Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS Poverty amidst affluence: Britain and the United States, Vic George and Irving Howards, Aldershot,England, Edward Elgar Publishers, 1991, Reviewed by James Midgley Separate societies: Poverty and inequality in American cities. William W. Goldsmith and Edward J. Blakely,Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1992, Reviewed by James Midgley The new politics of poverty: The non-working poor in America Lawrence M. Mead, New York, Basic Books, 1992, Reviewed by James Midgley The End of Equality. Mickey Kaus. New York: Basic Books, 1992, Reviewed by David Stoesz The Moral Construction of Poverty: Welfare Reform in America. Joel F. handler and Yeheskel HasenfeldNewbury Park: Sage Publications, 1991, Reviewed by Howard Jacob Karger The Dispossessed: American Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present. Jacqueline Jones, New York: Basic Books, 1992, Reviewed by Henry J. D\u27Souza. 213 Poor Women and Their Families: Hard Working Charity Cases. Beverly Stadum, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1992, Reviewed by Leslie Leighninger From Middle Income to Poor: Downward mobility Among Displaced Steelworkers. Allisojn Zippay, New York, Praeger, 1992, Reviewed by Joel Bla

Ground-layer wavefront reconstruction from multiple natural guide stars

Observational tests of ground layer wavefront recovery have been made in open loop using a constellation of four natural guide stars at the 1.55 m Kuiper telescope in Arizona. Such tests explore the effectiveness of wide-field seeing improvement by correction of low-lying atmospheric turbulence with ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO). The wavefronts from the four stars were measured simultaneously on a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (WFS). The WFS placed a 5 x 5 array of square subapertures across the pupil of the telescope, allowing for wavefront reconstruction up to the fifth radial Zernike order. We find that the wavefront aberration in each star can be roughly halved by subtracting the average of the wavefronts from the other three stars. Wavefront correction on this basis leads to a reduction in width of the seeing-limited stellar image by up to a factor of 3, with image sharpening effective from the visible to near infrared wavelengths over a field of at least 2 arc minutes. We conclude that GLAO correction will be a valuable tool that can increase resolution and spectrographic throughput across a broad range of seeing-limited observations.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Astrophys.

Consumer credit in comparative perspective

We review the literature in sociology and related fields on the fast global growth of consumer credit and debt and the possible explanations for this expansion. We describe the ways people interact with the strongly segmented consumer credit system around the world—more specifically, the way they access credit and the way they are held accountable for their debt. We then report on research on two areas in which consumer credit is consequential: its effects on social relations and on physical and mental health. Throughout the article, we point out national variations and discuss explanations for these differences. We conclude with a brief discussion of the future tasks and challenges of comparative research on consumer credit.Accepted manuscrip

Early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer: neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin as a marker of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia

Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal malignancy with a dismal 5-year survival of less than 5%. The scarcity of early biomarkers has considerably hindered our ability to launch preventive measures for this malignancy in a timely manner. Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), a 24-kDa glycoprotein, was reported to be upregulated nearly 27-fold in pancreatic cancer cells compared to normal ductal cells in a microarray analysis. Given the need for biomarkers in the early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, we investigated the expression of NGAL in tissues with the objective of examining if NGAL immunostaining could be used to identify foci of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia, premalignant lesions preceding invasive cancer. To examine a possible correlation between NGAL expression and the degree of differentiation, we also analysed NGAL levels in pancreatic cancer cell lines with varying grades of differentiation. Although NGAL expression was strongly upregulated in pancreatic cancer, and moderately in pancreatitis, only a weak expression could be detected in the healthy pancreas. The average composite score for adenocarcinoma (4.26±2.44) was significantly higher than that for the normal pancreas (1.0) or pancreatitis (1.0) (P<0.0001). Further, although both well- and moderately differentiated pancreatic cancer were positive for NGAL, poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma was uniformly negative. Importantly, NGAL expression was detected as early as the PanIN-1 stage, suggesting that it could be a marker of the earliest premalignant changes in the pancreas. Further, we examined NGAL levels in serum samples. Serum NGAL levels were above the cutoff for healthy individuals in 94% of pancreatic cancer and 62.5% each of acute and chronic pancreatitis samples. However, the difference between NGAL levels in pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer was not significant. A ROC curve analysis revealed that ELISA for NGAL is fairly accurate in distinguishing pancreatic cancer from non-cancer cases (area under curve=0.75). In conclusion, NGAL is highly expressed in early dysplastic lesions in the pancreas, suggesting a possible role as an early diagnostic marker for pancreatic cancer. Further, serum NGAL measurement could be investigated as a possible biomarker in pancreatitis and pancreatic adenocarcinoma

A high angular resolution survey of massive stars in Cygnus OB2 : JHK adaptive optics results from the Gemini Near-Infrared Imager

We present results of a high angular resolution survey of massive OB stars in the Cygnus OB2 association that we conducted with the NIRI camera and ALTAIR adaptive optics system of the Gemini North telescope. We observed 74 O- and early B-type stars in Cyg OB2 in the JHK infrared bands in order to detect binary and multiple companions. The observations are sensitive to equal-brightness pairs at separations as small as 0.08 \arcsec, and progressively fainter companions are detectable out to Δ K = 9 mag at a separation of 2 arcsec. This faint contrast limit due to readnoise continues out to 10 arcsec near the edge of the detector. We assigned a simple probability of chance alignment to each companion based upon its separation and magnitude difference from the central target star and upon areal star counts for the general star field of Cyg OB2. Companion stars with a field membership probability of less than 1% are assumed to be physical companions. This assessment indicates that 47% of the targets have at least one resolved companion that is probably gravitationally bound. Including known spectroscopic binaries, our sample includes 27 binary, 12 triple, and 9 systems with four or more components. These results confirm studies of high mass stars in other environments that find that massive stars are born with a high multiplicity fraction. The results are important for the placement of the stars in the H-R diagram, the interpretation of their spectroscopic analyses, and for future mass determinations through measurement of orbital motion

Comparison of Expression Profiles in Ovarian Epithelium In Vivo and Ovarian Cancer Identifies Novel Candidate Genes Involved in Disease Pathogenesis

Molecular events leading to epithelial ovarian cancer are poorly understood but ovulatory hormones and a high number of life-time ovulations with concomitant proliferation, apoptosis, and inflammation, increases risk. We identified genes that are regulated during the estrous cycle in murine ovarian surface epithelium and analysed these profiles to identify genes dysregulated in human ovarian cancer, using publically available datasets. We identified 338 genes that are regulated in murine ovarian surface epithelium during the estrous cycle and dysregulated in ovarian cancer. Six of seven candidates selected for immunohistochemical validation were expressed in serous ovarian cancer, inclusion cysts, ovarian surface epithelium and in fallopian tube epithelium. Most were overexpressed in ovarian cancer compared with ovarian surface epithelium and/or inclusion cysts (EpCAM, EZH2, BIRC5) although BIRC5 and EZH2 were expressed as highly in fallopian tube epithelium as in ovarian cancer. We prioritised the 338 genes for those likely to be important for ovarian cancer development by in silico analyses of copy number aberration and mutation using publically available datasets and identified genes with established roles in ovarian cancer as well as novel genes for which we have evidence for involvement in ovarian cancer. Chromosome segregation emerged as an important process in which genes from our list of 338 were over-represented including two (BUB1, NCAPD2) for which there is evidence of amplification and mutation. NUAK2, upregulated in ovarian surface epithelium in proestrus and predicted to have a driver mutation in ovarian cancer, was examined in a larger cohort of serous ovarian cancer where patients with lower NUAK2 expression had shorter overall survival. In conclusion, defining genes that are activated in normal epithelium in the course of ovulation that are also dysregulated in cancer has identified a number of pathways and novel candidate genes that may contribute to the development of ovarian cancer

Multisensory visual–tactile object related network in humans: insights gained using a novel crossmodal adaptation approach

Neuroimaging techniques have provided ample evidence for multisensory integration in humans. However, it is not clear whether this integration occurs at the neuronal level or whether it reflects areal convergence without such integration. To examine this issue as regards visuo-tactile object integration we used the repetition suppression effect, also known as the fMRI-based adaptation paradigm (fMR-A). Under some assumptions, fMR-A can tag specific neuronal populations within an area and investigate their characteristics. This technique has been used extensively in unisensory studies. Here we applied it for the first time to study multisensory integration and identified a network of occipital (LOtv and calcarine sulcus), parietal (aIPS), and prefrontal (precentral sulcus and the insula) areas all showing a clear crossmodal repetition suppression effect. These results provide a crucial first insight into the neuronal basis of visuo-haptic integration of objects in humans and highlight the power of using fMR-A to study multisensory integration using non-invasinve neuroimaging techniques

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference