Molecular Pathogenesis of Gastric Adenocarcinoma

The incidence and mortality of gastric cancer (GC) rank top five and top three, respectively, among cancers around the world. It is an intricate malignancy caused by the reciprocity of intrinsically genetic, environmental, and host-related elements. The silent property, advanced clinical characterization, and potential heterogeneity have made GC a thorny disease with a high death rate. The increasing knowledge of the abundant genetic abnormalities regarding GC will definitely elongate the patients’ survival. Scientists have been working hard to discover the myths beneath gastric tumorigenesis: novel biomarkers have been established, and cell transduction cascades have been well described. The study grouping GC into four molecular subtypes by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) broadens our horizon of GC etiologies. Knowledge regarding to the sophisticated networks in tumor microenvironment also bring new insights into the mechanisms assist GC development. In the future, people will strive for translating more research achievements into clinical utility. Successful translational medicine will lead to new methods for early GC diagnosis and precise medical strategies for individuals

Evidence for hyperacute rejection of human liver grafts: The case of the canary kidneys

Sequential liver and kidney transplantation from the same donor was performed in 2 patients. The kidney in Patient 1, which was transplanted after the liver, was hyperacutely rejected and removed 6 hours later. The first liver as well as another liver transplanted 3 days later developed widespread hemorrhagic necrosis. Although the cytotoxic crossmatch of preoperative recipient serum with both donors was negative, patchy widespread IgM and C(1q) deposits were found in all 3 organs. In Patient 2, who had a strongly positive cytotoxic crossmatch with his donor, the liver suffered a massive but reversible injury, while the kidney never functioned. Both patients developed a coagulopathy a few minutes after liver revascularization. The kidneys in these cases had served like the canaries which miners once used to detect a hostile environment and their presence made more understandable how an indolent version of hyperacute rejection of the liver can take place

Role of sea ice on satellite-observed chlorophyll-a concentration variations during spring bloom in the East/Japan sea

The relationship between the spring bloom along the Primorye coast and the sea ice of the Tatarskiy Strait in the northern region of the East/Japan Sea, a semi-enclosed marginal sea in the North Pacific, was investigated using the ten-year SeaWiFS chlorophyll-a concentration data and DMSP/SSMI sea ice concentration data from 1998 to 2007. Year-to-year variations in the chlorophyll-a concentrations in the spring were positively correlated with those of the sea ice concentrations in the Tatarskiy Strait in the previous winter with a correlation coefficient of 0.77. Abrupt increases in nutrients, essential for the spring bloom in the upper ocean during spring, were supplied from sea ice-melted waters. Time series of vertical distributions of the nutrients indicated that phosphate concentrations were extremely elevated in the upper ocean (less than 100 m) without any connection to high concentrations in the deep waters below. The water mass from sea ice provided preferable conditions for the spring bloom through changes in the vertical stratification structure of the water columns. Along-coast ratios of stability parameters between two neighboring months clearly showed the rapid progression of the generation of a shallow pycnocline due to fresh water originating from sea ice. This study addressed the importance of the physical environment for biogeochemical processes in semi-enclosed marginal seas affected by local sea ice. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.1166Ysciescopu

Managing Small Language Programs in Changing Times

Note: Editor Dennis Looney provided permission via email 13 Nov 2018 to deposit the published version in the KU ScholarWorks digital repository. Correspondence on file with corresponding author Marc L. Greenberg.The discussion excerpts part of a plenary discussion, Small Programs in Varied Contexts: A Roundtable, that took place during the 2016 ADFL Summer Seminar West on 3 June at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. The discussion sought perspectives from leaders of programs from a variety of institutions, public and private, including a community college, liberal arts colleges, and research universities distributed throughout the United States. The panelists included Carol Reitan, a French specialist and former chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the City College of San Francisco; Sahie Kang, professor of Korean and director of the School of Korean at Middlebury College; Mahmoud Abdalla, professor of Arabic and director of the Arabic Language School at Middlebury College; Omar Ka, a specialist in French, Wolof, and African linguistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a member of the ADFL Executive Committee; Zsuzsanna Abrams, a specialist in German and applied linguistics and former department chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Colleen Ryan, professor of Italian at Indiana University, Bloomington. The context of the discussion is what might have been referred to in another period as a crisis in higher education but what instead has become the new normal: shrinking budgets; pressure to raise efficiency and provide accountability metrics; competition for students anxious about rising tuition, debt, and postgraduate employment; and increased competition to gain student-credit- hour production and majors to generate tuition revenue. All this presents itself on the background of the dissonance between the growing real-world need for language and intercultural competence, on the one hand, and student ambivalence to foreign language study, on the other. The discussion below proceeds from the questions I posed to the panel: “What has worked for you in your program? What creative strategies might you recommend to other chairs or faculty members managing small programs?

Thioflavin dye degradation by using magnetic nanoparticles augmented PolyvinylideneFlouride (PVDF) microcapsules / Mohamed Syazwan Osman ... [et al.]

Microcapsule has remarkable advantages in engineering application for pollutants removal and biomedical field for transportation. It has obviously drawn attention from the research community. Undeniably, it does have shortages but the key is to balance both the advantages and limitations to enhance microcapsule benefits. In environmental engineering applications, microcapsules could serve as encapsulation agents of nanoparticles (NPs) to drastically reduce the risk associated to nano-toxicity when it is indirect contact with surroundings. In addition, this technique could improve the physical contact and promote catalytic degradations of pollutants while exhibit better recyclability without loss of activity after multiple catalytic degradation cycles. Even though magnetic responsiveness of capsules can be used for ease of separation, one of the constraints is that the encapsulated particles will restrict the performance of capsules materials in pollutants removal. However, encapsulated magnetite particles interact with polymeric matrix chains and thus tying up the chains as knot which can restrict the expansions of whole capsules. Some-times, capsules shell is designated to remove certain target contaminants and so does for encapsulated particles. This may possibly reduce or increase the removal performance of integrated capsules which depends on the target contaminants and the underlying mechanism involved in pollutant removal. Hence, this work primarily focuses on the synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles augmented microcapsule with dual functionalities namely adsorptive and catalytic activities using membrane material, PolyvinylideneFlouride (PVDF). Feasibility study using Thioflavin dye as the representable model system for degradation will be explored

Challenges of regulatory theory and practice : a study of hawker control in Hong Kong

published_or_final_versionPolitics and Public AdministrationMasterMaster of Public Administratio

Humidity Versus Photo-Stability of Metal Halide Perovskite Films in a Polymer Matrix

Despite the high efficiency of over 21% reported for emerging thin film perovskite solar cells, one of the key issues prior to their commercial deployment is to attain their long term stability under ambient and outdoor conditions. The instability in perovskite is widely conceived to be humidity induced due to the water solubility of its initial precursors, which leads to decomposition of the perovskite crystal structure; however, we note that humidity alone is not the major degradation factor and it is rather the photon dose in combination with humidity exposure that triggers the instability. In our experiment, which is designed to decouple the effect of humidity and light on perovskite degradation, we investigate the shelf-lifetime of CH3NH3PbI3 films in the dark and under illumination under high humidity conditions (Rel. H. > 70%). We note minor degradation in perovskite films stored in a humid dark environment whereas upon exposure to light, the films undergo drastic degradation, primarily owing to the reactive TiO2/perovskite interface and also the surface defects of TiO2. To enhance its air-stability, we incorporate CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite in a polymer (poly-vinylpyrrolidone, PVP) matrix which retained its optical and structural characteristics in the dark for ∼2000 h and ∼800 h in room light soaking, significantly higher than a pristine perovskite film, which degraded completely in 600 h in the dark and in less than 100 h when exposed to light. We attribute the superior stability of PVP incorporated perovskite films to the improved structural stability of CH3NH3PbI3 and also to the improved TiO2/perovskite interface upon incorporating a polymer matrix. Charge injection from the polymer embedded perovskite films has also been confirmed by fabricating solar cells using them, thereby providing a promising future research pathway for stable and efficient perovskite solar cells

Soft Spectrum in Yukawa-Gauge Mediation

We introduce a model independent parametrization for a subclass of gauge mediated theories, which we refer to as Yukawa-gauge mediation. Within this formalism we study the resulting soft masses in the visible spectrum. We find general expressions for the gaugino and scalar masses. Under generic conditions, the gaugino mass is screened, vanishing at first order in the SUSY breaking scale.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures; v2: minor corrections, published versio