Establishment and characterization of two human breast carcinoma cell lines by spontaneous immortalization: Discordance between Estrogen, Progesterone and HER2/neu receptors of breast carcinoma tissues with derived cell lines

Background: Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among women throughout the world. Therefore, established cell lines are widely used as in vitro experimental models in cancer research.Methods: Two continuous human breast cell lines, designated MBC1 and MBC2, were successfully established and characterized from invasive ductal breast carcinoma tissues of Malaysian patients. MBC1 and MBC2 have been characterized in terms of morphology analysis, population doubling time, clonogenic formation, wound healing assay, invasion assay, cell cycle, DNA profiling, fluorescence immunocytochemistry, Western blotting and karyotyping.Results: MBC1 and MBC2 exhibited adherent monolayer epithelial morphology at a passage number of 150. Receptor status of MBC1 and MBC2 show (ER+, PR+, HER2+) and (ER+, PR-, HER2+), respectively. These results are in discordance with histopathological studies of the tumoral tissues, which were triple negative and (ER-, PR-, HER2+) for MBC1 and MBC2, respectively. Both cell lines were capable of growing in soft agar culture, which suggests their metastatic potential. The MBC1 and MBC2 metaphase spreads showed an abnormal karyotype, including hyperdiploidy and complex rearrangements with modes of 52-58 chromosomes per cell.Conclusions: Loss or gain in secondary properties, deregulation and specific genetic changes possibly conferred receptor changes during the culturing of tumoral cells. Thus, we hypothesize that, among heterogenous tumoral cells, only a small minority of ER+/PR+/HER2+ and ER+/PR-/HER2+ cells with lower energy metabolism might survive and adjust easily to in vitro conditions. These cell lines will pave the way for new perspectives in genetic and biological investigations, drug resistance and chemotherapy studies, and would serve as prototype models in Malaysian breast carcinogenesis investigations. © 2012 Kamalidehghan et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Third-mission policy goals and incentives from performance-based funding: Are they aligned?

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from Birkbeck, University of London (research grant from the School of Business, Economics and Informatics) and the British Academy of Management (contract BAMRDGS2013_28291_13935_22282)

An overview of moisture damage performance tests on asphalt mixtures

This paper presents a review of moisture damage performance tests on asphalt mixtures. The moisture damage remains to be a detriment to the durability of the Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) pavement. Moisture damage can be defined in forms of adhesive failure between bitumen and aggregates and cohesive failure within bitumen. Aggregate mineralogy, bitumen characteristics and anti-stripping additive dominantly influence the performance of asphalt mixtures towards moisture damage alongside construction methods, climate and traffic loading. Various laboratory test methods have been developed to quantify the moisture damage performance of asphalt mixtures by resembles the action in the field, including qualitative test such as Boiling Water Test (ASTM D3625) and quantitative tests such as Modified Lottman Test (AASHTO T283). Both of these tests consist of two phases, which are conditioning and evaluation phase. This paper will review the effectiveness of the selected available tests based on various asphalt mixtures materials. Generally, this study indicates that asphalt mixtures consisted of limestone aggregates, modified bitumen and addition of anti-stripping additives will provide more resistant towards moisture damage

The long-term impact of engaged scholarship: How do SMEs capitalise on their engagement with academics to explore new opportunities?

We investigate whether—and how—small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are able to capitalise on their engagement with academics in order to explore new opportunities beyond the achievement of the immediate objectives of their collaboration. Using empirical evidence drawn from academic-SME collaborations supported by the Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme in the UK, we find that, for many SMEs, engagement with academics has led to new business opportunities, including new market creation, new project engagement, new venture creation, and new strategic network development. The exploration of new business opportunities is facilitated when three overarching factors are present: i) a capable boundary spanner, who creates bridges within the SME and between the SME and the university, and gains an in-depth knowledge of the collaboration’s content; ii) a committed SME leadership willing to allocate resources and permissions to the collaboration, and encouraging an open flow of communication; iii) a strong relationship, characterised by trust and cognitive proximity, between the collaboration’s partners, who engage in open discussions and acknowledge and respect their different roles and responsibilities. These findings offer suggestions to SMEs, universities and policy makers in relation to improving the generation of long-term impacts on SMEs through engaged scholarship

Student’s reflection on environmental conservation: the level of knowledge, attitude, and behavior

The purpose of this paper is to identify the reflection of primary school students’ in term of their environmental conservation awareness based on their knowledge, attitude, and behavior. The survey method was used in data collection and the questionnaire was distributed to 235 students from 25 different school under UTHM’s Knowledge Transfer Program in Kluang District. The results obtained moderate-average level of environmental awareness for each construct (i.e. knowledge, attitude, behaviour). The analysis suggest level of reflection has significant effect on gender and race differences for certain construct, however, it is positive correlation between the level of environmental conservation’s reflection with demographics profile. This study offers new insights into the impact of education on environmental protection, the need for environmental education to improve conservation awareness

Utilization of Sodium Hydroxide (Naoh) to Treat Used Tyres as Sand Partial Replacement in Engineered Cementitious Composites

Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) is distinct for the tensile strain-hardening behaviour and tensile ductility contrasting to the quasi-brittle nature of ordinary concrete. The blended materials of ECC only consist of cement, sand, water, fibre, and admixture. The depleting and limited resources of sand in many countries have led to the research on alternative materials to replace sand partially or fully in the concrete mixture. Therefore, this study aims to utilize the crumb rubber (CR) in ECC as a partial sand replacement to enhance the ductility and energy dissipation capacity of the composite. The additional of CR in the ECC cause reduction of compressive strength of the composites due to its smooth surface resulting to less bonding with cement matrix. Hence, the CR is being treated with 10% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to improve its surface roughness and enhance the adhesion between CR and cement matrix in the composites. The compressive strength results for ECC contained CR treated for duration of 2 days and 4 days were recorded. Two days is the optimum duration of CR treatment using 10% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to lessen the reduction of the compressive strength of the rubberized engineered cementitious composites (R-ECC)

Utilization of Sodium Hydroxide (Naoh) to Treat Used Tyres as Sand Partial Replacement in Engineered Cementitious Composites

Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) is distinct for the tensile strain-hardening behaviour and tensile ductility contrasting to the quasi-brittle nature of ordinary concrete. The blended materials of ECC only consist of cement, sand, water, fibre, and admixture. The depleting and limited resources of sand in many countries have led to the research on alternative materials to replace sand partially or fully in the concrete mixture. Therefore, this study aims to utilize the crumb rubber (CR) in ECC as a partial sand replacement to enhance the ductility and energy dissipation capacity of the composite. The additional of CR in the ECC cause reduction of compressive strength of the composites due to its smooth surface resulting to less bonding with cement matrix. Hence, the CR is being treated with 10% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to improve its surface roughness and enhance the adhesion between CR and cement matrix in the composites. The compressive strength results for ECC contained CR treated for duration of 2 days and 4 days were recorded. Two days is the optimum duration of CR treatment using 10% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to lessen the reduction of the compressive strength of the rubberized engineered cementitious composites (R-ECC)

Developing Marketing Strategy Of PT Angkasa Dwi Utama To America

PT. Angkasa Dwi Utama, our company has two subsidiaries convinced backpackerjalanjalan.com and tour and travel of Putra Hadi. As we know traveling increasingly in demand by many people and society, but foreigners who are have travelling hobbies, our company can provide tours to several countries in Asia but our company is more concerned to travel in Indonesia. Indonesia has many beautiful spots around the country, but these spots are not published well to the other country. Because of that we use online media for promotion of our business and the hidden beautiful spots in Indonesia, we use website, facebook, twitter, etc. This company have good management systems and interesting tour and travel packages, but this company are not doing promotion well. This company is have great potential to be better, so our team try to help this company selling the product abroad specially USA. The recommended idea from our team is using promotion by social media. We use social media because that is the quickest way to promote it without going to the targeted country. Our team is try to cooperate with another travel agent abroad which is AmericaAsia.com Our team are very optimistic with this project to help the company being International travel agent. We are hoping that our recommended idea can help the company to get more and more travel agent partnership

Wideband millimeter-wave substrate integrated waveguide cavity-backed antenna for satellites communications

This paper presents a new type of wideband waveguide (SIW) cavity-backed patch antenna for millimeter wave (mmW). The antenna proposed applies to applications of 31-36 GHz Ka-band such as satellites communications. The SIW is intended with settings for particular slots. The antenna is constructed on Rogers RT5880 (lossy) with 2.2 dielectric constant, l.27 mm thickness, and 0.0009 loss tangent. It is simulated in the programming of computer simulation technology (CST) Microwave Studio. The simulated results show that the SIW antenna resonates across 31 to 36 GHz bands, which means that this new antenna covers all applications within this range. The reflection coefficients in targeting range are below 10 dB. The antenna achieves good efficiency and gain with 80% and 8.87 dBi respectively

Morphology and composition of strontium calcium aluminate matrix doped with Dy3+

The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of doping rare earth ion on strontium calcium aluminate (CaO-SrO-SiO2-Al2O3). Therefore, the authors have manufactured luminescent material consisting of 40CaO-5SrO-5SiO2-50Al2O3 doped with Dy3+. The compositions have been selected on the basis of chemical stability. Five pellets were prepared with different calcination temperatures and times, namely 400 and 600°C for 1 and 2 h, in order to shed light on their luminescence behaviour. X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray analysis and scanning electron microscopy elaborate and characterise the formation of small particle of photoluminescent material in the phosphor matrix host material