Obscure, unclassed and undefinable: social immobility for mixed races in the nineteenth century presented in Jude the Obscure and Of One Blood

This paper examines the problematic nature of western reliance on class-based societies through looking at postbellum United States and Victorian England through a transatlantic lens. I prove how the classification system produces a group of “unclassed” peoples based on a racial and intellectual status, by looking at Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood. These two nineteenth-century novels expose the production of unclassifiable who are outcast based on what I call a “class-race-intellect disagreement.” By revealing the life and struggles of the mixed-raced individual, I will show how the class systems used by western nations not only maintained the financial, social, professional, educational, etc. disparity between the upper and lower classes, but created an entire class of outsiders who are not welcome to participate in the world in which they live. This paper will not only show how these “unclassed” individuals were produced in the nineteenth-century, but how their status has maintained across oceans, borders and time

The Regulatory Relationship between E2F4 and MiRNA-363, and it’s Relevance to Oral Cancer

BACKGROUND Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common type of head and neck cancer and persists a leading cause of cancer associated mortality and morbidity universally. Survival rate is still poor at less than 50% urging the need for biomarkers to allow better diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic strategies. In this study we focus on E2F4, a repressor of cell cycle, and further propose its regulatory relationship with MiRNA-363. METHODS Western blot (WB) was used to measure E2F4 protein expression and RT-qPCR was used to measure relative gene expression of E2F4, in UT-SSC-24A against UT-SCC-24B. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) of human tongue tissues was also applied to detect location and expression pattern of E2F4. Furthermore, transient transfection of the cell lines with miRNA-363 was applied to detect changes in E2F4 protein and gene expression. RESULTS E2F4 gene expression did not show major differences in the two cell lines. However, the protein levels did show difference both in the whole cell lysates and in the cytoplasmic fractions of cell lines. The IHC study revealed a relatively higher expression in cytoplasm of the cells belonging to the invasive front and areas with budding. Nearly 50% cell number decrease was observed in UT-SCC-24B, as a result of transfection with miRNA-363. This effect was not observed for UT-SCC-24A. A decrease of E2F4 protein levels in transfected UT-SCC-24B cells was further demonstrated by WB. Similar effect was observed in a immunoblot of transfected cytoplasmic fraction, but not observed for the nuclear fraction. Lastly, downregulation of E2F4 gene expression was exhibited by the transfected UT-SCC-24B cells with miRNA-363. CONCLUSION Our data indicate the involvement of E2F4 and miRNA-363 in OSCC and show a regulatory relationship between them. Furthermore, due to the findings of E2F4’s dynamic expression pattern, this study also proposes E2F4 as a potential biomarker for OSCC

Biodegradation of malathion and evaluation of kinetic parameters using three bacterial species

Efficacy of three different bacterial species for biodegradation of malathion and its secondary products have been investigated. The concentration range of malathion under investigation was 25-200 mg·L−1. It has been observed that Pseudomonas putida was found to be most efficient for degradation of malathion. The removal of malathion was 72% at its concentration of 125 mg·L−1. The optimum parameters were studied for all three bacterial species in batch mode. The average values of Ks and μmax were obtained for all these species for degradation of malathion. Results indicate that P. putida has high degradation potential than Rhodoccocus rhodochrous and Sphingomonas sp. The degradation of P. putida was maximum at concentration of 125 mg·L−1, pH and temperature at 7 ± 0.2, 80 °C respectively. Metabolites were obtained using GCMS analysis. © 2016 Tomsk Polytechnic University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

Removal of aqueous benzene in the immobilized batch and continuous packed bed bioreactor by isolated Bacillus sp. M1

Benzene biodegradation was studied in batch and continuous packed bed bioreactors using polyurethane foam (PUF) as packing media by isolated Bacillus sp. M1. The values of optimized process parameters were found to be 800 × 106CFU·mL−1, 400 mg·L−1, 7.0 and 37 °C for inoculum size, substrate concentration, pH and temperature respectively. Continuous packed bed bioreactor (CPBBR) was operated and monitored for 69 days on laboratory scale at various flow rates (10-60 mL·h−1). The steady state removal efficiency was observed more than 90% up to the inlet load of 288 mg·L−1.d−1 and elimination capacity was found to be 91.2-266.4 mg·L−1·day−1. Monod growth model was applied for the removal of benzene and values were found to be (Ks: 215.07 mg·L−1; μmax: 0.314 day−1)

Critical Period After Stroke Study (CPASS): A phase II clinical trial testing an optimal time for motor recovery after stroke in humans

Restoration of human brain function after injury is a signal challenge for translational neuroscience. Rodent stroke recovery studies identify an optimal or sensitive period for intensive motor training after stroke: near-full recovery is attained if task-specific motor training occurs during this sensitive window. We extended these findings to adult humans with stroke in a randomized controlled trial applying the essential elements of rodent motor training paradigms to humans. Stroke patients were adaptively randomized to begin 20 extra hours of self-selected, task-specific motor therapy at ≤30 d (acute), 2 to 3 mo (subacute), or ≥6 mo (chronic) after stroke, compared with controls receiving standard motor rehabilitation. Upper extremity (UE) impairment assessed by the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) was measured at up to five time points. The primary outcome measure was ARAT recovery over 1 y after stroke. By 1 y we found significantly increased UE motor function in the subacute group compared with controls (ARAT difference = +6.87 ± 2.63, P = 0.009). The acute group compared with controls showed smaller but significant improvement (ARAT difference = +5.25 ± 2.59 points, P = 0.043). The chronic group showed no significant improvement compared with controls (ARAT = +2.41 ± 2.25, P = 0.29). Thus task-specific motor intervention was most effective within the first 2 to 3 mo after stroke. The similarity to rodent model treatment outcomes suggests that other rodent findings may be translatable to human brain recovery. These results provide empirical evidence of a sensitive period for motor recovery in humans

The Regulatory Relationship between E2F4 and MiRNA-363, and it’s Relevance to Oral Cancer

BACKGROUND Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common type of head and neck cancer and persists a leading cause of cancer associated mortality and morbidity universally. Survival rate is still poor at less than 50% urging the need for biomarkers to allow better diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic strategies. In this study we focus on E2F4, a repressor of cell cycle, and further propose its regulatory relationship with MiRNA-363. METHODS Western blot (WB) was used to measure E2F4 protein expression and RT-qPCR was used to measure relative gene expression of E2F4, in UT-SSC-24A against UT-SCC-24B. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) of human tongue tissues was also applied to detect location and expression pattern of E2F4. Furthermore, transient transfection of the cell lines with miRNA-363 was applied to detect changes in E2F4 protein and gene expression. RESULTS E2F4 gene expression did not show major differences in the two cell lines. However, the protein levels did show difference both in the whole cell lysates and in the cytoplasmic fractions of cell lines. The IHC study revealed a relatively higher expression in cytoplasm of the cells belonging to the invasive front and areas with budding. Nearly 50% cell number decrease was observed in UT-SCC-24B, as a result of transfection with miRNA-363. This effect was not observed for UT-SCC-24A. A decrease of E2F4 protein levels in transfected UT-SCC-24B cells was further demonstrated by WB. Similar effect was observed in a immunoblot of transfected cytoplasmic fraction, but not observed for the nuclear fraction. Lastly, downregulation of E2F4 gene expression was exhibited by the transfected UT-SCC-24B cells with miRNA-363. CONCLUSION Our data indicate the involvement of E2F4 and miRNA-363 in OSCC and show a regulatory relationship between them. Furthermore, due to the findings of E2F4’s dynamic expression pattern, this study also proposes E2F4 as a potential biomarker for OSCC

Diagnostic Classifiers for Explaining a Neural Model with Hierarchical Attention for Aspect-based Sentiment Classification

The current models proposed for aspect-based sentiment classification (ABSC) are mainly developed with the purpose of providing high rates of accuracy, regardless of the inner working which is usually difficult to understand. Considering the state-of-art model LCR-Rot-hop++ for ABSC, we use diagnostic classifiers to gain insights into the encoded information of each layer. Starting from a set of various hypotheses, we test how sentimentrelated information is captured by different layers of the model. Given the model architecture, information about the related words to the target is easily extracted. Also, the model is able to detect to some extent information about the sentiments of the words and, in particular, sentiments of the words related to the target. However, the model is less effective in extracting the aspect mentions associated with a word and the general structure of the sentence.</p