Long noncoding RNAs in prostate cancer: overview and clinical implications.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer mortality among men in the United States. While many prostate cancers are indolent, an important subset of patients experiences disease recurrence after conventional therapy and progresses to castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), which is currently incurable. Thus, there is a critical need to identify biomarkers that will distinguish indolent from aggressive disease, as well as novel therapeutic targets for the prevention or treatment of CRPC. In recent years, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have emerged as an important class of biological molecules. LncRNAs are polyadenylated RNA species that share many similarities with protein-coding genes despite the fact that they are noncoding (not translated into proteins). They are usually transcribed by RNA polymerase II and exhibit the same epigenetic signatures as protein-coding genes. LncRNAs have also been implicated in the development and progression of variety of cancers, including prostate cancer. While a large number of lncRNAs exhibit tissue- and cancer-specific expression, their utility as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers is just starting to be explored. In this review, we highlight recent findings on the functional role and molecular mechanisms of lncRNAs in the progression of prostate cancer and evaluate their use as potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets

Graded Lie algebras with finite polydepth

If A is a graded connected algebra then we define a new invariant, polydepth A, which is finite if $Ext_A^*(M,A) \neq 0$ for some A-module M of at most polynomial growth. Theorem 1: If f : X \to Y is a continuous map of finite category, and if the orbits of H_*(\Omega Y) acting in the homology of the homotopy fibre grow at most polynomially, then H_*(\Omega Y) has finite polydepth. Theorem 2: If L is a graded Lie algebra and polydepth UL is finite then either L is solvable and UL grows at most polynomially or else for some integer d and all r, $\sum_{i=k+1}^{k+d} {dim} L_i \geq k^r$, $k\geq$ some $k(r)$

Genomic biomarkers in prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is the most common non-cutaneous cancer among men in the United States. In the last decade there has been a rapid expansion in the field of biomarker assays for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment prediction in prostate cancer. The evidence base for these assays is rapidly evolving. With several commercial assays available at each stage of the disease, deciding which genomic assays are appropriate for which patients can be nuanced for physicians. In an effort to help guide these decisions in clinical practice, we aim to give an update on the current status of the biomarker field of prostate cancer

Is Thermal Emission in Gamma-Ray Bursts Ubiquitous?

The prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts has yet defied any simple explanation, despite the presence of a rich observational material and great theoretical efforts. Here we show that all the types of spectral evolution and spectral shapes that have been observed can indeed be described with one and the same model, namely a hybrid model of a thermal and a non-thermal component. We further show that the thermal component is the key emission process determining the spectral evolution. Even though bursts appear to have a variety of, sometimes complex, spectral evolutions, the behaviors of the two separate components are remarkably similar for all bursts, with the temperature describing a broken power-law in time. The non-thermal component is consistent with emission from a population of fast cooling electrons emitting optically-thin synchrotron emission or non-thermal Compton radiation. This indicates that these behaviors are the fundamental and characteristic ones for gamma-ray bursts.Comment: ApJ Letters Accepte

Collective synchronization in populations of globally coupled phase oscillators with drifting frequencies

We generalize the Kuramoto model for coupled phase oscillators by allowing the frequencies to drift in time according to Ornstein-Uhlenbeck dynamics. Such drifting frequencies were recently measured in cellular populations of circadian oscillator and inspired our work. Linear stability analysis of the Fokker-Planck equation for an infinite population is amenable to exact solution and we show that the incoherent state is unstable passed a critical coupling strength K_c(\ga, \sigf), where \ga is the inverse characteristic drifting time and \sigf the asymptotic frequency dispersion. Expectedly $K_c$ agrees with the noisy Kuramoto model in the large \ga (Schmolukowski) limit but increases slower as \ga decreases. Asymptotic expansion of the solution for \ga\to 0 shows that the noiseless Kuramoto model with Gaussian frequency distribution is recovered in that limit. Thus varying a single parameter allows to interpolate smoothly between two regimes: one dominated by the frequency dispersion and the other by phase diffusion.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.

Realizing Hopf Insulators in Dipolar Spin Systems

The Hopf insulator represents a topological state of matter that exists outside the conventional ten-fold way classification of topological insulators. Its topology is protected by a linking number invariant, which arises from the unique topology of knots in three dimensions. We predict that three-dimensional arrays of driven, dipolar-interacting spins are a natural platform to experimentally realize the Hopf insulator. In particular, we demonstrate that certain terms within the dipolar interaction elegantly generate the requisite non-trivial topology, and that Floquet engineering can be used to optimize dipolar Hopf insulators with large gaps. Moreover, we show that the Hopf insulator's unconventional topology gives rise to a rich spectrum of edge mode behaviors, which can be directly probed in experiments. Finally, we present a detailed blueprint for realizing the Hopf insulator in lattice-trapped ultracold dipolar molecules; focusing on the example of ${}^{40}$K$^{87}$Rb, we provide quantitative evidence for near-term experimental feasibility.Comment: 6 + 7 pages, 3 figure