183 research outputs found
It Could Not Be Seen Because It Could Not Be Believed on June 30, 2013
Nineteen Prescott Fire Department, Granite Mountain Hot Shot
(GMHS) wildland firefighters (WF) perished in Arizona in June 2013 Yarnell Hill
Fire, an inexplicable wildland fire disaster. In complex wildland fires, sudden,
dynamic changes in human factors and fire conditions can occur, thus mistakes can
be unfortunately fatal. Individual and organizational faults regarding the predictable,
puzzling, human failures that will result in future WF deaths are
addressed. The GMHS were individually, then collectively fixated with abandoning
their Safety Zone to reengage, committing themselves at the worst possible
time, to relocate to another Safety Zone - a form of collective tunnel vision. Our
goal is to provoke meaningful discussion toward improved wildland firefighter
safety with practical solutions derived from a long-established wildland firefighter
expertise/performance in a fatality-prone profession. Wildfire fatalities are
unavoidable, hence these proposals, applied to ongoing training, can significantly
contribute to other well-thought-out and validated measures to reduce them
Interleukin-10 inhibits tumor metastasis through an NK-cell dependent mechanism
Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is a recently described pleiotropic cytokine secreted mainly by type 2 helper T cells. Previous studies have shown that IL-10 suppresses cytokine expression by natural killer (NK) and type 1 T cells, thus down-regulating cell-mediated immunity and stimulating humoral responses. We here report that injected IL-10 protein is an efficient inhibitor of tumor metastasis in experimental (B16-F10) and spontaneous (M27 and Lox human melanoma) metastasis models in vivo at doses that do not have toxic effects on normal or cancer cells. Histological characterization after IL-10 treatment confirmed the absence of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells and macrophages at the sites of tumor growth, but abundant NK cells were localized at these sites. This unexpected finding was confirmed by showing that IL-10 inhibits most B16-F10 and Lox metastases in mice deficient in T or B cells (SCID and nu/nu mice), but not in those deficient in NK cells (beige mice or NK cell-depleted mice). However, IL-10 downregulation of pro-inflammatory cytokine production and/or recruitment of additional effector cells may also be involved in the anti-tumor effect at higher local concentrations of IL-10, since transfected B16 tumor cells expressing high amounts of IL-10 were rejected by normal, nu/nu, or SCID mice at the primary tumor stage, and there was still a 33% inhibition of tumor metastasis in beige mice
Obscurin modulates the assembly and organization of sarcomeres and the sarcoplasmic reticulum
Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154636/1/fsb2fj065761com.pd
Formal matched asymptotics for degenerate Ricci flow neckpinches
Gu and Zhu have shown that Type-II Ricci flow singularities develop from
nongeneric rotationally symmetric Riemannian metrics on , for all . In this paper, we describe and provide plausibility arguments for a
detailed asymptotic profile and rate of curvature blow-up that we predict such
solutions exhibit
Breath analysis for early detection of malignant pleural mesothelioma: Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) determination and possible biochemical pathways
Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare neoplasm, mainly caused by asbestos exposure, with a high mortality rate. The management of patients with MPM is controversial due to a long latency period between exposure and diagnosis and because of non-specific symptoms generally appearing at advanced stage of the disease. Breath analysis, aimed at the identification of diagnostic Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) pattern in exhaled breath, is believed to improve early detection of MPM. Therefore, in this study, breath samples from 14 MPM patients and 20 healthy controls (HC) were collected and analyzed by Thermal Desorption-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC/MS). Nonparametric test allowed to identify the most weighting variables to discriminate between MPM and HC breath samples and multivariate statistics were applied. Considering that MPM is an aggressive neoplasm leading to a late diagnosis and thus the recruitment of patients is very difficult, a promising data mining approach was developed and validated in order to discriminate between MPM patients and healthy controls, even if no large population data are available. Three different machine learning algorithms were applied to perform the classification task with a leave-one-out cross-validation approach, leading to remarkable results (Area Under Curve AUC = 93%). Ten VOCs, such as ketones, alkanes and methylate derivates, as well as hydrocarbons, were able to discriminate between MPM patients and healthy controls and for each compound which resulted diagnostic for MPM, the metabolic pathway was studied in order to identify the link between VOC and the neoplasm. Moreover, five breath samples from asymptomatic asbestos-exposed persons (AEx) were exploratively analyzed, processed and tested by the validated statistical method as blinded samples in order to evaluate the performance for the early recognition of patients affected by MPM among asbestos-exposed persons. Good agreement was found between the information obtained by gold-standard diagnostic methods such as computed tomography CT and model output
SOME ABSTRACT PROPERTIES OF SEMIGROUPS APPEARING IN SUPERCONFORMAL THEORIES
A new type of semigroups which appears while dealing with
superconformal symmetry in superstring theories is considered. The ideal series
having unusual abstract properties is constructed. Various idealisers are
introduced and studied. The ideal quasicharacter is defined. Green's relations
are found and their connection with the ideal quasicharacter is established.Comment: 11 page
Metastable de Sitter vacua in N=2 to N=1 truncated supergravity
We study the possibility of achieving metastable de Sitter vacua in general
N=2 to N=1 truncated supergravities without vector multiplets, and compare with
the situations arising in N=2 theories with only hypermultiplets and N=1
theories with only chiral multiplets. In N=2 theories based on a quaternionic
manifold and a graviphoton gauging, de Sitter vacua are necessarily unstable,
as a result of the peculiar properties of the geometry. In N=1 theories based
on a Kahler manifold and a superpotential, de Sitter vacua can instead be
metastable provided the geometry satisfies some constraint and the
superpotential can be freely adjusted. In N=2 to N=1 truncations, the crucial
requirement is then that the tachyon of the mother theory be projected out from
the daughter theory, so that the original unstable vacuum is projected to a
metastable vacuum. We study the circumstances under which this may happen and
derive general constraints for metastability on the geometry and the gauging.
We then study in full detail the simplest case of quaternionic manifolds of
dimension four with at least one isometry, for which there exists a general
parametrization, and study two types of truncations defining Kahler
submanifolds of dimension two. As an application, we finally discuss the case
of the universal hypermultiplet of N=2 superstrings and its truncations to the
dilaton chiral multiplet of N=1 superstrings. We argue that de Sitter vacua in
such theories are necessarily unstable in weakly coupled situations, while they
can in principle be metastable in strongly coupled regimes.Comment: 40 pages, no figure
Informed consent and Italian physicians: change course or abandon shipâfrom formal authorization to a culture of sharing
"Who am I? Where am I?" Experiences of married young women in a slum in Islamabad, Pakistan
Background: According to the cultural tradition in Pakistan, young women belonging to poor families should
marry shortly after menarche. However, existing data show that young people, especially women, are not
prepared for sexual life and have poor knowledge about sexuality and reproductive health. Many of the
difficulties young women experience are related to beliefs and expectations in the society related to their
reproductive roles making them more vulnerable to reproductive ill health.
Aim: The study explores the preparedness of young women for married life (communicating with spouse,
initiation of sexual activity and child bearing) and ability to negotiate in marriage with spouse on number of
children to have and on contraceptive use.
Methods: In order to obtain an in-depth understanding of young womenâs lives qualitative and quantitative
approaches were used. Three qualitative studies using narrative and content analysis were carried out in a slum
setting in the outskirts of Islamabad city in Pakistan. Married young women (I), unmarried young women (II) and
parents (III) were selected with the help of a community worker. Young married women were interviewed three
times at different occasions. Narrative structuring was used to explore how the participants represented their
situation. In addition twenty qualitative interviews and three focus group discussions were conducted with young
unmarried women (II). Twenty-five parents participated in four gender specific focus group discussions (III).
Content analysis was used for analysis of study II and III. For the quantitative study (IV), a subset of 1803
married young women aged 15-24 years was drawn from a nationally representative adolescent and youth survey
conducted in Pakistan in 2001-2002 by the Population Council. Regression models were used for analysing the
following outcomes: reported agreement with spouse on the number of children to have, current use of
contraceptives, intention to use contraceptives in the future and the time elapsed between marriage and the first
contraceptive use. Key co-variates of interest were variables that measure the involvement of young women in
their marriage as having a say in selection of spouse, mobility outside the household, social role and decision
making in their homes.
Results: The main theme in all the qualitative studies was âsocialisation of young women into submissivenessâ.
For the married young women two themes were identified a) submissive-accepting and
b) submissive-victims. The married young women who belonged to the accepting group lived under compromised
conditions but described themselves as satisfied with their situation. Women belonging to the victimized group
experienced physical and verbal abuse for their inability to cope with the duties of a wife, caretaker of the home
and bearer of children. Their situation was compounded by the power dynamics within the household (I). For the
unmarried young women the main theme identified was security lies in obedience. The two sub-themes
contributing to the main theme were socialisation into submissiveness and transition into adulthood in silence
(II). The theme and the sub-themes illustrate the situation of young women in a poor setting in Pakistan. The main
theme identified in the study with the parents was âGood parentsâ strive to raise âinnocent daughtersâ. The three
sub-themes contributing to the main theme were: a daughter - a responsibility and a burden, social and sexual
innocence and parentsâ roles in the preparation for marriage. The theme and the sub-themes illustrate how the
parents saw themselves as responsible for raising âinnocent daughtersâ and arranging good marriages (III). The
quantitative study on the married young women showed that having a say in the selection of spouse at the time of
marriage was significantly associated with agreeing with spouse over the number of children to have, intention to
use contraceptives and the time between marriage and first contraceptive use. These relationships existed after
controlling for education, socioeconomic status, mobility outside of house and decision making in the home (IV).
Conclusions: In a culture of silence around sexuality, young womenâs socialisation into submissiveness lays the
foundation for the lack of control over their future reproductive health (I and II). The parents realised, though, that
bringing up daughters for marriage requires not only obedience, but also building confidence and knowledge
during their childhood (III). Women who had decision making freedom in their parental home carried this ability
with them into marriage in their new home and were better able to negotiate about their fertility (IV). Knowledge
about reproductive life could prepare young women better for the future life and give them more control of their
fertility. Innovative interventions targeting women need to challenge current societal norms of womanhood to
promote the upbringing of confident and knowledgeable young women
Allylic Oxidation of Alkenes Catalyzed by a CopperâAluminum Mixed Oxide
A strategy for the allylic oxidation of cyclic alkenes with a copperâaluminum mixed oxide as catalyst is presented. The reaction involves the treatment of an alkene with a carboxylic acid employing tert-butyl hydroperoxide as the oxidant. In all cases, the corresponding allylic esters are obtained. When L-proline is employed, the allylic alcohol or ketone is obtained. The oxidation of cyclohexene and valencene has been optimized by design of experiments (DoE) statistical methodology
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