Foams From Aqueous Systems Of Polymerizable Surfactants

Polymerization was made in aqueous foams stabilized by a combination of a polymerizable surfactant, sodium (ω)-acrylamidoundecanoate (NaAAU), and oleyl alcohol. The common two-phase foams stabilized by a monomolecular layer of surfactant were not sufficiently stable to allow polymerization in foamed form, nor were such foams obtained in the two-phase region of aqueous solution and the liquid crystalline phase of hexagonally packed cylinders. Sufficient foam stability was found first when the lamellar liquid crystal formed by the combination of oleyl alcohol, the NaAAU, and the water. These foams were polymerized and shown to retain the liquid crystalline structure after polymerization. © 1987 Academic Press, Inc. All rights reserved

Evasion of anti-growth signaling: a key step in tumorigenesis and potential target for treatment and prophylaxis by natural compounds

The evasion of anti-growth signaling is an important characteristic of cancer cells. In order to continue to proliferate, cancer cells must somehow uncouple themselves from the many signals that exist to slow down cell growth. Here, we define the anti-growth signaling process, and review several important pathways involved in growth signaling: p53, phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), retinoblastoma protein (Rb), Hippo, growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), AT-rich interactive domain 1A (ARID1A), Notch, insulin-like growth factor (IGF), and Krüppel-like factor 5 (KLF5) pathways. Aberrations in these processes in cancer cells involve mutations and thus the suppression of genes that prevent growth, as well as mutation and activation of genes involved in driving cell growth. Using these pathways as examples, we prioritize molecular targets that might be leveraged to promote anti-growth signaling in cancer cells. Interestingly, naturally-occurring phytochemicals found in human diets (either singly or as mixtures) may promote anti-growth signaling, and do so without the potentially adverse effects associated with synthetic chemicals. We review examples of naturally-occurring phytochemicals that may be applied to prevent cancer by antagonizing growth signaling, and propose one phytochemical for each pathway. These are: epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) for the Rb pathway, luteolin for p53, curcumin for PTEN, porphyrins for Hippo, genistein for GDF15, resveratrol for ARID1A, withaferin A for Notch and diguelin for the IGF1-receptor pathway. The coordination of anti-growth signaling and natural compound studies will provide insight into the future application of these compounds in the clinical setting

Thermal plasma synthesis of Li2S nanoparticles for application in lithium-sulfur batteries

Abstract : Inductively-coupled thermal plasma processes were used to produce nanosized Li2S. Prior to the syntheses, the feasibility of forming Li2S was first evaluated using FactSage by considering the phase diagrams of sulfur and different lithium precursors in reducing atmospheres; Li2O, LiOH·H2O, Li2CO3 and Li2SO4·H2O all showed promises in producing Li2S nanoparticles, as confirmed by experiments. Argon and hydrogen mixtures were used as plasma gases, and a carbothermal reduction was implemented for Li2SO4·H2O. In addition, carbon-coated Li2S nanoparticles were synthesized with downstream injection of methane. Carbon was shown to stabilize Li2S upon contact with ambient air. The Li2S nanoparticles were electrochemically tested in half-cells using electrolytes containing LiNO3 or Li2S6 as additives. It was found that adding LiNO3 to the electrolyte was detrimental to the electrochemical performance of Li2S, whereas the combination of Li2S6 and LiNO3 as additives doubled the charge and discharge capacities of the half-cell over 10 cycles

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Genome-wide association study of lung adenocarcinoma in East Asia and comparison with a European population.

Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer. Known risk variants explain only a small fraction of lung adenocarcinoma heritability. Here, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association study of lung adenocarcinoma of East Asian ancestry (21,658 cases and 150,676 controls; 54.5% never-smokers) and identified 12 novel susceptibility variants, bringing the total number to 28 at 25 independent loci. Transcriptome-wide association analyses together with colocalization studies using a Taiwanese lung expression quantitative trait loci dataset (n = 115) identified novel candidate genes, including FADS1 at 11q12 and ELF5 at 11p13. In a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of East Asian and European studies, four loci were identified at 2p11, 4q32, 16q23, and 18q12. At the same time, most of our findings in East Asian populations showed no evidence of association in European populations. In our studies drawn from East Asian populations, a polygenic risk score based on the 25 loci had a stronger association in never-smokers vs. individuals with a history of smoking (Pinteraction = 0.0058). These findings provide new insights into the etiology of lung adenocarcinoma in individuals from East Asian populations, which could be important in developing translational applications

Genome-wide association study of lung adenocarcinoma in East Asia and comparison with a European population

Lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer. Known risk variants explain only a small fraction of lung adenocarcinoma heritability. Here, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association study of lung adenocarcinoma of East Asian ancestry (21,658 cases and 150,676 controls; 54.5% never-smokers) and identified 12 novel susceptibility variants, bringing the total number to 28 at 25 independent loci. Transcriptome-wide association analyses together with colocalization studies using a Taiwanese lung expression quantitative trait loci dataset (n = 115) identified novel candidate genes, including FADS1 at 11q12 and ELF5 at 11p13. In a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of East Asian and European studies, four loci were identified at 2p11, 4q32, 16q23, and 18q12. At the same time, most of our findings in East Asian populations showed no evidence of association in European populations. In our studies drawn from East Asian populations, a polygenic risk score based on the 25 loci had a stronger association in never-smokers vs. individuals with a history of smoking (P interaction  = 0.0058). These findings provide new insights into the etiology of lung adenocarcinoma in individuals from East Asian populations, which could be important in developing translational applications

Amphiphilic association structures and some aspects of foam stability

This investigation was performed in order to study two interesting and important problems in foams. Foam separation was studied in the model system of water - sodium octylsulfonate - decanol. The efficiency of foam separation as a function of surfactant concentration and decanol content were measured. The results were related to the association structures of amphiphiles in aqueous systems. Foam polymerization was conducted in the amphiphilic system containing water, polymerizable surfactant and oleyl alcohol. Liquid foams were produced in one three - phase region. The location and optical pattern of liquid crystals on the foam surface were observed by photomicroscope with polarized light. Solid foams were obtained when the liquid foams polymerized. The investigation was successful. The effect of amphiphile association structure on foam separation was established. The polymerized foam obtained in this study showed a novel development in solid foams --Abstract, page iv

Cytomegalovirus infection in a kidney transplantation patient presented with skin lesion

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection commonly occurs after major organ transplantation. It mostly presents gastrointestinal tract symptoms in clinical manifestation. Dermatologic lesion as a main presenting feature for posttransplantation CMV is very rare. Here, we report a case of CMV infection predominated by skin ulcers in genitalia and perianal area in a 59-year-old female who received renal transplantation 3 months ago. She had initially been treated with both oral and topical antibiotics for suspicious bacterial or fungus infection without response. Subsequent serological study proved positive CMV infection. After treatment of ganciclovir and valganciclovir for 2 weeks, respectively, the skin ulcers healed gradually. This case report suggests that CMV-induced skin infection should be concerned in the diagnosis of poor healing skin ulcers in patients received organ transplantation

Comparison of admission random glucose, fasting glucose, and glycated hemoglobin in predicting the neurological outcome of acute ischemic stroke: a retrospective study

Background Hyperglycemia is a known predictor of negative outcomes in stroke. Several glycemic measures, including admission random glucose, fasting glucose, and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), have been associated with bad neurological outcomes in acute ischemic stroke, particularly in nondiabetic patients. However, the predictive power of these glycemic measures is yet to be investigated. Methods This retrospective study enrolled 484 patients with acute ischemic stroke from January 2009 to March 2013, and complete records of initial stroke severity, neurological outcomes at three months, and glycemic measures were evaluated. We examined the predictive power of admission random glucose, fasting glucose, and HbA1c for neurological outcomes in acute ischemic stroke. Furthermore, subgroup analyses of nondiabetic patients and patients with diabetes were performed separately. Results Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis revealed that admission random glucose and fasting glucose were significant predictors of poor neurological outcomes, whereas HbA1c was not (areas under the ROC curve (AUCs): admission random glucose = 0.564, p = 0.026; fasting glucose = 0.598, p = 0.001; HbA1c = 0.510, p = 0.742). Subgroup analyses of nondiabetic patients and those with diabetes revealed that only fasting glucose predicts neurological outcomes in patients with diabetes, and the AUCs of these three glycemic measures did not differ between the two groups. A multivariate logistic regression analysis of the study patients indicated that only age, initial stroke severity, and fasting glucose were independent predictors of poor neurological outcomes, whereas admission random glucose and HbA1c were not (adjusted odds ratio: admission random glucose = 1.002, p = 0.228; fasting glucose = 1.005, p = 0.039; HbA1c = 1.160, p = 0.076). Furthermore, subgroup multivariate logistic regression analyses of nondiabetic patients and those with diabetes indicated that none of the three glycemic measures were associated with poor neurological outcomes. Discussion Fasting glucose is an independent predictor of poor neurological outcomes in patients with acute ischemic stroke and had greater predictive power than that of admission random glucose and HbA1c. The predictive power of glycemic measures for poor neurological outcomes did not differ significantly between the nondiabetic patients and those with diabetes