Workmen\u27s Compensation

Covers cases on employees for the short term

A Cytochrome b561 with Ferric Reductase Activity from the Parasitic Blood Fluke, Schistosoma japonicum

Parasites acquire their food from their hosts, either by feeding directly on tissues of the host, or by competing for ingested food. Adult schistosomes live within the vasculature of humans and rely on the blood cells and plasma they ingest and dissolved solutes they derive across their body surface, the tegument, for their nutrition. Schistosomes require host trace elements, notably iron, which is used as a co-factor in many biological reactions. Iron is especially important for schistosomes, for it has a significant role in egg formation and embryogenesis. In human tissues, iron predominates in the trivalent (ferric) form; however, it is the divalent (ferrous) form that is used as an essential co-factor for multiple biomolecules and enzymes. In order to be acquired from the host environment, the valency of iron must be modified to render it suitable for transport across the parasite membrane. This paper describes the molecular characterisation of a schistosome molecule that is crucial for bringing about this change in iron. Schistosoma japonicum Cytb561 is the first ferric reductase characterised in any parasitic helminth and emphasises the importance of iron, and other divalent cations, in these organisms

TWIST1, A novel androgen-regulated gene, is a target for NKX3-1 in prostate cancer cells

Background TWIST1 plays a key role in EMT-mediated tumor invasion and metastasis. Since bone metastasis is a hallmark of advanced prostate cancer and is detected in at least 85% of patients who die of this disease, it is of great importance to understand the regulation of the cellular signaling pathways involved in the metastatic process. Methods Prostatic cell lines were analyzed using real time RT-PCR, chromatin immunoprecipitations (ChIP) and transfection of siRNA’s and reporter constructs. Results We report in this paper that TWIST1 is an androgen-regulated gene under tight regulation of NKX3-1. Androgens repress the expression of TWIST1 via NKX3-1, which is a prostate–specific tumor suppressor that is down-regulated in the majority of metastatic prostate tumors. We show that NKX3-1 binds to the TWIST1 promoter and that NKX3-1 over-expression reduces the activity of a TWIST1 promoter reporter construct, whereas NKX3-1 siRNA up-regulates endogenous TWIST1 mRNA in prostate cancer cells. Conclusion Our finding that NKX3-1 represses TWIST1 expression emphasizes the functional importance of NKX3-1 in regulating TWIST1 expression during prostate cancer progression to metastatic disease

Rutnätsbaserad multisensorfusion för detektering av hinder på vägen: tillämpning på självkörande bilar

Self-driving cars have recently become a challenging research topic, with the aim of making transportation safer and more efficient. Current advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) allow cars to drive autonomously by following lane markings, identifying road signs and detecting pedestrians and other vehicles. In this thesis work we improve the robustness of autonomous cars by designing an on-road obstacle detection system. The proposed solution consists on the low-level fusion of radar and lidar through the occupancy grid framework. Two inference theories are implemented and evaluated: Bayesian probability theory and Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. Obstacle detection is performed through image processing of the occupancy grid. Last, the Dempster-Shafer additional features are leveraged by proposing a sensor performance estimation module and performing advanced conflict management. The work has been carried out at Volvo Car Corporation, where real experiments on a test vehicle have been performed under different environmental conditions and types of objects. The system has been evaluated according to the quality of the resulting occupancy grids, detection rate as well as information content in terms of entropy. The results show a significant improvement of the detection rate over single-sensor approaches. Furthermore, the Dempster-Shafer implementation may slightly outperform the Bayesian one when there is conflicting information, although the high computational cost limits its practical application. Last, we demonstrate that the proposed solution is easily scalable to include additional sensors.