An Archaeological Survey of the North Carolina Zoological Park

A miscellaneous report by the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These reports discuss the findings of archaeological survey, testing, and excavations undertaken by the RLA between 1973 and 1985

Measuring Angular Diameter Distances through Halo Clustering

Current and upcoming wide-field surveys for weak gravitational lensing and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect will generate mass-selected catalogues of dark matter halos with internal or followup photometric redshift information. The angular power spectrum of these halos provides additional information that complements the previously-studied number counts. In particular, using the shape of the linear power spectrum as a standard ruler that is calibrated by cosmic microwave background measurements, we find that a survey of 4000 sqr. deg. and a mass threshold of 10^14 M_sun can be used to determine the comoving angular diameter distance as a function of redshift. In principle, this test also allows an absolute calibration of the distance scale and measurement of the Hubble constant. This test is largely insensitive to the details of halo mass measurements, mass function, and halo bias. Determination of these quantities would further allow a measurement of the linear growth rate of fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; final version published in ApJ Letter

Serum from patients with cirrhosis undergoing liver transplantation induces permeability in human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells ex vivo

IntroductionPatients with cirrhosis undergoing liver transplantation frequently exhibit systemic inflammation, coagulation derangements, and edema, indicating endothelial dysfunction. This syndrome may worsen after ischemia-reperfusion injury of the liver graft, coincident with organ dysfunction that worsens patient outcomes. Little is known about changes in endothelial permeability during liver transplantation. We hypothesized that sera from these patients would increase permeability in cultured human endothelial cells ex vivo.MethodsAdults with cirrhosis presenting for liver transplantation provided consent for blood collection during surgery. Sera were prepared at five time points spanning the entire operation. The barrier function of human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells in culture was assessed by transendothelial resistance measured using the ECIS ZΘ system. Confluent cells from two different endothelial cell donors were stimulated with human serum from liver transplant patients. Pooled serum from healthy men and purified inflammatory agonists served as controls. The permeability response to serum was quantified as the area under the normalized resistance curve. Responses were compared between time points and analyzed for associations with clinical characteristics of liver transplant patients and their grafts.ResultsLiver transplant sera from all time points during surgery-induced permeability in both endothelial cell lines. The magnitude of permeability change was heterogeneous between patients, and there were differences in the effects of sera on the two endothelial cell lines. In one of the cell lines, the severity of liver disease was associated with greater permeability at the start of surgery. In the same cell line, serum collected 15 min after liver reperfusion induced significantly more permeability as compared to that collected at the start of surgery. Early postreperfusion sera from patients undergoing living donor transplants induced more permeability than sera from deceased donor transplants. Sera from two exemplary cases of patients on preoperative dialysis, and one patient with an unexpectedly long warm ischemia time of the liver graft, induced exaggerated and prolonged endothelial permeability.DiscussionSerum from patients with cirrhosis undergoing liver transplantation induces permeability of cultured human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells. Increased endothelial permeability during liver transplantation may contribute to organ injury and present a target for future therapeutics

Weak Lensing with SDSS Commissioning Data: The Galaxy-Mass Correlation Function To 1/h Mpc

(abridged) We present measurements of galaxy-galaxy lensing from early commissioning imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We measure a mean tangential shear around a stacked sample of foreground galaxies in three bandpasses out to angular radii of 600'', detecting the shear signal at very high statistical significance. The shear profile is well described by a power-law. A variety of rigorous tests demonstrate the reality of the gravitational lensing signal and confirm the uncertainty estimates. We interpret our results by modeling the mass distributions of the foreground galaxies as approximately isothermal spheres characterized by a velocity dispersion and a truncation radius. The velocity dispersion is constrained to be 150-190 km/s at 95% confidence (145-195 km/s including systematic uncertainties), consistent with previous determinations but with smaller error bars. Our detection of shear at large angular radii sets a 95% confidence lower limit $s>140^{\prime\prime}$, corresponding to a physical radius of $260h^{-1}$ kpc, implying that galaxy halos extend to very large radii. However, it is likely that this is being biased high by diffuse matter in the halos of groups and clusters. We also present a preliminary determination of the galaxy-mass correlation function finding a correlation length similar to the galaxy autocorrelation function and consistency with a low matter density universe with modest bias. The full SDSS will cover an area 44 times larger and provide spectroscopic redshifts for the foreground galaxies, making it possible to greatly improve the precision of these constraints, measure additional parameters such as halo shape, and measure the properties of dark matter halos separately for many different classes of galaxies.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, submitted to A

Serum From Patients With Cirrhosis Undergoing Liver Transplantation Induces Permeability in Human Pulmonary Microvascular Endothelial Cells

INTRODUCTION: Patients with cirrhosis undergoing liver transplantation frequently exhibit systemic inflammation, coagulation derangements, and edema, indicating endothelial dysfunction. This syndrome may worsen after ischemia-reperfusion injury of the liver graft, coincident with organ dysfunction that worsens patient outcomes. Little is known about changes in endothelial permeability during liver transplantation. We hypothesized that sera from these patients would increase permeability in cultured human endothelial cells METHODS: Adults with cirrhosis presenting for liver transplantation provided consent for blood collection during surgery. Sera were prepared at five time points spanning the entire operation. The barrier function of human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells in culture was assessed by transendothelial resistance measured using the ECIS ZΘ system. Confluent cells from two different endothelial cell donors were stimulated with human serum from liver transplant patients. Pooled serum from healthy men and purified inflammatory agonists served as controls. The permeability response to serum was quantified as the area under the normalized resistance curve. Responses were compared between time points and analyzed for associations with clinical characteristics of liver transplant patients and their grafts. RESULTS: Liver transplant sera from all time points during surgery-induced permeability in both endothelial cell lines. The magnitude of permeability change was heterogeneous between patients, and there were differences in the effects of sera on the two endothelial cell lines. In one of the cell lines, the severity of liver disease was associated with greater permeability at the start of surgery. In the same cell line, serum collected 15 min after liver reperfusion induced significantly more permeability as compared to that collected at the start of surgery. Early postreperfusion sera from patients undergoing living donor transplants induced more permeability than sera from deceased donor transplants. Sera from two exemplary cases of patients on preoperative dialysis, and one patient with an unexpectedly long warm ischemia time of the liver graft, induced exaggerated and prolonged endothelial permeability. DISCUSSION: Serum from patients with cirrhosis undergoing liver transplantation induces permeability of cultured human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells. Increased endothelial permeability during liver transplantation may contribute to organ injury and present a target for future therapeutics

Weak Lensing Measurements of 42 SDSS/RASS Galaxy Clusters

We present a lensing study of 42 galaxy clusters imaged in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) commissioning data. Cluster candidates are selected optically from SDSS imaging data and confirmed for this study by matching to X-ray sources found independently in the ROSAT all sky survey (RASS). Five color SDSS photometry is used to make accurate photometric redshift estimates that are used to rescale and combine the lensing measurements. The mean shear from these clusters is detected to 2 h-1 Mpc at the 7-sigma level, corresponding to a mass within that radius of 4.2 +/- 0.6 x 10^14 h-1 M_sun. The shear profile is well fit by a power law with index -0.9 +/- 0.3, consistent with that of an isothermal density profile. This paper demonstrates our ability to measure ensemble cluster masses from SDSS imaging data.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

Valuing the Child Health Utility 9D: Using profile case best worst scaling methods to develop a new adolescent specific scoring algorithm.

In contrast to the recent proliferation of studies incorporating ordinal methods to generate health state values from adults, to date relatively few studies have utilised ordinal methods to generate health state values from adolescents. This paper reports upon a study to apply profile case best worst scaling methods to derive a new adolescent specific scoring algorithm for the Child Health Utility 9D (CHU9D), a generic preference based instrument that has been specifically designed for the estimation of quality adjusted life years for the economic evaluation of health care treatment and preventive programs targeted at young people. A survey was developed for administration in an on-line format in which consenting community based Australian adolescents aged 11-17 years (N = 1982) indicated the best and worst features of a series of 10 health states derived from the CHU9D descriptive system. The data were analyzed using latent class conditional logit models to estimate values (part worth utilities) for each level of the nine attributes relating to the CHU9D. A marginal utility matrix was then estimated to generate an adolescent-specific scoring algorithm on the full health = 1 and dead = 0 scale required for the calculation of QALYs. It was evident that different decision processes were being used in the best and worst choices. Whilst respondents appeared readily able to choose 'best' attribute levels for the CHU9D health states, a large amount of random variability and indeed different decision rules were evident for the choice of 'worst' attribute levels, to the extent that the best and worst data should not be pooled from the statistical perspective. The optimal adolescent-specific scoring algorithm was therefore derived using data obtained from the best choices only. The study provides important insights into the use of profile case best worst scaling methods to generate health state values with adolescent populations

Host-Based Th2 Cell Therapy for Prolongation of Cardiac Allograft Viability

Donor T cell transfusion, which is a long-standing approach to prevent allograft rejection, operates indirectly by alteration of host T cell immunity. We therefore hypothesized that adoptive transfer of immune regulatory host Th2 cells would represent a novel intervention to enhance cardiac allograft survival. Using a well-described rat cardiac transplant model, we first developed a method for ex vivo manufacture of rat host-type Th2 cells in rapamycin, with subsequent injection of such Th2.R cells prior to class I and class II disparate cardiac allografting. Second, we determined whether Th2.R cell transfer polarized host immunity towards a Th2 phenotype. And third, we evaluated whether Th2.R cell therapy prolonged allograft viability when used alone or in combination with a short-course of cyclosporine (CSA) therapy. We found that host-type Th2.R cell therapy prior to cardiac allografting: (1) reduced the frequency of activated T cells in secondary lymphoid organs; (2) shifted post-transplant cytokines towards a Th2 phenotype; and (3) prolonged allograft viability when used in combination with short-course CSA therapy. These results provide further support for the rationale to use “direct” host T cell therapy for prolongation of allograft viability as an alternative to “indirect” therapy mediated by donor T cell infusion

A population-based study of tumor gene expression and risk of breast cancer death among lymph node-negative patients

INTRODUCTION: The Oncotype DX assay was recently reported to predict risk for distant recurrence among a clinical trial population of tamoxifen-treated patients with lymph node-negative, estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer. To confirm and extend these findings, we evaluated the performance of this 21-gene assay among node-negative patients from a community hospital setting. METHODS: A case-control study was conducted among 4,964 Kaiser Permanente patients diagnosed with node-negative invasive breast cancer from 1985 to 1994 and not treated with adjuvant chemotherapy. Cases (n = 220) were patients who died from breast cancer. Controls (n = 570) were breast cancer patients who were individually matched to cases with respect to age, race, adjuvant tamoxifen, medical facility and diagnosis year, and were alive at the date of death of their matched case. Using an RT-PCR assay, archived tumor tissues were analyzed for expression levels of 16 cancer-related and five reference genes, and a summary risk score (the Recurrence Score) was calculated for each patient. Conditional logistic regression methods were used to estimate the association between risk of breast cancer death and Recurrence Score. RESULTS: After adjusting for tumor size and grade, the Recurrence Score was associated with risk of breast cancer death in ER-positive, tamoxifen-treated and -untreated patients (P = 0.003 and P = 0.03, respectively). At 10 years, the risks for breast cancer death in ER-positive, tamoxifen-treated patients were 2.8% (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.7–3.9%), 10.7% (95% CI 6.3–14.9%), and 15.5% (95% CI 7.6–22.8%) for those in the low, intermediate and high risk Recurrence Score groups, respectively. They were 6.2% (95% CI 4.5–7.9%), 17.8% (95% CI 11.8–23.3%), and 19.9% (95% CI 14.2–25.2%) for ER-positive patients not treated with tamoxifen. In both the tamoxifen-treated and -untreated groups, approximately 50% of patients had low risk Recurrence Score values. CONCLUSION: In this large, population-based study of lymph node-negative patients not treated with chemotherapy, the Recurrence Score was strongly associated with risk of breast cancer death among ER-positive, tamoxifen-treated and -untreated patients

Rabies Virus Infection Induces Type I Interferon Production in an IPS-1 Dependent Manner While Dendritic Cell Activation Relies on IFNAR Signaling

As with many viruses, rabies virus (RABV) infection induces type I interferon (IFN) production within the infected host cells. However, RABV has evolved mechanisms by which to inhibit IFN production in order to sustain infection. Here we show that RABV infection of dendritic cells (DC) induces potent type I IFN production and DC activation. Although DCs are infected by RABV, the viral replication is highly suppressed in DCs, rendering the infection non-productive. We exploited this finding in bone marrow derived DCs (BMDC) in order to differentiate which pattern recognition receptor(s) (PRR) is responsible for inducing type I IFN following infection with RABV. Our results indicate that BMDC activation and type I IFN production following a RABV infection is independent of TLR signaling. However, IPS-1 is essential for both BMDC activation and IFN production. Interestingly, we see that the BMDC activation is primarily due to signaling through the IFNAR and only marginally induced by the initial infection. To further identify the receptor recognizing RABV infection, we next analyzed BMDC from Mda-5−/− and RIG-I−/− mice. In the absence of either receptor, there is a significant decrease in BMDC activation at 12h post infection. However, only RIG-I−/− cells exhibit a delay in type I IFN production. In order to determine the role that IPS-1 plays in vivo, we infected mice with pathogenic RABV. We see that IPS-1−/− mice are more susceptible to infection than IPS-1+/+ mice and have a significantly increased incident of limb paralysis