Krüppel-like factor 8 (KLF8) is expressed in gliomas of different WHO grades and is essential for tumor cell proliferation.

Krüppel-like factor 8 (KLF8) has only recently been identified to be involved in tumor cell proliferation and invasion of several different tumor entities like renal cell carcinoma, hepatocellular carcinoma and breast cancer. In the present study, we show for the first time the expression of KLF8 in gliomas of different WHO grades and its functional impact on glioma cell proliferation. In order to get information about KLF8-mRNA regulation qPCR was performed and did not reveal any significant difference in samples (n = 10 each) of non-neoplastic brain (NNB), low-grade gliomas (LGG, WHO°II) and glioblastomas (GBM, WHO°IV). Immunohistochemistry of tissue samples (n = 7 LGG, 11 AA and 12 GBM) did not show any significant difference in the fraction of KLF8-immunopositive cells of all analyzed cells in LGG (87%), AA (80%) or GBM (89%). Tissue samples from cerebral breast cancer metastasis, meningiomas but also non-neoplastic brain demonstrated comparable relative cell counts as well. Moreover, there was no correlation between KLF8 expression and the expression pattern of the assumed proliferation marker Ki67, which showed high variability between different tumor grade (9% (LGG), 6% (AA) and 15% (GBM) of Ki67-immunopositive cells). Densitometric analysis of Western blotting revealed that the relative amount of KLF8-protein did also not differ between the highly aggressive and proliferative GBM (1.05) compared to LGG (0.93; p<0.05, studens t-test). As demonstrated for some other non-glial cancer entities, KLF8-knockdown by shRNA in U87-MG cells confirmed its functional relevance, leading to an almost complete loss of tumor cell proliferation. Selective blocking of KLF8 might represent a novel anti-proliferative treatment strategy for malignant gliomas. Yet, its simultaneous expression in non-proliferating tissues could hamper this approach

Preoperative short-course radiotherapy versus combined radiochemotherapy in locally advanced rectal cancer: a multi-centre prospectively randomised study of the Berlin Cancer Society

BACKGROUND: The additional use of radiotherapy has changed the treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) dramatically. But a major achievement has been the development of total mesorectal excision (TME) as a surgical standard and the recognition that the surgeon is the predominant prognostic factor. The benefit of preoperative hypofractionated radiotherapy (SCRT; five fractions each of 5 Gy), initially established by the Swedish Rectal Cancer Trial, has been demonstrated in conjunction with TME by the Dutch Colorectal Cancer Group. The concept of combined neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy (conventional radiation of about 50 Gy with chemotherapy) has not been compared over surgery alone with TME. However, the German Rectal Cancer Study Group recently demonstrated that preoperative radiochemotherapy (RCT) was better than postoperative radiochemotherapy in terms of local control. METHODS: Patients with histological proven rectal cancer staged T2N+ or T3 are randomized to receive either SCRT (25 Gy in five fractions of 5 Gy) plus TME-surgery within 5 days or RCT (50.4 Gy in 28 fractions of 1.8 Gy, continuous infusion 5-fluorouracil) plus TME-surgery 4-6 weeks later. All patients receive adjuvant chemotherapy (12 weeks continuous infusional 5-FU) and are followed up for 5 years. TME-quality is independently documented by the surgeon and the pathologist. Hypothesis of the study is that RCT is superior to SCRT in terms of local recurrence after five years. Secondary endpoints are overall survival, disease-free survival, complete resection rate (R0 resection), rate of sphincter saving resection, acute and late toxicity (radiation related side effects), and quality of life (including long term bowel function). DISCUSSION: Similar long-term survival, local control and late morbidity have been reported for both concepts of preoperative therapy in non-comparative studies. In addition to other ongoing (and recently published) comparative trials we include a larger number of patients for adequate power, apply quality-controlled TME and try to avoid the adjuvant treatment bias by mandatory adjuvant chemotherapy in both groups. Further more, stratification of the initially planned surgical procedure and sphincter-preservation will generate valid evidence whether RCT will allow a less aggressive (sphincter saving) surgical approach

Observation of an Excited Bc+ State

Using pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 8.5 fb-1 recorded by the LHCb experiment at center-of-mass energies of s=7, 8, and 13 TeV, the observation of an excited Bc+ state in the Bc+π+π- invariant-mass spectrum is reported. The observed peak has a mass of 6841.2±0.6(stat)±0.1(syst)±0.8(Bc+) MeV/c2, where the last uncertainty is due to the limited knowledge of the Bc+ mass. It is consistent with expectations of the Bc∗(2S31)+ state reconstructed without the low-energy photon from the Bc∗(1S31)+→Bc+γ decay following Bc∗(2S31)+→Bc∗(1S31)+π+π-. A second state is seen with a global (local) statistical significance of 2.2σ (3.2σ) and a mass of 6872.1±1.3(stat)±0.1(syst)±0.8(Bc+) MeV/c2, and is consistent with the Bc(2S10)+ state. These mass measurements are the most precise to date

Adsorption of hydroxamate siderophores and EDTA on goethite in the presence of the surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate

Siderophore-promoted iron acquisition by microorganisms usually occurs in the presence of other organic molecules, including biosurfactants. We have investigated the influence of the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) on the adsorption of the siderophores DFOB (cationic) and DFOD (neutral) and the ligand EDTA (anionic) onto goethite (α-FeOOH) at pH 6. We also studied the adsorption of the corresponding 1:1 Fe(III)-ligand complexes, which are products of the dissolution process. Adsorption of the two free siderophores increased in a similar fashion with increasing SDS concentration, despite their difference in molecule charge. In contrast, SDS had little effect on the adsorption of EDTA. Adsorption of the Fe-DFOB and Fe-DFOD complexes also increased with increasing SDS concentrations, while adsorption of Fe-EDTA decreased. Our results suggest that hydrophobic interactions between adsorbed surfactants and siderophores are more important than electrostatic interactions. However, for strongly hydrophilic molecules, such as EDTA and its iron complex, the influence of SDS on their adsorption seems to depend on their tendency to form inner-sphere or outer-sphere surface complexes. Our results demonstrate that surfactants have a strong influence on the adsorption of siderophores to Fe oxides, which has important implications for siderophore-promoted dissolution of iron oxides and biological iron acquisition

Becoming good in Africa: A critical appraisal of Stanley Hauerwas’ ecclesial ethic in the sub-Saharan context

The present article examines the appropriateness of Stanley Hauerwas� ecclesial ethic for the sub-Saharan African churches. Thus, it consists in a Christian ethical assessment of the metaethical foundational categories of his ecclesial ethic. In brief, his proposal is eclectic and pluri-disciplinarily applicable to the churches of various denominations. It reflects the marks of the Aristotelian ethical tradition endorsed by Thomas Aquinas and recovered by several communitarian philosophers. It also includes some discernible ecclesio-centric and postliberal theological accents. The promising insights of this proposal include: (1) the necessity to ordain the church�s worship, polity and its entire way of life to the spiritual and moral formation of church members; (2) the stress on Christian virtuous life, identity formation, witness and non-conformism in social ethics. However, essentially designed against the background of a Western, liberal, autonomous and individualist self, Hauerwas� ecclesial ethic is not a definitive answer for the holistic, normative and communalist moral self, characteristic of the traditional African ethos and influencing a large majority in Africa. Moreover, it stresses the purity of the church in a way that restricts cooperation between Christians and nonChristians for socio-economic justice and the common good.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Therefore, Hauerwas� virtue, narrative, community and social ethics provide some valuable insights for moral formation in African churches as it explores the interplay between ecclesiology, Christian ethics, practical theology and philosophical ethics. For sure, other relevant resources should come from African spirituality, developmental psychology and sociology of religion.</p

Learning to Predict Human Behavior in Crowded Scenes

Pedestrians follow different trajectories to avoid obstacles and accommodate fellow pedestrians. Any autonomous vehicle navigating such a scene should be able to foresee the future positions of pedestrians and accordingly adjust its path to avoid collisions. This problem of trajectory prediction can be viewed as a sequence generation task, where we are interested in predicting the future trajectory of people based on their past positions. Following the recent success of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) models for sequence prediction tasks, we propose an LSTM model which can learn general human movement and predict their future trajectories. This is in contrast to traditional approaches which use hand-crafted functions such as Social Forces. We demonstrate the performance of our method on several public datasets. Our model outperforms state-of-the-art methods on some of these datasets. We also analyze the trajectories predicted by our model to demonstrate the motion behavior learned by our model. Moreover, we introduce a new characterization that describes the “social sensitivity” at which two targets interact. We use this characterization to define “navigation styles” and improve both forecasting models and state-of-the-art multi-target tracking – whereby the learned forecasting models help the data association step

Determination of nutrient salts by automatic methods both in seawater and brackish water: the phosphate blank

9 páginas, 2 tablas, 2 figurasThe main inconvenience in determining nutrients in seawater by automatic methods is simply solved: the preparation of a suitable blank which corrects the effect of the refractive index change on the recorded signal. Two procedures are proposed, one physical (a simple equation to estimate the effect) and the other chemical (removal of the dissolved phosphorus with ferric hydroxide).Support for this work came from CICYT (MAR88-0245 project) and Conselleria de Pesca de la Xunta de GaliciaPeer reviewe

Study of Charm Fragmentation into D^{*\pm} Mesons in Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA

The process of charm quark fragmentation is studied using $D^{*\pm}$ meson production in deep-inelastic scattering as measured by the H1 detector at HERA. Two different regions of phase space are investigated defined by the presence or absence of a jet containing the $D^{*\pm}$ meson in the event. The parameters of fragmentation functions are extracted for QCD models based on leading order matrix elements and DGLAP or CCFM evolution of partons together with string fragmentation and particle decays. Additionally, they are determined for a next-to-leading order QCD calculation in the fixed flavour number scheme using the independent fragmentation of charm quarks to $D^{*\pm}$ mesons.Comment: 33 pages, submitted to EPJ