Cell migration directionality and speed are independently regulated by RasG and Gβ in Dictyostelium cells in electrotaxis.

Motile cells manifest increased migration speed and directionality in gradients of stimuli, including chemoattractants, electrical potential and substratum stiffness. Here, we demonstrate that Dictyostelium cells move directionally in response to an electric field (EF) with specific acceleration/deceleration kinetics of directionality and migration speed. Detailed analyses of the migration kinetics suggest that migration speed and directionality are separately regulated by Gβ and RasG, respectively, in EF-directed cell migration. Cells lacking Gβ, which is essential for all chemotactic responses in Dictyostelium, showed EF-directed cell migration with the same increase in directionality in an EF as wild-type cells. However, these cells failed to show induction of the migration speed upon EF stimulation as much as wild-type cells. Loss of RasG, a key regulator of chemoattractant-directed cell migration, resulted in almost complete loss of directionality, but similar acceleration/deceleration kinetics of migration speed as wild-type cells. These results indicate that Gβ and RasG are required for the induction of migration speed and directionality, respectively, in response to an EF, suggesting separation of migration speed and directionality even with intact feedback loops between mechanical and signaling networks

A Human Capital Approach to Reduce Health Disparities

Objective: To introduce a human capital approach to reduce health disparities in South Carolina by increasing the number and quality of trained minority professionals in public health practice and research. Methods: The conceptual basis and elements of Project EXPORT in South Carolina are described. Project EXPORT is a community based participatory research (CBPR) translational project designed to build human capital in public health practice and research. This project involves Claflin University (CU), a Historically Black College University (HBCU) and the African American community of Orangeburg, South Carolina to reduce health disparities, utilizing resources from the University of South Carolina (USC), a level 1 research institution to build expertise at a minority serving institution. The elements of Project EXPORT were created to advance the science base of disparities reduction, increase trained minority researchers, and engage the African American community at all stages of research. Conclusion: Building upon past collaborations between HBCU’s in South Carolina and USC, this project holds promise for a public health human capital approach to reduce health disparities

Synthesizing framework models for symbolic execution

Symbolic execution is a powerful program analysis technique, but it is difficult to apply to programs built using frameworks such as Swing and Android, because the framework code itself is hard to symbolically execute. The standard solution is to manually create a framework model that can be symbolically executed, but developing and maintaining a model is difficult and error-prone. In this paper, we present Pasket, a new system that takes a first step toward automatically generating Java framework models to support symbolic execution. Pasket's focus is on creating models by instantiating design patterns. Pasket takes as input class, method, and type information from the framework API, together with tutorial programs that exercise the framework. From these artifacts and Pasket's internal knowledge of design patterns, Pasket synthesizes a framework model whose behavior on the tutorial programs matches that of the original framework. We evaluated Pasket by synthesizing models for subsets of Swing and Android. Our results show that the models derived by Pasket are sufficient to allow us to use off-the-shelf symbolic execution tools to analyze Java programs that rely on frameworks.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CCF-1139021)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CCF-1139056)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CCF-1161775

Nucleus-Nucleus Bremsstrahlung from Ultrarelativistic Collisions

The bremsstrahlung produced when heavy nuclei collide is estimated for central collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Soft photons can be used to infer the rapidity distribution of the outgoing charge. An experimental design is outlined.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, uses revte

Cd3As2 is Centrosymmetric

This is a revised version of a manuscript that was originally posted here in February of 2014. It has been accepted at the journal Inorganic Chemistry after reviews that included those of two crystallographers who made sure all the t's were crossed and the i's were dotted. The old work (from 1968) that said that Cd3As2 was noncentrosymmetric was mistaken, with the authors of that study making a type of error that in the 1980s became infamous in crystallography. As a result of the increased scrutiny of the issue of centrosymmetricity of the 1980's, there are now much better analysis tools to resolve the issue fully, and its important to understand that not just our crystals are centrosymmetric, even the old guy's crystals were centrosymmetric (and by implication everyone's are). There is no shame in having made that error back in the day and those authors would not find the current centrosymmetric result controversial; their paper is excellent in all other aspects. This manuscript describes how the structure is determined, explains the structure schematically, calculates the electronic structure based on the correct centrosymmetric crystal structure, and gives the structural details that should be used for future analysis and modeling.Comment: Accepted by ACS Inorganic Chemistr

Greater Partnerships for the Effective Management of Labor Migration in Asia

The pace and size of labor migration have been on the rise in past decades, largely due to the different stages of economic development across Asia. Labor migration flows from Asia peaked in 2015 and dropped in the following 2 years, falling to 5.2 million in 2017, the lowest level since 2011. The decrease of about 6% in 2017 reversed the upward trend (Figure 1). Reduced recruitment in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the top destinations for Asian workers, was the main reason behind this downward trend (ADBI, OECD, and ILO 2019). The changes in the labor migration trend and its characteristics are described in the recently published ADBI-OECD-ILO migration report

International Stock Market Efficiency: A Non-Bayesian Time-Varying Model Approach

This paper develops a non-Bayesian methodology to analyze the time-varying structure of international linkages and market efficiency in G7 countries. We consider a non-Bayesian time-varying vector autoregressive (TV-VAR) model, and apply it to estimate the joint degree of market efficiency in the sense of Fama (1970, 1991). Our empirical results provide a new perspective that the international linkages and market efficiency change over time and that their behaviors correspond well to historical events of the international financial system.Comment: 21 pages, 2 tables, 6 figure

Quantum and frustration effects on fluctuations of the inverse compressibility in two-dimensional Coulomb glasses

We consider interacting electrons in a two-dimensional quantum Coulomb glass and investigate by means of the Hartree-Fock approximation the combined effects of the electron-electron interaction and the transverse magnetic field on fluctuations of the inverse compressibility. Preceding systematic study of the system in the absence of the magnetic field identifies the source of the fluctuations, interplay of disorder and interaction, and effects of hopping. Revealed in sufficiently clean samples with strong interactions is an unusual right-biased distribution of the inverse compressibility, which is neither of the Gaussian nor of the Wigner-Dyson type. While in most cases weak magnetic fields tend to suppress fluctuations, in relatively clean samples with weak interactions fluctuations are found to grow with the magnetic field. This is attributed to the localization properties of the electron states, which may be measured by the participation ratio and the inverse participation number. It is also observed that at the frustration where the Fermi level is degenerate, localization or modulation of electrons is enhanced, raising fluctuations. Strong frustration in general suppresses effects of the interaction on the inverse compressibility and on the configuration of electrons.Comment: 15 pages, 18 figures, To appear in Phys. Rev.

Helicobacter pylori infection is associated with an increased rate of diabetes.

ObjectiveChronic infections could be contributing to the socioeconomic gradient in chronic diseases. Although chronic infections have been associated with increased levels of inflammatory cytokines and cardiovascular disease, there is limited evidence on how infections affect risk of diabetes.Research design and methodsWe examined the association between serological evidence of chronic viral and bacterial infections and incident diabetes in a prospective cohort of Latino elderly. We analyzed data on 782 individuals aged >60 years and diabetes-free in 1998-1999, whose blood was tested for antibodies to herpes simplex virus 1, varicella virus, cytomegalovirus, Helicobacter pylori, and Toxoplasma gondii and who were followed until June 2008. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate the relative incidence rate of diabetes by serostatus, with adjustment for age, sex, education, cardiovascular disease, smoking, and cholesterol levels.ResultsIndividuals seropositive for herpes simplex virus 1, varicella virus, cytomegalovirus, and T. gondii did not show an increased rate of diabetes, whereas those who were seropositive for H. pylori at enrollment were 2.7 times more likely at any given time to develop diabetes than seronegative individuals (hazard ratio 2.69 [95% CI 1.10-6.60]). Controlling for insulin resistance, C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 did not attenuate the effect of H. pylori infection.ConclusionsWe demonstrated for the first time that H. pylori infection leads to an increased rate of incident diabetes in a prospective cohort study. Our findings implicate a potential role for antibiotic and gastrointestinal treatment in preventing diabetes