Proliferation tracing with single-cell mass cytometry optimizes generation of stem cell memory-like T cells.

Selective differentiation of naive T cells into multipotent T cells is of great interest clinically for the generation of cell-based cancer immunotherapies. Cellular differentiation depends crucially on division state and time. Here we adapt a dye dilution assay for tracking cell proliferative history through mass cytometry and uncouple division, time and regulatory protein expression in single naive human T cells during their activation and expansion in a complex ex vivo milieu. Using 23 markers, we defined groups of proteins controlled predominantly by division state or time and found that undivided cells account for the majority of phenotypic diversity. We next built a map of cell state changes during naive T-cell expansion. By examining cell signaling on this map, we rationally selected ibrutinib, a BTK and ITK inhibitor, and administered it before T cell activation to direct differentiation toward a T stem cell memory (TSCM)-like phenotype. This method for tracing cell fate across division states and time can be broadly applied for directing cellular differentiation

FLEXIBELT ARBETE - En kvalitativ intervjustudie om arbetssituationen för hemtjänstpersonal

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att ge en bild av vad antal personer som arbetar inom hemtjänsten har för uppfattning om hur de hanterar balansen mellan sina tilldelade arbetsuppgifter och brukarens situationella behov. Teori: Studiens teori omfattas av John Atkinssons (1984) modell ”The Flexible Firm”. Tidigare forskning som tas upp är brukartid i fokus, flexibla organisationer och dess konsekvenser, sjuksköterskornas tidshantering hemma hos brukarna, hemtjänstpersonalens roll för hälsofrämjande vanor samt professionell begränsning i ett flexibelt arbete. Metod: Forskningen är baserad på en fallstudie som är avgränsad till en hemtjänstverksamhet och är avidentifierad för att skydda verksamhetens integritet. Undersökningen har således utförts med semistrukturerade frågor som har utformats med hjälp av tidigare forskning för att framhäva de anställdas upplevelse av sitt arbete och beskriva det utifrån deras perspektiv. De anställdas beskrivning på de frågor jag har ställt har medfört att de själva får möjligheten att berätta sin egen synvinkel med hjälp av att frågorna har varit styrt mot forskningens syfte. Det har hjälpt informanterna att hålla sig till ämnet och att operationalisera flexibilitet genom att försöka gestalta vad det innebär att vara flexibel i sitt arbete för att få en kvalitativ analys. Resultat: Fyra teman har kommit fram genom analysen, arbetserfarenhet, samarbete, flexibelt arbetssätt och kontinuitet som har med hemtjänstpersonalens hantering av arbetsuppgifter att göra. Varje enskild hemtjänstpersonal har att hantera konflikten mellan att tillmötesgå den enskilda brukarens behov av stöd och hjälp och verksamhetens behov av att omsorgsarbete blir utfört. Detta betyder att det finns en spänning mellan att ha ett flexibelt förhållningssätt för brukarens skull eller för verksamhetens skull. Ytterst handlar detta om en konflikt mellan att betrakta brukare i hemtjänsten som individer eller som kollektiv, det vill säga brukare inom hemtjänsten som en enhetlig grupp

An Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Traffic Stops in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, from 2010 to 2019

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 spurred a national reckoning around how Black people are viewed and treated by law enforcement and the criminal legal system. Some elected officials, prosecutors, and police have acknowledged their moral responsibility to pursue racial justice by examining racial disparities and inequities. This report addresses one such practice—non-traffic-safety stops. These occur when police stop and detain people for minor traffic violations that pose no identifiable risk of harm to people outside of the vehicle. Vera partnered with the Suffolk County (Massachusetts) District Attorney's Office from July 2020 to March 2022 to study racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Vera's analysis revealed that non-traffic-safety stops in Suffolk County are worsening racial disparities in traffic enforcement. This report shares findings from Vera's analysis, along with proposed solutions that prohibit or deter such stops

The Supply Chain 4.0 in Moroccan automotive companies: a state of art.

Now more than ever, improving the efficiency of a company’s supply chain has become an asset for maintaining a competitive advantage also to meet the overall sustainability challenges related to the environmental pillar that must have a positive effect on the environment such as minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, for Moroccan companies, the integration of the industry 4.0 enabling technologies can improve and give a new impetus especially for the automotive industry. The success of this integration begins with the study of the industry 4.0 technologies and the supply chain 4.0 and their impact on automotive companies’ performance. The present study is based on a systematic literature review using quantitative and qualitative collected data, a statistical method will be applied to the current literature, on the international and national scales, to study and make further use of the major writings on the subject of this communication, especially in Morocco and similar developing countries by presenting the number of articles published so far also the main definitions and aspects treated by these studies, to provide a global vision on the current literature and encourage more searches to fill the gap, since the Moroccan industries don’t give the necessary importance to this topic.

Clinico-pathological spectrum of testicular and paratesticular lesions: a retrospective study

Background: Both neoplastic and non neoplastic conditions affect the testis. Although non neoplastic testicular lesions are more common, still most of the studies were done on testicular neoplasms only. Hence the present study was undertaken to study histopathological spectrum of testicular and paratesticular lesions, their age distribution and clinical presentation.Methods: This is a retrospective study of 77 cases of orchidectomy specimens, testicular biopsies and paratesticular lesions received in the department from Jan 2015 to June 2018.Results: Non neoplastic testicular lesions were more common than neoplastic (90.1% Vs 9.8%) with majority in the second and third decade. Undescended testis comprised 46.1% of the total orchidectomy specimens followed by Torsion/Infarction testis (15.3%). None of the undescended testis showed tumour unlike western countries. Majority of patients presented with empty scrotum (31.16%) and testicular/scrotal swelling (18.11%). Only 5 cases of testicular neoplasm were diagnosed during the study period amounting to only 1.42 cases per year. All were germ cell tumours (4 classic seminoma and 1 yolk sac tumour).Conclusions: Non neoplastic testicular lesions were more common than neoplastic lesions. Complete neonatal examination for testicular descent should be mandatory to avoid late presentations and future malignancies. Germ cell tumours formed the bulk of testicular tumours

Malware Triage Approach using a Task Memory based on Meta-Transfer Learning Framework

To enhance the efficiency of incident response triage operations, it is not cost-effective to defend all systems equally in a complex cyber environment. Instead, prioritizing the defense of critical functionality and the most vulnerable systems is desirable. Threat intelligence is crucial for guiding Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts' focus toward specific system activity and provides the primary contextual foundation for interpreting security alerts. This paper explores novel approaches for improving incident response triage operations, including dealing with attacks and zero-day malware. This solution for rapid prioritization of different malware have been raised to formulate fast response plans to minimize socioeconomic damage from the massive growth of malware attacks in recent years, it can also be extended to other incident response. We propose a malware triage approach that can rapidly classify and prioritize different malware classes to address this concern. We utilize a pre-trained ResNet18 network based on Siamese Neural Network (SNN) to reduce the biases in weights and parameters. Furthermore, our approach incorporates external task memory to retain the task information of previously encountered examples. This helps to transfer experience to new samples and reduces computational costs, without requiring backpropagation on external memory. Evaluation results indicate that the classification aspect of our proposed method surpasses other similar classification techniques in terms of performance. This new triage strategy based on task memory with meta-learning evaluates the level of similarity matching across malware classes to identify any risky and unknown malware (e.g., zero-day attacks) so that a defense of those that support critical functionality can be conducted

Comprehensive Immune Monitoring of Clinical Trials to Advance Human Immunotherapy.

The success of immunotherapy has led to a myriad of clinical trials accompanied by efforts to gain mechanistic insight and identify predictive signatures for personalization. However, many immune monitoring technologies face investigator bias, missing unanticipated cellular responses in limited clinical material. We present here a mass cytometry (CyTOF) workflow for standardized, systems-level biomarker discovery in immunotherapy trials. To broadly enumerate immune cell identity and activity, we established and extensively assessed a reference panel of 33 antibodies to cover major cell subsets, simultaneously quantifying activation and immune checkpoint molecules in a single assay. This assay enumerates ≥98% of peripheral immune cells with ≥4 positively identifying antigens. Robustness and reproducibility are demonstrated on multiple samples types, across two research centers and by orthogonal measurements. Using automated analysis, we identify stratifying immune signatures in bone marrow transplantation-associated graft-versus-host disease. Together, this validated workflow ensures comprehensive immunophenotypic analysis and data comparability and will accelerate biomarker discovery

A graphene electron lens

International audienceAn epitaxial layer of graphene was grown on a pre patterned 6H-SiC(0001) crystal. The graphene smoothly covers the hexagonal nano-holes in the substrate without the introduction of small angle grain boundaries or dislocations. This is achieved by an elastic deformation of the graphene by ~0.3% in accordance to its large elastic strain limit. This elastic stretching of the graphene leads to a modification of the band structure and to a local lowering of the electron group velocity of the graphene. We propose to use this effect to focus two-dimensional electrons in analogy to simple optical lenses

Harmful Waste Products as Novel Immune Modulators for Treating Inflammatory Arthritis?

Cope discusses a new study in rats suggesting that oxidative burst inducers might have a role to play in treating inflammatory arthritis