Annual Report of the Town Officers of the Town of Alfred Maine For the Year Ending February 15, 1913

A novel dielectric resonator antenna (DRA), working at 28 GHz with a peak gain of 12.4 dBi over a fractional bandwidth of 12.6%, is presented. The novel design achieves side-lobe levels below -10 dB for both the E and H-planes so to meet the requirements of the new generation 5G wireless communications systems

Identification of p53-target genes in human papillomavirus-associated head and neck cancer by integrative bioinformatics analysis

Introduction: Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a highly prevalent and heterogeneous malignancy. Although extensive efforts have been made to advance its treatment, the prognosis remained poor with increased mortality. Human papillomaviruses (HPV) have been associated with high risk in HNC. TP53, a tumor suppressor, is the most frequently altered gene in HNC, therefore, investigating its target genes for the identification of novel biomarkers or therapeutic targets in HPV-related HNC progression is highly recommended. Methods: Transcriptomic profiles from three independent gene expression omnibus (GEO) datasets, including 44 HPV+ and 70 HPV- HNC patients, were subjected to integrative statistical and Bioinformatics analyses. For the top-selected marker, further in-silico validation in TCGA and GTEx databases and experimental validation in 65 (51 HPV- and 14 HPV+) subjects with histologically confirmed head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) have been performed. Results: A total of 498 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified including 291 up-regulated genes and 207 down-regulated genes in HPV+ compared to HPV- HNSCC patients. Functional annotations and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) showed that the up-regulated genes were significantly involved in p53-related pathways. The integrative analysis between the Hub-genes identified in the complex protein-protein network and the top frequent genes resulting from GSEA showed an intriguing correlation with five biomarkers which are EZH2, MDM2, PCNA, STAT5A and TYMS. Importantly, the MDM2 gene showed the highest gene expression difference between HPV+ and HPV- HNSCC (Average log2FC = 1.89). Further in-silico validation in a large HNSCC cohort from TCGA and GTEx databases confirmed the over-expression of MDM2 in HPV+ compared to HPV- HNSCC patients (p = 2.39E-05). IHC scoring showed that MDM2 protein expression was significantly higher in HPV+ compared to HPV- HNSCC patients (p = 0.031). Discussion: Our findings showed evidence that over-expression of MDM2, proto-oncogene, may affect the occurrence and proliferation of HPV-associated HNSCC by disturbing the p53-target genes and consequently the p53-related pathways

Effect of Magnetic Field on Peroxidase Activity and Growth of Panicum miliaceum L. Seeds

In latest years in agricultural sector, physical techniques based on magnetic field are being designed. The present work studied the impact of magnetic field on the germination of fresh and partially-aged Panicum miliaceum L. (PM) seeds. The germinated PM seeds were categorized into 6 groups. Groups 1,2 and 3 were fresh seeds, and Groups 4, 5 and 6 (LV30%) were left for 6 days to lose about 30% of their viabilityLV30% seeds. Groups 1 and 4 were normal unexposed seeds. Groups 2 and 5 were seeds exposed to magnetic field intensity of 100mT, while those of 3 and 6 to 200mT for 60 minutes. Germination was monitored on days 2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14 and 16. The effect of magnetic field on the % germination, growth characteristics of radical and shoot, protein concentration and peroxidase activity in fresh and LV30%were studied. Both the exposed and unexposed seeds lost their viability by 16 days of ageing in fresh and 14 days in (LV30%). Exposed seeds to magnetic fields 100 and 200 mT revealed significant increase in the length of root and shoot compared to normal unexposed seeds. The magnetically exposed aged seeds had significantly higher protein than in the unexposed aged seeds. The peroxidase activity decreased with ageing and the magnetically exposed seeds showed higher activity than the corresponding aged unexposed normal seeds. The present study suggests the magnetic field could accelerate the germination of PM seeds, accelerate their growth characteristics and increase soluble protein content. In addition the peroxidase activity significantly improved

Retinal blood vessels extraction using probabilistic modelling

© 2014 Kaba et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The analysis of retinal blood vessels plays an important role in detecting and treating retinal diseases. In this review, we present an automated method to segment blood vessels of fundus retinal image. The proposed method could be used to support a non-intrusive diagnosis in modern ophthalmology for early detection of retinal diseases, treatment evaluation or clinical study. This study combines the bias correction and an adaptive histogram equalisation to enhance the appearance of the blood vessels. Then the blood vessels are extracted using probabilistic modelling that is optimised by the expectation maximisation algorithm. The method is evaluated on fundus retinal images of STARE and DRIVE datasets. The experimental results are compared with some recently published methods of retinal blood vessels segmentation. The experimental results show that our method achieved the best overall performance and it is comparable to the performance of human experts.The Department of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics, Brunel University

Novel 2-arylthiopropanoyl-CoA inhibitors of α-methylacyl-CoA racemase 1A (AMACR; P504S) as potential anti-prostate cancer agents

α-Methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR; P504S) catalyses an essential step in the degradation of branched-chain fatty acids and the activation of ibuprofen and related drugs. AMACR has gained much attention as a drug target and biomarker, since it is found at elevated levels in prostate cancer and several other cancers. Herein, we report the synthesis of 2-(phenylthio)propanoyl-CoA derivatives which provided potent AMACR inhibitory activity(IC50=22–100 nM), as measured by the AMACR colorimetric activity assay. Inhibitor potency positively correlates with calculated logP, although 2-(3-benzyloxyphenylthio)propanoyl-CoA and 2-(4-(2-methylpropoxy)phenylthio)propanoyl-CoA were more potent than predicted by this parameter. Subsequently, carboxylic acid precursors were evaluated against androgen-dependent LnCaP prostate cancer cells and androgen-independent Du145 and PC3 prostate cancer cells using the MTS assay. All tested precursor acids showed inhibitory activity against LnCaP, Du145 and PC3 cells at 500 μM, but lacked activity at 100 μM. This is the first extensive structureactivity relationship study on the influence of side-chain interactions on the potency of novel rationally designed AMACR inhibitors

The COVID-19 vaccine communication handbook. A practical guide for improving vaccine communication and fighting misinformation

This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents – in short, it’s for everyone who wants to know more: About the COVID-19 vaccines; How to talk to others about them; How to challenge misinformation about the vaccines.Published versio

Modelling the time-varying cell capacity in LTE networks

In wireless orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) based networks like Long Term Evolution (LTE) or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) a technique called adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) is applied. With AMC, different modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) are used to serve different users in order to maximise the throughput and range. The used MCS depends on the quality of the radio link between the base station and the user. Data is sent towards users with a good radio link with a high MCS in order to utilise the radio resources more efficiently while a low MCS is used for users with a bad radio link. Using AMC however has an impact on the cell capacity as the quality of a radio link varies when users move around; this can even lead to situations where the cell capacity drops to a point where there are too little radio resources to serve all users. AMC and the resulting varying cell capacity notably has an influence on admission control (AC). AC is the algorithm that decides whether new sessions are allowed to a cell or not and bases its decisions on, amongst others, the cell capacity. The analytical model that is developed in this paper models a cell with varying capacity caused by user mobility using a continuous -time Markov chain (CTMC). The cell is divided into multiple zones, each corresponding to the area in which data is sent towards users using a certain MCS and transitions of users between these zones are considered. The accuracy of the analytical model is verified by comparing the results obtained with it to results obtained from simulations that model the user mobility more realistically. This comparison shows that the analytical model models the varying cell capacity very accurately; only under extreme conditions differences between the results are noticed. The developed analytical and simulation models are then used to investigate the effects of a varying cell capacity on AC. Also, an optimisation algorithm that adapts the parameter of the AC algorithm which determines the amount of resources that are reserved in order to mitigate the effects of the varying cell capacity is studied using the models. Updating the parameter of the AC algorithm is done by reacting to certain triggers that indicate good or bad performance and adapt the parameters of the AC algorithm accordingly. Results show that using this optimisation algorithm improves the quality of service (QoS) that is experienced by the users.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Government through project TIN2010-21378-C02-02 and contract BES-2007-15030.Sas, B.; Bernal Mor, E.; Spaey, K.; Pla, V.; Blondia, C.; Martínez Bauset, J. (2014). Modelling the time-varying cell capacity in LTE networks. Telecommunication Systems. 55(2):299-313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-013-9782-2S2993135523GPP (2010). 3GPP TR 36.213: Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Radio Resource Control (RRC); Physical layer procedures, June 2010.3GPP (2010). 3GPP TR 36.942: Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Radio Resource Control (RRC); Radio Frequency (RF) system scenarios, September 2010.Al-Rawi, M., & Jäntti, R. (2009). Call admission control with active link protection for opportunistic wireless networks. Telecommunications Systems, 41(1), 13–23.Bhatnagar, S., & Reddy, B.B.I. (2005). Optimal threshold policies for admission control in communication networks via discrete parameter stochastic approximation. Telecommunications Systems, 29(1), 9–31.Camp, T., Boleng, J., & Davies, V. (2002). A survey of mobility models for ad hoc network research. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 2(5), 483–502.E3. ict-e3.eu.Elayoubi, S.-E., & Chahed, T. (2005). Admission control in the downlink of WCDMA/UMTS. In LNCS: Vol. 3427. Mobile and wireless systems (pp. 136–151).Garcia, D., Martinez, J., & Pla, V. (2005). Admission control policies in multiservice cellular networks: optimum configuration and sensitivity. In G. Kotsis, & O. Spaniol (Eds.), Lecture notes in computer science: Vol. 3427. Wireless systems and mobility in next generation Internet (pp. 121–135).Guo, J., Liu, F., & Zhu, Z. (2007). Estimate the call duration distribution parameters in GSM system based on K-L divergence method. In International conference on wireless communications, networking and mobile computing (pp. 2988–2991), Shanghai, China, September 2007.Hossain, M., Hassan, M., & Sirisena, H. R. (2004). Adaptive resource management in mobile wireless networks using feedback control theory. Telecommunications Systems, 24(3–4), 401–415.Jeong, S.S., Han, J.A., & Jeon, W.S. (2005). Adaptive connection admission control scheme for high data rate mobile networks. In IEEE 62nd Vehicular technology conference, 2005. VTC-2005-Fall (Vol. 4, pp. 2607–2611).Kim, D.K., Griffith, D., & Golmie, N. (2010). A novel ring-based performance analysis for call admission control in wireless networks. IEEE Communications Letters, 14(4), 324–326.Latouche, G., & Ramaswami, V. (1999). Introduction to matrix analytic methods in stochastic modeling. ASA-SIAM. Baltimore: Philadelphia.MONOTAS. http://www.macltd.com/monotas .Neuts, M. (1981). Matrix-geometric solutions in stochastic models: an algorithmic approach. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.NGMN. NGMN Radio Access Performance Evaluation Methodology, January 2008.NGMN. www.ngmn.org .Prehofer, C., & Bettstetter, C. (2005). Self-organization in communication networks: principles and design paradigms. IEEE Communications Magazine, 43(7), 78–85.Ramjee, R., Nagarajan, R., & Towsley, D. (1997). On optimal call admission control in cellular networks. Wireless Networks, 3(1), 29–41.Siwko, J., & Rubin, I. (2001). Call admission control for capacity-varying networks. Telecommunications Systems, 16(1–2), 15–40.SOCRATES. www.fp7-socrates.eu .Spaey, K., Sas, B., & Blondia, C. (2010). Self-optimising call admission control for LTE downlink. In COST 2100 TD(10)10056, Joint Workshop COST 2100 SWG 3.1 & FP7-ICT-SOCRATES, Athens, Greece.Spilling, A. G., Nix, A. R., Beach, M. A., & Harrold, T. J. (2000). Self-organisation in future mobile communications. Electronics & Communication Engineering Journal, 3, 133