In Vitro Chemosensitivity Using the Histoculture Drug Response Assay in Human Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

The choice of chemotherapeutic drugs to treat patients with epithelial ovarian cancer has not depended on individual patient characteristics. We have investigated the correlation between in vitro chemosensitivity, as determined by the histoculture drug response assay (HDRA), and clinical responses in epithelial ovarian cancer. Fresh tissue samples were obtained from 79 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. The sensitivity of these samples to 11 chemotherapeutic agents was tested using the HDRA method according to established methods, and we analyzed the results retrospectively. HDRA showed that they were more chemosensitive to carboplatin, topotecan and belotecan, with inhibition rates of 49.2%, 44.7%, and 39.7%, respectively, than to cisplatin, the traditional drug of choice in epithelial ovarian cancer. Among the 37 patients with FIGO stage Ⅲ/Ⅳ serous adenocarcinoma who were receiving carboplatin combined with paclitaxel, those with carboplatin-sensitive samples on HDRA had a significantly longer median disease-free interval than patients with carboplatin- resistant samples (23.2 vs. 13.8 months, p＜0.05), but median overall survival did not differ significantly (60.4 vs. 37.3 months, p＝0.621). In conclusion, this study indicates that HDRA could provide useful information for designing individual treatment strategies in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer

Dispersion of Vascular Plant in An-do, Korea

AbstractThe vascular plants observed in the area were composed of a total of 342 taxa; 104 families, 239 genus, 309 species, 30 varieties, 2 forms and 1 sub-species. The endangered species found in the area were Glehnia littoralis Fr. Schm. and Milletia japonica (Siebold & Zucc.) A.Gray. The five endemic plants were found growing in the area like Carpinus coreana Nakai., Celtis choseniana Nakai, Clematis trichotoma, Spiraea prunifolia for. simpliciflora and Weigela subsessilis L.H.Bailey. Specialized plants of Geumodo were a total of 45 species; 34 taxa in Grade I, 10 taxa in Grade III, and 1 taxon in Grade V. Glehnia littoralis Fr. Schm. and Milletia japonica (Siebold & Zucc.) A.Gray confirmed in this study formed a colony alongside the coast and mountain paths. Currently, the construction to build water supply and sewer systems destroyed part of the colony. Therefore, in the long-term perspective, the conservation plan such as comprehensive research and monitoring on the ecosystem shall be established to protect indeciduous plants in the warm temperate zone

In Vitro Scaffold Construction for a Bio-artificial Liver

The main focus of this investigation is to design a scaffold that will accommodate a growing Bio-Artificial Liver (BAL) with oxygen. The two design objectives are to find the maximum length and the distance between the artificial capillaries of the scaffold to provide adequate oxygen supply above 1.98 x 10-19 g/um3 to prevent hypoxia to the growing liver tissues. By utilizing industrial modeling software, FIDAP and GAMBIT, a model of a single capillary with liver tissue attached directly was constructed to simulate the oxygen delivery by means of diffusion and convection from the capillary wall to the tissue and the uptake by metabolism. From the results obtained, it was concluded that diffusion, not convection of the oxygen flow within the capillary was the dominant process of oxygen transport throughout the tissue. The maximum distance traveled into the tissue with capillary length of 60 ?m was 147 ?m from the capillary at the inlet side of the tissue while diffusion at the outlet tissue was at a modest 108 ?m. These values are unacceptable for the feasible construction of oxygen transport system solely based on diffusion. Thus, this investigation concludes that novel methods of greater complexity are needed to construct a more efficient and economically applicable oxygen delivery system for the mass production of bio-organs

Renormalization group theory for percolation in time-varying networks

Motivated by multi-hop communication in unreliable wireless networks, we present a percolation theory for time-varying networks. We develop a renormalization group theory for a prototypical network on a regular grid, where individual links switch stochastically between active and inactive states. The question whether a given source node can communicate with a destination node along paths of active links is equivalent to a percolation problem. Our theory maps the temporal existence of multi-hop paths on an effective two-state Markov process. We show analytically how this Markov process converges towards a memory-less Bernoulli process as the hop distance between source and destination node increases. Our work extends classical percolation theory to the dynamic case and elucidates temporal correlations of message losses. Quantification of temporal correlations has implications for the design of wireless communication and control protocols, e.g. in cyber-physical systems such as self-organized swarms of drones or smart traffic networks.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Human papillomavirus 16/18 AS04-adjuvanted cervical cancer vaccine: immunogenicity and safety in 15-25 years old healthy Korean women

OBJECTIVE: The study assessed the immunogenicity and safety of human papillomavirus (HPV)-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted cervical cancer vaccine in healthy Korean women aged 15-25 years. METHODS: Phase IIIB, double-blind, randomised (2:1), multi-centre trial was conducted in Korea from June 2007 to March 2008. The study enrolled 225 women in the HPV (N=149) and placebo (N=76) groups who received three doses of HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine or placebo (aluminium hydroxide) administered intramuscularly at 0, 1, and 6 months and were followed until one month post-dose 3. Serum samples were collected pre-vaccination and one month post-dose 3. Safety and reactogenicity data were collected throughout. RESULTS: In this trial, 208 women completed the study (141 in HPV group; 67 in placebo group). At month 7, all initially seronegative women had seroconverted for HPV-16 and HPV-18 antibodies with anti-HPV-16 and anti-HPV-18 geometric mean titres of 9,351.4 El.U/mL (95% CI, 8,145.5 to 10,735.8) and 4204.1 El.U/mL (95% CI, 3,626.5 to 4,873.6), respectively. Initially seropositive women showed similar increase in geometric mean titre levels. Compliance to the three dose vaccination course was 95.3% in HPV and 89.5% in placebo group. Solicited local (pain) and general (fatigue, myalgia or headache) symptoms were commonly reported in both groups. Three serious adverse events were reported (two in HPV group; one in placebo group), all unrelated to vaccination by the investigator; all recovered. CONCLUSION: The HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine was highly immunogenic with a clinically acceptable safety profile in Korean women. This study was in line with previous global studies in Europe, North America, and Brazil. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT 00485732.).ope

Rhodium-oxide-coated indium tin oxide for enhancement of hole injection in organic light emitting diodes

The authors report the enhancement of hole injection using an RhOx layer between indium tin oxide anodes and 4, 4??? -bis[N-(1-naphtyl)- N -phenyl-amino]biphenyl in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The operation voltage of OLEDs at 700 cdm2 decreased from 13 to 10 V as the Rh layer changed to RhOx by surface treatment using O2 plasma. Synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy results showed that the work function increased by 0.2 eV as the Rh layer transformed into RhOx. Thus, the hole injection energy barrier was lowered, reducing the turn-on voltage and increasing the quantum efficiency of OLEDs.open281

An artificial neural-network approach to identify motor hotspot for upper-limb based on electroencephalography: a proof-of-concept study

Abstract Background To apply transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) to the motor cortex, motor hotspots are generally identified using motor evoked potentials by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The objective of this study is to validate the feasibility of a novel electroencephalography (EEG)-based motor-hotspot-identification approach using a machine learning technique as a potential alternative to TMS. Methods EEG data were measured using 63 channels from thirty subjects as they performed a simple finger tapping task. Power spectral densities of the EEG data were extracted from six frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma, and full) and were independently used to train and test an artificial neural network for motor hotspot identification. The 3D coordinate information of individual motor hotspots identified by TMS were quantitatively compared with those estimated by our EEG-based motor-hotspot-identification approach to assess its feasibility. Results The minimum mean error distance between the motor hotspot locations identified by TMS and our proposed motor-hotspot-identification approach was 0.22 ± 0.03cm, demonstrating the proof-of-concept of our proposed EEG-based approach. A mean error distance of 1.32 ± 0.15cm was measured when using only nine channels attached to the middle of the motor cortex, showing the possibility of practically using the proposed motor-hotspot-identification approach based on a relatively small number of EEG channels. Conclusion We demonstrated the feasibility of our novel EEG-based motor-hotspot-identification method. It is expected that our approach can be used as an alternative to TMS for motor hotspot identification. In particular, its usability would significantly increase when using a recently developed portable tES device integrated with an EEG device