MiR-1254 inhibits proliferation, migration and invasion of human brain tumour cell lines

Purpose: To investigate the expression of miR-1254 in 5 astrocytoma cell lines, and the mechanism involved.Methods: Total RNA was isolated by RNeasy RNA isolation kit while cDNA was prepared by RevertAid cDNA synthesis kit. The transcripts were analysed by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Transfection of miR-1254 was carried out using FuGENE HD (Promega). Apoptosis was determined by DAPI, acridine orange (AO)/ethidium bromide (EB) and annexin V/PI double staining. Cell migration and invasion were investigated by wound healing and Martigel invasion assays, respectively. Protein expression was measured by western blotting.Results: Expression of miR-1254 was significantly down-regulated in the astrocytoma cell lines when compared to normal astrocyte cells (p < 0.05). Ectopic expression of miR-1254 in astrocytoma SW 1088 cells inhibited cell proliferation via initiation of apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. Over-expression of miR- 1254 also led to significant decrease in cell migration and invasion of SW 1088 astrocytoma cells (p < 0.05).Conclusion: The results show that the expression of miR-1254 is down-regulated in astrocytoma cell lines, but over-expression of miR-1254 inhibits proliferation of the cell lines via cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Thus, miR-1254 has promising potential for use in the treatment of brain tumour.Keywords: Brain tumour, Astrocytoma, miR-1254, Apoptosis, Cell migratio

Design And Fabrication of Condenser Microphone Using Wafer Transfer And Micro-electroplating Technique

A novel fabrication process, which uses wafer transfer and micro-electroplating technique, has been proposed and tested. In this paper, the effects of the diaphragm thickness and stress, the air-gap thickness, and the area ratio of acoustic holes to backplate on the sensitivity of the condenser microphone have been demonstrated since the performance of the microphone depends on these parameters. The microphone diaphragm has been designed with a diameter and thickness of 1.9 mm and 0.6 $\mu$m, respectively, an air-gap thickness of 10 $\mu$m, and a 24% area ratio of acoustic holes to backplate. To obtain a lower initial stress, the material used for the diaphragm is polyimide. The measured sensitivities of the microphone at the bias voltages of 24 V and 12 V are -45.3 and -50.2 dB/Pa (at 1 kHz), respectively. The fabricated microphone shows a flat frequency response extending to 20 kHz.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/16838

Live from the battlefield: an examination of embedded war correspondents' reporting during Operation Iraqi Freedom (21 March-14 April 2003)

During Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the U.S. Department of Defense instituted a program to attach civilian journalists to coalition military units. Their purpose was to report firsthand on the military campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. These "embedded journalists," as they were called, would travel, eat, sleep, and endure the same hardships and dangers of the soldiers and Marines they were accompanying. While their immediate and highly dramatic accounts offered a perspective not before seen by the news-hungry U.S. public, they also raised questions if the "embedding" process resulted in a more thematically narrow coverage of the war. This study addresses the newspaper coverage of OIF by examining the content of the embedded and non-embedded war reporting of various highly circulating U.S. newspapers. It is posited that being attached or embedded within U.S. military units resulted in the journalists producing a body of stories concerning military operations and personnel markedly different than nonembedded reporters during OIF.http://archive.org/details/livefrombattlefi109451541Major, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Effects of a Modified Hospital Elder Life Program on Frailty in Individuals Undergoing Major Elective Abdominal Surgery

Objectives To test the effects of a modified Hospital Elder Life Program (mHELP) on frailty. Design Matched and unmatched analyses of data from a before-and-after study. Setting Hospital, inpatient. Participants Participants aged 65 years and older ((N = 189) undergoing elective, major abdominal surgery at a medical center in Taiwan. Intervention The mHELP included three nursing interventions: early mobilization, oral and nutritional assistance, and orienting communication. Measurements Frailty rate and transitions between frailty states from hospital discharge to 3 months after discharge, using Fried's phenotype criteria categorized as: non-frail (0 or 1 criteria present), pre-frail (2 or 3 criteria present), and frail (4 or 5 criteria present). Results Among matched pairs, participants who received the mHELP interventions were significantly less likely to be frail at discharge (19.2% vs. 65.4% for controls; adjusted OR = .10, 95% CI = .02 to .39) than their matched controls. Transitions to states of greater frailty during hospitalization were more common for participants in the control group. At 3 months post-discharge, participants who received the mHELP intervention during hospitalization were less likely to be frail than the matched controls (17.3% versus 23.1%; adjusted OR = .73; 95% CI = .21 to 2.56), although this difference did not achieve statistical significance. Conclusion The mHELP intervention is effective in reducing frailty by hospital discharge but the benefit is diminished by 3 months post-discharge. Thus, the mHELP provides a useful approach to manage in-hospital frailty for older patients undergoing major abdominal surgery

High yield expression in a recombinant E. coli of a codon optimized chicken anemia virus capsid protein VP1 useful for vaccine development

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chicken anemia virus (CAV), the causative agent chicken anemia, is the only member of the genus <it>Gyrovirus </it>of the <it>Circoviridae </it>family. CAV is an immune suppressive virus and causes anemia, lymph organ atrophy and immunodeficiency. The production and biochemical characterization of VP1 protein and its use in a subunit vaccine or as part of a diagnostic kit would be useful to CAV infection prevention.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Significantly increased expression of the recombinant full-length VP1 capsid protein from chicken anemia virus was demonstrated using an <it>E. coli </it>expression system. The VP1 gene was cloned into various different expression vectors and then these were expressed in a number of different <it>E. coli </it>strains. The expression of CAV VP1 in <it>E. coli </it>was significantly increased when VP1 was fused with GST protein rather than a His-tag. By optimizing the various rare amino acid codons within the N-terminus of the VP1 protein, the expression level of the VP1 protein in <it>E. coli </it>BL21(DE3)-pLysS was further increased significantly. The highest protein expression level obtained was 17.5 g/L per liter of bacterial culture after induction with 0.1 mM IPTG for 2 h. After purification by GST affinity chromatography, the purified full-length VP1 protein produced in this way was demonstrated to have good antigenicity and was able to be recognized by CAV-positive chicken serum in an ELISA assay.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Purified recombinant VP1 protein with the gene's codons optimized in the N-terminal region has potential as chimeric protein that, when expressed in <it>E. coli</it>, may be useful in the future for the development of subunit vaccines and diagnostic tests.</p

Oxygen vacancy engineering in spinel-structured nanosheet wrapped hollow polyhedra for electrochemical nitrogen fixation under ambient conditions

Electrochemical nitrogen-to-ammonia conversion by the nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) under ambient conditions is regarded as a potential approach to tackle the energy-intensive Haber–Bosch process with excessive CO2 emission. However, the NRR is still restricted by low faradaic efficiency and NH3 yield, which is due to the chemical inertness of N-related groups for efficient adsorption/activation on the electrocatalysts. Here, a series of spinel-structured nanosheet wrapped hollow nitrogen-doped carbon polyhedra with abundant oxygen vacancies are constructed successfully. From theoretical aspects, these materials show increased charge density on their surface for enhanced capture and activation of N2 molecules. As a result, oxygen vacancy-rich NiCo2O4 on hollow N-carbon polyhedra (Vo-rich NiCo2O4@HNCP) shows outstanding electrocatalytic NRR performance with high production yield (NH3: 4.1 μg h−1 cm−2/17.8 μg h−1 mg−1; faradaic efficiency: 5.3%) and high stability under ambient conditions and is superior to the counterpart oxygen vacancy-poor electrocatalysts. Oxygen vacancy engineering introduces a new concept for rational design of advanced NRR catalysts for energy conversion systems

The TOP-SCOPE Survey of Planck Galactic Cold Clumps : Survey Overview and Results of an Exemplar Source, PGCC G26.53+0.17

The low dust temperatures (<14 K) of Planck Galactic cold clumps (PGCCs) make them ideal targets to probe the initial conditions and very early phase of star formation. "TOP-SCOPE" is a joint survey program targeting similar to 2000 PGCCs in J = 1-0 transitions of CO isotopologues and similar to 1000 PGCCs in 850 mu m continuum emission. The objective of the "TOP-SCOPE" survey and the joint surveys (SMT 10 m, KVN 21 m, and NRO 45 m) is to statistically study the initial conditions occurring during star formation and the evolution of molecular clouds, across a wide range of environments. The observations, data analysis, and example science cases for these surveys are introduced with an exemplar source, PGCC G26.53+0.17 (G26), which is a filamentary infrared dark cloud (IRDC). The total mass, length, and mean line mass (M/L) of the G26 filament are similar to 6200 M-circle dot, similar to 12 pc, and similar to 500 M-circle dot pc(-1), respectively. Ten massive clumps, including eight starless ones, are found along the filament. The most massive clump as a whole may still be in global collapse, while its denser part seems to be undergoing expansion owing to outflow feedback. The fragmentation in the G26 filament from cloud scale to clump scale is in agreement with gravitational fragmentation of an isothermal, nonmagnetized, and turbulent supported cylinder. A bimodal behavior in dust emissivity spectral index (beta) distribution is found in G26, suggesting grain growth along the filament. The G26 filament may be formed owing to large-scale compression flows evidenced by the temperature and velocity gradients across its natal cloud.Peer reviewe

The Belle II Physics Book

We present the physics program of the Belle II experiment, located on the intensity frontier SuperKEKB $e^+e^-$ collider. Belle II collected its first collisions in 2018, and is expected to operate for the next decade. It is anticipated to collect 50/ab of collision data over its lifetime. This book is the outcome of a joint effort of Belle II collaborators and theorists through the Belle II theory interface platform (B2TiP), an effort that commenced in 2014. The aim of B2TiP was to elucidate the potential impacts of the Belle II program, which includes a wide scope of physics topics: B physics, charm, tau, quarkonium, electroweak precision measurements and dark sector searches. It is composed of nine working groups (WGs), which are coordinated by teams of theorist and experimentalists conveners: Semileptonic and leptonic B decays, Radiative and Electroweak penguins, phi_1 and phi_2 (time-dependent CP violation) measurements, phi_3 measurements, Charmless hadronic B decay, Charm, Quarkonium(like), tau and low-multiplicity processes, new physics and global fit analyses. This book highlights "golden- and silver-channels", i.e. those that would have the highest potential impact in the field. Theorists scrutinised the role of those measurements and estimated the respective theoretical uncertainties, achievable now as well as prospects for the future. Experimentalists investigated the expected improvements with the large dataset expected from Belle II, taking into account improved performance from the upgraded detector.Comment: 689 page

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements