What Causes Cancer Gallbladder?: A Review

Gallbladder cancer is a common malignancy of the biliary tract. It is the fifth common malignancy of the gastrointestinal tract in United States [1] and third in Northern India [2]. Despite such high prevalence, there is scanty published literature about this disease in indexed journals. Therefore, this article is intended to provide a brief overview of gallbladder cancer risk factors, based mainly on published evidence from analytical epidemiology and recent research findings of biologists and practising oncologists. Furthermore, an attempt has been made to establish an association between different causative factors and the occurrence of the disease

On the Eccentricities and Merger Rates of Double Neutron Star Binaries and the Creation of "Double Supernovae"

We demonstrate that a natural consequence of an asymmetric kick imparted to neutron stars at birth is that the majority of double neutron star binaries should possess highly eccentric orbits. This leads to greatly accelerated orbital decay, due to the enormous increase in the emission of gravitational radiation at periastron as originally demonstrated by Peters (1964). A uniform distribution of kick velocities constrained to the orbital plane would result in ~24% of surviving binaries coalescing at least 10,000 times faster than an unperturbed circular system. Even if the planar kick constraint is lifted, ~6% of bound systems still coalesce this rapidly. In a non-negligible fraction of cases it may even be possible that the system could coalesce within 10 years of the final supernova, resulting in what we might term a "double supernova''. For systems resembling the progenitor of PSR J0737-3039A, this number is as high as \~9% (in the planar kick model). Whether the kick velocity distribution extends to the range required to achieve this is still unclear. We do know that the observed population of binary pulsars has a deficit of highly eccentric systems at small orbital periods. In contrast, the long-period systems favour large eccentricities, as expected. We argue that this is because the short-period highly eccentric systems have already coalesced and are thus selected against by pulsar surveys. This effect needs to be taken into account when using the scale-factor method to estimate the coalescence rate of double neutron star binaries. We therefore assert that the coalesence rate of such binaries is underestimated by a factor of several.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Ap

Multienzymatic immobilization of laccases on polymeric microspheres:A strategy to expand the maximum catalytic efficiency

Laccase enzymes of were covalently coimmobilized on poly(glycidyl methacrylate) microspheres. The objective of this work was to create a biocatalyst that works efficiently in a wide range of pH. The coimmobilization was performed using two different strategies to compare the most efficient. The results showed that by correctly selecting the enzymes and concentrations involved in the commobilization, it is possible to obtain a biocatalyst that works efficiently at a wide pH range (2.0-7.0). The maximum activity values reached per gram of support for the obtained biocatalyst were 41.90 U (pH 3.0), 40.89 U (pH 4.0), and 39.54 U (pH 6.0). Moreover, the thermal, storage, and mechanical stabilities were improved compared to the free and single-immobilized laccases. It was concluded that enzymatic coimmobilization is an excellent alternative to obtain a robust biocatalyst that works in a wide pH range, with potential environmental and industrial applications

Capture, Reconstruction, and Representation of the Visual Real World for Virtual Reality

We provide an overview of the concerns, current practice, and limitations for capturing, reconstructing, and representing the real world visually within virtual reality. Given that our goals are to capture, transmit, and depict complex real-world phenomena to humans, these challenges cover the opto-electro-mechanical, computational, informational, and perceptual fields. Practically producing a system for real-world VR capture requires navigating a complex design space and pushing the state of the art in each of these areas. As such, we outline several promising directions for future work to improve the quality and flexibility of real-world VR capture systems

ProteoLens: a visual analytic tool for multi-scale database-driven biological network data mining

Background New systems biology studies require researchers to understand how interplay among myriads of biomolecular entities is orchestrated in order to achieve high-level cellular and physiological functions. Many software tools have been developed in the past decade to help researchers visually navigate large networks of biomolecular interactions with built-in template-based query capabilities. To further advance researchers' ability to interrogate global physiological states of cells through multi-scale visual network explorations, new visualization software tools still need to be developed to empower the analysis. A robust visual data analysis platform driven by database management systems to perform bi-directional data processing-to-visualizations with declarative querying capabilities is needed. Results We developed ProteoLens as a JAVA-based visual analytic software tool for creating, annotating and exploring multi-scale biological networks. It supports direct database connectivity to either Oracle or PostgreSQL database tables/views, on which SQL statements using both Data Definition Languages (DDL) and Data Manipulation languages (DML) may be specified. The robust query languages embedded directly within the visualization software help users to bring their network data into a visualization context for annotation and exploration. ProteoLens supports graph/network represented data in standard Graph Modeling Language (GML) formats, and this enables interoperation with a wide range of other visual layout tools. The architectural design of ProteoLens enables the de-coupling of complex network data visualization tasks into two distinct phases: 1) creating network data association rules, which are mapping rules between network node IDs or edge IDs and data attributes such as functional annotations, expression levels, scores, synonyms, descriptions etc; 2) applying network data association rules to build the network and perform the visual annotation of graph nodes and edges according to associated data values. We demonstrated the advantages of these new capabilities through three biological network visualization case studies: human disease association network, drug-target interaction network and protein-peptide mapping network. Conclusion The architectural design of ProteoLens makes it suitable for bioinformatics expert data analysts who are experienced with relational database management to perform large-scale integrated network visual explorations. ProteoLens is a promising visual analytic platform that will facilitate knowledge discoveries in future network and systems biology studies

Stress-resilient maize for climate-vulnerable ecologies in the Asian tropics

Most parts of the Asian tropics are hotspots of climate change effects and associated weather variabilities. One of the major challenges with climate change is the uncertainty and inter-annual variability in weather conditions as crops are frequently exposed to different weather extremes within the same season. Therefore, agricultural research must strive to develop new crop varieties with inbuilt resilience towards variable weather conditions rather than merely tolerance to individual stresses in a specific situation and/or at a specific crop stage. C4 crops are known for their wider adaptation to range of climatic conditions. However, recent climatic trends and associated variabilities seem to be challenging the threshold limit of wider adaptability of even C4 crops like maize. In collaboration with national programs and private sector partners in the region, CIMMYT-Asia maize program initiated research for development (R4D) projects largely focusing on saving achievable yields across range of variable environments by incorporating reasonable levels of tolerance/resistance to major abiotic and biotic stresses without compromising on grain yields under optimal growing conditions. By integrating novel breeding tools like - genomics, double haploid (DH) technology, precision phenotyping and reducing genotype × environment interaction effects, a new generation of maize germplasm with multiple stress tolerance that can grow well across variable weather conditions were developed. The new maize germplasm were targeted for stress-prone environments where maize is invariability exposed to a range of sub-optimal growing conditions, such as drought, heat, waterlogging and various virulent diseases. The overarching goal of the stress-resilient maize program has been to achieve yield potential with a downside risk reduction

Towards understanding global patterns of antimicrobial use and resistance in neonatal sepsis: insights from the NeoAMR network.

OBJECTIVE: To gain an understanding of the variation in available resources and clinical practices between neonatal units (NNUs) in the low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) setting to inform the design of an observational study on the burden of unit-level antimicrobial resistance (AMR). DESIGN: A web-based survey using a REDCap database was circulated to NNUs participating in the Neonatal AMR research network. The survey included questions about NNU funding structure, size, admission rates, access to supportive therapies, empirical antimicrobial guidelines and period prevalence of neonatal blood culture isolates and their resistance patterns. SETTING: 39 NNUs from 12 countries. PATIENTS: Any neonate admitted to one of the participating NNUs. INTERVENTIONS: This was an observational cohort study. RESULTS: The number of live births per unit ranged from 513 to 27 700 over the 12-month study period, with the number of neonatal cots ranging from 12 to 110. The proportion of preterm admissions <32 weeks ranged from 0% to 19%, and the majority of units (26/39, 66%) use Essential Medicines List 'Access' antimicrobials as their first-line treatment in neonatal sepsis. Cephalosporin resistance rates in Gram-negative isolates ranged from 26% to 84%, and carbapenem resistance rates ranged from 0% to 81%. Glycopeptide resistance rates among Gram-positive isolates ranged from 0% to 45%. CONCLUSION: AMR is already a significant issue in NNUs worldwide. The apparent burden of AMR in a given NNU in the LMIC setting can be influenced by a range of factors which will vary substantially between NNUs. These variations must be considered when designing interventions to improve neonatal mortality globally

Application of prolonged microdialysis sampling in carboplatin-treated cancer patients

Purpose: To better understand the mechanisms underlying (in)sensitivity of tumors to anticancer drugs, assessing intra-tumor drug pharmacokinetics (PKs) could be important. We explored the feasibility of microdialysis in tumor tissue for multiple days in a clinical setting, using carboplatin as model drug. Methods: Plasma and microdialysate samples from tumor and adipose normal tissues were collected up to 47 h after dosing in eight carboplatin-treated patients with an accessible (sub)cutaneous tumor. Results: Pharmacokinetics were evaluable in tumor tissue in 6/8 patients and in adipose normal tissue in 3/8 patients. Concentration-time curves of unbound platinum in both the tissues followed the pattern of the curves in plasma, with exposure ratios of tissue versus plasma ranging from 0.64 to 1.46. Conclusions: Microdialysis can be successfully employed in ambulant patients for multiple days, which enables one to study tissue PK of anticancer drugs in normal and malignant tissues in more detail