27,123 research outputs found
Demonstration of mixed properties of RU486 in progesterone receptor (PR)-transfected MDA-MB-231 cells: a model for studying the functions of progesterone analogues
Progesterone antagonist RU486 (mifepristone) has been implicated for many anti-neoplastic and obstetrical applications. But the compound has demonstrated undesired agonist-like effect depending on cell, tissue and species studied. Using PR-transfected breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231, this report describes the similarities and differences between progesterone- and RU486-mediated effects on cell growth, cell differentiation and, at the molecular level, on the activation of p44/p42 MAP kinases (MAPK). Like progesterone, RU486 inhibited cells growth by arresting the cells in G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle. In contrast to progesterone that induced cell spreading, RU486 induced a multipolar, stellate morphology. RU486-treated cells showed no increase of stress fibers, nor was there any increase of focal adhesions as progesterone-treated cells did. Furthermore, despite of the fact that both compounds inhibited cell growth, RU486 significantly stimulated the activation of p44/p42 MAP kinases whereas progesterone markedly inhibited the activation. Nonetheless, the effects of RU486 were PR-mediated and RU486 was able to antagonize the effect of progesterone on cell growth and focal adhesion. In conclusion, RU486 can act not only as a progesterone antagonist, a progesterone agonist but also induced morphological and molecular changes that were distinct from progesterone-mediated effects in PR-transfected MDA-MB-231 cells. The non-progesterone-like effect of RU486 may be mediated through a pathway that is different from the progesterone-mediated pathway, or it is the result of a blockade of certain critical step(s) in the progesterone-mediated pathway. In any case, undesired side effects of antiprogestin may create clinical complications. PR-transfected MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells provide a model for studying the functions of progesterone analogues.© 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co
Faster k-Medoids Clustering: Improving the PAM, CLARA, and CLARANS Algorithms
Clustering non-Euclidean data is difficult, and one of the most used
algorithms besides hierarchical clustering is the popular algorithm
Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM), also simply referred to as k-medoids. In
Euclidean geometry the mean-as used in k-means-is a good estimator for the
cluster center, but this does not hold for arbitrary dissimilarities. PAM uses
the medoid instead, the object with the smallest dissimilarity to all others in
the cluster. This notion of centrality can be used with any (dis-)similarity,
and thus is of high relevance to many domains such as biology that require the
use of Jaccard, Gower, or more complex distances.
A key issue with PAM is its high run time cost. We propose modifications to
the PAM algorithm to achieve an O(k)-fold speedup in the second SWAP phase of
the algorithm, but will still find the same results as the original PAM
algorithm. If we slightly relax the choice of swaps performed (at comparable
quality), we can further accelerate the algorithm by performing up to k swaps
in each iteration. With the substantially faster SWAP, we can now also explore
alternative strategies for choosing the initial medoids. We also show how the
CLARA and CLARANS algorithms benefit from these modifications. It can easily be
combined with earlier approaches to use PAM and CLARA on big data (some of
which use PAM as a subroutine, hence can immediately benefit from these
improvements), where the performance with high k becomes increasingly
important.
In experiments on real data with k=100, we observed a 200-fold speedup
compared to the original PAM SWAP algorithm, making PAM applicable to larger
data sets as long as we can afford to compute a distance matrix, and in
particular to higher k (at k=2, the new SWAP was only 1.5 times faster, as the
speedup is expected to increase with k)
Secondary aerosol formation from atmospheric reactions of aliphatic amines
Although aliphatic amines have been detected in both urban and rural atmospheric aerosols, little is known about the chemistry leading to particle formation or the potential aerosol yields from reactions of gas-phase amines. We present here the first systematic study of aerosol formation from the atmospheric reactions of amines. Based on laboratory chamber experiments and theoretical calculations, we evaluate aerosol formation from reaction of OH, ozone, and nitric acid with trimethylamine, methylamine, triethylamine, diethylamine, ethylamine, and ethanolamine. Entropies of formation for alkylammonium nitrate salts are estimated by molecular dynamics calculations enabling us to estimate equilibrium constants for the reactions of amines with nitric acid. Though subject to significant uncertainty, the calculated dissociation equilibrium constant for diethylammonium nitrate is found to be sufficiently small to allow for its atmospheric formation, even in the presence of ammonia which competes for available nitric acid. Experimental chamber studies indicate that the dissociation equilibrium constant for triethylammonium nitrate is of the same order of magnitude as that for ammonium nitrate. All amines studied form aerosol when photooxidized in the presence of NOx with the majority of the aerosol mass present at the peak of aerosol growth consisting of aminium (R3NH+) nitrate salts, which repartition back to the gas phase as the parent amine is consumed. Only the two tertiary amines studied, trimethylamine and triethylamine, are found to form significant non-salt organic aerosol when oxidized by OH or ozone; calculated organic mass yields for the experiments conducted are similar for ozonolysis (15% and 5% respectively) and photooxidation (23% and 8% respectively). The non-salt organic aerosol formed appears to be more stable than the nitrate salts and does not quickly repartition back to the gas phase
Tilting instability and other anomalies in the flux-lattice in some magnetic superconductors
The flux-line lattice in the compound , which has a tendency to
ferromagnetic order in the a-b plane is studied with external magnetic field
direction close to the c-axis. We show the existence of an instability where
the direction of flux-lines spontaneously tilts away from that of the applied
field near the onset of ferromagnetic order. The enhanced fluctuations in the
flux lattice and the square flux lattice recently observed are explained and
further experiments suggested.Comment: 12 pages, Latex file, no figur
Recent progress in Hamiltonian light-front QCD
Hamiltonian light-front quantum field theory constitutes a framework for the
non-perturbative solution of invariant masses and correlated parton amplitudes
of self-bound systems. By choosing light-front gauge and adopting a basis
function representation, we obtain a large, sparse, Hamiltonian matrix for mass
eigenstates of gauge theories that is solvable by adapting the ab initio
no-core methods of nuclear many-body theory. Full covariance is recovered in
the continuum limit, the infinite matrix limit. We outline our approach and
discuss the computational challenges.Comment: Invited paper at Light Cone 2008, Mulhouse, Franc
Spin polarized liquid 3He
We have employed the constrained variational method to study the influence of
spin polarization on the ground state properties of liquid . The
spin polarized phase, we have found, has stronger correlation with respect to
the unpolarized phase. It is shown that the internal energy of liquid increases by increasing polarization with no crossing point between
polarized and unpolarized energy curves over the liquid density range. The
obtained internal energy curves show a bound state, even in the case of fully
spin polarized matter. We have also investigated the validity of using a
parabolic formula for calculating the energy of spin polarized liquid . Finally, we have compared our results with other calculations.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Entangled light from Bose-Einstein condensates
We propose a method to generate entangled light with a Bose-Einstein
condensate trapped in a cavity, a system realized in recent experiments. The
atoms of the condensate are trapped in a periodic potential generated by a
cavity mode. The condensate is continuously pumped by a laser and spontaneously
emits a pair of photons of different frequencies in two distinct cavity modes.
In this way, the condensate mediates entanglement between two cavity modes
which leak out and can be separated and exhibit continuous variable
entanglement. The scheme exploits the experimentally demonstrated strong,
steady and collective coupling of condensate atoms to a cavity field.Comment: 5 pages and 5 figure
Stochastic Spacetime and Brownian Motion of Test Particles
The operational meaning of spacetime fluctuations is discussed. Classical
spacetime geometry can be viewed as encoding the relations between the motions
of test particles in the geometry. By analogy, quantum fluctuations of
spacetime geometry can be interpreted in terms of the fluctuations of these
motions. Thus one can give meaning to spacetime fluctuations in terms of
observables which describe the Brownian motion of test particles. We will first
discuss some electromagnetic analogies, where quantum fluctuations of the
electromagnetic field induce Brownian motion of test particles. We next discuss
several explicit examples of Brownian motion caused by a fluctuating
gravitational field. These examples include lightcone fluctuations, variations
in the flight times of photons through the fluctuating geometry, and
fluctuations in the expansion parameter given by a Langevin version of the
Raychaudhuri equation. The fluctuations in this parameter lead to variations in
the luminosity of sources. Other phenomena which can be linked to spacetime
fluctuations are spectral line broadening and angular blurring of distant
sources.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures. Talk given at the 9th Peyresq workshop, June
200
- …