Fracture toughness and acoustic emission of alumina

Imperial Users onl

Exploration of female academic staff experiences in a conservative and gendered society : a case study of selected universities in Pakistan

The focus of my research is to explore the experiences of female academic staff in a number of higher education institutions in Pakistan. The research looked at female academic staff perceptions in light of their socio-cultural experiences and how societal as well as cultural norms impacted their institutional experiences. It also investigated female academic career progression and work-life conflict which impacts their lives. The research also explored how multiple identities are adopted by these academics in their attempt to adjust to institutional life. A feminist discourse was adopted to understand female academic staff position in Pakistani society. From a methodological perspective, data was generated by conducting face-to-face interviews of 16 female academic staff from the four provinces in Pakistan. Sample was identified by snowballing technique and data was analysed thematically from the transcribed interviews. My findings show that female academics experience significant work-life conflict and career stagnation. Respondents indicated that their treatment was often based on their gender which was historically located and supported by male cultural and societal dominance. There was societal role differentiation with men being the bread-winners whereby women had a domestic role. Domestic responsibilities included women having to look after the home and the extended family. Within the institutions female academics are employed, their treatment was based on institutional ‘maleness’ whereby women were often denied opportunities to develop their careers in par with their male colleagues. Respondents indicated that institutional understanding of equality issues was often limited to policy rhetoric with little sign of policies being implemented. Overall, the findings show that for female academics there are a myriad of issues at institutional and societal level that need to be addressed to improve their overall experiences

Identification and characterization of T cell receptors reactive to the E7(11-19) epitope of HPV-16

High-risk human Papilloma viruses (HR-HPVs) are the main causative agents of cervical, anal, vulvar, vaginal and penile cancer as well as head and neck cancer. The most prevalent HR-HPV types are HPV16 and HPV18. HPV16 is responsible for about 50% of HPV-related cancers and thus it is a preferred type to study. The HPV16 E7 (11-19) peptide is a well-characterized epitope presented by HLA-A*02:01 molecules on HPV16+ tumor cells. Therefore, it represents a tumor-specific antigen and is an ideal target for Adoptive T cell therapy (ATC) due to its viral source and being absent in healthy tissues. Recently, a proof-of-concept study in metastatic cervical cancer patients has shown that administration of HPV16-specific tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) expanded ex vivo and infused back to the patient induced tumor regression. However, selection and expansion of TILs has some important disadvantages compared to genetically modified T cells. This project was aimed at identifying HPV16 E7-specific TCRs that could be applied as an effective immunotherapy to cancers caused by this virus. We believe that tumor samples from patients at developing stages of HPV+ cancers might not be optimal for finding HPV-specific TCRs, since their TILs react weakly against the E6/E7 oncoproteins. Furthermore, HPV16- specific cytotoxic T cells can be frequently found in peripheral blood of healthy donors. Therefore, in vitro stimulation of CD8+ T cells derived from healthy individuals and subsequent identification of their TCR repertoire could be a better way to obtain efficient TCR candidates for adoptive T cell therapy of HPV16+ cancers. For an efficient in vitro stimulation of T cells, we used a previously constructed and purified recombinant fusion protein composed of an N-terminal fragment of E7 (amino acids 1-30, E71- 30) linked to the N terminus of Flt3L. Immature dendritic cells isolated from PBMCs of healthy donors were pre-incubated with the fusion protein and then co-cultured with autologous T cells. E7-reactive CD8+ T cells (IFN- γ + , CD137+ and HLA-A2-E711-19-Tetramer+ ) were isolated. The exact TCR profile of the E7-reactive T cells was determined by single-cell V(D)J sequencing using the 10X Genomics platform. Our results showed that the E7-Flt3L is a functional protein that can efficiently increase the frequency of CD8+ T cells targeting the HLA-A*02:01-restricted iv HPV16 E7(11-19) epitope among peripheral lymphocytes of healthy donors. Moreover, our workflow combined tetramer binding and activation of T cells to improve the selection of truly reactive T cells. Three TCR candidates were screened in vitro, which showed different patterns of specificity, avidity, and reactivity. Further, we were able to identify several E7(11-19)-reactive motifs in the CDR3β region through in silico characterization of 22 selected TCRs. Importantly, most of these motifs were enriched in patients who cleared HPV16 infection compared to patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 (CIN3) or higher. Taken together, our study has established an efficient workflow for the identification of TCRs targeting tumor viral antigens which can be an important step toward TCR discovery

Study of Porcine in vitro Fertilization: Effect of Sperm Selection and Concentration on the Blastocyst rate

P porcine reproductive biology has gained more interest recently due to an increase in pig meat requests; demand to enhance and preserve the good genetic material of the animal, along with improvement of animal genetic transportation biosecurity made the reproductive biotechnology create more suitable ways to achieve this destination, in vitro embryo production (IVEP) is one of this ways. Norsvin SA is a research and development-based company looking for optimization of the IVEP process. Porcine IVEP is more challenging than most domestic animals, due to gamete sensitivity. On the other hand, for the research purposes, due to the utilization of oocytes from the slaughterhouse, assessment, and control of the oocyte quality is even more out of reach, therefore, in this study, the main focus was on sperm cell quality (motility criteria, viability, acrosome reactivity) assessment by CASA and flocytometry. This study tried to find standardization for sperm selection by examining two different percoll batches and storage time. Furthermore, it was proven by prior studies that sperm concentration in IVF plays a crucial role in the fertilization and blastocyst rate; therefore after sperm selection by percoll discontinuous gradient, and oocyte selection and maturation two different sperm concentrations per COC were applied: 1’000:1 ratio (normal) and 2’000:1 ratio (double). The data analysis after culturing potential zygote revealed no significant difference between the two treatments at cleavage and blastocyst rate (day 6 and 7) (n= 935; P>0.05). However, in polyspermy assessment of a total of 120 cells, 0.0%, and 13.4% polyspermy were observed in normal and double sperm concentrations respectively. In a conclusion, it was proven that the 1’000:1 ratio of sperm cell/COC seemed to be a more suitable ratio for IVF. Keywords: in vitro embryo production (IVEP), in vitro fertilization (IVF), sperm selection, cleavage and blastocyst rate, polysperm

Robust extended Kalman filtering for camera pose tracking using 2D to 3D lines correspondences

International audienceIn this paper we present a new robust camera pose estimation approach based on 3D lines tracking. We used an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to incrementally update the camera pose in real-time. The principal contributions of our method includes first, the expansion of the RANSAC scheme in order to achieve a robust matching algorithm that associates 2D edges from the image with the 3D line segments from the input model. And second, a new framework for camera pose estimation using 2D-3D straight-lines within an EKF. Experimental results on real image sequences are presented to evaluate the performances and the feasibility of the proposed approach

Cognitive Information Processing

Contains reports on one research project.National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 P01 GM14940-06

Weak-field limit of Kaluza-Klein models with spherically symmetric static scalar field: observational constraints

In a multidimensional Kaluza-Klein model with Ricci-flat internal space, we study the gravitational field in the weak-field limit. This field is created by two coupled sources. First, this is a point-like massive body which has a dust-like equation of state in the external space and an arbitrary parameter $\Omega$ of equation of state in the internal space. The second source is a static spherically symmetric massive scalar field centered at the origin where the point-like massive body is. The found perturbed metric coefficients are used to calculate the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameter $\gamma$. We define under which conditions $\gamma$ can be very close to unity in accordance with the relativistic gravitational tests in the Solar system. This can take place for both massive or massless scalar fields. For example, to have $\gamma \approx 1$ in the Solar system, the mass of scalar field should be $\mu \gtrsim 5.05\times 10^{-49}$g $\sim 2.83\times 10^{-16}$eV. In all cases, we arrive at the same conclusion that to be in agreement with the relativistic gravitational tests, the gravitating mass should have tension: $\Omega=-1/2$.Comment: 7 pages, no figure