Cancer Therapy via Targeting Warburg Effect Leads to Cancer Metabolism Depression that Promotes Efficient Treatment with Small Dosage Cytotoxic Drugs

This work exhibits mechanism of the new method Cancer Therapy via combination “Prolonged medical starvation” with considerably decreased dosage of cytotoxic drugs which was described in detail in the article: Ponizovskiy M.R., The detailed description mechanisms of the herbs extracts operations in the new method cancer disease treatment via rearrangement of metabolism from pathologic development into normal development, Journal of Clinical Trials, 2012, v. 2, Issue 4, doi:10.4172/2167-0870.1000124. The mechanism of this method of cancer therapy operates via Warburg effect targeting. The purpose of this work is substantiation the supplementary mechanisms of efficient Cancer Therapy via combination “Prolonged medical starvation” with considerably decreased dosage of cytotoxic drugs and also substantiation advantage of this method of cancer therapy in comparison with cancer treatment with great dosage of cytotoxic drugs. There were described the biochemical and biophysical mechanisms of formations resistance to some cytotoxic drugs and recurrence cancer disease after disease remission. Also it was described the benefits of use the method “Prolonged medical starvation” with decreased dosage of cytotoxic drugs for cancer treatment. The result of this work that it was substantiated the mechanism operation of this method cancer treatment, which leads to prevention recurrence cancer disease and resistance to anticancer drugs in comparison with intensive anticancer chemotherapy with great dosages of cytotoxic drugs. Also the offered concepts of cancer therapy mechanism gave possibility to explain mechanisms of some results of experiments eliminating the doubts of the authors these experiments. As the conclusion, the offered method Cancer Therapy should be put into practical medicine after detail clinical trials

On the pulsating strings in Sasaki-Einstein spaces

We study the class of pulsating strings in AdS_5 x Y^{p,q} and AdS_5 x L^{p,q,r}. Using a generalized ansatz for pulsating string configurations, we find new solutions for this class in terms of Heun functions, and derive the particular case of AdS_5 x T^{1,1}, which was analyzed in arXiv:1006.1539 [hep-th]. Unfortunately, Heun functions are still little studied, and we are not able to quantize the theory quasi-classically and obtain the first corrections to the energy. The latter, due to AdS/CFT correspondence, is supposed to give the anomalous dimensions of operators of the gauge theory dual N=1 superconformal field theory.Comment: 9 pages, talk given at the 2nd Int. Conference AMiTaNS, 21-26 June 2010, Sozopol, Bulgaria, organized by EAC (Euro-American Consortium) for Promoting AMiTaNS, to appear in the Proceedings of 2nd Int. Conference AMiTaN

Lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking for morbidity reduction during sentinel node biopsy in breast cancer

Current trends in patient care include the desire for minimizing invasiveness of procedures and interventions. This aim is reflected in the increasing utilization of sentinel lymph node biopsy, which results in a lower level of morbidity in breast cancer staging, in comparison to extensive conventional axillary dissection. Optimized lymphoscintigraphy with triangulated body marking is a clinical option that can further reduce morbidity, more than when a hand held gamma probe alone is utilized. Unfortunately it is often either overlooked or not fully understood, and thus not utilized. This results in the unnecessary loss of an opportunity to further reduce morbidity. Optimized lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking provides a detailed 3 dimensional map of the number and location of the sentinel nodes, available before the first incision is made. The number, location, relevance based on time/sequence of appearance of the nodes, all can influence 1) where the incision is made, 2) how extensive the dissection is, and 3) how many nodes are removed. In addition, complex patterns can arise from injections. These include prominent lymphatic channels, pseudo-sentinel nodes, echelon and reverse echelon nodes and even contamination, which are much more difficult to access with the probe only. With the detailed information provided by optimized lymphoscintigraphy and triangulated body marking, the surgeon can approach the axilla in a more enlightened fashion, in contrast to when the less informed probe only method is used. This allows for better planning, resulting in the best cosmetic effect and less trauma to the tissues, further reducing morbidity while maintaining adequate sampling of the sentinel node(s)

Exact distributed kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for on-lattice chemical kinetics: lessons learnt from medium- and large-scale benchmarks

Kinetic Monte-Carlo (KMC) simulations have been instrumental in multiscale catalysis studies, enabling the elucidation of the complex dynamics of heterogeneous catalysts and the prediction of macroscopic performance metrics, such as activity and selectivity. However, the accessible length- and time-scales have been a limiting factor in such simulations. For instance, handling lattices containing millions of sites with “traditional” sequential KMC implementations is prohibitive owing to large memory requirements and long simulation times. We have recently established an approach for exact, distributed, lattice-based simulations of catalytic kinetics which couples the Time-Warp algorithm with the Graph-Theoretical KMC framework, enabling the handling of complex adsorbate lateral interactions and reaction events within large lattices. In this work, we develop a lattice-based variant of the Brusselator system, a prototype chemical oscillator pioneered by Prigogine and Lefever in the late 60’s, to benchmark and demonstrate our approach. This system can form spiral wave patterns, which would be computationally intractable with sequential KMC, while our distributed KMC approach can simulate such patterns 16 and 36 times faster with 625 and 1600 processors, respectively. The medium- and large-scale benchmarks thus conducted, demonstrate the robustness of the approach, and reveal computational bottlenecks that could be targeted in further development efforts

Substitution of cast iron engine components with aluminium alloys: a life cycle perspective

Environmental sustainability is nowadays one of the most important global challenges. It is common that the amount of CO2 emissions is being used as a measure of the environmental impact of vehicles. As a result, manufacturers focus on producing lightweight car components in order to minimize the weight of the vehicles and maximize the fuel economy. As a consequence, car manufacturer designers have started to favour low density materials. However, it is usually the case that the energy footprint of the materials as well as the processes involved in the manufacturing of automotive components is often not assessed. This study focuses on the validity of the claim that lightweight materials are associated with enhanced environmental sustainability by making a full assessment of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions during the manufacturing and usage stages of diesel and petrol engine blocks made of cast iron and aluminium. For this purpose, inputs from over 100 world experts from across the automotive supply chain have been taken into consideration. Our results show that the usage of lightweight materials is often associated with higher energy consumption and CO2 emissions. More specifically, the 1.6L aluminium alloy engine block examined only seems to compensate for the additional energy consumed during their manufacturing process after 200,000 km of on-the-road driving compared to the one made of cast iron. Similar trends are observed for the CO2 emissions

Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of homogeneous nucleation of pure aluminium

Despite the continuous and remarkable development of experimental techniques for the investigation of microstructures and the growth of nuclei during the solidification of metals, there are still unknown territories around this topic. The solidification in nanoscale can be effectively investigated by means of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations which can provide a deep insight into the mechanisms of the formation of nuclei and the induced crystal structures. In this study, MD simulations were performed to investigate the solidification of pure Aluminium and the effects of the cooling rate on the final properties of the solidified material. A large number of Aluminium atoms were used in order to investigate the grain growth over time and the formation of stacking faults during solidification. The number of face-centred cubic (FCC), hexagonal close-packed (HCP) and body-centred cubic (BCC) was recorded during the evolution of the process to illustrate the nanoscale mechanisms initiating solidification. The current investigation also focuses on the exothermic nature of the solidification process which has been effectively captured by means of MD simulations using 3 dimensional representations of the kinetic energy across the simulation domain

Life cycle and energy assessment of automotive components manufacturing: The dilemma between aluminium and cast iron

Considering the manufacturing of automotive components, there exists a dilemma around the substitution of traditional cast iron (CI) with lighter metals. Currently, aluminum alloys, being lighter compared to traditional materials, are considered as a more environmentally friendly solution. However, the energy required for the extraction of the primary materials and manufacturing of components is usually not taken into account in this debate. In this study, an extensive literature review was performed to estimate the overall energy required for the manufacturing of an engine cylinder block using (a) cast iron and (b) aluminum alloys. Moreover, data from over 100 automotive companies, ranging from mining companies to consultancy firms, were collected in order to support the soundness of this investigation. The environmental impact of the manufacturing of engine blocks made of these materials is presented with respect to the energy burden; the “cradle-to-grave approach” was implemented to take into account the energy input of each stage of the component life cycle starting from the resource extraction and reaching to the end-of-life processing stage. Our results indicate that, although aluminum components contribute toward reduced fuel consumption during their use phase, the vehicle distance needed to be covered in order to compensate for the up-front energy consumption related to the primary material production and manufacturing phases is very high. Thus, the substitution of traditional materials with lightweight ones in the automotive industry should be very thoughtfully evaluate

Numerical simulation and evaluation of Campbell running and gating systems

The most common problems encountered in sand casting foundries are related to sand inclusions, air, and oxide films entrainment. These issues can be addressed to a good extent or eliminated by designing proper running systems. The design of a good running system should be based on John Campbell’s “10 casting rules”; it should hinder laminar and turbulent entrainment of the surface film on the liquid, as well as bubble entrainment. These rules have led to the establishment of a group of components such as high and low placed filters (HPF/LPF) and standard gate designs such as the trident gate (TG) and vortex gate (VG) which are incorporated in wellperforming running system designs. In this study, the potential of the aforementioned running system designs to eliminate air entrainment and surface defects has been investigated via means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The obtained results suggest that the use of filters significantly enhances the quality of the final cast product; moreover, all of the gating system designs appear to perform better than the basic running system (BRS). Finally, the five in total running and gating system designs have been evaluated with respect to their ability to produce good quality cast products (reduced air entrainment and surface defects) and their sustainability component (runner scrap mass)

Minimising defect formation in sand casting of sheet lead: a DoE approach

Sand casting of lead sheet is a traditional manufacturing process used up to the present due to the special features of sand cast sheet such as their attractive sheen. Similarly to any casting process, sand casting of lead sheet suffers from the presence of surface defects. In this study, a surface defect type, hereby referred to as ‘grooves’, has been investigated. The focus has been laid on the identification of the main factors affecting defect formation in this process. Based on a set of screening experiments performed using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) as well as the existing literature, a number of factors affecting the formation of such defects was identified and their corresponding significance was estimated using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) technique. The obtained results suggest that the most significant factor affecting defect formation in sand casting of lead sheet is the composition of the moulding mixture. Defect formation was also proven to be dependent on the sand grain fineness, the quality of the melt and some of the interactions between the aforementioned process parameters. Finally, an optimal set of process parameters leading to the minimisation of surface defects was identified