Dietary alterations modulate the microRNA 29/30 and IGF-1/AKT signaling axis in breast Cancer liver metastasis.

Background: Metastatic cancer is incurable and understanding the molecular underpinnings is crucial to improving survival for our patients. The IGF-1/Akt signaling pathway is often impaired in cancer leading to its progression and metastases. Diet modification is known to alter the IGF-1/Akt pathway and affect the expression of microRNA involved in tumor initiation, growth and metastases. Liver metastases are one of the most common type of metastases in breast and colon cancer. In the present study, we looked at the effect of diet modification on the expression of microRNA in normal liver and liver with breast cancer metastases using in vivo model. Methodology: 6-month-old C57BL/6 J mice were put on either an ad libitum (AL) diet, or 40% calorie restricted (CR) diet or were fasted for 24 h (FA) before sacrifice. MicroRNA array analysis, western blot and qRT-PCR were performed using liver tissue to compare the treatment groups. A breast cancer model was also used to study the changes in microRNA expression in liver of a group of BALB/c mice orthotopically injected with 4 T1 cells in the mammary fat pad, put on either an AL or 30% CR diet. Liver and primary tumor tissues were used to perform qRT-PCR to compare the treatment groups. Results: MicroRNA array analysis showed significant changes in miRNA expression in both CR and FA conditions in normal liver. Expression of miR-29 and miR-30 family members was increased in both CR and FA. Western blot analysis of the normal liver tissue showed that CR and FA downregulated the IGF-1/Akt pathway and qRT-PCR showed that the expression of miR-29b, miR-29c, miR-30a and miR-30b were increased with CR and FA. Liver tissue collected from mice in the breast cancer model showed an increase in expression of miR-29b, miR-29c and miR-30b while tumor tissue showed increased expression of miR-29c, miR-30a and miR-30b. Discussion: Members of the miR-29 family are known to target and suppress IGF-1, while members of the miR-30 family are known to target and suppress both IGF-1 and IGF-1R. In the present study, we observe that calorie restriction increased the expression of miR-29 and miR-30 in both the normal liver as well as the liver with breast cancer metastases. These findings suggest that dietary alterations may play a role in the treatment of liver metastasis, which should be evaluated further

On Logistics Management for Prosumer Business Information System Development and Implementation

Managing prosumer businesses is challenging with different types of renewable and non-renewable energy resources. The development and implementation of energy systems pose additional challenges when prosumers pursue sustainable production while simultaneously trying to mitigate gas emissions and energy losses. Issues associated with energy emissions and supply shortfalls must be addressed before developing prosumer business information systems and reaping their benefits. Innovative IS (Information System) solutions are needed to align different energy systems and prosumer coalitions that require cautious implementations. The purpose of the research is to develop IS artefacts, strategizing energy systems, establishing essential logistics requirements for smart-grids to ensure sustainable energy supplies. A conceptual Prosumer Business-based Design Science Information System (PBDSIS) framework is developed, collaborating IS articulations of prosumer business data artefacts in ecologies, where energy production and distribution need crucial logistics support and implementation of IS artefacts. The framework is implemented in prosumer business domain using open-source data

The Information Content of Commercial Paper Rating Downgrades: Further Evidence

Nayar received financial support from the Noble Foundation, and the Cooksey and Laird Programs. Both authors also thank the University of Oklahoma Research Council for other financial assistance. Comments from William Kross, Byung Ro, Mike Rozeff, Gregory Waymire, and participants at the University of Oklahoma Accounting and Finance Joint Workshop are appreciated. Eli Bartov (referee) helped to focus and strengthen the paper considerably. Stephanie Farewell, Giri Iyer, Alex Lee, Lori Mason, Karen Nunez, and Scott Whisenant provided valuable research assistance. Address correspondence to the authors at Michael F. Price College of Business, Adams Hall, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019–0450, Tel: (405) 325–5591.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Information System Guided Supply Chains and their Visual Analytics in Integrated Project Management

From a digital ecosystem perspective, sustainability is a manifestation of a composite entity with multiple data attribute dimensions. The data relationships may emerge between geographically distributed supply chain management ecosystems and their linked human, economic and environment ecologies. The ecosystems may exhibit inherent connections and interactions. For making connections more resilient, we characterize models that serve multiple industries through numerous data associations, even in Big Data scales. In the context of Integrated Project Management (IPM), the knowledge of boundaries between systems is mysterious, analysing diverse ecosystems through a sustainable framework can uncover new insights of inherent connections. The purpose of this research is to develop a holistic information system approach, in which multidimensional data and their connectivity are analysed, recognizing the ontological cogency, uniqueness of ecosystems and their data sources. The research outcome has facilitated the tactical development of strategies for ameliorating the sustainability challenges in the IPM contexts

Relevance Judgment Convergence Degree – A Measure of Inconsistency among Assessors for Information Retrieval

Relevance judgment of human assessors is inherently subjective and dynamic when evaluation datasets are created for Information Retrieval (IR) systems. However, a small group of experts’ relevance judgment results are usually taken as ground truth to “objectively” evaluate the performance of the IR systems. Recent trends intend to employ a group of judges, such as outsourcing, to alleviate the potentially biased judgment results stemmed from using only a single expert’s judgment. Nevertheless, different judges may have different opinions and may not agree with each other, and the inconsistency in human relevance judgment may affect the IR system evaluation results. In this research, we introduce a Relevance Judgment Convergence Degree (RJCD) to measure the quality of queries in the evaluation datasets. Experimental results reveal a strong correlation coefficient between the proposed RJCD score and the performance differences between the two IR systems

Inkjet printed GPS antenna on a 3D printed substrate using low-cost machines

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, is a process of fabricating a 3D digital design by printing layer after layer. 3D printing has advanced very rapidly in recent years and has become an alternative to traditional manufacture methods for customized objects. Originally intended for the prototyping of mechanical objects, this technique has expanded into different areas such as biomedical [1] and electronics [2]. Within electronics, antennas and microwave engineering can greatly benefit from this technology. Researchers have already demonstrated the potential applicability of 3D printing in this field. Light weight waveguides have been fabricated by copper plating plastics forms [3]. Substrates for antenna applications have been modified and new properties have been found with the assistance of additive manufacturing [4]. Novel frequency selective structures (FSS) have been developed by fully [5] and partially [6] metalizing 3D printed elements. Non-uniform electromagnetic band gap structures have been fabricated on printed substrates [7]. Antennas have been placed onto wearables and tested on 3D printed phantoms [8]–[9]. Fig. 1

Dissecting Galaxies: Separating Star Formation, Shock Excitation and AGN Activity in the Central Region of NGC 613

The most rapidly evolving regions of galaxies often display complex optical spectra with emission lines excited by massive stars, shocks and accretion onto supermassive black holes. Standard calibrations (such as for the star formation rate) cannot be applied to such mixed spectra. In this paper we isolate the contributions of star formation, shock excitation and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity to the emission line luminosities of individual spatially resolved regions across the central 3 $\times$ 3 kpc$^2$ region of the active barred spiral galaxy NGC$\sim$613. The star formation rate and AGN luminosity calculated from the decomposed emission line maps are in close agreement with independent estimates from data at other wavelengths. The star formation component traces the B-band stellar continuum emission, and the AGN component forms an ionization cone which is aligned with the nuclear radio jet. The optical line emission associated with shock excitation is cospatial with strong $H_2$ and [Fe II] emission and with regions of high ionized gas velocity dispersion ($\sigma > 100$ km s$^{-1}$). The shock component also traces the outer boundary of the AGN ionization cone and may therefore be produced by outflowing material interacting with the surrounding interstellar medium. Our decomposition method makes it possible to determine the properties of star formation, shock excitation and AGN activity from optical spectra, without contamination from other ionization mechanisms.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

The X-ray emission of the most luminous 3CR radio sources

We investigate the X-ray properties of the most luminous radio sources in the 3CR catalogue, in order to assess if they are similar to the most luminous radio quiet quasars, for instance in the X-ray normalization with respect to the optical luminosity, or in the distribution of the absorption column density. We have selected the (optically identified) 3CR radio sources whose 178-MHz monochromatic luminosity lies in the highest factor-of-three bin. The 4 most luminous objects had already been observed in X rays. Of the remaining 16, we observed with XMM-Newton 4 randomly chosen, optical type 1s, and 4 type 2s. All targets have been detected. The optical-to-Xray spectral index, alphaox, can be computed only for the type 1s and, in agreement with previous studies, is found to be flatter than in radio quiet quasars of similar luminosity. However, the Compton thin type 2s have an absorption corrected X-ray luminosity systematically lower than the type 1s, by a factor which makes them consistent with the radio quiet alphaox. Within the limited statistics, the Compton thick objects seem to have a reflected component more luminous than the Compton thin ones. The extra X-ray component observed in type 1 radio loud quasars is beamed for intrinsic causes, and is not collimated by the absorbing torus as is the case for the (intrinsically isotropic) disk emission. The extra component can be associated with a relativistic outflow, provided that the flow opening angle and the Doppler beaming factor are 1/5 - 1/7 radians.Comment: LaTex, 6 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables; accepted for publication in A&

The WiFeS S7 AGN survey: Current status and recent results on NGC 6300

The Siding Spring Southern Seyfert Spectroscopic Snapshot Survey (S7) is a targeted survey probing the narrow-line regions (NLRs) of a representative sample of ~140 nearby (z<0.02) Seyfert galaxies by means of optical integral field spectroscopy. The survey is based on a homogeneous data set observed using the Wide Field Spectrograph WiFeS. The data provide a 25x38 arcsec$^2$ field-of-view around the galaxy centre at typically ~1.5 arcsec spatial resolution and cover a wavelength range between ~3400 - 7100 $\AA$ at spectral resolutions of ~100 km s$^{-1}$ and ~50 km s$^{-1}$ in the blue and red parts, respectively. The survey is primarily designed to study gas excitation and star formation around AGN, with a special focus on the shape of the AGN ionising continuum, the interaction between radio jets and the NLR gas, and the nature of nuclear LINER emission. We provide an overview of the current status of S7-based results and present new results for NGC 6300.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, Refereed Proceeding of the "The Universe of Digital Sky Surveys" conference held at the INAF - Observatory of Capodimonte, Naples, on 25th-28th november 2014, to be published on Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, edited by Longo, Napolitano, Marconi, Paolillo, Iodic

Is Host Metabolism the Missing Link to Improving Cancer Outcomes?

For the past 100 years, oncologists have relentlessly pursued the destruction of tumor cells by surgical, chemotherapeutic or radiation oncological means. Consistent with this focus, treatment plans are typically based on key characteristics of the tumor itself such as disease site, histology and staging based on local, regional and systemic dissemination. Precision medicine is similarly built on the premise that detailed knowledge of molecular alterations of tumor cells themselves enables better and more effective tumor cell destruction. Recently, host factors within the tumor microenvironment including the vasculature and immune systems have been recognized as modifiers of disease progression and are being targeted for therapeutic gain. In this review, we argue that-to optimize the impact of old and new treatment options-we need to take account of an epidemic that occurs independently of-but has major impact on-the development and treatment of malignant diseases. This is the rapidly increasing number of patients with excess weight and its\u27 attendant metabolic consequences, commonly described as metabolic syndrome. It is well established that patients with altered metabolism manifesting as obesity, metabolic syndrome and chronic inflammation have an increased incidence of cancer. Here, we focus on evidence that these patients also respond differently to cancer therapy including radiation and provide a perspective how exercise, diet or pharmacological agents may be harnessed to improve therapeutic responses in this patient population