Gaming growth in Clark County, Nevada: A life cycle study

The purpose of this study was to use product life cycle (PLC) theory to analyze the growth of gaming in Clark County, Nevada. Historical data for the last 30 years, provided by the Nevada Gaming Abstracts and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, allowed average casino revenues, hotel occupancy percentages, and visitor statistics to be examined. Based on this analysis, Clark County can be described as in the consolidation stage of Butler\u27s six-stage life cycle model. The information learned from this study helps to show that gaming is a unique form of tourist destination. As such, operators need to be especially aware of the factors that contribute to the success of an area in order to remain competitive in the future

Mathematical deconvolution of CAR T-cell proliferation and exhaustion from real-time killing assay data.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has shown promise in the treatment of haematological cancers and is currently being investigated for solid tumours, including high-grade glioma brain tumours. There is a desperate need to quantitatively study the factors that contribute to the efficacy of CAR T-cell therapy in solid tumours. In this work, we use a mathematical model of predator-prey dynamics to explore the kinetics of CAR T-cell killing in glioma: the Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell treatment Response in GliOma (CARRGO) model. The model includes rates of cancer cell proliferation, CAR T-cell killing, proliferation, exhaustion, and persistence. We use patient-derived and engineered cancer cell lines with an in vitro real-time cell analyser to parametrize the CARRGO model. We observe that CAR T-cell dose correlates inversely with the killing rate and correlates directly with the net rate of proliferation and exhaustion. This suggests that at a lower dose of CAR T-cells, individual T-cells kill more cancer cells but become more exhausted when compared with higher doses. Furthermore, the exhaustion rate was observed to increase significantly with tumour growth rate and was dependent on level of antigen expression. The CARRGO model highlights nonlinear dynamics involved in CAR T-cell therapy and provides novel insights into the kinetics of CAR T-cell killing. The model suggests that CAR T-cell treatment may be tailored to individual tumour characteristics including tumour growth rate and antigen level to maximize therapeutic benefit

Comparison of Insertional RNA Editing in Myxomycetes

RNA editing describes the process in which individual or short stretches of nucleotides in a messenger or structural RNA are inserted, deleted, or substituted. A high level of RNA editing has been observed in the mitochondrial genome of Physarum polycephalum. The most frequent editing type in Physarum is the insertion of individual Cs. RNA editing is extremely accurate in Physarum; however, little is known about its mechanism. Here, we demonstrate how analyzing two organisms from the Myxomycetes, namely Physarum polycephalum and Didymium iridis, allows us to test hypotheses about the editing mechanism that can not be tested from a single organism alone. First, we show that using the recently determined full transcriptome information of Physarum dramatically improves the accuracy of computational editing site prediction in Didymium. We use this approach to predict genes in the mitochondrial genome of Didymium and identify six new edited genes as well as one new gene that appears unedited. Next we investigate sequence conservation in the vicinity of editing sites between the two organisms in order to identify sites that harbor the information for the location of editing sites based on increased conservation. Our results imply that the information contained within only nine or ten nucleotides on either side of the editing site (a distance previously suggested through experiments) is not enough to locate the editing sites. Finally, we show that the codon position bias in C insertional RNA editing of these two organisms is correlated with the selection pressure on the respective genes thereby directly testing an evolutionary theory on the origin of this codon bias. Beyond revealing interesting properties of insertional RNA editing in Myxomycetes, our work suggests possible approaches to be used when finding sequence motifs for any biological process fails

The Reduction of Certain Hindered Aromatic Ester Vinylogs With Magnesium(i) Halides

97 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1960.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Relationship between codon bias () and the conservation at the second codon position.

<p> and are the number of second and third codon position editing sites. Based on the conservation at the second codon position, the genes are separated into (a) four groups and (b) two groups. For the case of 16 known genes, we counted all unambiguous C insertional editing sites in <i>Physarum</i> and <i>Didymium</i>). For the case of 16 known genes + 8 genes in <i>Physarum</i>, we counted all unambiguous C insertional editing sites in <i>Physarum</i> and <i>Didymium</i> for the 16 known genes and unambiguous C insertional editing sites only in <i>Physarum</i> for the additional 8 genes. For 16 known genes + 8 genes in <i>Physarum</i> and <i>Didymium</i>, we counted all unambiguous C insertional editing sites in <i>Physarum</i> and <i>Didymium</i> for all 24 genes.</p

Background frequencies for conservation between <i>Physarum</i> and <i>Didymium</i>.

<p>Background frequencies for conservation between <i>Physarum</i> and <i>Didymium</i>.</p

Accuracy of different prediction methods of insertional RNA editing sites in <i>Didymium</i>.

<p>Each graph shows the percentage of editing sites which are correctly predicted, predicted by one, two, or at least three positions away from the experimentally known correct editing site. (a) shows results for all 15 genes studied, (b) for the more conserved genes, and (c) for the less conserved genes.</p

Comparison of (a) overall conservation and (b) codon bias for real and predicted mRNA sequences.

<p>The data is close to the diagonal in both cases indicating that predicted sequences can be used to estimate these quanitities in cases where the true sequences are not known.</p