Stem Cell Research for the Treatment of Malignant Glioma

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive brain tumor. Gene therapies, such as cytokine-based, suicide gene, and oncolytic virus therapies, are different types of treatments from chemotherapy such as using temozolomide as a standard treatment. However, overall survival was not prolonged in some clinical trials because of the low efficiency of gene transduction and viral infection. Neural stem cells (NSCs) have tumor trophic migratory capacity and can be cellular delivery vehicles of cytokines, suicide genes, and oncolytic virus. NSCs can be differentiated from embryonic stem cells. In addition, mesenchymal stem cells can be another cellular delivery vehicle. Recently, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have been established. iPSCs are multipotent; hence, they can efficiently differentiate to NSCs and can possibly overcome ethical and practical issues in clinical application. In this study, current topics about stem cell therapy for malignant glioma are reviewed

Pattern Classification Using A Fuzzy Immune Network Model

It is generally believed that one major function of immune system is helping to protect multicellular organisms from foreign pathogens, especially replicating pathogens such as viruses, bacteria and parasites. The relevant events in immune system are not only the molecules, but also their interactions. The immune cells can respond either positively or negatively to the recognition signal. A positive response would result in cell proliferation, activation and antibody secretion, while a negative response would lead to tolerance and suppression. Depending upon these immune mechanisms, an immune network model(here, we call it the binary model) based on biological immune response network was proposed in our previous work. However, there are some problems like input and memory in the binary model. In order to improve the binary model, in this paper we propose a fuzzy immune network model. In the proposed fuzzy immune model, we add a normalization B cell layer for normalizing the large-scale antigen information on the base of the binary model. Meanwhile, a fuzzy AND operator(.AND.) and a normalization procedure called complement coding were employed in the proposed fuzzy immune model. Compute simulations illustrate that the proposed fuzzy model not only can improve the problems existing in the binary model but also is capable of clustering arbitrary sequences of large-scale analog input patterns into stable recognition categories. (author abst.

An Engineering Immune Network Model for Pattern Recognition

The biological immune system consists of a multitude of cells and molecules that interact in a variety of ways to detect and eliminate infectious agents. It has several useful mechanisms from the viewpoint of information processing. Our overall goal for this paper is twofold: to understand the real immune system from the information processing perspective, and to use idea generated from the immune system to construct new engineering application. As one example of the latter, we propose an engineering immune network model and apply it to pattern recognition. We test the proposed model by the simulations of alphabet patter recognition. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed model is capable of clustering similar input pattern into stable categories. (author abst.

A New Method to Solve the Constraint Satisfaction Problem Using the Hopfield Neural Network

The constraint satisfaction problem is constituted by several condition formulas, which makes it difficult to be solved. In this paper, using the Hopfield neural network, a new method is proposed to solve the constraint satisfaction problem by simplifying its condition formula. In this method, all restriction conditions of a constraint satisfaction problem are divided into two restrictions: restriction I and restriction II. In processing step, restriction II is satisfied by setting its value to be 0 and the value of restriction I is always made on the decreasing direction. The optimum solution could be obtained when the values of energy, restriction I and restriction II become 0 at the same time. To verify the validity of the proposed method, we apply it to two typical constraint satisfaction problems: N-queens problem and four-coloring problem. The simulation results show that the optimum solution can be obtained in high speed and high convergence rate. Moreover, compared with other methods, the proposed method is better than other methods. (author abst.

Design and realization of a network security model

The security of information is a key problem in the development of network technology. The basic requirements of security of information clearly include confidentiality, integrity, authentication and non-repudiation. This paper proposes a network security model that is composed of security system, security connection and communication, and key management. The model carries out encrypting, decrypting, signature and ensures confidentiality, integrity, authentication and non-repudiation. Finally, the paper analyses the merits of the model. (author abst.

Vulnerability of Roof and Building Walls Under a Translating Tornado Like Vortex

Exposure of a building to a tornado often proves fatal, resulting in massive destruction of property and structures. The effect of disasters can be minimized by understanding the nature of fluid-structure interactions when a tornado hits a building on its path. Earlier researchers have investigated extensively on building models exposed to stationary type vortex generated in a laboratory type tornado simulator; however studies using translating type vortex are few. In the present investigation, the external and internal pressures experienced by a building model are discussed based on experiments conducted using a translating tornado-like flow simulator at Tokyo Polytechnic University, Japan. The swirl ratio which characterizes the strength of vortices generated is kept constant. The investigation attempts to explore the opening locations which can result in higher internal pressures and net roof forces in building and the vulnerability of roof structures of buildings when exposed to tornado-like flow. The effect of translating speed on internal pressure fluctuations when compared to those of external pressures are investigated using aerodynamic admittance functions. Results indicate that there is an increased amount of internal pressure fluctuations at higher translating speeds