Analysis of death trends in coroner cases in East Baton Rouge Parish from January 1, 1991 to December 31, 2001

Analysis of death trends in a geographic area can provide valuable information regarding the health of the people in that area. Additionally, evaluation of variables such as sex, race, age, and cause of death can aid local health officials in serving the needs of the population. East Baton Rouge Parish is located in southern Louisiana, includes the capital city of Baton Rouge, and has a population of 412,852. An analysis of death cases handled by the Coroner\u27s Office in East Baton Rouge Parish has not been performed until now. This thesis presents results from an analysis of all deaths in East Baton Rouge Parish that were considered coroner\u27s cases from January 1, 1991, to December 31, 2001. The race, age, sex, cause of death, and year of death of 23,813 coroner cases were analyzed. The results of this study indicate that white males aged 75 and older represent the largest number of deaths. In addition, the results show that heart disease is the number one killer of people in East Baton Rouge Parish, followed by cancer. These results were compared to the death trends of the state of Louisiana and the death trends of the United States. The goal of this comparison was to determine if the trends in the parish paralleled the trends of the rest of the state and country. The results of this analysis mirrored the death trends of the state of Louisiana. Finally, the results also closely reflected the death trends of the nation

Trigger and Reconstruction for a heavy long lived charged particles with the ATLAS detector

Long lived charged particles are predicted by many models of physics beyond the standard model (SM). The common signature of such models is a heavy long-lived charged particle with velocity smaller than the speed of light, beta<1. This unique signature makes the search for it model independent. This paper presents methods developed as part of the ATLAS trigger and reconstruction chain for identifying slow particles and measuring their mass. The efficacy of these methods is demonstrated using two models that are different in every aspect except for the existence of long lived charged particles; A GMSB model that includes sleptons with a mass of 100 GeV, and R-Hadrons with a mass of 300 GeV produced in a split SUSY model

An automatic audio classification system for radio newscast

Current web search engines generally do not enable searches into audio files. Informative metadata would allow searches into audio files, but producing such metadata is a tedious manual task. Tools for automatic production of metadata are therefore needed. This project describes the work done on the development of an automatic audio classification system which can be used for this metadata extraction. In order to design this system I used adapting it to our case of study, the matlab code of the MPEG-7 Experimental Model [15]

An Automatic audio segmentation system for radio newscast

Current web search engines generally do not enable searches into audio files. Informative metadata would allow searches into audio files, but producing such metadata is a tedious manual task. Tools for automatic production of metadata are therefore needed. This project describes the work done on the development of an automatic audio segmentation system which can be used for this metadata extraction. In this work the radio newscast are divided into segments in which there is only one speaker. Audio features used in this project include Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients. This feature was extracted from audio files that were stored in a WAV format, using CLAM. Model-Selection-Based segmentation is used to segment audio signals using this feature

Agostini v. Felton and the Delivery of Title I Services in Catholic Schools

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Agostini v. Felton is its most important case involving Catholic schools since the landmark 1971 ruling in Lemon v. Kurtzman. In Agostini, a closely divided Court took the unusual step of overturning its 1985 decision in Aguilar v. Felton, which prohibited the on-site delivery of Title I services to students enrolled in religiously affiliated nonpublic schools. In light of the potential ramifications of Agostini, this article reviews the Court’s rationale in detail before reflecting on how Agostini might affect the delivery of educational services under Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act to students in Catholic schools

Beclin-1 Expression is Retained in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer yet is Not Essential for Autophagy Induction In Vitro

BACKGROUND: Autophagy is a conserved cellular self-digestion mechanism that can either suppress or promote cancer in a context-dependent manner. In ovarian cancer, prevalent mono-allelic deletion of BECN1 (a canonical autophagy-inducer) suggests that autophagy is impaired to promote carcinogenesis and that Beclin-1 is a haploinsufficient tumor suppressor. Nonetheless, autophagy is known to be readily inducible in ovarian cancer cells. We sought to clarify whether Beclin-1 expression is in fact disrupted in ovarian cancer and whether this impacts autophagy regulation. METHODS: BECN1 expression levels were assessed using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) datasets from 398 ovarian high-grade serous cystadenocarcinomas (HGSC) and protein immunoblot data from HGSC samples obtained at our institution. Knockdown of BECN1 and other autophagy-related gene expression was achieved using siRNA in established human ovarian cancer cell lines (CaOV3, OVCAR8, SKOV3, and HeyA8) and a novel early-passage, ascites-derived cell line (iOvCa147-E2). LC3 immunoblot, autophagic flux assays, transmission electron microscopy and fluorescence microscopy were used to assess autophagy. RESULTS: We observed prevalent mono-allelic BECN1 gene deletion (76 %) in TCGA tumors, yet demonstrate for the first time that Beclin-1 protein expression remains relatively unaltered in these and additional samples generated at our institution. Surprisingly, efficient siRNA-mediated Beclin-1 knockdown did not attenuate autophagy induction, whereas knockdown of other autophagy-related genes blocked the process. Beclin-1 knockdown instead decreased cell viability without inducing apoptosis. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, these data demonstrate that despite its sustained expression, Beclin-1 is dispensable for autophagy induction in ovarian tumor cells in vitro, yet may be retained to promote cell viability by a mechanism independent of autophagy or apoptosis regulation. Overall, this work makes novel observations about tumor expression of Beclin-1 and challenges the accepted understanding of its role in regulating autophagy in ovarian cancer

Stanniocalcin-1 Regulates Extracellular ATP-Induced Calcium Waves in Human Epithelial Cancer Cells by Stimulating ATP Release from Bystander Cells

Background: The epithelial cell response to stress involves the transmission of signals between contiguous cells that can be visualized as a calcium wave. In some cell types, this wave is dependent on the release of extracellular trinucleotides from injured cells. In particular, extracellular ATP has been reported to be critical for the epithelial cell response to stress and has recently been shown to be upregulated in tumors in vivo. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, we identify stanniocalcin-1 (STC1), a secreted pleiotrophic protein, as a critical mediator of calcium wave propagation in monolayers of pulmonary (A549) and prostate (PC3) epithelial cells. Addition of STC1 enhanced and blocking STC1 decreased the distance traveled by an extracellular ATP-dependent calcium wave. The same effects were observed when calcium was stimulated by the addition of exogenous ATP. We uncover a positive feedback loop in which STC1 promotes the release of ATP from cells in vitro and in vivo. Conclusions/Significance: The results indicated that STC1 plays an important role in the early response to mechanical injury by epithelial cells by modulating signaling of extracellular ATP. This is the first report to describe STC1 as a modulator o

Stanniocalcin 2 alters PERK signalling and reduces cellular injury during cerulein induced pancreatitis in mice

BACKGROUND: Stanniocalcin 2 (STC2) is a secreted protein activated by (PKR)-like Endoplasmic Reticulum Kinase (PERK) signalling under conditions of ER stress in vitro. Over-expression of STC2 in mice leads to a growth-restricted phenotype; however, the physiological function for STC2 has remained elusive. Given the relationship of STC2 to PERK signalling, the objective of this study was to examine the role of STC2 in PERK signalling in vivo. RESULTS: Since PERK signalling has both physiological and pathological roles in the pancreas, STC2 expression was assessed in mouse pancreata before and after induction of injury using a cerulein-induced pancreatitis (CIP) model. Increased Stc2 expression was identified within four hours of initiating pancreatic injury and correlated to increased activation of PERK signalling. To determine the effect of STC2 over-expression on PERK, mice systemically expressing human STC2 (STC2Tg) were examined. STC2Tg pancreatic tissue exhibited normal pancreatic morphology, but altered activation of PERK signalling, including increases in Activating Transcription Factor (ATF) 4 accumulation and autophagy. Upon induction of pancreatic injury, STC2Tg mice exhibited limited increases in circulating amylase levels and increased maintenance of cellular junctions. CONCLUSIONS: This study links STC2 to the pathological activation of PERK in vivo, and suggests involvement of STC2 in responding to pancreatic acinar cell injury