Condensation tendency and planar isotropic actin gradient induce radial alignment in confined monolayers

A monolayer of highly motile cells can establish long-range orientational order, which can be explained by hydrodynamic theory of active gels and fluids. However, it is less clear how cell shape changes and rearrangement are governed when the monolayer is in mechanical equilibrium states when cell motility diminishes. In this work, we report that rat embryonic fibroblasts (REF), when confined in circular mesoscale patterns on rigid substrates, can transition from the spindle shapes to more compact morphologies. Cells align radially only at the pattern boundary when they are in the mechanical equilibrium. This radial alignment disappears when cell contractility or cell-cell adhesion is reduced. Unlike monolayers of spindle-like cells such as NIH-3T3 fibroblasts with minimal intercellular interactions or epithelial cells like Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) with strong cortical actin network, confined REF monolayers present an actin gradient with isotropic meshwork, suggesting the existence of a stiffness gradient. In addition, the REF cells tend to condense on soft substrates, a collective cell behavior we refer to as the ‘condensation tendency’. This condensation tendency, together with geometrical confinement, induces tensile prestretch (i.e. an isotropic stretch that causes tissue to contract when released) to the confined monolayer. By developing a Voronoi-cell model, we demonstrate that the combined global tissue prestretch and cell stiffness differential between the inner and boundary cells can sufficiently define the cell radial alignment at the pattern boundary

Recurrent deletions of ULK4 in schizophrenia : a gene crucial for neuritogenesis and neuronal motility

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Photoprocesses in protoplanetary disks

Circumstellar disks are exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation from the young star. In the inner disks, the UV radiation can be enhanced by more than seven orders of magnitude compared with the average interstellar field, resulting in a physical and chemical structure that resembles that of a dense photon-dominated region (PDR). This intense UV field affects the chemistry, the vertical structure of the disk, and the gas temperature, especially in the surface layers of the disk. The parameters which make disks different from traditional PDRs are discussed, including the shape of the UV radiation field, grain growth, the absence of PAHs, the gas/dust ratio and the presence of inner holes. New photorates for selected species, including simple ions, are presented. Also, a summary of available cross sections at Lyman alpha 1216 A is made. Rates are computed for radiation fields with color temperatures ranging from 4000 to 30,000 K, and can be applied to a wide variety of astrophysical regions including exo-planetary atmospheres. The importance of photoprocesses is illustrated for a number of representative disk models, including disk models with grain growth and settling.Comment: A website with the final published version and all photodissociation cross sections and rates can be found at http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~ewine/phot

Effect of Control Strategies on Prevalence, Incidence and Re-infection of Clonorchiasis in Endemic Areas of China

Clonorchiasis is a liver fluke disease prevalent in East Asia, which is transmitted to humans mainly by eating raw freshwater fish. It induces various complications in the liver or bile duct including cholelithiasis, cholecystitis, cholangitis, and cirrhosis. Clonorchis sinensis has been known to cause cholangiocarcinoma, and is still a major health problem in endemic areas. People in endemic areas are repeatedly infected with C. sinensis, as they continue to consume raw freshwater fish in spite of control activities and availability of a highly effective drug, praziquantel. Reservoir hosts such as cats, dogs, and pigs supply eggs continuously to the environment and act as a source of infection. The present study analyzed the data produced by the Korea-China collaborative project for helminthiasis control in China during 2001–2004 to find out effective chemotherapeutic control strategies with praziquantel in endemic areas and to evaluate their effects on the transmission of C. sinensis infection by repeated mass or selective treatment. The four-year control trial found that repeated treatment is essential to the effective reduction of prevalence and infection intensity in heavily endemic areas. Mass chemotherapy is more effective than selective treatment, and more repeated treatments produce better outcomes in clonorchiasis control. Health education to change the habit of consuming raw or undercooked fish is an important and practical measure to prevent and reduce human infections in endemic areas. Together with chemotherapy, health education could be highly effective and produce sustainable effects in clonorchiasis control. Treatment of reservoirs, if applicable, will contribute to reduce the source of infection

Watchbird Home Monitoring System

Chickadee
 Tech 
has 
presents 
a 
remotely 
accessible 
home 
monitoring 
system 
called
 Watchbird.  

The
 system
 will
 allow
 users
 to 
check 
via 
their cell
 phones 
what the 
status
 of
 their door
 locks,
 windows,
 and
 stoves
 are in 
their 
homes.

  A
 considerable
 percentage 
of
 people
 leave
 their
 homes
 without
 locking
 their
 doors
, 
and 
that
 many
 burglaries
 actually
 occur
 through
 an
 unlocked
 door
.

 Watchbird will
 provide
 users
 with
 peace
 of
 mind 
in 
an 
unobtrusive
 and 
low‐cost 
manner

Nonperturbative Light-Front QCD

In this work the determination of low-energy bound states in Quantum Chromodynamics is recast so that it is linked to a weak-coupling problem. This allows one to approach the solution with the same techniques which solve Quantum Electrodynamics: namely, a combination of weak-coupling diagrams and many-body quantum mechanics. The key to eliminating necessarily nonperturbative effects is the use of a bare Hamiltonian in which quarks and gluons have nonzero constituent masses rather than the zero masses of the current picture. The use of constituent masses cuts off the growth of the running coupling constant and makes it possible that the running coupling never leaves the perturbative domain. For stabilization purposes an artificial potential is added to the Hamiltonian, but with a coefficient that vanishes at the physical value of the coupling constant. The weak-coupling approach potentially reconciles the simplicity of the Constituent Quark Model with the complexities of Quantum Chromodynamics. The penalty for achieving this perturbative picture is the necessity of formulating the dynamics of QCD in light-front coordinates and of dealing with the complexities of renormalization which such a formulation entails. We describe the renormalization process first using a qualitative phase space cell analysis, and we then set up a precise similarity renormalization scheme with cutoffs on constituent momenta and exhibit calculations to second order. We outline further computations that remain to be carried out. There is an initial nonperturbative but nonrelativistic calculation of the hadronic masses that determines the artificial potential, with binding energies required to be fourth order in the coupling as in QED. Next there is a calculation of the leading radiative corrections to these masses, which requires our renormalization program. Then the real struggle of finding the right extensions to perturbation theory to study the strong-coupling behavior of bound states can begin.Comment: 56 pages (REVTEX), Report OSU-NT-94-28. (figures not included, available via anaonymous ftp from pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu in subdirectory pub/infolight/qcd

Benign tumors in myotonic dystrophy type I target disease-related cancer sites

Acknowledgments The authors thank Ms. Emily Carver, BS, and Mr. David Ruggieri, BS, both from the Information Management Services Inc. (Calverton, MD, USA) for their important contributions to database management. This study is based on data from the CPRD GOLD database October 2016 release, obtained from the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database (Copyright © (2016)), and Office of National Statistics (ONS) database (Copyright ©(2016)) reused with the permission of The Health &Social Care Information Centre. All rights reserved. The interpretation and conclusions contained in this study are those of the authors alonePeer reviewedPublisher PD