Carbon nanotube reinforced porous carbon having three-dimensionally ordered porosity and method of fabricating same

A solid carbon has CNTs dispersed therein and is formed about three-dimensionally ordered spherical voids arranged in an opal-like lattice

Characterizing the malignancy and drug resistance of cancer cells from their membrane resealing response

In this report, we showed that two tumor cell characteristics, namely the malignancy and drug-resistance status can be evaluated by their membrane resealing response. Specifically, membrane pores in a number of pairs of cancer and normal cell lines originated from nasopharynx, lung and intestine were introduced by nano-mechanical puncturing. Interestingly, such nanometer-sized holes in tumor cells can reseal ∼ 2-3 times faster than those in the corresponding normal cells. Furthermore, the membrane resealing time in cancer cell lines exhibiting resistance to several leading chemotherapeutic drugs was also found to be substantially shorter than that in their drug-sensitive counterparts, demonstrating the potential of using this quantity as a novel marker for future cancer diagnosis and drug resistance detection. Finally, a simple model was proposed to explain the observed resealing dynamics of cells which suggested that the distinct response exhibited by normal, tumor and drug resistant cells is likely due to the different tension levels in their lipid membranes, a conclusion that is also supported by direct cortical tension measurement.published_or_final_versio

Upregulation and hypomethylation of EGFR in Formalin-fixed Paraffin Embedded FFPE tissues of colon adenocarcinoma

Introduction: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer worldwide. Even though many cancer therapies have been developed, considerable proportions of patients respond poorly to therapy and the number of resistance cases increases. CRC emerges as a result of genetic and/or epigenetic modifications of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in colonic epithelial cells during tumourigenesis. Determination of DNA methylation status of EGFR is very crucial to further understand the role of this gene in carcinogenesis. However, the applicability of formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues in molecular studies is still limited due to high degradation of the nucleic acids. Hence, this study aimed to determine the gene expression and DNA methylation status of EGFR in FFPE CRC samples. Methods: Fifty-nine of archival FFPE CRC cases with the adjacent normal colon tissues were retrieved. Manual micro-dissection was performed prior to RNA and DNA extraction. EGFR expression and DNA methylation status was evaluated by qPCR and methylation specific PCR (MSP) techniques respectively. Results: EGFR was overexpressed in 54.2% (p-value=0.021) of CRC cases. Hypomethylation of EGFR was discovered in 81.4% and 79.7% of FFPE CRC tissues and normal adjacent tissues respectively. No significant association was found between DNA methylation and mRNA levels of EGFR. Conclusion: Determination of gene expression and DNA methylation in FFPE tissues were successfully carried out. The overexpression and hypomethylation of EGFR strongly suggest its important role in CRC tumourigenesis. Hypomethylation in normal tissue adjacent to the tumours indicates this epigenetic change occurs at the early step in carcinogenesis

Sleep problems in children with autism spectrum disorder in Hong Kong: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a growing prevalence of sleep problems associated with significant behavioral problems and more severe autism clinical presentation. Little is known about the relationships between autism traits and sleep problems in Hong Kong. Therefore, this study aimed to examine whether children with autism have increased sleep problems than non-autistic children in Hong Kong. The secondary objective was to examine the factors associated with sleep problems in an autism clinical sample.MethodsThis cross-sectional study recruited 135 children with autism and 102 with the same age range of non-autistic children, aged between 6 and 12 years. Both groups were screened and compared on their sleep behaviors using the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ).ResultsChildren with autism had significantly more sleep problems than non-autistic children [t(226.73) = 6.20, p < 0.001]. Bed -sharing [beta = 0.25, t(165) = 2.75, p = 0.07] and maternal age at birth [beta = 0.15, t(165) = 2.05, p = 0.043] were significant factors associated with CSHQ score on the top of autism traits. Stepwise linear regression modeling identified that only separation anxiety disorder (beta = 4.83, t = 2.40, p = 0.019) best-predicted CSHQ.ConclusionIn summary, autistic children suffered from significantly more sleep problems and co-occurring separation anxiety disorder brings greater sleep problems as compared to non-autistic children. Clinicians should be more aware of sleep problems to provide more effective treatments to children with autism

Factors associated with nursing home placement of all patients admitted for inpatient rehabilitation in Singapore community hospitals from 1996 to 2005: A disease stratified analysis

10.1371/journal.pone.0082697PLoS ONE812-POLN

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Infection in Southern Chinese Women – A Population-Based Study

Background: Persistent high-risk type Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is recognized as a necessary cause of cervical cancer. This study aimed to compare the HPV prevalence and risk factors between women residing in Hong Kong (HK) and Guangzhou (GZ) region of China. Methodology/Principal Findings: A total of 1,570 and 1,369 women were recruited from HK and GZ, respectively. The cytology samples were collected and tested for HPV infection. The overall and type-specific HPV prevalence and the potential risk factors for acquisition of HPV infection were studied. Women with normal cytology in the GZ cohort had significantly higher HPV prevalence (10%) than those in the HK cohort (6.2%, p<0.001). The patterns of the age-specific HPV prevalence were also different between the two cohorts. In the HK cohort, women at the age of 20-29 years old had the highest prevalence and a second peak was observed in the age of ≥60 years old. In the GZ cohort, the highest HPV prevalence was also observed in 20-29 years old but declined as the age increased and a second peak was not seen. HPV16 and HPV52 were the most common high-risk types found in the HK and GZ cohorts, respectively. Age was the most consistently observed independent risk factor for HPV infection in the HK, while the number of sexual partners had association in the GZ cohort. Conclusions/Significance: Our study provides the current status and the epidemiological characteristics of HPV prevalence in Southern Chinese women. The results strongly suggested that population education and the effective cervical cancer screening would be vital in the prevention of cervical cancer. © 2011 Liu et al.published_or_final_versio

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

An efficient local search algorithm for crane scheduling problem

Hong Kong has the world's busiest container port. Everyday thousands of con-tainers need to be removed from container ships onto container yards and from the yards onto container trunks. In this thesis, a Crane Scheduling Problem is defined to model operations in the container yards. We have developed a scheduling algorithm for Crane Scheduling Problem. Our algorithm solves the problem by minimizing the time needed to remove containers from the yard, shortening the waiting time in queues for container trucks, and thus reducing traffic congestion on the port docks and around the port area. In the scheduling algorithm, an efficient local search technique is designed to sequence the delivery requests to be removed out of the yard by crane. Such a scheduling problem is NP-hard and the search space grows exponentially as the number of requests increases. The proposed algorithm makes use of problem specific knowledge in order to reduce the search space as well as the cost of partial schedule calculation. Under different experiments, the algorithm has shown promising results and is able to produce near-optimal results in a reasonable time

Do local and international school students in Hong Kong have different thinking styles?

This study had two objectives. The first objective was to investigate whether or not local and international school students in Hong Kong have different thinking styles. The second objective was to examine the predictive power of socialization variables for thinking styles among students in secondary schools. Three hundred and two students from three schools in Hong Kong responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory – Revised II based on Sternberg’s theory of mental style government, and a survey on two groups of socialization variables: student characteristic and school environment. The student characteristic variables included personological and situational variables, while the school environmental variables included in-class experience and assessment-related variables. Results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in thinking styles between local and international school students in Hong Kong. Results also indicated that the subgroup of in-class experience was the most powerful in predicting thinking styles at the international school, the subgroup of assessment-related variables was the most powerful in predicting thinking styles at the traditional local school, and the subgroup of personological characteristics was the most powerful in predicting thinking styles at the direct subsidy scheme local school. Implications of the findings are discussed for parents, teachers, school administrators and policy makers.published_or_final_versionEducationMasterMaster of Educatio