The human primary visual cortex (V1) encodes the perceived position of static but not moving objects

Brain activity in retinotopic cortex reflects illusory changes in stimulus position. Is this neural signature a general code for apparent position? Here we show that responses in primary visual cortex (V1) are consistent with perception of the Muller-Lyer illusion; however, we found no such signature for another striking illusion, the curveball effect. This demonstrates that V1 does not encode apparent position per se

Mycotoxin Decontamination of Foods Using Nonthermal Plasma and Plasma-Activated Water

Mycotoxins are food safety and public health concerns due to their widespread contamination in agricultural products and adverse health effects on humans. Several decontamination techniques, including physical-, chemical-, and thermal-based treatments, are employed to minimize the levels of mycotoxins in food. However, these treatments present disadvantages, such as negative impacts on the quality and leftover chemical residues on the treated food after physical- and chemical-based treatments. Furthermore, mycotoxins are resistant to heat, thus contributing to the insufficiency of thermal treatments for complete mycotoxin degradation. The use of alternative nonthermal-based treatments, such as nonthermal plasma (NTP) and plasma-activated water (PAW) for mycotoxin degradation in food, have been recently explored to overcome these limitations. NTP and PAW treatments are known to minimize the unfavorable changes in food quality while ensuring safety from food contaminants. The basics of NTP and PAW technologies, their mycotoxin decontamination efficiencies, their underlying mechanisms of action, effects on food quality, and the safety of mycotoxin degradation byproducts and treated food are hereby discussed in this chapter

A proteomic study of human Merkel Cell Carcinoma

Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive neuroendocrine cancer of the skin. The incidence has been quadrupled with a 5-year mortality rate of 46%, presently there is no cure for metastatic disease. Despite the contribution of Merkel cell polyomavirus, the molecular events of MCC carcinogenesis are poorly defined. To better understand MCC carcinogensis, we have performed the first quantitative proteomic comparison of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) MCC tissues using another neuroendocrine tumor (carcinoid tumor of the lung) as controls. Bioinformatic analysis of the proteomic data has revealed that MCCs carry distinct protein expression patterns. Further analysis of significantly over-expressed proteins suggested the involvement of MAPK, PI3K/Akt/mTOR, wnt, and apoptosis signaling pathways. Our previous study and that from others have shown mTOR activation in MCCs. Therefore, we have focused on two downstream molecules of the mTOR pathway, lactate dehydrogenase B (LDHB) and heterogeneous ribonucleoprotein F (hnRNPF). We confirm over-expression of LDHB and hnRNPF in two primary human MCC cell lines, 16 fresh tumors, and in the majority of 80 tissue microarray samples. Moreover, mTOR inhibition suppresses LDHB and hnRNPF expression in MCC cells. The results of the current study provide insight into MCC carcinogenesis and provide rationale for mTOR inhibition in pre-clinical studies

Anakinra reduces blood pressure and renal fibrosis in one kidney/DOCA/salt-induced hypertension

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a clinically-utilised IL-1 receptor antagonist, anakinra, reduces renal inflammation, structural damage and blood pressure (BP) in mice with established hypertension. METHODS: Hypertension was induced in male mice by uninephrectomy, deoxycorticosterone acetate (2.4mg/d,s.c.) and replacement of drinking water with saline (1K/DOCA/salt). Control mice received uninephrectomy, a placebo pellet and normal drinking water. 10days post-surgery, mice commenced treatment with anakinra (75mg/kg/d, i.p.) or vehicle (0.9% saline, i.p.) for 11 days. Systolic BP was measured by tail cuff while qPCR, immunohistochemistry and flow cytometry were used to measure inflammatory markers, collagen and immune cell infiltration in the kidneys. RESULTS: By 10 days post-surgery, 1K/DOCA/salt-treated mice displayed elevated systolic BP (148.3+/-2.4mmHg) compared to control mice (121.7+/-2.7mmHg; n=18, P\u3c0.0001). The intervention with anakinra reduced BP in 1K/DOCA/salt-treated mice by approximately 20mmHg (n=16, P\u3c0.05), but had no effect in controls. In 1K/DOCA/salt-treated mice, anakinra modestly reduced ( approximately 30%) renal expression of some (CCL5, CCL2; n=7-8; P\u3c0.05) but not all (ICAM-1, IL-6) inflammatory markers, and had no effect on immune cell infiltration (n=7-8, P \u3e 0.05). Anakinra reduced renal collagen content (n=6, P\u3c0.01) but paradoxically appeared to exacerbate the renal and glomerular hypertrophy (n=8-9, P\u3c0.001) that accompanied 1K/DOCA/salt-induced hypertension. CONCLUSION: Despite its anti-hypertensive and renal anti-fibrotic actions, anakinra had minimal effects on inflammation and leukocyte infiltration in mice with 1K/DOCA/salt-induced hypertension. Future studies will assess whether the anti-hypertensive actions of anakinra are mediated by protective actions in other BP-regulating or salt-handling organs such as the arteries, skin and brain

Identifying and Reducing Interfacial Losses to Enhance Color-Pure Electroluminescence in Blue-Emitting Perovskite Nanoplatelet Light-Emitting Diodes.

Perovskite nanoplatelets (NPls) hold promise for light-emitting applications, having achieved photoluminescence quantum efficiencies approaching unity in the blue wavelength range, where other metal-halide perovskites have typically been ineffective. However, the external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) of blue-emitting NPl light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have reached only 0.12%. In this work, we show that NPl LEDs are primarily limited by a poor electronic interface between the emitter and hole injector. We show that the NPls have remarkably deep ionization potentials (≥6.5 eV), leading to large barriers for hole injection, as well as substantial nonradiative decay at the NPl/hole-injector interface. We find that an effective way to reduce these nonradiative losses is by using poly(triarylamine) interlayers, which lead to an increase in the  EQE of the blue (464 nm emission wavelength) and sky-blue (489 nm emission wavelength) LEDs to 0.3% and 0.55%, respectively. Our work also identifies the key challenges for further efficiency increases

Class talk: habitus and class in parental narratives of school choice

© 2016 Westburn Publishers Ltd. This article explores how social class is linguistically negotiated and contested in parental narratives of school choice in the British education marketplace. Our study reveals prevalent yet obscured vestiges of ‘class talk’, and in doing so, unmasks ‘micro-political’ acts of status claiming. Using interactional narrative interviewing with 30 parents, we explore how inter- and intra-class differences are emotionally expressed, thus exposing the embodied dispositions of parents’ habitus and its’ subtle influence on school choice. The parental narratives also unveil a moral and political tension between the neoliberal ideal of entrepreneurial self-advancement and an egalitarian sentiment for social equality. Our study therefore challenges the neoliberal educational policy of market choice in closing the attainment gap

An Analysis of the Sensitivity of Proteogenomic Mapping of Somatic Mutations and Novel Splicing Events in Cancer

Improvements in mass spectrometry (MS)-based peptide sequencing provide a new opportunity to determine whether polymorphisms, mutations, and splice variants identified in cancer cells are translated. Herein, we apply a proteogenomic data integration tool (QUILTS) to illustrate protein variant discovery using whole genome, whole transcriptome, and global proteome datasets generated from a pair of luminal and basal-like breast-cancer-patient-derived xenografts (PDX). The sensitivity of proteogenomic analysis for singe nucleotide variant (SNV) expression and novel splice junction (NSJ) detection was probed using multiple MS/MS sample process replicates defined here as an independent tandem MS experiment using identical sample material. Despite analysis of over 30 sample process replicates, only about 10% of SNVs (somatic and germline) detected by both DNA and RNA sequencing were observed as peptides. An even smaller proportion of peptides corresponding to NSJ observed by RNA sequencing were detected (<0.1%). Peptides mapping to DNA-detected SNVs without a detectable mRNA transcript were also observed, suggesting that transcriptome coverage was incomplete (∼80%). In contrast to germline variants, somatic variants were less likely to be detected at the peptide level in the basal-like tumor than in the luminal tumor, raising the possibility of differential translation or protein degradation effects. In conclusion, this large-scale proteogenomic integration allowed us to determine the degree to which mutations are translated and identify gaps in sequence coverage, thereby benchmarking current technology and progress toward whole cancer proteome and transcriptome analysis

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin