The therapeutic effects of myoelectrically controlled robotic system for persons after stroke : a pilot study

Author name used in this publication: R. SongAuthor name used in this publication: K. Y. TongAuthor name used in this publication: X. L. HuAuthor name used in this publication: L. LiRefereed conference paper2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperVersion of RecordPublishe

Oxygen-regulated transcription factors and their role in pulmonary disease

The transcription factors nuclear factor interleukin-6 (NF-IL6), early growth response-1 (EGR-1) and hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) have important roles in the molecular pathophysiology of hypoxia-associated pulmonary disease. NF-IL6 controls the production of interleukin (IL)-6 in vascular endothelial cells, which may have anti-inflammatory activity by counteracting effects of IL-1 and IL-8. EGR-1 controls the production of tissue factor by macrophages, which triggers fibrin deposition in the pulmonary vasculature. HIF-1 activates the expression of the vasoconstrictor endothelin-1 in vascular endothelial cells. Angiotensin II induces HIF-1 expression and hypertrophy of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells. HIF-1 might therefore have multiple roles in the pathogenesis of pulmonary vascular remodeling

Fitness Ranking of Individual Mutants Drives Patterns of Epistatic Interactions in HIV-1

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PLAST: parallel local alignment search tool for database comparison

Background: Sequence similarity searching is an important and challenging task in molecular biology and next-generation sequencing should further strengthen the need for faster algorithms to process such vast amounts of data. At the same time, the internal architecture of current microprocessors is tending towards more parallelism, leading to the use of chips with two, four and more cores integrated on the same die. The main purpose of this work was to design an effective algorithm to fit with the parallel capabilities of modern microprocessors. Results: A parallel algorithm for comparing large genomic banks and targeting middle-range computers has been developed and implemented in PLAST software. The algorithm exploits two key parallel features of existing and future microprocessors: the SIMD programming model (SSE instruction set) and the multithreading concept (multicore). Compared to multithreaded BLAST software, tests performed on an 8-processor server have shown speedup ranging from 3 to 6 with a similar level of accuracy. Conclusions: A parallel algorithmic approach driven by the knowledge of the internal microprocessor architecture allows significant speedup to be obtained while preserving standard sensitivity for similarity search problems.

Associations of sitting accumulation patterns with cardio-metabolic risk biomarkers in Australian adults

Backgroun

Laser Cooling of Optically Trapped Molecules

Calcium monofluoride (CaF) molecules are loaded into an optical dipole trap (ODT) and subsequently laser cooled within the trap. Starting with magneto-optical trapping, we sub-Doppler cool CaF and then load $150(30)$ CaF molecules into an ODT. Enhanced loading by a factor of five is obtained when sub-Doppler cooling light and trapping light are on simultaneously. For trapped molecules, we directly observe efficient sub-Doppler cooling to a temperature of $60(5)$ $\mu\text{K}$. The trapped molecular density of $8(2)\times10^7$ cm$^{-3}$ is an order of magnitude greater than in the initial sub-Doppler cooled sample. The trap lifetime of 750(40) ms is dominated by background gas collisions.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Enhanced down-regulation of ALCAM/CD166 in African-American breast cancer

Background: Variation in tumor biology in African-American (AA) and Caucasian (CAU) women with breast cancer is poorly defined. Activated leukocyte cell adhesion molecule (ALCAM) is a bad prognostic factor of breast cancer yet it has never being studied in the AA population. We tested the hypothesis that ALCAM expression would be markedly lower in cases of AA breast cancer when compared to CAU. Methods: Cases of breast cancer among AA (n = 78) and CAU (n = 95) women were studied. Immunohistochemical staining was used to semi-quantitatively score ALCAM expression in tumor and adjacent non-tumor breast tissues. Clinico-pathological characteristics including histological type, histological grade, tumor size, lymph node metastasis, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2-neu status were abstracted, and their association with ALCAM expression tested. Results: Univariate analysis revealed that the level of ALCAM expression at intercellular junctions of primary tumors correlates with histological grade (AA; p = 0.04, CUA; p = 0.02), ER status (AA; p = 0.0004, CAU; p = 0.0015), PR status (AA; p = 0.002, CUA p = 0.034) and triple-negative tumor status (AA; p = 0.0002, CAU; p = 0.0006,) in both ethnic groups. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that ethnicity contribute significantly to ALCAM expression after accounting for basal-like subtype, age, histological grade, tumor size, and lymph node status. Compared to CAU tumors, the AA are 4 times more likely to have low ALCAM expression (p = 0.003). Conclusions: Markedly low expression of ALCAM at sites of cell-cell contact in primary breast cancer tumors regardless of differentiation, size and lymph node involvement may contribute to the more aggressive phenotype of breast cancer among AA women