280 research outputs found
A versatile microarray platform for capturing rare cells
Analyses of rare events occurring at extremely low frequencies in body fluids are still challenging. We established a versatile microarray-based platform able to capture single target cells from large background populations. As use case we chose the challenging application of detecting circulating tumor cells (CTCs) - about one cell in a billion normal blood cells. After incubation with an antibody cocktail, targeted cells are extracted on a microarray in a microfluidic chip. The accessibility of our platform allows for subsequent recovery of targets for further analysis. The microarray facilitates exclusion of false positive capture events by co-localization allowing for detection without fluorescent labelling. Analyzing blood samples from cancer patients with our platform reached and partly outreached gold standard performance, demonstrating feasibility for clinical application. Clinical researchers free choice of antibody cocktail without need for altered chip manufacturing or incubation protocol, allows virtual arbitrary targeting of capture species and therefore wide spread applications in biomedical sciences
Little impact of Three Gorges Dam on recent decadal lake decline across China's Yangtze Plain
The ubiquitous lakes across China's Yangtze Plain (YP) are indispensable freshwater resources sustaining ecosystems and socioeconomics for nearly half a billion people. Our recent survey revealed a widespread net decline in the total YP lake inundation area during 2000–2011 (a cumulative decrease of ∼10%), yet its mechanism remains contentious. Here, we uncover the impacts of climate variability and anthropogenic activities including i) Yangtze flow and sediment alterations by the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) and ii) human water consumption in agricultural, industrial, and domestic sectors throughout the downstream Yangtze Basin. Results suggest that climate variability is the dominant driver of this decadal lake decline, whereas studied human activities, despite varying seasonal impacts that peak in fall, contribute marginal fraction (∼10–20% or less) to the interannual lake area decrease. Given that the TGD impacts on the total YP lake area and its seasonal variation are both under ∼5%, we also dismiss the speculation that the TGD might be responsible for evident downstream climate change by altering lake surface extent and thus open water evaporation. Nevertheless, anthropogenic impacts exhibited a strengthening trend during the past decade. Although the TGD has reached its full-capacity water regulation, the negative impacts of human water consumption and TGD-related net channel erosion are already comparable to that of TGD's flow regulation, and may continue to grow as crucial anthropogenic factors to future YP lake conservation
Little impact of Three Gorges Dam on recent decadal lake decline across China's Yangtze Plain
The ubiquitous lakes across China's Yangtze Plain (YP) are indispensable freshwater resources sustaining ecosystems and socioeconomics for nearly half a billion people. Our recent survey revealed a widespread net decline in the total YP lake inundation area during 2000–2011 (a cumulative decrease of ∼10%), yet its mechanism remains contentious. Here, we uncover the impacts of climate variability and anthropogenic activities including i) Yangtze flow and sediment alterations by the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) and ii) human water consumption in agricultural, industrial, and domestic sectors throughout the downstream Yangtze Basin. Results suggest that climate variability is the dominant driver of this decadal lake decline, whereas studied human activities, despite varying seasonal impacts that peak in fall, contribute marginal fraction (∼10–20% or less) to the interannual lake area decrease. Given that the TGD impacts on the total YP lake area and its seasonal variation are both under ∼5%, we also dismiss the speculation that the TGD might be responsible for evident downstream climate change by altering lake surface extent and thus open water evaporation. Nevertheless, anthropogenic impacts exhibited a strengthening trend during the past decade. Although the TGD has reached its full-capacity water regulation, the negative impacts of human water consumption and TGD-related net channel erosion are already comparable to that of TGD's flow regulation, and may continue to grow as crucial anthropogenic factors to future YP lake conservation
Isomer shift and magnetic moment of the long-lived 1/2 isomer in Zn: signature of shape coexistence near Ni
Collinear laser spectroscopy has been performed on the Zn
isotope at ISOLDE-CERN. The existence of a long-lived isomer with a few hundred
milliseconds half-life was confirmed, and the nuclear spins and moments of the
ground and isomeric states in Zn as well as the isomer shift were
measured. From the observed hyperfine structures, spins and
are firmly assigned to the ground and isomeric states. The magnetic moment
(Zn) = 1.1866(10) , confirms the spin-parity
with a shell-model configuration, in excellent
agreement with the prediction from large scale shell-model theories. The
magnetic moment (Zn) = 1.0180(12) supports a
positive parity for the isomer, with a wave function dominated by a 2h-1p
neutron excitation across the shell gap. The large isomer shift
reveals an increase of the intruder isomer mean square charge radius with
respect to that of the ground state:
= +0.204(6) fm, providing first evidence of shape coexistence.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Accepeted by Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016
Characterization of different CTC subpopulations in non-small cell lung cancer
Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) serve as valuable biomarkers. However, EpCAM
positive CTCs are less frequently detected in NSCLC patients compared to other
epithelial tumours. First, EpCAM protein expression was analysed in primary
and metastatic lung cancer tissue. In both groups 21% of the samples were
EpCAM negative. Second, the CellSearch system identified 15% of patients (n =
48) as CTC positive whereas a multiplex RT-PCR for PIK3CA, AKT2, TWIST, and
ALDH1 following EGFR, HER2 and EpCAM based enrichment detected CTCs in 29% of
the patients. Interestingly, 86% of CTC positive patients were found to
express ALDH1. Only 11% of the patients were CTC-positive by both techniques.
CTC positivity was associated with patient disease state when assessed by the
multiplex RT-PCR assay (p = 0.015). Patients harbouring tumours with an
altered EGFR genotype were more frequently CTC-positive compared to patients
with EGFR wildtype tumours. In subsets of patients, CTCs were found to express
genes involved in resistance to therapy such as HER3 and MET. In conclusion,
using multiple targets for CTC capture and identification increases the
sensitivity of CTC detection in NSCLC patients, which can be explained by the
presence of different CTC subtypes with distinct molecular features
Existence of the magnetization plateau in a class of exactly solvable Ising-Heisenberg chains
The mapping transformation technique is applied to obtain exact results for
the spin-1/2 and spin-S (S=1/2,1) Ising-Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain in
the presence of an external magnetic field. Within this scheme, a field-induced
first-order metamagnetic transition resulting in multiplateau magnetization
curves, is investigated in detail. It is found that the scenario of the plateau
formation depends fundamentally on the ratio between Ising and Heisenbrg
interaction constants, as well as on the anisotropy strength of the XXZ
Heisenberg interaction.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, submitted to J. Phys: Condens. Matte
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