Ah, Wilderness

In the movement toward greater and greater specialization which is so popular these days, we can find growing tendencies for the members of new branch-professions to operate in ways which dis courage interprofessional cooperation. In much the same way as adolescents strive to establish distinct and secure self-images, so the various branches of the educational profession are seeking separate identity and status, and they are choosing routes which remove them as far as possible from their neighbors. This exclusiveness is pointed up dramatically by the very labels and distinguishing lingo which the new specialties are adopting

An Analysis on Mental Health in College Sports at a Small Faith-Based Midwest University

Throughout universities around the world, every day, the mental health of college students is tested. Specifically, collegiate athletes may feel uncomfortable, or uncertain seeking out resources to assess their overall mental health. There are numerous reasons athletes may be either comfortable, or uncomfortable seeking out these resources. Some reasons can include being seen as a sign of weakness, there are no resources for athletes, or they are uncertain about what resources are available to them. The researchers chose to investigate the mental health of two different sports teams at a university. Specifically, the researchers explored these athletes and their mental health state, whether or not they feel comfortable utilizing campus resources, and whether or not they have non-campus provided resources to assess their mental health state. Participants of the study hailed from a small, religious, and faith-based Midwestern university

CORRECTION OF BUTT-WELDING INDUCED DISTORTIONS BY LASER FORMING

ABSTRACT Welding-induced distortion is an intrinsic phenomenon arising due to the thermally induced strain distributions in the weld and surrounding material. The distortion can be minimized during the pre-process, real-time, or postprocess stages. In the present paper, the laser forming (LF) technology is utilized for the post correction of welding-induced distortion. The out-of-plane distortion can be divided into angular and longitudinal distortions. The LF correction paths are based on the magnitude and direction of bending angle, and the longitudinal residual stresses. The heating conditions are determined through the use of a heating database established by FEM simulations. It is seen that laser forming can reduce not only the weldinginduced distortion, but also the tensile longitudinal residual stresses on the welded surface

Systematic nomenclature for the PLUNC/PSP/BSP30/SMGB proteins as a subfamily of the BPI fold-containing superfamily

We present the BPIFAn/BPIFBn systematic nomenclature for the PLUNC (palate lung and nasal epithelium clone)/PSP (parotid secretory protein)/BSP30 (bovine salivary protein 30)/SMGB (submandibular gland protein B) family of proteins, based on an adaptation of the SPLUNCn (short PLUNCn)/LPLUNCn (large PLUNCn) nomenclature. The nomenclature is applied to a set of 102 sequences which we believe represent the current reliable data for BPIFA/BPIFB proteins across all species, including marsupials and birds. The nomenclature will be implemented by the HGNC (HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee)

Parameter Identification in Synthetic Biological Circuits Using Multi-Objective Optimization

[EN] Synthetic biology exploits the of mathematical modeling of synthetic circuits both to predict the behavior of the designed synthetic devices, and to help on the selection of their biological coin portents. The increasing complexity of the circuits being designed requires performing approximations and model reductions to get handy models. Parameter estimation in these models remains a challenging problem that has usually been addressed by optimizing the weighted combination of different prediction errors to obtain a single solution. The single-objective approach is inadequate to incorporate different kinds of experiments, and to identify parameters for an ensemble of biological circuit models. We present a methodology based on multi-objective optimization to perform parameter estimation that can fully harness to ensembles of local models for biological circuits. The methodology uses a global multi-objective evolutionary algorithm and a multi-criteria decision making strategy to select the most suitable solutions. Our approach finds an approximation to the Pareto optimal set of model parameters that correspond to each experimental scenario. Then, the Pareto set was clustered according to the experimental scenarios. This, in turn, allows to analyze the sensitivity of model parameters for different scenarios. Finally, we show the methodology applicability through the case study of a genetic incoherent feed-forward circuit, under different concentrations of the inducer input signal. (C) 2016 IFAC (International Federation Of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work is partially supported by Spanish government and European Union (FEDER-CICYT DPI2011-28112-C04-01, and DPI2014-55276-C5-1). Y.B. thanks grant FP/2013-3242 of Universitat Politecnica de Valencia and Becas Iberoamerica of Santander Group, Spain 2015. G.R.M. thanks the partial support provided by the postdoctoral fellowship BJT-304804/2014-2 from the National Council of Scientific and Technologic Development of Brazil. A.V. thanks the Max Planck Society, the CSBD and the MPI-CBG. We are grateful to Dr. C,Bauerl and Dr, D. Provencio at the SB2CLab for their help in plasmid construction and getting experimental data. Also to Dr. V. Monedero at IATACSIC for allowing us to use the POLARstar plate reader at his lab,Boada-Acosta, YF.; Vignoni, A.; Reynoso Meza, G.; Picó, J. (2016). Parameter Identification in Synthetic Biological Circuits Using Multi-Objective Optimization. IFAC-PapersOnLine. 49(26):77-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2016.12.106S7782492

SUSD2 expression in high-grade serous ovarian cancer correlates with increased patient survival and defective mesothelial clearance

The cause of death among the majority of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients involves passive dissemination of cancer cells within the peritoneal cavity and subsequent implantation of cancer spheroids into adjacent organs. Thus, it is important to identify the factors that mediate EOC metastasis and implantation, including clearance of the mesothelium. Sushi domain containing 2 (SUSD2) encodes a type I transmembrane protein containing several functional domains inherent to adhesion molecules. Immunohistochemical analysis determined the presence of SUSD2 in several subtypes of EOC, with the strongest staining observed in high-grade serous ovarian carcinomas (HGSOCs). A high-density, clinically annotated HGSOC tissue microarray was stained with an anti-SUSD2 antibody. Patients with tumors that had a low percentage of SUSD2 staining cells had a shorter median survival (31.7 months) compared with patients who had tumors with extensive SUSD2 staining (49.1 months; P-value=0.0083). To investigate the role of SUSD2 in HGSOCs, stable OVCAR3, OVSAHO and KURAMOCHI cell lines were established with knockdown (KD) or non-targeting (NT) of SUSD2. Boyden chamber and wound-healing assays demonstrated that OVCAR3, OVSAHO and KURAMOCHI SUSD2-KD cells migrated at significantly higher rates compared with their SUSD2 NT counterpart cell lines. Quantitative reverse transcription–PCR and western immunoblot analysis indicated an inverse relationship between SUSD2 and well-characterized mesenchymal proteins, including Twist-1, Zeb-1, N-cadherin, STEAP1, AHNAK, Snail-1, COL5A2 and Snail-3 in OVCAR3, OVSAHO and KURAMOCHI cell line models. In addition, OVCAR3 and KURAMOCHI SUSD2-KD spheroids displayed increased mesothelial clearance ability compared with cells that express endogenous levels of SUSD2. These data suggest that SUSD2 has a role in the inhibition of mesothelial clearance, which is required for metastasis. Altogether, our findings indicate that SUSD2 impedes migration, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transitional and mesothelial clearance of HGSOC cells, consistent with prolonged survival of patients with SUSD2-expressing tumors