Role of components of microRNA machinery in carcinogenesis

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a broad class of non-coding RNAs nearly 21 nucleotides length, which play crucial functions in posttranscriptional gene regulation. These molecules are associated with many developmental and cellular processes in eukaryotic organisms. Current investigation has reported major factors contributing to miRNA biogenesis and has constituted basic principles of miRNA function. More recently, it was confirmed that various miRNAs are clearly implicated in human malignancies, such as lung, breast, ovarian, bladder, colon cancer and other kinds of carcinoma. In addition, dysregulation in the miRNA machinery elements such as Dicer, Drosha, DGCR8, Argonaut, and TRBP could be involved in the progress of many tumor types. The purpose of the current review was to compile growing information besides how miRNA biogenesis and gene silencing are modified to develop cancer

Operator inequalities of Jensen type

We present some generalized Jensen type operator inequalities involving sequences of self-adjoint operators. Among other things, we prove that if $f:[0,\infty) \to \mathbb{R}$ is a continuous convex function with $f(0)\leq 0$, then {equation*} \sum_{i=1}^{n} f(C_i) \leq f(\sum_{i=1}^{n}C_i)-\delta_f\sum_{i=1}^{n}\widetilde{C}_i\leq f(\sum_{i=1}^{n}C_i) {equation*} for all operators $C_i$ such that $0 \leq C_i\leq M \leq \sum_{i=1}^{n} C_i$ \ $(i=1,...,n)$ for some scalar $M\geq0$, where $\widetilde{C_i} = 1/2 - |\frac{C_i}{M}- 1/2 |$ and $\delta_f = f(0)+f(M) - 2 f(\frac{M}{2})$.Comment: 17 pages, to appear in Topological Algebra and its Applications (a newly established journal by Versita Ltd.)

Decentralized Data Fusion and Active Sensing with Mobile Sensors for Modeling and Predicting Spatiotemporal Traffic Phenomena

The problem of modeling and predicting spatiotemporal traffic phenomena over an urban road network is important to many traffic applications such as detecting and forecasting congestion hotspots. This paper presents a decentralized data fusion and active sensing (D2FAS) algorithm for mobile sensors to actively explore the road network to gather and assimilate the most informative data for predicting the traffic phenomenon. We analyze the time and communication complexity of D2FAS and demonstrate that it can scale well with a large number of observations and sensors. We provide a theoretical guarantee on its predictive performance to be equivalent to that of a sophisticated centralized sparse approximation for the Gaussian process (GP) model: The computation of such a sparse approximate GP model can thus be parallelized and distributed among the mobile sensors (in a Google-like MapReduce paradigm), thereby achieving efficient and scalable prediction. We also theoretically guarantee its active sensing performance that improves under various practical environmental conditions. Empirical evaluation on real-world urban road network data shows that our D2FAS algorithm is significantly more time-efficient and scalable than state-of-the-art centralized algorithms while achieving comparable predictive performance.Comment: 28th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2012), Extended version with proofs, 13 page

Cash-based interventions to enhance dignity in persistent humanitarian refugee crises: a system dynamics approach

Cash-based interventions (CBIs) as one form of aid have recently received substantial interest from humanitarian organizations in persistent humanitarian crises. This article proposes a system dynamics (SD) approach to study the CBIs' impact factors on all aspects of the beneficiaries' dignity in longstanding refugee crises, such as the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Reviewing the humanitarian management literature,we first develop a set of holistic causal loops to better understand the building boxes of refugees’ dignity and their interactions. Then, an SD model is proposed and calibrated by field data from humanitarian organizations. The result of CBI amount sensitivity and payment time periods shows that CBIs are significantly more effective in diminishing child labor rates and to improve in health and accommodation service reception by the refugees in short terms, but to be as much effective in longer terms, humanitarian organizations must be more directly contribute to service capacity-building activities that are strategies by the hosting governments and supported by the international bodies, such as EU and UN.Otherwise, long-term or enhanced CBI supports can only lead to accelerated service capacity saturation and thus put extra pressure on already strained services and cause tensions between hosting and refugee communities

Uses of cetyl cacaoateTM in lipstick development: sensory evaluation

The use of Cetyl CacaoateTM in lipstick formulation was evaluated by varying the porpotion of waxes mixture among carnauba wax, jojoba ester and Cetyl CacaoateTM based on Simplex centroid {3,3} experimental design. Sensory evaluation was carried out by nine trained panels using quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) method. The attributes agreed in the sensory languages development session were easy to apply, off flavor, hardness, texture, moist, appearance on lip after use, glossy, oily, comfortability after use, and long lasting. Results showed that Cetyl CacaoateTM increased the score of easy to apply but decreased the score for hardness. Cetyl CacaoateTM in the lipstick formulation increased the oily feels whereas carnauba wax gave less oily effect. No off flavor was detected for all the samples. However, the panels had different perception on comfortability after use, and long lasting. The ratio of cosmetic waxes in lipstick formulation which gave scores close to reference sample were 1/2 Cetyl CacaoateTM : 1/2 jojoba ester and 2/3 Cetyl CacaoateTM : 1/6 jojoba ester : 1/6 lilin carnauba

MyAirCoach: The use of home-monitoring and mHealth systems to predict deterioration in asthma control and the occurrence of asthma exacerbations; Study protocol of an observational study

© Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. Introduction Asthma is a variable lung condition whereby patients experience periods of controlled and uncontrolled asthma symptoms. Patients who experience prolonged periods of uncontrolled asthma have a higher incidence of exacerbations and increased morbidity and mortality rates. The ability to determine and to predict levels of asthma control and the occurrence of exacerbations is crucial in asthma management. Therefore, we aimed to determine to what extent physiological, behavioural and environmental data, obtained by mobile healthcare (mHealth) and home-monitoring sensors, as well as patient characteristics, can be used to predict episodes of uncontrolled asthma and the onset of asthma exacerbations. Methods and analysis In an 1-year observational study, patients will be provided with mHealth and home-monitoring systems to record daily measurements for the first-month (phase I) and weekly measurements during a follow-up period of 11 months (phase II). Our study population consists of 150 patients, aged ≥18 years, with a clinician's diagnosis of asthma, currently on controller medication, with uncontrolled asthma and/or minimally one exacerbation in the past 12 months. They will be enrolled over three participating centres, including Leiden, London and Manchester. Our main outcomes are the association between physiological, behavioural and environmental data and (1) the loss of asthma control and (2) the occurrence of asthma exacerbations. Ethics This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands and by the NHS ethics service in the UK. Trial registration number NCT02774772

Domain Requirements and Sequence Specificity of DNA Binding for the Forkhead Transcription Factor FOXP3

The forkhead, winged-helix transcription factor FOXP3 is preferentially expressed in T regulatory (Treg) cells and is critical for their immunosuppressive function. Mutations that abolish FOXP3 function lead to systemic autoimmunity in mice and humans. However, the manner by which FOXP3 recognizes cognate DNA elements is unclear. Here we identify an in vitro optimized DNA sequence to assess FOXP3 DNA binding by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). The optimized sequence contains two tandem copies of a core DNA element resembling, but not identical to, the canonical forkhead (FKH) binding element. The tandem nature of this optimized FOXP3-binding oligonucleotide suggests a requirement for multimerization, and EMSA experiments confirm that both the DNA-binding FKH domain and an intact leucine-zipper domain, which mediates homo-multimerization of FOXP3, are required for DNA binding. These results establish a practical framework for understanding the molecular basis by which FOXP3 regulates gene transcription and programs Treg suppressive function