305 research outputs found
Effective target arrangement in a deterministic scale-free graph
We study the random walk problem on a deterministic scale-free network, in
the presence of a set of static, identical targets; due to the strong
inhomogeneity of the underlying structure the mean first-passage time (MFPT),
meant as a measure of transport efficiency, is expected to depend sensitively
on the position of targets. We consider several spatial arrangements for
targets and we calculate, mainly rigorously, the related MFPT, where the
average is taken over all possible starting points and over all possible paths.
For all the cases studied, the MFPT asymptotically scales like N^{theta}, being
N the volume of the substrate and theta ranging from (1 - log 2/log3), for
central target(s), to 1, for a single peripheral target.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
IL-21 Promotes CD4 T Cell Responses by Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase-Dependent Upregulation of CD86 on B Cells.
The cytokine IL-21 is a potent immune modulator with diverse mechanisms of action on multiple cell types. IL-21 is in clinical use to promote tumor rejection and is an emerging target for neutralization in the setting of autoimmunity. Despite its clinical potential, the biological actions of IL-21 are not yet fully understood and the full range of effects of this pleiotropic cytokine are still being uncovered. In this study, we identify a novel role for IL-21 as an inducer of the costimulatory ligand CD86 on B lymphocytes. CD86 provides critical signals through T cell-expressed CD28 that promote T cell activation in response to Ag engagement. Expression levels of CD86 are tightly regulated in vivo, being actively decreased by regulatory T cells and increased in response to pathogen-derived signals. In this study, we demonstrate that IL-21 can trigger potent and sustained CD86 upregulation through a STAT3 and PI3K-dependent mechanism. We show that elevated CD86 expression has functional consequences for the magnitude of CD4 T cell responses both in vitro and in vivo. These data pinpoint CD86 upregulation as an additional mechanism by which IL-21 can elicit immunomodulatory effects
Activity of a trinuclear platinum complex in human ovarian cancer cell lines sensitive and resistant to cisplatin: cytotoxicity and induction and gene-specific repair of DNA lesions
A collateral sensitivity or a very modest cross-resistance to BBR 3464 was found in 2 ovarian cancer cell lines with experimentally induced resistance to cisplatin. Loss of mismatch repair proteins (hMLH1, hPMS2) or overexpression of nucleotide excision repair proteins (ERCC1) was not detrimental for the cellular sensitivity to BBR 3464. Moreover, interesting differences in the kinetics of formation and removal of DNA lesions at the single-gene (N- ras) level were observed between BBR 3464 and CDDP. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign www.bjcancer.co
Neorealism: unifying cognition and environment
APA ProofsRecent trends in psychology have revealed increasing discontent toward representational explanations of behavior. However, whether these trends have the conceptual resources to address the full range of cognitive phenomena remains unclear. Here, I defend neorealism (Holt, 1914) as the missing philosophical link between radically embodied cognitive science and a more encompassing psychology. Neorealism identifies cognitive contents, however subjective or unreal in appearance, with portions or cross sections of the objective environment. These portions are extended in time and they sustain causal and
historical relations to current behavior. I sketch how neorealist concepts can help psychologists to address phenomena such as dreams and imagery in fully environmental terms
Adult mesenchymal stem cells for bone and cartilage engineering: effect of scaffold materials
Bone marrow is a useful cell source for skeletal tissue engineering approaches. In vitro differentiation of marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to chondrocytes or osteoblasts can be induced by the addition of specific growth factors to the medium. The present study evaluated the behaviour of human MSCs cultured on various scaffolds to determine whether their differentiation can be induced by cell-matrix interactions. MSCs from bone marrow collected from the acetabulum during hip arthroplasty procedures were isolated by cell sorting, expanded and characterised by a flow cytometry system. Cells were grown on three different scaffolds (type I collagen, type I + II collagen and type I collagen + hydroxyapatite membranes) and analysed by histochemistry, immunohistochemistry and spectrophotometry (cell proliferation, alkaline phosphatase activity) at 15 and 30 days. Widely variable cell adhesion and proliferation was observed on the three scaffolds. MSCs grown on type I+II collagen differentiated to cells expressing chondrocyte markers, while those grown on type I collagen + hydroxyapatite differentiated into osteoblast-like cells. The study highlighted that human MSCs grown on different scaffold matrices may display different behaviours in terms of cell proliferation and phenotype expression without growth factor supplementation
The novel lncRNA BlackMamba controls the neoplastic phenotype of ALK- anaplastic large cell lymphoma by regulating the DNA helicase HELLS.
The molecular mechanisms leading to the transformation of anaplastic lymphoma kinase negative (ALK-) anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) have been only in part elucidated. To identify new culprits which promote and drive ALCL, we performed a total transcriptome sequencing and discovered 1208 previously unknown intergenic long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), including 18 lncRNAs preferentially expressed in ALCL. We selected an unknown lncRNA, BlackMamba, with an ALK- ALCL preferential expression, for molecular and functional studies. BlackMamba is a chromatin-associated lncRNA regulated by STAT3 via a canonical transcriptional signaling pathway. Knockdown experiments demonstrated that BlackMamba contributes to the pathogenesis of ALCL regulating cell growth and cell morphology. Mechanistically, BlackMamba interacts with the DNA helicase HELLS controlling its recruitment to the promoter regions of cell-architecture-related genes, fostering their expression. Collectively, these findings provide evidence of a previously unknown tumorigenic role of STAT3 via a lncRNA-DNA helicase axis and reveal an undiscovered role for lncRNA in the maintenance of the neoplastic phenotype of ALK-ALCL
Measurements of the Temperature and E-Mode Polarization of the CMB from 500 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data
We present measurements of the -mode polarization angular auto-power
spectrum () and temperature--mode cross-power spectrum () of the
cosmic microwave background (CMB) using 150 GHz data from three seasons of
SPTpol observations. We report the power spectra over the spherical harmonic
multipole range , and detect nine acoustic peaks in the
spectrum with high signal-to-noise ratio. These measurements are the most
sensitive to date of the and power spectra at and , respectively. The observations cover 500 deg, a fivefold increase
in area compared to previous SPTpol analyses, which increases our sensitivity
to the photon diffusion damping tail of the CMB power spectra enabling tighter
constraints on \LCDM model extensions. After masking all sources with
unpolarized flux mJy we place a 95% confidence upper limit on residual
polarized point-source power of at , suggesting that the damping tail
dominates foregrounds to at least with modest source masking. We
find that the SPTpol dataset is in mild tension with the model
(), and different data splits prefer parameter values that differ
at the level. When fitting SPTpol data at we
find cosmological parameter constraints consistent with those for
temperature. Including SPTpol data at results in a preference for
a higher value of the expansion rate (H_0 = 71.3 \pm
2.1\,\mbox{km}\,s^{-1}\mbox{Mpc}^{-1} ) and a lower value for present-day
density fluctuations ().Comment: Updated to match version accepted to ApJ. 34 pages, 17 figures, 6
table
CMB Polarization B-mode Delensing with SPTpol and Herschel
We present a demonstration of delensing the observed cosmic microwave
background (CMB) B-mode polarization anisotropy. This process of reducing the
gravitational-lensing generated B-mode component will become increasingly
important for improving searches for the B modes produced by primordial
gravitational waves. In this work, we delens B-mode maps constructed from
multi-frequency SPTpol observations of a 90 deg patch of sky by subtracting
a B-mode template constructed from two inputs: SPTpol E-mode maps and a lensing
potential map estimated from the map of the
CIB. We find that our delensing procedure reduces the measured B-mode power
spectrum by 28% in the multipole range ; this is shown to be
consistent with expectations from theory and simulations and to be robust
against systematics. The null hypothesis of no delensing is rejected at . Furthermore, we build and use a suite of realistic simulations to
study the general properties of the delensing process and find that the
delensing efficiency achieved in this work is limited primarily by the noise in
the lensing potential map. We demonstrate the importance of including realistic
experimental non-idealities in the delensing forecasts used to inform
instrument and survey-strategy planning of upcoming lower-noise experiments,
such as CMB-S4.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. Comments are welcome
- …