Immunoreactive calcitonin production by human lung carcinoma cells in culture.

Monolayer cultures have been established from a poorly differentiated carcinoma of the lung. Homogeneous cell growth and morphology have been maintained for over 18 months through more than 80 subculture passages, and the cells have been found to produce both immunoreactive calcitonin and an immunoreactive carcinoembryonic antigen-like material

Urine as a High-Quality Source of Host Genomic DNA from Wild Populations

The ability to generate genomic data from wild animal populations has the potential to give unprecedented insight into the population history and dynamics of species in their natural habitats. However, in the case of many species, it is impossible legally, ethically, or logistically to obtain tissues samples of high-quality necessary for genomic analyses. In this study we evaluate the success of multiple sources of genetic material (feces, urine, dentin, and dental calculus) and several capture methods (shotgun, whole-genome, exome) in generating genome-scale data in wild eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) from Gombe National Park, Tanzania. We found that urine harbors significantly more host DNA than other sources, leading to broader and deeper coverage across the genome. Urine also exhibited a lower rate of allelic dropout. We found exome sequencing to be far more successful than both shotgun sequencing and whole-genome capture at generating usable data from low-quality samples such as feces and dental calculus. These results highlight urine as a promising and untapped source of DNA that can be noninvasively collected from wild populations of many species

An HDG Method for Dirichlet Boundary Control of Convection Dominated Diffusion PDE

We first propose a hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method to approximate the solution of a \emph{convection dominated} Dirichlet boundary control problem. Dirichlet boundary control problems and convection dominated problems are each very challenging numerically due to solutions with low regularity and sharp layers, respectively. Although there are some numerical analysis works in the literature on \emph{diffusion dominated} convection diffusion Dirichlet boundary control problems, we are not aware of any existing numerical analysis works for convection dominated boundary control problems. Moreover, the existing numerical analysis techniques for convection dominated PDEs are not directly applicable for the Dirichlet boundary control problem because of the low regularity solutions. In this work, we obtain an optimal a priori error estimate for the control under some conditions on the domain and the desired state. We also present some numerical experiments to illustrate the performance of the HDG method for convection dominated Dirichlet boundary control problems

Ten Years After: An ‘Austerity Audit’ of Services and Living Conditions for People Living with HIV in the UK, a Decade after the Financial Crisis

Cite as: HIV Psychosocial Network (2018). Ten Years After: An ‘Austerity Audit’ of Services and Living Conditions for People Living with HIV in the UK, a Decade after the Financial Crisis

Wild Chimpanzees Exchange Meat for Sex on a Long-Term Basis

Humans and chimpanzees are unusual among primates in that they frequently perform group hunts of mammalian prey and share meat with conspecifics. Especially interesting are cases in which males give meat to unrelated females. The meat-for-sex hypothesis aims at explaining these cases by proposing that males and females exchange meat for sex, which would result in males increasing their mating success and females increasing their caloric intake without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting. Although chimpanzees have been shown to share meat extensively with females, there has not been much direct evidence in this species to support the meat-for-sex hypothesis. Here we show that female wild chimpanzees copulate more frequently with those males who, over a period of 22 months, share meat with them. We excluded other alternative hypotheses to exchanging meat for sex, by statistically controlling for rank of the male, age, rank and gregariousness of the female, association patterns of each male-female dyad and meat begging frequency of each female. Although males were more likely to share meat with estrous than anestrous females given their proportional representation in hunting parties, the relationship between mating success and sharing meat remained significant after excluding from the analysis sharing episodes with estrous females. These results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis. Similar studies on humans will determine if the direct nutritional benefits that women receive from hunters in foraging societies could also be driving the relationship between reproductive success and good hunting skills

What role for public policy in promoting philanthropy? The case of EU universities

This article presents and discusses the findings of a survey conducted among Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in most of the twenty-seven countries within the European Union, which studied the extent and success of fundraising from philanthropic sources for research. Our data demonstrate that success in fundraising is related to institutional privilege (in terms of the universities' reputation, wealth and networks) as well as factors relating to the internal organization, activities and cultures of universities (such as the extent of investment in fundraising activities) and factors relating to the external social, economic and political environments (such as national cultural attitudes towards philanthropy and the existence of tax breaks for charitable giving). Our findings identify the existence of a ‘Matthew effect’, such that privilege begets privilege, when it comes to successful fundraising for university research. We argue that, despite the existence of some untapped philanthropic potential, not all universities are equally endowed with the same fundraising capacities. The article concludes by suggesting that policy-makers pay more heed to the structural constraints within which fundraising takes place, to ensure that policies that seek to promote philanthropy are realistic

Behavioral, Ecological, and Evolutionary Aspects of Meat-Eating by Sumatran Orangutans (Pongo abelii)

Meat-eating is an important aspect of human evolution, but how meat became a substantial component of the human diet is still poorly understood. Meat-eating in our closest relatives, the great apes, may provide insight into the emergence of this trait, but most existing data are for chimpanzees. We report 3 rare cases of meat-eating of slow lorises, Nycticebus coucang, by 1 Sumatran orangutan mother–infant dyad in Ketambe, Indonesia, to examine how orangutans find slow lorises and share meat. We combine these 3 cases with 2 previous ones to test the hypothesis that slow loris captures by orangutans are seasonal and dependent on fruit availability. We also provide the first (to our knowledge) quantitative data and high-definition video recordings of meat chewing rates by great apes, which we use to estimate the minimum time necessary for a female Australopithecus africanus to reach its daily energy requirements when feeding partially on raw meat. Captures seemed to be opportunistic but orangutans may have used olfactory cues to detect the prey. The mother often rejected meat sharing requests and only the infant initiated meat sharing. Slow loris captures occurred only during low ripe fruit availability, suggesting that meat may represent a filler fallback food for orangutans. Orangutans ate meat more than twice as slowly as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), suggesting that group living may function as a meat intake accelerator in hominoids. Using orangutan data as a model, time spent chewing per day would not require an excessive amount of time for our social ancestors (australopithecines and hominids), as long as meat represented no more than a quarter of their diet

Gene expression and splicing alterations analyzed by high throughput RNA sequencing of chronic lymphocytic leukemia specimens.

BackgroundTo determine differentially expressed and spliced RNA transcripts in chronic lymphocytic leukemia specimens a high throughput RNA-sequencing (HTS RNA-seq) analysis was performed.MethodsTen CLL specimens and five normal peripheral blood CD19+ B cells were analyzed by HTS RNA-seq. The library preparation was performed with Illumina TrueSeq RNA kit and analyzed by Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing system.ResultsAn average of 48.5 million reads for B cells, and 50.6 million reads for CLL specimens were obtained with 10396 and 10448 assembled transcripts for normal B cells and primary CLL specimens respectively. With the Cuffdiff analysis, 2091 differentially expressed genes (DEG) between B cells and CLL specimens based on FPKM (fragments per kilobase of transcript per million reads and false discovery rate, FDR q < 0.05, fold change >2) were identified. Expression of selected DEGs (n = 32) with up regulated and down regulated expression in CLL from RNA-seq data were also analyzed by qRT-PCR in a test cohort of CLL specimens. Even though there was a variation in fold expression of DEG genes between RNA-seq and qRT-PCR; more than 90 % of analyzed genes were validated by qRT-PCR analysis. Analysis of RNA-seq data for splicing alterations in CLL and B cells was performed by Multivariate Analysis of Transcript Splicing (MATS analysis). Skipped exon was the most frequent splicing alteration in CLL specimens with 128 significant events (P-value <0.05, minimum inclusion level difference >0.1).ConclusionThe RNA-seq analysis of CLL specimens identifies novel DEG and alternatively spliced genes that are potential prognostic markers and therapeutic targets. High level of validation by qRT-PCR for a number of DEG genes supports the accuracy of this analysis. Global comparison of transcriptomes of B cells, IGVH non-mutated CLL (U-CLL) and mutated CLL specimens (M-CLL) with multidimensional scaling analysis was able to segregate CLL and B cell transcriptomes but the M-CLL and U-CLL transcriptomes were indistinguishable. The analysis of HTS RNA-seq data to identify alternative splicing events and other genetic abnormalities specific to CLL is an added advantage of RNA-seq that is not feasible with other genome wide analysis