Carcinoembryonic antigen and glucose phosphate isomerase in a human colonic cancer model (GW-39).

Levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and glucose phosphate isomerase (GPI) have been compared in the circulating blood of hamsters bearing intra-muscular grafts of GW-39 human colonic tumour. CEA in the sera of GW-39 tumour-bearing hamsters ranged from 2-6 to 8-4 ng/ml (mean = 4-5 +/- 1-7 ng/ml). GPI in the sera of normal hamsters ranged from 332 to 749 iu/1 (mean = 602 +/- 110 iu/1) while those with 14-week-old intra-muscular grafts of a hamster amelanotic melanoma, (A.Mel.3), or GW-39 human colonic carcinoma had a range of 664 to 1267 iu/1 (mean = 1024 +/- 220 iu/1) and 1430 to 4719 iu/1 (mean = 2065 +/- 601 iu/1) respectively. Thus, the ratio of enzyme activity in GW-39, A.Mel.3, and normal hamsters was 3-4:1-7:1, indicating a significant elevation (P less than 0-01) in animals bearing a human colon carcinoma or a hamster melanoma, with particularly high values obtained in hamsters with GW-39. Sequential determinations of CEA and GPI in a group of hamsters transplanted intra-muscularly with GW-39 tumours revealed that both markers increased proportionately with duration of tumour growth, suggesting that both serum CEA and GPI may be used as measures of tumour growth. The concentration of GPI in GW-39 human colonic carcinoma xenografts was also significantly higher than that measured in normal human colon, primary human colonic cancer, or normal hamster tissues. These results support the view that GPI, in addition to CEA, is a quantitatively increased marker in this tumour model, and is liberated into the circulation in proportion to the increase in tumour mass

Particle displacements in the elastic deformation of amorphous materials: local fluctuations vs. non-affine field

We study the local disorder in the deformation of amorphous materials by decomposing the particle displacements into a continuous, inhomogeneous field and the corresponding fluctuations. We compare these fields to the commonly used non-affine displacements in an elastically deformed 2D Lennard-Jones glass. Unlike the non-affine field, the fluctuations are very localized, and exhibit a much smaller (and system size independent) correlation length, on the order of a particle diameter, supporting the applicability of the notion of local "defects" to such materials. We propose a scalar "noise" field to characterize the fluctuations, as an additional field for extended continuum models, e.g., to describe the localized irreversible events observed during plastic deformation.Comment: Minor corrections to match the published versio

Potential of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Gamma Antagonist Compounds as Therapeutic Agents for a Wide Range of Cancer Types

PPARγ is a therapeutic target that has been exploited for treatment of type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with agonist drugs. Since PPARγ is expressed by many hematopoietic, mesodermal and epithelial cancers, agonist drugs were tested and shown to have both preclinical and clinical anticancer activities. While preclinical activity has been observed in many cancer types, clinical activity has been observed only in pilot and phase II trials in liposarcoma and prostate cancer. Most studies address agonist compounds, with substantially fewer reports on anticancer effects of PPARγ antagonists. In cancer model systems, some effects of PPARγ agonists were not inhibited by PPARγ antagonists, suggesting noncanonical or PPARγ-independent mechanisms. In addition, PPARγ antagonists, such as T0070907 and GW9662, have exhibited antiproliferative effects on a broad range of hematopoietic and epithelial cell lines, usually with greater potency than agonists. Also, additive antiproliferative effects of combinations of agonist plus antagonist drugs were observed. Finally, there are preclinical in vivo data showing that antagonist compounds can be administered safely, with favorable metabolic effects as well as antitumor effects. Since PPARγ antagonists represent a new drug class that holds promise as a broadly applicable therapeutic approach for cancer treatment, it is the subject of this review

Force Chains, Microelasticity and Macroelasticity

It has been claimed that quasistatic granular materials, as well as nanoscale materials, exhibit departures from elasticity even at small loadings. It is demonstrated, using 2D and 3D models with interparticle harmonic interactions, that such departures are expected at small scales [below O(100) particle diameters], at which continuum elasticity is invalid, and vanish at large scales. The models exhibit force chains on small scales, and force and stress distributions which agree with experimental findings. Effects of anisotropy, disorder and boundary conditions are discussed as well.Comment: 4 pages, 11 figures, RevTeX 4, revised and resubmitted to Phys. Rev. Let

A Comparison of Blocking Methods for Record Linkage

Record linkage seeks to merge databases and to remove duplicates when unique identifiers are not available. Most approaches use blocking techniques to reduce the computational complexity associated with record linkage. We review traditional blocking techniques, which typically partition the records according to a set of field attributes, and consider two variants of a method known as locality sensitive hashing, sometimes referred to as "private blocking." We compare these approaches in terms of their recall, reduction ratio, and computational complexity. We evaluate these methods using different synthetic datafiles and conclude with a discussion of privacy-related issues.Comment: 22 pages, 2 tables, 7 figure

Supply Chain Disruption Costs Study in International Containerised Maritime Transportation

The global economy relies highly on international trade, and the international maritime transport system acts as the lifeblood carrying and transporting materials and goods globally, realizing the economy globalization in an effective and efficient way. However, globalization increases the interdependence and complexity of global supply chains and drives it to be more vulnerable to disruptions. Meanwhile, the international marine transport system is a complex and intertwined system exposed to high risks and decreased safety due to its very accessibility and operational flexibility. Thereby, global supply chains integrated with international maritime transportation systems are inherently vulnerable to various disruptions. Studies of supply chain disruptions particularly quantifying transport related disruption costs are becoming increasingly important. However, research on maritime transport related supply chain disruptions, in particular, quantifying its disruption costs is under-represented in the transport literature, due largely to the features of supply chain disruptions, but also because of the complexity of maritime related supply chains. Current research in transportation has tended to concentrate on shippers’ transport mode choice and port selection. In the context of a global market, however, the behaviour of maritime containerised shippers has to be viewed as a complex decision and an integral element of the supply chain management strategy. Those shippers’ transportation choice decisions should be emphasized and studied to reveal their behaviour changes between normal operations and disruption circumstance. This research adds to the paucity work on investigating the maritime transport related supply chain disruptions and quantifying its disruption costs based on shippers’ maritime transportation choice behaviour. It presents the results of a microanalysis of freight transport choice decisions in an international containerised maritime transport chain context. The Latent Class Model (LCM) is applied to identify the key service attributes and its preference heterogeneity in maritime transportation and to estimate the marginal values for the quality of maritime transport service with and without a disruption, simultaneously, quantifying the disruption costs through comparing each attribute’s marginal value difference between normal and disruption operations. The Seemingly Unrelated Regression model (SURE) is utilized to explore the sources influencing shippers’ preference heterogeneities. In doing so, we are able to gain an understanding as to where and how much should be invested in order to facilitate recovery in the case of a disruption based on the view of the maritime participants’ perspectives. The research results confirm freight rate, transit time, reliability, damage rate, and frequency as the key service attributes influencing shippers’ transport choice. They also reveal shippers’ VOT increase by more than four-times, VOR nearly double, and VOD increase about twenty percent if a disruption takes place, and identify shippers’ transport decisions vary with its product, shipment, company and supply chain characteristics no matter with or without a disruption. This research quantifies the costs of supply chain disruption in containerised maritime transport context for the first time, and its results provide useful industrial implications for maritime transport chain related parties

Stress response inside perturbed particle assemblies

The effect of structural disorder on the stress response inside three dimensional particle assemblies is studied using computer simulations of frictionless sphere packings. Upon applying a localised, perturbative force within the packings, the resulting {\it Green's} function response is mapped inside the different assemblies, thus providing an explicit view as to how the imposed perturbation is transmitted through the packing. In weakly disordered arrays, the resulting transmission of forces is of the double-peak variety, but with peak widths scaling linearly with distance from the source of the perturbation. This behaviour is consistent with an anisotropic elasticity response profile. Increasing the disorder distorts the response function until a single-peak response is obtained for fully disordered packings consistent with an isotropic description.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure captions To appear in Granular Matte

Modelling diffusion of innovations in a social network

A new simple model of diffusion of innovations in a social network with upgrading costs is introduced. Agents are characterized by a single real variable, their technological level. According to local information agents decide whether to upgrade their level or not balancing their possible benefit with the upgrading cost. A critical point where technological avalanches display a power-law behavior is also found. This critical point is characterized by a macroscopic observable that turns out to optimize technological growth in the stationary state. Analytical results supporting our findings are found for the globally coupled case.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Final version accepted in PR