Anaphora Resolution Using Named Entity and Ontology

Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Anaphora Resolution (WAR II). Editor: Christer Johansson. NEALT Proceedings Series, Vol. 2 (2008), 91-96. © 2008 The editors and contributors. Published by Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT) http://omilia.uio.no/nealt . Electronically published at Tartu University Library (Estonia) http://hdl.handle.net/10062/7129

Syntheses of fused pyrroloheterocycles, isatins, approach towards the indole fragment of nosiheptide and a base-mediated formation of 3-hydroxycarbazoles

The nitro group has been and still is one of the few functional groups widely studied in synthetic organic chemistry. The reactivity of the nitro group has had important applications in the syntheses of many complex organic molecules, either through its assistance in the formation of new carbon-carbon bonds or in the formation of carbon-heteroatom bonds. Of late, the nitro group has become an important source of nitrogen in organic molecules, thus spawning the syntheses of a range of nitrogen heterocycles.;This dissertation is one such work, wherein the reactivity of the nitro group has been exploited with respect to the syntheses of nitrogen heterocycles. The palladium-catalyzed reductive N-heteroannulation reaction discovered in our laboratories a decade ago, has been utilized to synthesize a group of fused pyrroloheterocycles from the corresponding nitro-alkenylarenes. Also, these annulation conditions, when applied to 1-(2-haloethynyl)-2-nitrobenzenes, led to the formation of isatins. The isolation of a few stable 2-haloisatogens en route to the isatins is an important aspect in this conversion.;In addition, the possibility of executing an intramolecular nucleophillic attack on 3-(2-nitrophenyl)-2-cyclohexenone derivatives to afford hydroxy-carbazoles was investigated. A short synthetic approach to a model indole fragment of the natural product nosiheptide was also designed and attempted

Mast cell-T cell interactions in inflammatory chemokine mediated immune surveillance of intestinal cancer.

Chronic inflammation promotes a variety of cancers but inflammation also plays an important role in immune surveillance of cancer. Chemokine decoy receptor, D6 scavenges large number of inflammatory chemokines without transducing any signals and thus presumably dampens inflammation. Consistent with this notion, the D6 deficient mice displayed enhanced inflammation in variety of disease models. However, our laboratory observed that absence of D6 caused an unexpected decrease in inflammation and reduced tumor burden in the ApcMin/+ mouse model of intestinal cancer. Intestinal tumors in D6-/-ApcMin/+ mice showed increased mast cell infiltration but their contribution to tumor progression is unknown. Therefore, unravelling the cellular and molecular mechanisms of mast cell mediated regulation of intestinal tumor development is the central theme of this dissertation. Studies described in three specific aims utilize a combination of genetic, molecular and immunologic approaches to establish the importance of mast cells in the D6-/- ApcMin/+ model. Chapter III describes generation and characterization of the mast cell deficient D6-/-SA-/-ApcMin/+ mice. The results showed that the absence of mast cells led to decreased survival of these mice due to rapid progression of the intestinal adenomas. However, mast cells did not have a significant impact on the rate of tumor initiation in this model. In Chapter IV, we established cultures of bone marrow derived mast cells (BMMCs) from WT and D6-/- mice. Analysis of total RNA from these cells by microarrays, real-time PCR showed that chemokine receptors, CCR2 and CCR5 are highly upregulated in D6-/- BMMCs compared to WT cells. The enhanced mRNA expression also correlated well with the enhanced protein and function of CCR2 and CCR5 in D6-/- BMMCs. Further studies will be required to identify the relevance of CCR2 and CCR5 to enhanced mast cell migration into D6-/-ApcMin/+ tumors. In Chapter V, immunofluorescence studies on the extent of mast cell and CD8+ T-cell infiltration into intestinal adenomas of ApcMin/+, D6-/-ApcMin/+ and D6-/- SA-/-ApcMin/+ showed that cytotoxic T-cell infiltration is dependent on mast cell presence in the tumors. In contrast, analysis of D6-/-Rag2-/-ApcMin/+ tumors showed T-cell independent mast cell homing into these tumors. Further studies with cultured mast cells and CD8+ T-cells showed that D6-/- mast cells are capable of efficient antigen presentation to induce proliferation and activation of the cytotoxic potential of T-cells. The data suggests that mast cells act upstream of T-cells in mediating effective immune surveillance of intestinal cancers. These results would have important implications in designing immunotherapeutic approaches involving mast cell mediated anti-tumor immunity

Fuzzy Translationin Fuzzy d-Ideals and Fuzzy d-Subalgebra

In this paper, we discuss about some properties such as fuzzy translation in fuzzy d-ideals and fuzzy d-subalgebr

MODERATE-DENSITY BURST ERROR CORRECTING LINEAR CODES

Lower and upper bounds for the existence of linear codes which correct burst of length b (fixed) and whose weight lies between certain limits have been presented

Perspectives on Women\u27s Studies from India: Strengths, Struggles and Implications for Programs in the U.S.

An important goal of Women’s Studies (WS) is the advancement of women’s rights not just locally, but on a global scale. How well this goal is accomplished will ultimately depend on the current WS curricula adapting to include international and transnational perspectives. This paper investigates how Indian-WS programs, with some comparisons to WS programs in the US, are meeting this challenge. It begins by tracing the development of WS and examines its curricula by conducting a content analysis of ten syllabi from Indian universities and offers reflections from WS practitioners in India. The research yields important insights on institutionalization of WS programs, its interdisciplinarity, pedagogy, theories, methods, and effects of globalization on societies on the curricula. It also reveals strengths and struggles of India-WS programs, which are compared directly to those of US-WS programs. Such a comparison of the programs will prove fruitful in developing effective transnational theories that truly address women’s issues on both a global and local scale and impact the long-term advancement of WS programs

Pegaptanib sodium for neovascular age-related macular degeneration: clinical experience in the UK

The pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is unclear, but it can take either a neovascular/exudative/wet form, characterized by choroidal neovascularization (CNV), or a dry form. No treatments are available for the dry form, but there are a number of pharmacological interventions that inhibit vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which is central to the pathogenesis of CNV and neovascular AMD. Available anti-VEGF agents either target all active VEGF isoforms (eg, ranibizumab), or take a more selective approach and inhibit only VEGF165 (eg, pegaptantib sodium). Current guidance on their use is equivocal and restrictive at best, resulting in associated difficulties in securing adequate, timely funding for treatment. The Moorfields Eye Hospital undertook an audit of 70 patients receiving intravitreal (ITV) pegaptanib sodium on a pro re nata (prn) dosing schedule. Despite initial funding delays, the audit recorded superior treatment outcomes compared with those reported in the VISION trials at 12 weeks: 88% of audit patients maintained stable vision, 29% gained vision and 6% experienced severe vision loss compared with 70%, ≥6% and ≤10% of patients in VISION at 54 weeks, respectively. The audit indicates a positive correlation between patients with better baseline visual acuity (VA) and improved therapeutic benefits, including a greater likelihood of both vision gain and vision preservation. Experience at Moorfields also suggests that pegaptanib sodium is more useful in occult lesions than minimally classic lesions, and clinical experience suggests that combination therapies may offer the best approach with anti-VEGF therapies. Further randomized clinical trials will help better determine the optimal treatment strategies with pegaptanib sodium in neovascular AMD

Annotations of Connectives and Arguments in Malayalam Language

AbstractDiscourse relations in natural languages link clauses in text and compose overall text structure. Discourse connectives are an important part of modeling the Malayalam discourse structure. We followed the annotation procedure of Penn Discourse Tree Bank and worked on tagging of discourse connectives and arguments of Malayalam text and also report the senses of relation. We present our work on annotations of Malayalam discourse connectives and arguments which helps to know more about the discourse connectives and their appearance in case of semantic rules in Malayalam discourse. Discourse connectives may or may not be explicitly present in the relation. In our work, we focus on the annotation of both explicit and implicit connectives and arguments in Malayalam text and showed encouraging results