant effects have been confirmed. Hitherto, the 911 impact is relatively small and somewhat inconclusive.East Asian; Spillover Effect; Dominant Effect; EGARCH-M; ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

Multi-pollutant exposure profiles associated with term low birth weight in Los Angeles County

Research indicates that multiple outdoor air pollutants and adverse neighborhood conditions are spatially correlated. Yet health risks associated with concurrent exposure to air pollution mixtures and clustered neighborhood factors remain underexplored. Statistical models to assess the health effects from pollutant mixtures remain limited, due to problems of collinearity between pollutants and area-level covariates, and increases in covariate dimensionality. Here we identify pollutant exposure profiles and neighborhood contextual profiles within Los Angeles (LA) County. We then relate these profiles with term low birth weight (TLBW). We used land use regression to estimate NO2, NO, and PM2.5 concentrations averaged over census block groups to generate pollutant exposure profile clusters and census block group-level contextual profile clusters, using a Bayesian profile regression method. Pollutant profile cluster risk estimation was implemented using a multilevel hierarchical model, adjusting for individual-level covariates, contextual profile cluster random effects, and modeling of spatially structured and unstructured residual error. Our analysis found 13 clusters of pollutant exposure profiles. Correlations between study pollutants varied widely across the 13 pollutant clusters. Pollutant clusters with elevated NO2, NO, and PM2.5 concentrations exhibited increased log odds of TLBW, and those with low PM2.5, NO2, and NO concentrations showed lower log odds of TLBW. The spatial patterning of pollutant cluster effects on TLBW, combined with between-pollutant correlations within pollutant clusters, imply that traffic-related primary pollutants influence pollutant cluster TLBW risks. Furthermore, contextual clusters with the greatest log odds of TLBW had more adverse neighborhood socioeconomic, demographic, and housing conditions. Our data indicate that, while the spatial patterning of high-risk multiple pollutant clusters largely overlaps with adverse contextual neighborhood cluster, both contribute to TLBW while controlling for the other.Health Effects Institute (HEI), an organization jointly funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Assistance Award No. R-82811201

Hemophagocytic syndrome and acute pancreatitis in acute systemic lupus erythematosus

AbstractHemophagocytic syndrome (HPS) is characterized by the activation of histiocytes with prominent hemophagocytosis in bone marrow and other reticuloendothelial systems. It has two forms: primary and secondary. The precise pathogenesis of HPS is unclear but a dysregulation of macrophage–lymphocyte interactions with subsequent increases in the levels of both T-cell-derived and macrophage-derived cytokines has been suggested. Cardinal symptoms of HPS are prolonged high fever, hepatosplenomegaly, cytopenias, lymphadenopathy and neurological symptoms. In this report, we present a case Systemic Lupus Erythematosus associated with HPS and acute pancreatitis