Adiposity Related Protection of Intestinal Tumorigenesis: Interaction With Dietary Calcium

Excess adipose tissue is a risk factor for developing colorectal cancer. However, the present studies demonstrate that lack of adipose-derived factor(s), such as adiponectin, due to the substantial loss of body fat on high dairy calcium diet could increase susceptibility to intestinal tumorigenesis. These studies suggest that a minimum amount or threshold level of adipose tissue may be required to significantly attenuate tumorigenesis. In ApcMin/+ mice, consumption of high dairy calcium diet exhibited markedly reduced adipose tissue and increased tumor number. Our results showed that the high calcium diet reduced fat pad mass by 65%-82% in ApcMin/+ (p\u3c0.03) in comparison with low calcium diet. ApcMin/+ mice on the high calcium diet exhibited an increase in tumor number (76 vs. 29, p=0.009). Moreover, β-catenin gene and cyclin D1 gene expression were significantly induced in intestinal tumor tissue of ApcMin/+ mice on high calcium diet. These effects were not directly resulted from high dietary calcium feeding, but rather associated with loss of body fat mass. Tumor load was not affected by the calcium diet on obese A/yApcMin/+mice despite the fact that high dairy calcium diet produced a substantial loss of body fat, as there was still substantial residual adipose tissue remaining. Our results indicate that protective effects of calcium against colorectal cancer may be least apparent among lean individuals, suggesting that future studies of calcium and colorectal cancer should consider stratification of subjects according to adiposity. In an in vitro environment to determine the adipose-derived factor(s) responsible, we utilized a co-culture system to observe the influence of human adipocytes on the growth of Caco-2, a human colon cancer cell line. We found that human adipocytes substantially suppressed proliferation of Caco-2 by 62.8%. In addition, we reported that human adipocyte conditioned medium inhibited growth of Caco-2 cells by 28.0%-65.6% compare to DMEM. These findings suggest the protective effect of adipocytes on colonic tumorigenesis. To further investigate if adiponecin, a protein hormone secreted from mature adipocytes, is responsible for this inhibitory effect, anti-human adiponectin-neutralizing antibody was added into the human adipocyte conditioned medium (HACM) and to the co-culture system. The antibody blocked the growth-inhibiting effects in both human adipocytes (HA) and HACM. Consistent with this, siRNA-mediated decrease in adiponectin protein in human adipocytes prevented the inhibitory effect of human adipocytes on Caco-2 proliferation. These data demonstrated that human adipocytes inhibit Caco-2 proliferation and that adiponectin is responsible for this effect

A multimodal fusion enabled ensemble approach for human activity recognition in smart homes

How to deal with multi-modality data from different types of devices is a challenging issue for accurate recognition of human activities in a smart environment. In this paper, we propose a multimodal fusion enabled ensemble approach. Firstly, useful features collected from Bluetooth beacons, binary sensors, and smart floor are extracted and presented by fuzzy logic based-method with variable-size temporal windows. Secondly, a group of support vector machine classifiers are used to perform the classification task. Finally, a weighted ensemble method is used to obtain the final prediction. Especially, by applying the geometric framework, we are able to obtain the optimal weights for the ensemble. The proposed approach is evaluated on the UJAmI dataset. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy and robustness of the proposed method

Blind source separation by fully nonnegative constrained iterative volume maximization

Blind source separation (BSS) has been widely discussed in many real applications. Recently, under the assumption that both of the sources and the mixing matrix are nonnegative, Wang develop an amazing BSS method by using volume maximization. However, the algorithm that they have proposed can guarantee the nonnegativities of the sources only, but cannot obtain a nonnegative mixing matrix necessarily. In this letter, by introducing additional constraints, a method for fully nonnegative constrained iterative volume maximization (FNCIVM) is proposed. The result is with more interpretation, while the algorithm is based on solving a single linear programming problem. Numerical experiments with synthetic signals and real-world images are performed, which show the effectiveness of the proposed method

Blind Source Separation by Nonnegative Matrix Factorization with Minimum-Volume Constraint

Recently, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) attracts more and more attentions for the promising of wide applications. A problem that still remains is that, however, the factors resulted from it may not necessarily be realistically interpretable. Some constraints are usually added to the standard NMF to generate such interpretive results. In this paper, a minimum-volume constrained NMF is proposed and an efficient multiplicative update algorithm is developed based on the natural gradient optimization. The proposed method can be applied to the blind source separation (BSS) problem, a hot topic with many potential applications, especially if the sources are mutually dependent. Simulation results of BSS for images show the superiority of the proposed method

31P NMR Investigation of the Superconductor LiFeP (Tc = 5 K)

We investigate the static and dynamic spin susceptibility of the 111 type Fe-based superconductor LiFeP with Tc ~ 5 K through the measurement of Knight shift 31K and the spin-lattice relaxation rate 1/T1 at 31P site by nuclear magnetic resonance. The constant 31K, small magnitudes of 1/T1T, along with the resistivity rho ~ T^2 all point to the weak spin correlations in LiFeP. 1/T1T display small enhancement toward Tc, indicating that the superconductivity is intimately correlated with the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations.Comment: Accepted for publication in EP

The Magnetic Properties of 1111-type Diluted Magnetic Semiconductor (La1−x_{1-x}Bax_{x})(Zn1−x_{1-x}Mnx_{x})AsO in the Low Doping Regime

We investigated the magnetic properties of (La$_{1-x}$Ba$_{x}$)(Zn$_{1-x}$Mn$_{x}$)AsO with $x$ varying from 0.005 to 0.05 at an external magnetic field of 1000 Oe. For doping levels of $x$ $\leq$ 0.01, the system remains paramagnetic down to the lowest measurable temperature of 2 K. Only when the doping level increases to $x$ = 0.02 does the ferromagnetic ordering appear. Our analysis indicates that antiferromagnetic exchange interactions dominate for $x$ $\leq$ 0.01, as shown by the negative Weiss temperature fitted from the magnetization data. The Weiss temperature becomes positive, i.e., ferromagnetic coupling starts to dominate, for $x$ $\geq$ 0.02. The Mn-Mn spin interaction parameter $\mid$$2J/k_B$$\mid$ is estimated to be in the order of 10 K for both $x$ $\leq$ 0.01 (antiferromagnetic ordered state) and $x$ $\geq$ 0.02 (ferromagnetic ordered state). Our results unequivocally demonstrate the competition between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions in carrier-mediated ferromagnetic systems.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

(Sr3La2O5)(Zn1-xMnx)2As2: A Bulk Form Diluted Magnetic Semiconductor isostructural to the "32522" Fe-based Superconductors

A new diluted magnetic semiconductor system, (Sr3La2O5)(Zn1-xMnx)2As2, has been synthesized and characterized. 10% Mn substitution for Zn in bulk form (Sr3La2O5)Zn2As2 results in a ferromagnetic ordering below Curie temperature, TC ~ 40 K. (Sr3La2O5)(Zn1-xMnx)2As2 has a layered crystal structure identical to that of 32522-type Fe based superconductors, and represents the fifth DMS family that has a direct counterpart among the FeAs high temperature superconductor families.Comment: Accepted for publication in EP

The suppression of Curie temperature by Sr doping in diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor (La1-xSrx)(Zn1-yMny)AsO

(La1-xSrx)(Zn1-yMny)AsO is a two dimensional diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor that has the advantage of decoupled charge and spin doping. The substitution of Sr2+ for La3+ and Mn2+ for Zn2+ into the parent semiconductor LaZnAsO introduces hole carriers and spins, respectively. This advantage enables us to investigate the influence of carrier doping on the ferromagnetic ordered state through the control of Sr concentrations in (La1-xSrx)(Zn0.9Mn0.1)AsO. 10 % Sr doping results in a ferromagnetic ordering below TC ~ 30 K. Increasing Sr concentration up to 30 % heavily suppresses the Curie temperature and saturation moments. Neutron scattering measurements indicate that no structural transition occurs for (La0.9Sr0.1)(Zn0.9Mn0.1)AsO below 300 K.Comment: Submitted to EP