4,836 research outputs found

    Resonance raman characterization of the forms of ground-state 8-substituted 7-hydroxyquinoline caged acetate compounds in aqueous solutions

    Get PDF
    Monday Poster Session: Resonance Raman in Biological and Chemical Systems (MP22) - Poster Number: 0978-substituted 7-hydroxyquinolines, like 8-chloro-7-hydroxyquinoline (CHQ) and 8-cyano-7-hydroxyquinoline (CyHQ), are able to be useful for 1PE and 2PE and their acetate acids CHQ−OAc and CyHQ−OAc were also able to undergo photolysis reactions in neutral aqueous buffer solutions. To examine the substituent effect on the relative populations of the forms of the ground state species of 8-substituted 7-hydroxyquinolines, ultraviolet absorption and resonance Raman spectroscopy experiments were done for CHQ–OAc and CyHQ–OAc in differnt solutions.postprintThe 22nd International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS 2010), Boston, MA., 8-13 August 2010

    The American lifestyle-induced obesity syndrome diet in male and female rodents recapitulates the clinical and transcriptomic features of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis

    Get PDF
    The pathogenesis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and the progression to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma remain poorly understood. Additionally, there is increasing recognition of the extrahepatic manifestations associated with NAFLD and NASH. We demonstrate that intervention with the American lifestyle-induced obesity syndrome (ALIOS) diet in male and female mice recapitulates many of the clinical and transcriptomic features of human NAFLD and NASH. Male and female C57BL/6N mice were fed either normal chow (NC) or ALIOS from 11 to 52 wk and underwent comprehensive metabolic analysis throughout the duration of the study. From 26 wk, ALIOS-fed mice developed features of hepatic steatosis, inflammation, and fibrosis. ALIOS-fed mice also had an increased incidence of hepatic tumors at 52 wk compared with those fed NC. Hepatic transcriptomic analysis revealed alterations in multiple genes associated with inflammation and tissue repair in ALIOS-fed mice. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis confirmed dysregulation of metabolic pathways as well as those associated with liver disease and cancer. In parallel the development of a robust hepatic phenotype, ALIOS-fed mice displayed many of the extrahepatic manifestations of NAFLD, including hyperlipidemia, increased fat mass, sarcopenia, and insulin resistance. The ALIOS diet in mice recapitulates many of the clinical features of NAFLD and, therefore, represents a robust and reproducible model for investigating the pathogenesis of NAFLD and its progression.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects 30% of the general population and can progress to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and potentially hepatocellular carcinoma. Preclinical models rely on mouse models that often display hepatic characteristics of NAFLD but rarely progress to NASH and seldom depict the multisystem effects of the disease. We have conducted comprehensive metabolic analysis of both male and female mice consuming a Western diet of trans fats and sugar, focusing on both their hepatic phenotype and extrahepatic manifestations

    EVALUASI STRATEGI BERSAING HOTEL X BERDASARKAN ANALISIS THE FIVE MAJOR ELEMENTS OF STRATEGY STUDI KASUS

    Get PDF
    Dalam usahanya untuk bertahan dalam berbagai kondisi pasar, setiap perusahaan atau organisasi seharusnya berusaha proaktif dan melakukan pembenahan serta memformulasi strategi yang diharapkan dapat berfungsi secara optimal mencapai tujuan organisasi. Setiap organisasi akan mengidentifikasi dan mengeksploitasi sumber daya yang dimiliki serta kesempatan yang ada di pasar, disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan dan tujuan masing-masing organisasi. Hal tersebut berarti strategi yang berbeda akan dipilih oleh setiap organisasi yang berbeda pula. Setiap organisasi, dalam memilih strategi, akan menyesuaikan langkahlangkah yang diambil untuk mencapai tujuan dengan sumber daya yang dimiliki. Hotel X merupakan salah satu pemain dalam sektor perdagangan hotel dan restoran di daerah Juanda, Sidoarjo. Hotel X merupakan hotel yang berdiri sejak 1993, hingga saat ini sudah menjadi hotel bintang tiga. Dengan usia hotel yang sudah sekitar dua puluh tahun, Hotel X selama ini sudah berhasil menjaga eksistensinya bahkan mampu berkembang cukup pesat dengan menambahkan unit kamar dan investasi bangunan baru. Dengan kondisi saat ini berlebihnya jumlah kamar hotel yang ditawarkan oleh hotel-hotel pesaing merupakan tantangan tersendiri bagi Hotel X untuk mempertahankan eksistensi yang sudah cukup lama terjaga. Dewasa ini dampak dari perubahan kondisi lingkungan pasar mulai terasa oleh Hotel X, diantaranya pendapatan usaha yang diperoleh mulai menurun, meningkatnya biaya pemasaran, turnover karyawan yang meningkat, dan perubahan lainnya yang menuntut Hotel X untuk segera menyesuaikan diri. Pertumbuhan usaha hotel terlalu tinggi yang tidak sebanding dengan jumlah pertumbuhan wisatawan asing maupun lokal, merupakan tantangan tersendiri bagi para pengusaha hotel dalam berkompetisi mendapatkan pelanggan, begitu juga dengan Hotel X. Untuk dapat mencapai tujuannya Hotel X telah memiliki strategi perusahaan, namun yang menjadi pertanyaan adalah, apakah strategi yang dimiliki oleh Hotel X sudah dijalankan dengan baik dan sesuai untuk memenangkan persaiangan. Peneliti berinisiatif untuk melakukan penelitian melalui evaluasi strategi yang disesuaikan dengan kondisi internal dan eksternal Hotel X dengan menggunakan The Five Major Elements of Strategy. Sesuai dengan pendapat Hambrick dan Frederickson (2001), The Five Major Elements of Strategy, strategi yang dimiliki sebuah perusahaan sangat penting untuk memiliki elemen-elemen turunan yang terpadu atau saling berkaitan sehingga dalam menjalankan strategi tersebut, perusahaan dalam mewujudkan strategi yang telah dimiliki untuk mencapai tujuannya

    Moral enhancement: do means matter morally?

    Get PDF
    One of the reasons why moral enhancement may be controversial, is because the advantages of moral enhancement may fall upon society rather than on those who are enhanced. If directed at individuals with certain counter-moral traits it may have direct societal benefits by lowering immoral behavior and increasing public safety, but it is not directly clear if this also benefits the individual in question. In this paper, we will discuss what we consider to be moral enhancement, how different means may be used to achieve it and whether the means we employ to reach moral enhancement matter morally. Are certain means to achieve moral enhancement wrong in themselves? Are certain means to achieve moral enhancement better than others, and if so, why? More specifically, we will investigate whether the difference between direct and indirect moral enhancement matters morally. Is it the case that indirect means are morally preferable to direct means of moral enhancement and can we indeed pinpoint relevant intrinsic, moral differences between both? We argue that the distinction between direct and indirect means is indeed morally relevant, but only insofar as it tracks an underlying distinction between active and passive interventions. Although passive interventions can be ethical provided specific safeguards are put in place, these interventions exhibit a greater potential to compromise autonomy and disrupt identity

    Conditioned stochastic particle systems and integrable quantum spin systems

    Full text link
    We consider from a microscopic perspective large deviation properties of several stochastic interacting particle systems, using their mapping to integrable quantum spin systems. A brief review of recent work is given and several new results are presented: (i) For the general disordered symmectric exclusion process (SEP) on some finite lattice conditioned on no jumps into some absorbing sublattice and with initial Bernoulli product measure with density ρ\rho we prove that the probability Sρ(t)S_\rho(t) of no absorption event up to microscopic time tt can be expressed in terms of the generating function for the particle number of a SEP with particle injection and empty initial lattice. Specifically, for the symmetric simple exclusion process on Z\mathbb Z conditioned on no jumps into the origin we obtain the explicit first and second order expansion in ρ\rho of Sρ(t)S_\rho(t) and also to first order in ρ\rho the optimal microscopic density profile under this conditioning. For the disordered ASEP on the finite torus conditioned on a very large current we show that the effective dynamics that optimally realizes this rare event does not depend on the disorder, except for the time scale. For annihilating and coalescing random walkers we obtain the generating function of the number of annihilated particles up to time tt, which turns out to exhibit some universal features.Comment: 25 page

    Orexinergic Input to Dopaminergic Neurons of the Human Ventral Tegmental Area

    Get PDF
    The mesolimbic reward pathway arising from dopaminergic (DA) neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) has been strongly implicated in reward processing and drug abuse. In rodents, behaviors associated with this projection are profoundly influenced by an orexinergic input from the lateral hypothalamus to the VTA. Because the existence and significance of an analogous orexigenic regulatory mechanism acting in the human VTA have been elusive, here we addressed the possibility that orexinergic neurons provide direct input to DA neurons of the human VTA. Dual-label immunohistochemistry was used and orexinergic projections to the VTA and to DA neurons of the neighboring substantia nigra (SN) were analyzed comparatively in adult male humans and rats. Orexin B-immunoreactive (IR) axons apposed to tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-IR DA and to non-DA neurons were scarce in the VTA and SN of both species. In the VTA, 15.062.8% of TH-IR perikarya in humans and 3.260.3% in rats received orexin B-IR afferent contacts. On average, 0.2460.05 and 0.0560.005 orexinergic appositions per TH-IR perikaryon were detected in humans and rats, respectively. The majority(86–88%) of randomly encountered orexinergic contacts targeted the dendritic compartment of DA neurons. Finally, DA neurons of the SN also received orexinergic innervation in both species. Based on the observation of five times heavierorexinergic input to TH-IR neurons of the human, compared with the rat, VTA, we propose that orexinergic mechanism acting in the VTA may play just as important roles in reward processing and drug abuse in humans, as already established well in rodents

    CtGEM typing: Discrimination of Chlamydia trachomatis ocular and urogenital strains and major evolutionary lineages by high resolution melting analysis of two amplified DNA fragments

    Get PDF
    © 2018 Giffard et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Chlamydia trachomatis infects the urogenital tract (UGT) and eyes. Anatomical tropism is correlated with variation in the major outer membrane protein encoded by ompA. Strains possessing the ocular ompA variants A, B, Ba and C are typically found within the phyloge-netically coherent “classical ocular lineage”. However, variants B, Ba and C have also been found within three distinct strains in Australia, all associated with ocular disease in children and outside the classical ocular lineage. CtGEM genotyping is a method for detecting and discriminating ocular strains and also the major phylogenetic lineages. The rationale was facilitation of surveillance to inform responses to C. trachomatis detection in UGT specimens from young children. CtGEM typing is based on high resolution melting analysis (HRMA) of two PCR amplified fragments with high combinatorial resolving power, as defined by computerised comparison of 65 whole genomes. One fragment is from the hypothetical gene defined by Jali-1891 in the C. trachomatis B_Jali20 genome, while the other is from ompA. Twenty combinatorial CtGEM types have been shown to exist, and these encompass unique genotypes for all known ocular strains, and also delineate the TI and T2 major phylogenetic lineages, identify LGV strains and provide additional resolution beyond this. CtGEM typing and Sanger sequencing were compared with 42 C. trachomatis positive clinical specimens, and there were no disjunctions. CtGEM typing is a highly efficient method designed and tested using large scale comparative genomics. It divides C. trachomatis into clinically and biologically meaningful groups, and may have broad application in surveillance

    In the best interests of the deceased: A possible justification for organ removal without consent?

    Get PDF
    Opt-out systems of postmortem organ procurement are often supposed to be justifiable by presumed consent, but this justification turns out to depend on a mistaken mental state conception of consent. A promising alternative justification appeals to the analogical situation that occurs when an emergency decision has to be made about medical treatment for a patient who is unable to give or withhold his consent. In such cases, the decision should be made in the best interests of the patient. The analogous suggestion to be considered, then, is, if the potential donor has not registered either his willingness or his refusal to donate, the probabilities that he would or would not have preferred the removal of his organs need to be weighed. And in some actual cases the probability of the first alternative may be greater. This article considers whether the analogy to which this argument appeals is cogent, and concludes that there are important differences between the emergency and the organ removal cases, both as regards the nature of the interests involved and the nature of the right not to be treated without one’s consent. Rather, if opt-out systems are to be justified, the needs of patients with organ failure and/or the possibility of tacit consent should be considered

    Randomized Benchmarking for Non-Markovian Noise

    Full text link

    HAGE (DDX43) is a biomarker for poor prognosis and a predictor of chemotherapy response in breast cancer

    Get PDF
    Background: HAGE protein is a known immunogenic cancer-specific antigen. Methods: The biological, prognostic and predictive values of HAGE expression was studied using immunohistochemistry in three cohorts of patients with BC (n=2147): early primary (EP-BC; n=1676); primary oestrogen receptor-negative (PER-BC; n=275) treated with adjuvant anthracycline-combination therapies (Adjuvant-ACT); and primary locally advanced disease (PLA-BC) who received neo-adjuvant anthracycline-combination therapies (Neo-adjuvant-ACT; n=196). The relationship between HAGE expression and the tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in matched prechemotherapy and postchemotherapy samples were investigated. Results: Eight percent of patients with EP-BC exhibited high HAGE expression (HAGEþ) and was associated with aggressive clinico-pathological features (Ps<0.01). Furthermore, HAGEþexpression was associated with poor prognosis in both univariate and multivariate analysis (Ps<0.001). Patients with HAGE+ did not benefit from hormonal therapy in high-risk ER-positive disease. HAGE+ and TILs were found to be independent predictors for pathological complete response to neoadjuvant-ACT; P<0.001. A statistically significant loss of HAGE expression following neoadjuvant-ACT was found (P=0.000001), and progression-free survival was worse in those patients who had HAGE+ residual disease (P=0.0003). Conclusions: This is the first report to show HAGE to be a potential prognostic marker and a predictor of response to ACT in patients with BC
    corecore