Cardiovascular magnetic resonance reference ranges for the heart and aorta in Chinese at 3T.

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) reference ranges have not been well established in Chinese. Here we determined normal cardiac and aortic reference ranges in healthy Singaporean Chinese and investigated how these data might affect clinical interpretation of CMR scans.In 180 healthy Singaporean Chinese (20 to 69 years old; males, n = 91), comprehensive cardiac assessment was performed using the steady state free precision technique (3T Ingenia, Philips) and images were analysed by two independent observers (CMR42, Circle Cardiovascular Imaging). Measurements were internally validated using standardized approaches: left ventricular mass (LVM) was measured in diastole and systole (with and without papillary muscles) and stroke volumes were compared in both ventricles. All reference ranges were stratified by sex and age; and indeterminate/borderline regions were defined statistically at the limits of the normal reference ranges. Results were compared with clinical measurements reported in the same individuals.LVM was equivalent in both phases (mean difference 3.0 ± 2.5 g; P = 0.22) and stroke volumes were not significantly different in the left and right ventricles (P = 0.91). Compared to females, males had larger left and right ventricular volumes (P  0.05 for all measures). In both sexes, age correlated negatively with left and right ventricular volumes; and positively with aortic sinus and sinotubular junction diameters (P < 0.0001 for all). There was excellent agreement in indexed stroke volumes in the left and right ventricles (0.1±5.7 mL/m2, 0.7±6.2 mL/m2, respectively), LVM (0.6±6.4 g/m2), atrial sizes and aortic root dimensions between values reported in clinical reports and our measured reference ranges.Comprehensive sex and age-corrected CMR reference ranges at 3T have been established in Singaporean Chinese. This is an important step for clinical practice and research studies of the heart and aorta in Asia

Land Enhancement and Intensification Benefits of Investing in an Urban Rail Network

Authorities around the world are looking for new approaches to justify the implementation of capital intensive transport infrastructure such as urban rail solutions. Traditionally, the benefits of an urban rail line include conventional user benefits such as savings in travel time, vehicle operating costs, accident costs and environmental costs, and more recently wider economic benefits. An alternative approach that is sometimes used is to consider the appreciation of property prices along a rail corridor, and the intensification of land development surrounding a rail station. Using the development of new rail lines in Singapore as a case study, this paper will first apply the hedonic regression method to obtain estimates of elasticity between property price and transport accessibility. Secondly, using historical land use masterplans, the paper will discuss how the density of land use adjacent to rail stations has intensified over the past 15 years, through a comparative analysis of the land use density with respect to the distance to a rail station. Finally, with the North East Line as an example, the alternative approach comprising the land value enhancement of existing properties and the land intensification due to proximity to the line will be compared against the conventional user benefits.Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion from the Perspective of International Community College Students

With changing demographics, Canadian institutions of higher education are under pressure to address the challenges of student, faculty, and staff diversity. Despite growing numbers of international students at Canada’s community colleges, this group has historically been underrepresented. The intersectionality of their minority-status characteristics makes their experience complex. This qualitative study of 35 international students and graduates from 15 countries uses critical theory to explore their experiences through the lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Despite a high degree of cultural diversity, some of them experienced stereotyping. Moreover, they tended to engage less in classroom discussions, and many of them were unaware of college resources and services. Consequently, they had difficulty adjusting to life at college and life in Canada.En raison de l’évolution démographique, les établissements d’enseignement supérieur canadiens subissent des pressions pour relever les défis liés à la diversité des étudiants, des professeurs et du personnel. Malgré le nombre croissant d’étudiants étrangers dans les collèges communautaires du Canada, ce groupe a toujours été sous-représenté. L’intersectionnalité des caractéristiques de leur statut minoritaire rend leur expérience complexe. Cette étude qualitative menée auprès de 35 étudiants et diplômés internationaux de 15 pays utilise la théorie critique pour explorer leurs expériences sous l’angle de l’équité, de la diversité et de l’inclusion. Malgré une grande diversité culturelle, certains d’entre eux étaient victimes des stéréotypes. D’ailleurs, ils avaient tendance à moins participer aux discussions en classe, et bon nombre ne connaissaient pas les ressources et les services fournis par leur collège. Ils avaient donc de la difficulté à s’adapter à la vie au collège et au Canada

Tiresias: Predicting Security Events Through Deep Learning

With the increased complexity of modern computer attacks, there is a need for defenders not only to detect malicious activity as it happens, but also to predict the specific steps that will be taken by an adversary when performing an attack. However this is still an open research problem, and previous research in predicting malicious events only looked at binary outcomes (e.g., whether an attack would happen or not), but not at the specific steps that an attacker would undertake. To fill this gap we present Tiresias, a system that leverages Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to predict future events on a machine, based on previous observations. We test Tiresias on a dataset of 3.4 billion security events collected from a commercial intrusion prevention system, and show that our approach is effective in predicting the next event that will occur on a machine with a precision of up to 0.93. We also show that the models learned by Tiresias are reasonably stable over time, and provide a mechanism that can identify sudden drops in precision and trigger a retraining of the system. Finally, we show that the long-term memory typical of RNNs is key in performing event prediction, rendering simpler methods not up to the task

Repurposing Albendazole: new potential as a chemotherapeutic agent with preferential activity against HPV-negative head and neck squamous cell cancer.

Albendazole is an anti-helminthic drug that has been shown to exhibit anti-cancer properties, however its activity in head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) was unknown. Using a series of in vitro assays, we assessed the ability of albendazole to inhibit proliferation in 20 HNSCC cell lines across a range of albendazole doses (1 nM-10 μM). Cell lines that responded to treatment were further examined for cell death, inhibition of migration and cell cycle arrest. Thirteen of fourteen human papillomavirus-negative HNSCC cell lines responded to albendazole, with an average IC50 of 152 nM. In contrast, only 3 of 6 human papillomavirus-positive HNSCC cell lines responded. Albendazole treatment resulted in apoptosis, inhibition of cell migration, cell cycle arrest in the G2/M phase and altered tubulin distribution. Normal control cells were not measurably affected by any dose tested. This study indicates that albendazole acts to inhibit the proliferation of human papillomavirus-negative HNSCC cell lines and thus warrants further study as a potential chemotherapeutic agent for patients suffering from head and neck cancer

Graded Nodal/Activin Signaling Titrates Conversion of Quantitative Phospho-Smad2 Levels into Qualitative Embryonic Stem Cell Fate Decisions

Nodal and Activin are morphogens of the TGFbeta superfamily of signaling molecules that direct differential cell fate decisions in a dose- and distance-dependent manner. During early embryonic development the Nodal/Activin pathway is responsible for the specification of mesoderm, endoderm, node, and mesendoderm. In contradiction to this drive towards cellular differentiation, the pathway also plays important roles in the maintenance of self-renewal and pluripotency in embryonic and epiblast stem cells. The molecular basis behind stem cell interpretation of Nodal/Activin signaling gradients and the undertaking of disparate cell fate decisions remains poorly understood. Here, we show that any perturbation of endogenous signaling levels in mouse embryonic stem cells leads to their exit from self-renewal towards divergent differentiation programs. Increasing Nodal signals above basal levels by direct stimulation with Activin promotes differentiation towards the mesendodermal lineages while repression of signaling with the specific Nodal/Activin receptor inhibitor SB431542 induces trophectodermal differentiation. To address how quantitative Nodal/Activin signals are translated qualitatively into distinct cell fates decisions, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation of phospho-Smad2, the primary downstream transcriptional factor of the Nodal/Activin pathway, followed by massively parallel sequencing, and show that phospho-Smad2 binds to and regulates distinct subsets of target genes in a dose-dependent manner. Crucially, Nodal/Activin signaling directly controls the Oct4 master regulator of pluripotency by graded phospho-Smad2 binding in the promoter region. Hence stem cells interpret and carry out differential Nodal/Activin signaling instructions via a corresponding gradient of Smad2 phosphorylation that selectively titrates self-renewal against alternative differentiation programs by direct regulation of distinct target gene subsets and Oct4 expression

Infrared Luminosities and Dust Properties of z ~ 2 Dust-Obscured Galaxies

We present SHARC-II 350um imaging of twelve 24um-bright (F_24um > 0.8 mJy) Dust-Obscured Galaxies (DOGs) and CARMA 1mm imaging of a subset of 2 DOGs, all selected from the Bootes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. Detections of 4 DOGs at 350um imply IR luminosities which are consistent within a factor of 2 of expectations based on a warm dust spectral energy distribution (SED) scaled to the observed 24um flux density. The 350um upper limits for the 8 non-detected DOGs are consistent with both Mrk231 and M82 (warm dust SEDs), but exclude cold dust (Arp220) SEDs. The two DOGs targeted at 1mm were not detected in our CARMA observations, placing strong constraints on the dust temperature: T_dust > 35-60 K. Assuming these dust properties apply to the entire sample, we find dust masses of ~3x10^8 M_sun. In comparison to other dusty z ~ 2 galaxy populations such as sub-millimeter galaxies (SMGs) and other Spitzer-selected high-redshift sources, this sample of DOGs has higher IR luminosities (2x10^13 L_sun vs. 6x10^12 L_sun for the other galaxy populations), warmer dust temperatures (>35-60 K vs. ~30 K), and lower inferred dust masses (3x10^8 M_sun vs. 3x10^9 M_sun). Herschel and SCUBA-2 surveys should be able to detect hundreds of these power-law dominated DOGs. We use HST and Spitzer/IRAC data to estimate stellar masses of these sources and find that the stellar to gas mass ratio may be higher in our 24um-bright sample of DOGs than in SMGs and other Spitzer-selected sources. Although larger sample sizes are needed to provide a definitive conclusion, the data are consistent with an evolutionary trend in which the formation of massive galaxies at z~2 involves a sub-millimeter bright, cold-dust and star-formation dominated phase followed by a 24um-bright, warm-dust and AGN-dominated phase.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables; accepted to the Ap

A New Loop Antenna for Directional UWB Links

Abstract Loop antennas of circumference greater than a wavelength are generally known to have a good directive radiation pattern. However, for use in UWB applications, the variation of the radiation pattern with frequency must also be taken into account. Besides a good wideband radiation pattern, the impedance bandwidth of the antenna is also very important. The quality of a transmitted and received UWB pulse from the antenna will be a combination of both these factors. In this paper, we first investigate the characteristics of loop antennas with respect to both these factors. Next, we propose a new loop antenna configuration to overcome the limitations of the standard loop antenna for UWB applications. The new antenna consists of two concentric half-loops directly coupled to each other. The proposed antenna is analyzed using the Method-of-Moments (MoM). The theoretical and measured results agree with each other closely and attest to the fact that the new antenna has a far superior impedance bandwidth when compared with conventional loop antennas. Further, it is shown that the new antenna has a good gain and a useful radiation pattern for directional wireless links. The advantages of the antenna are conclusively demonstrated by successfully deploying it in a very high speed (500 Mbps) point-to-point UWB link