Unraveling the vascular fate of deformable circulating tumor cells via a hierarchical computational model

Distant spreading of primary lesions is modulated by the vascular dynamics of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and their ability to establish metastatic niches. While the mechanisms regulating CTC homing in specific tissues are yet to be elucidated, it is well documented that CTCs possess different size, biological properties and deformability. A computational model is presented to predict the vascular transport and adhesion of CTCs in whole blood. A Lattice-Boltzmann method, which is employed to solve the Navier-Stokes equation for the plasma flow, is coupled with an Immersed Boundary Method. The vascular dynamics of a CTC is assessed in large and small microcapillaries. The CTC shear modulus k ctc is varied returning CTCs that are stiffer, softer and equally deformable as compared to RBCs. In large microcapillaries, soft CTCs behave similarly to RBCs and move away from the vessel walls; whereas rigid CTCs are pushed laterally by the fast moving RBCs and interact with the vessel walls. Three adhesion behaviors are observed, firm adhesion, rolling and crawling over the vessel walls, depending on the CTC stiffness. On the contrary, in small microcapillaries, rigid CTCs are pushed downstream by a compact train of RBCs and cannot establish any firm interaction with the vessel walls; whereas soft CTCs are squeezed between the vessel wall and the RBC train and rapidly establish firm adhesion. These findings document the relevance of cell deformability in CTC vascular adhesion and provide insights on the mechanisms regulating metastasis formation in different vascular districts

Suppression of Superconductivity in YBCO/LCMO Superlattices

The competition of superconductivity and magnetism in superlattices composed of alternating YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-d}$ and La$_{0.67}$Ca$_{0.33}$MnO$_{3}$ thin films is investigated using low-energy optical spectroscopy. The thickness of the superconducting YBCO layers is varied from 30 nm to 20 nm while the thickness of the magnetic LCMO layers is kept constant at 20 nm. We clearly observe that the superconducting condensate density in the superconducting state of superlattice is drastically reduced by the magnetic subsystem which may be connected with proximity effects that distort the gap symmetry and thus suppress superconductivity.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Electronics and Data Acquisition System of the DarkSide Dark Matter Search

It is generally inferred from astronomical measurements that Dark Matter (DM) comprises approximately 27\% of the energy-density of the universe. If DM is a subatomic particle, a possible candidate is a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP), and the DarkSide-50 (DS) experiment is a direct search for evidence of WIMP-nuclear collisions. DS is located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy, and consists of three active, embedded components; an outer water veto (CTF), a liquid scintillator veto (LSV), and a liquid argon (LAr) time projection chamber (TPC). This paper describes the data acquisition and electronic systems of the DS detectors, designed to detect the residual ionization from such collisions

The SUMMA Platform Prototype

We present the first prototype of the SUMMA Platform: an integrated platform for multilingual media monitoring. The platform contains a rich suite of low-level and high-level natural language processing technologies: automatic speech recognition of broadcast media, machine translation, automated tagging and classification of named entities, semantic parsing to detect relationships between entities, and automatic construction / augmentation of factual knowledge bases. Implemented on the Docker platform, it can easily be deployed, customised, and scaled to large volumes of incoming media streams

Os possíveis desafios do programa de mobilidade Mercosul

O presente trabalho é parte de uma pesquisa mais ampla que se encontra em andamento e pretende avaliar os impactos do Projeto de Apoio ao Programa de Mobilidade Mercosul (PMM) em dez instituições de ensino superior situadas nos quatro países do Mercosul, a qual resultará na dissertação de mestrado a ser apresentada na Faculdade de Educação da Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados FAED/UFGD, no início de 2014. O PMM é co-financiado pela União Europeia e o Mercosul e tem por objetivo geral apoiar a conformação de uma cidadania Mercosul com sentimento de pertinência à região entre os membros da comunidade universitária dos quatro países membros efetivos do Mercosul. Como objetivo específico tem-se a pretensão de apoiar a consolidação e expansão de um programa de mobilidade de estudantes de graduação do Mercosul para cursos não acreditados. Neste texto será abordada a formulação do PMM, considerando seu contexto histórico e as influências recebidas, também se apresentaram os possíveis desafios para a sua implantação e sua continuidade. Adotou-se como metodologia o levantamento bibliográfico e documental, com consultas a documentos da União Europeia, do Mercosul e do Setor Educativo do Mercosul

Classic readings in American politics

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