Serum proteome analysis for profiling protein markers associated with carcinogenesis and lymph node metastasis in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), one of the most common cancers in population with Chinese or Asian progeny, poses a serious health problem for southern China. It is unfortunate that most NPC victims have had lymph node metastasis (LNM) when first diagnosed. We believe that the 2D based serum proteome analysis can be useful in discovering new biomarkers that may aid in the diagnosis and therapy of NPC patients. To filter the tumor specific antigen markers of NPC, sera from 42 healthy volunteers, 27 non-LNM NPC patients and 37 LNM NPC patients were selected for screening study using 2D combined with MS. Pretreatment strategy, including sonication, albumin and immunoglobulin G (IgG) depletion, was adopted for screening differentially expressed proteins of low abundance in serum. By 2D image analysis and MALDI-TOF-MS identification, twenty-three protein spots were differentially expressed. Three of them were further validated in the sera using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Our research demonstrates that HSP70, sICAM-1 and SAA, confirmed with ELISA at sera and immunohistochemistry, are potential NPC metastasis-specific serum biomarkers which may be of great underlying significance in clinical detection and management of NPC

The business performance determinants of estate agents in England and Wales

The paper uses the data of the moving cost survey from 2003 to 2005 to investigate the factors influencing the business performance of estate agents in England and Wales, based on the theory of market attractiveness and resource-based capabilities. The empirical analysis indicates that the business performance of the estate agents are subject to market environment volatility such as market uncertainly, housing market liquidity and housing prices. The market economic scale, firm size and agent fee have no significant impact on the business performance. The agent fee is positively associated with firm size, market environment and liquidity. The finding also shows that there is existence of geographic variations in business performance and fee level in estate agency industry across the regions. There is no such analysis in this field so far

Investigation on lift characteristics of a double-delta wing pitching in various reduced frequencies

The unsteady lift characteristics of a double-delta wing were studied using both experimental and numerical approaches, which were also compared with a single-delta wing with the same main wing sweep angle. It was found that by increasing the reduced frequency of pitching, the hysteresis effect of lift was magnified. Moreover, in the high reduced frequency case k = 0.48, the difference between the lift coefficients of single- and double-delta wings became rather subtle. The wing surface pressure distribution results indicated the flow phenomenon of dramatic lift losses was due to the effect of lower surface suction during the wing being pitched downstroke. It was observed that, as the reduced frequency became sufficiently high, the virtual camber effect induced by pitching could dominate the flow field, which would mitigate the impact of wing geometry on the lift characteristics