Invariant universality for quandles and fields

We show that the embeddability relations for countable quandles and for countable fields of any given characteristic other than 2 are maximally complex in a strong sense: they are invariantly universal. This notion from the theory of Borel reducibility states that any analytic quasi-order on a standard Borel space essentially appears as the restriction of the embeddability relation to an isomorphism-invariant Borel set. As an intermediate step we show that the embeddability relation of countable quandles is a complete analytic quasi-order

Perioperative care of the geriatric patient for noncardiac surgery

Adults age 65 and over are the fastest growing segment of the population in the United States and around the world. As the size of this population expands, the number of older adults referred for surgical procedures will continue to increase. Due to the physiologic changes of aging and the increased frequency of comorbidities, older adults are at increased risk for adverse outcomes, and perioperative care is inherently more complex than in younger individuals. In this review, we discuss the physiologic changes of aging relevant to the surgical patient, comprehensive preoperative assessment, and postoperative management of common complications in older adults in order to promote optimal clinical outcomes both perioperatively and long-term

T cells in aging mice: genetic, developmental, and biochemical analyses

A combination of approaches – gene mapping, biomarker analysis, and studies of signal transduction – has helped to clarify the mechanisms of age-related change in mouse immune status and the implications of immune aging for late-life disease. Mapping studies have documented multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL) that influence the levels of age-sensitive T-cell subsets. Some of these QTL have effects that are demonstrable in young-adult mice (8 months of age) and others demonstrable only in middle-aged mice (18 months). Biomarker studies show that T-cell subset levels measured at 8 or 18 months are significant predictors of lifespan for mice dying of lymphoma, fibrosarcoma, mammary adenocarcinoma, or all causes combined. Mice whose immune systems resemble that of young animals, i.e. with low levels of CD4 + and CD8 + memory T cells and relatively high levels of CD4 + T cells, tend to outlive their siblings with the opposite subset pattern. Biochemical analyses show that T cells from aged mice show defects in the activation process within a few minutes of encountering a stimulus and that the defects precede the recognition by the T-cell receptor of agonist peptides on the antigen-presenting cell. Defective assembly of cytoskeletal fibers and hyperglycosylation of T-cell surface glycoproteins contribute to the immunodeficiency state, and indeed treatment with a sialylglycoprotein endopeptidase can restore full function to CD4 + T cells from aged donors in vitro .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75195/1/j.0105-2896.2005.00254.x.pd

Filariasis of the Axilla in a Patient Returning from Travel Abroad: A Case Report

Background: The term filariasis comprises a group of parasitic infections caused by helminths belonging to different genera in the superfamily Filaroidea. The human parasites occur mainly in tropical and subtropical regions, but filariae are also found in temperate climates, where they can infect wild and domestic animals. Humans are rarely infected by these zoonotic parasites. Patients and Methods: A 55-year-old patient presented with a new-onset, subcutaneous, non-tender palpable mass in the right axilla. Ultrasonography showed a 1.3-cm, solid, singular encapsulated node. Sonography of the breast on both sides, axilla and lymphatic drainage on the left side, lymphatic drainage on the right side, and mammography on both sides were without pathological findings. The node was excised under local anesthesia as the patient refused minimal invasive biopsy. Results: On histopathological examination, the tail of a parasite of the group of filariae was found. The patient revealed that she had stayed in Africa and Malaysia for professional reasons. 6 months before the time of diagnosis, she had also suffered from a fever and poor general condition after a trip abroad. The patient was referred for further treatment to the Institute for Tropical Medicine at the University of Dusseldorf, where a treatment with ivermectin was conducted on the basis of positive staining with antibodies against filariae. Conclusion: Our case demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between breast center, pathology, and other specialties such as microbiology and tropical medicine

Professionalization as a governance strategy for synthetic biology

This article considers professionalization as a governance strategy for synthetic biology, reporting on social science interviews done with scientists, science journal editors, members of science advisory boards and authors of nongovernmental policy reports on synthetic biology. After summarizing their observations about the potential advantages and disadvantages of the professionalization of synthetic biology, we analyze professionalization as a strategy that overcomes dichotomies found in the current debates about synthetic biology governance, specifically “top down” versus “bottom up” governance and scientific fact versus public values. Professionalization combines community and state, fact and value. Like all governance options, professionalization has limitations, particularly regarding war and peace. It is best conceptualized as potentially part of a wider range of governance mechanisms working in concert: a “web of prevention”

Translation and Community in the work of Elizabeth Cary

Explores the role of female community within Elizabeth Cary\u27s translations and her play, The Tragedy of Mariam

A Study of Concurrency Bugs and Advanced Development Support for Actor-based Programs

The actor model is an attractive foundation for developing concurrent applications because actors are isolated concurrent entities that communicate through asynchronous messages and do not share state. Thereby, they avoid concurrency bugs such as data races, but are not immune to concurrency bugs in general. This study taxonomizes concurrency bugs in actor-based programs reported in literature. Furthermore, it analyzes the bugs to identify the patterns causing them as well as their observable behavior. Based on this taxonomy, we further analyze the literature and find that current approaches to static analysis and testing focus on communication deadlocks and message protocol violations. However, they do not provide solutions to identify livelocks and behavioral deadlocks. The insights obtained in this study can be used to improve debugging support for actor-based programs with new debugging techniques to identify the root cause of complex concurrency bugs.Comment: - Submitted for review - Removed section 6 "Research Roadmap for Debuggers", its content was summarized in the Future Work section - Added references for section 1, section 3, section 4.3 and section 5.1 - Updated citation

The future of canine glaucoma therapy

Canine glaucoma is a group of disorders that are generally associated with increased intraocular pressure (IOP) resulting in a characteristic optic neuropathy. Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible vision loss in dogs and may be either primary or secondary. Despite the growing spectrum of medical and surgical therapies, there is no cure, and many affected dogs go blind. Often eyes are enucleated because of painfully high, uncontrollable IOP. While progressive vision loss due to primary glaucoma is considered preventable in some humans, this is mostly not true for dogs. There is an urgent need for more effective, affordable treatment options. Because newly developed glaucoma medications are emerging at a very slow rate and may not be effective in dogs, work toward improving surgical options may be the most rewarding approach in the near term. This Viewpoint Article summarizes the discussions and recommended research strategies of both a Think Tank and a Consortium focused on the development of more effective therapies for canine glaucoma; both were organized and funded by the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists Vision for Animals Foundation (ACVO‐VAF). The recommendations consist of (a) better understanding of disease mechanisms, (b) early glaucoma diagnosis and disease staging, (c) optimization of IOP‐lowering medical treatment, (d) new surgical therapies to control IOP, and (e) novel treatment strategies, such as gene and stem cell therapies, neuroprotection, and neuroregeneration. In order to address these needs, increases in research funding specifically focused on canine glaucoma are necessary.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151896/1/vop12678_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151896/2/vop12678.pd

Lung adenocarcinoma originates from retrovirus infection of proliferating type 2 pneumocytes during pulmonary post-natal development or tissue repair

Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus (JSRV) is a unique oncogenic virus with distinctive biological properties. JSRV is the only virus causing a naturally occurring lung cancer (ovine pulmonary adenocarcinoma, OPA) and possessing a major structural protein that functions as a dominant oncoprotein. Lung cancer is the major cause of death among cancer patients. OPA can be an extremely useful animal model in order to identify the cells originating lung adenocarcinoma and to study the early events of pulmonary carcinogenesis. In this study, we demonstrated that lung adenocarcinoma in sheep originates from infection and transformation of proliferating type 2 pneumocytes (termed here lung alveolar proliferating cells, LAPCs). We excluded that OPA originates from a bronchioalveolar stem cell, or from mature post-mitotic type 2 pneumocytes or from either proliferating or non-proliferating Clara cells. We show that young animals possess abundant LAPCs and are highly susceptible to JSRV infection and transformation. On the contrary, healthy adult sheep, which are normally resistant to experimental OPA induction, exhibit a relatively low number of LAPCs and are resistant to JSRV infection of the respiratory epithelium. Importantly, induction of lung injury increased dramatically the number of LAPCs in adult sheep and rendered these animals fully susceptible to JSRV infection and transformation. Furthermore, we show that JSRV preferentially infects actively dividing cell in vitro. Overall, our study provides unique insights into pulmonary biology and carcinogenesis and suggests that JSRV and its host have reached an evolutionary equilibrium in which productive infection (and transformation) can occur only in cells that are scarce for most of the lifespan of the sheep. Our data also indicate that, at least in this model, inflammation can predispose to retroviral infection and cancer

Towards the Formalization of Fractional Calculus in Higher-Order Logic

Fractional calculus is a generalization of classical theories of integration and differentiation to arbitrary order (i.e., real or complex numbers). In the last two decades, this new mathematical modeling approach has been widely used to analyze a wide class of physical systems in various fields of science and engineering. In this paper, we describe an ongoing project which aims at formalizing the basic theories of fractional calculus in the HOL Light theorem prover. Mainly, we present the motivation and application of such formalization efforts, a roadmap to achieve our goals, current status of the project and future milestones.Comment: 9 page