21,066 research outputs found
Pomegranate extract inhibits EMT in clear cell renal cell carcinoma in a NF-ÎşB and JNK dependent manner.
Objective:Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common subtype of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and is characterized by biallelic inactivation of the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumor suppressor gene. One effect of VHL inactivation is hypoxia inducible factor alpha (HIFα)-independent constitutive activation of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) and c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). Both NF-κB and JNK drive ccRCC growth and epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT). The purpose of this study was to determine the biochemical effects of pomegranate juice extracts (PE) on RCC cell lines. Methods:The pre-clinical effects of PE on NF-κB, JNK, and the EMT phenotype were assayed, including its effect on proliferation, anchorage-independent growth, and invasion of pVHL-deficient RCCs. Results:PE inhibits the NF-κB and JNK pathways and consequently inhibits the EMT phenotype of pVHL-deficient ccRCCs. The effects of PE are concentration-dependent and affect not only biochemical markers of EMT (i.e., cadherin expression) but also functional manifestations of EMT, such as invasion. These effects are manifested within days of exposure to PE when diluted 2000-fold. Highly dilute concentrations of PE (106 dilution), which do not impact these pathways in the short term, were found to have NF-κB and JNK inhibitory effects and ability to reverse the EMT phenotype following prolonged exposure. Conclusion:These findings suggest that PE may mediate inhibition growth of pVHL-deficient ccRCCs and raises the possibility of its use as a dietary adjunct to managing patients with active surveillance for small, localized, incidentally identified renal tumors so as to avoid more invasive procedures such as nephrectomy
Storytelling industries : narrative production in the 21st century
This book shows how the unique characteristics of traditionally differentiated media continue to determine narrative despite the recent digital convergence of media technologies. It argues that media are now each largely defined by distinctive industrial practices that continue to preserve their identities and uniquely condition narrative production. It furthermore demonstrates how a given medium’s variability in institutional and technological conditions influences diverse approaches to storytelling. By connecting US film, television, comic book and video game industries to their popular fictional characters and universes, including Star Wars, Batman, Game of Thrones and Grand Theft Auto, the book identifies how differences in industrial practice between media, and between contexts within a given medium, inform narrative production. Storytelling Industries, by revealing how 21st century media industries shape storyworlds and steer the techniques by which they are conveyed, enhances our understanding of media and narrative
Pursuing “Generation Snowflake” : Mr. Robot and the USA Network's mission for millennials
U.S. basic cable channels are increasingly directing their brands toward millennials due to the increased economic importance of this demographic group. This article contributes to scholarship on basic cable economics and scripted programming by providing insight into how the institutional prioritization of millennials is shaping commissioning and marketing strategies in the sector. Using the USA Network drama series Mr. Robot (2015–present) as a case study, it demonstrates how widespread assumptions within media culture concerning millennial viewers’ personalities, preferences, and behaviors are influencing approaches to basic cable series narrative and promotion, and—accordingly—informing channel brand identities. It argues that these assumptions are influencing channels to (1) develop brands around programming that can be perceived to have social value, (2) amplify stereotypes of millennials as “digital natives” and “snowflakes,” and (3) circulate marketing material that presumes millennials’ familiarity with online technology and deemphasizes the promotional purpose of such content
Invited Discussion
There is a very rich literature proposing Bayesian approaches for clustering starting with a prior probability distribution on partitions. Most approaches assume exchangeability, leading to simple representations in terms of Exchangeable Partition Probability Functions (EPPF). Gibbs-type priors encompass a broad class of such cases, including Dirichlet and Pitman-Yor processes. Even though there have been some proposals to relax the exchangeability assumption, allowing covariate-dependence and partial exchangeability, limited consideration has been given on how to include concrete prior knowledge on the partition. For example, we are motivated by an epidemiological application, in which we wish to cluster birth defects into groups and we have prior knowledge of an initial clustering provided by experts. As a general approach for including such prior knowledge, we propose a Centered Partition (CP) process that modifies the EPPF to favor partitions close to an initial one. Some properties of the CP prior are described, a general algorithm for posterior computation is developed, and we illustrate the methodology through simulation examples and an application to the motivating epidemiology study of birth defects
Effect of “Ground Truth” on Image Binarization
Image binarization has a large effect on the rest of the document image analysis processes in character recognition. Algorithm development is still a major focus of research. Evaluation of image binarization has been done by comparison of the result of OCR systems on images binarized by different methods. That has been criticized in that the binarization alone is not evaluated, but rather how it interacts with the downstream processes. Recently pixel accurate ground truth images have been introduced for use in binarization algorithm evaluation. This has been shown to be open to interpretation. The choice of binarization ground truth affects the binarization algorithm design, either directly if design is by automated algorithm trying to match the provided ground truth, or indirectly if human designers adjust their designs to perform better on the provided data. Three variations in pixel accurate ground truth were used to train a binarization classifier. The performance can vary significantly depending on choice of ground truth, which can influence binarization design choices
A Photometric Metallicity Estimate of the Virgo Stellar Overdensity
We determine photometric metal abundance estimates for individual
main-sequence stars in the Virgo Overdensity (VOD), which covers almost 1000
deg^2 on the sky, based on a calibration of the metallicity sensitivity of
stellar isochrones in the gri filter passbands using field stars with
well-determined spectroscopic metal abundances. Despite the low precision of
the method for individual stars, we derive [Fe/H] = -2.0 +/-0.1 (internal)
+/-0.5 (systematic) for the metal abundance of the VOD from photometric
measurements of 0.7 million stars in the Northern Galactic hemisphere with
heliocentric distances from ~10 kpc to ~20 kpc. The metallicity of the VOD is
indistinguishable, within Delta [Fe/H] < 0.2, from that of field halo stars
covering the same distance range. This initial application suggests that the
SDSS gri passbands can be used to probe the properties of main-sequence stars
beyond ~10 kpc, complementing studies of nearby stars from more
metallicity-sensitive color indices that involve the u passband.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
The Tilt of the Halo Velocity Ellipsoid and the Shape of the Milky Way Halo
A sample of roughly 1,800 halo subdwarf stars with radial velocities and
proper motions is assembled, using the repeated multi-band Sloan Digital Sky
Survey photometric measurements in Stripe 82. Our sample of halo subdwarfs is
extracted via a reduced proper motion diagram and distances are obtained using
photometric parallaxes, thus giving full phase space information. The tilt of
the velocity ellipsoid with respect to the spherical polar coordinate system is
computed and found to be consistent with zero for two of the three tilt angles,
and very small for the third. We prove that if the inner halo is in a
steady-state and the triaxial velocity ellipsoid is everywhere aligned in
spherical polar coordinates, then the potential must be spherically symmetric.
The detectable, but very mild, misalignment with spherical polars is consistent
with the perturbative effects of the Galactic disk on a spherical dark halo.
Banana orbits are generated at the 1:1 resonance (in horizontal and vertical
frequency) by the disk. They populate Galactic potentials at the typical radii
of our subdwarf sample, along with the much more dominant short-axis tubes.
However, on geometric grounds alone, the tilt cannot vanish for the banana
orbits and this leads to a slight, but detectable, misalignment. We argue that
the tilt of the stellar halo velocity ellipsoid therefore provides a hitherto
largely neglected but important line of argument that the Milky Way's dark
halo, which dominates the potential, must be nearly spherical.Comment: Submitted to Ap
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