Heavy Metal Analysis in Lens and Aqueous Humor of Cataract Patients by Total Reflection X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry

The human eye is continuously exposed to the environment yet little is known about how much of toxins, specifically heavy metals are present in its different parts and how they influence vision and acuity. To shed light into this subject, aqueous humor and lens samples were collected from 14 cataract patients to study the presence and concentration of selected metals in the eye. Subjects undergoing routine cataract surgery were consecutively enrolled for study by simple random sampling. Prior to surgery, subject demographic were compiled. The surgical procedure involved small incision cataract removal using phacoemulsification. During the procedure, a small aliquot of aqueous humor was retained for analysis, whereas homogenized lens fragments were obtained during phacoemulsification. A balanced salt solution was used as control for each set of samples. Both ocular specimens were analyzed by total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectrometry after dilution and addition of an internal standard. The data obtained show substantial variations in elemental signature between the two media (aqueous humor and lens) and the patients themselves. Most commonly found heavy metals in both types of media were chromium and manganese. Barium was found in the lens, but not in aqueous tissue, whereas nickel was found only in the aqueous humor. Concentrations were generally higher in aqueous samples. Further study and increased sample size are required to more accurately elucidate the relationship between systemic and ocular metal accumulation and the impact of metal accumulation on measures of visual function and ocular disease

Las variables que influyen en el aprendizaje del alemán en niños de 4 y 5 años de un aula de inmersión en una institución educativa privada del distrito de Miraflores

“El aprendizaje de segundas lenguas es cada vez una necesidad más patente en las sociedades occidentales” (Vila, 1997, p.15). Nos encontramos en un mundo que se vuelve día a día más globalizado y competitivo, y por ende muchos padres y madres de familia consideran como opción para sus hijos e hijas el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua a una edad temprana, ya que esto los preparará mejor para el futuro.Tesi

How Does Art Act in Crisis? Togetherness and Friendship as Artistic Concept

Na temelju teza Hannah Arendt i posebno Judith Butler, u tekstu se promišlja o „krizi” u suvremenoj umjetnosti u uvjetima ideološke prekarizacije. Postoje li savezništva u razmišljanju i djelovanju? Metodom slobodne navigacije kroz recentnu umjetničku praksu nailazi se na geste koje je moguće dovesti u vezu s oblicima savezništva, zajedništva i prijateljstva.Based on Hannah Arendt’s thesis, and especially Judith Butler’s body of work, the paper examines “the crisis” in contemporary art under the conditions of precarization. Are there any alliances in thought or action? By using the method of free navigation through recent art practices, it is possible to find gestures which can be associated with forms of alliances, community and friendship

How Does Art Act in Crisis? Togetherness and Friendship as Artistic Concept

Na temelju teza Hannah Arendt i posebno Judith Butler, u tekstu se promišlja o „krizi” u suvremenoj umjetnosti u uvjetima ideološke prekarizacije. Postoje li savezništva u razmišljanju i djelovanju? Metodom slobodne navigacije kroz recentnu umjetničku praksu nailazi se na geste koje je moguće dovesti u vezu s oblicima savezništva, zajedništva i prijateljstva.Based on Hannah Arendt’s thesis, and especially Judith Butler’s body of work, the paper examines “the crisis” in contemporary art under the conditions of precarization. Are there any alliances in thought or action? By using the method of free navigation through recent art practices, it is possible to find gestures which can be associated with forms of alliances, community and friendship

Prognostic factors of resected node-positive lung cancer: location, extent of nodal metastases, and multimodal treatment

Objective: To investigate the prognostic significance of location and extent of lymph node metastasis in resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and to weigh up the influence of treatment modalities on survival

Joint co-clustering: co-clustering of genomic and clinical bioimaging data

AbstractFor better understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying clinical observations, and better defining a group of potential candidates for protein-family-inhibiting therapy, it is interesting to determine the correlations between genomic, clinical data and data coming from high resolution and fluorescent microscopy. We introduce a computational method, called joint co-clustering, that can find co-clusters or groups of genes, bioimaging parameters and clinical traits that are believed to be closely related to each other based on the given empirical information. As bioimaging parameters, we quantify the expression of growth factor receptor EGFR/erb-B family in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) through a fully-automated computer-aided analysis approach. This immunohistochemical analysis is usually performed by pathologists via visual inspection of tissue samples images. Our fully-automated techniques streamlines this error-prone and time-consuming process, thereby facilitating analysis and diagnosis. Experimental results for several real-life datasets demonstrate the high quantitative precision of our approach. The joint co-clustering method was tested with the receptor EGFR/erb-B family data on non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) tissue and identified statistically significant co-clusters of genes, receptor protein expression and clinical traits. The validation of our results with the literature suggest that the proposed method can provide biologically meaningful co-clusters of genes and traits and that it is a very promising approach to analyse large-scale biological data and to study multi-factorial genetic pathologies through their genetic alterations

Construction and Application of an Inducible System for Homogenous Expression Levels in Bulk Cell Lines

Stringently controlled conditional expressing systems are crucial for the functional characterization of genes. Currently, screening of multiple clones to identify the tightly controlled ones is necessary but time-consuming. Here, we describe a system fusing Tet (tetracycline)-inducible elements, BAC (bacterial artificial chromosome) and Gateway technology together to allow tight control of gene expression in BAC-transfected eukaryotic bulk cell cultures. Recombinase cloning into the shuttle vector and the BAC facilitates vector construction. An EGFP (enhanced green fluorescent protein) allows FACS (fluorescence activated cell sorting) and the BAC technology ensures tight control of gene expression that is independent of the integrating site. In the current first application, our gene of interest encodes a β-catenin-ERα fusion protein. Tested by luciferase assay and western blotting, in HTB56 lung cancer cells the final BAC E11-IGR-β-catenin-ERα vector demonstrated sensitive inducibility by Tet or Dox (doxycycline) in a dose-dependent manner with low background, and the EGFP was an effective selection marker by FACS in bulk culture HTB56 and myeloblastic 32D cells. This is a highly efficient tool for the rapid generation of stringently controlled Tet-inducible systems in cell lines

MTSS1 is a critical epigenetically regulated tumor suppressor in CML

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is driven by malignant stem cells that can persist despite therapy. We have identified Metastasis suppressor 1 (Mtss1/MIM) to be downregulated in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells from leukemic transgenic SCLtTA/Bcr-Abl mice and in patients with CML at diagnosis, and Mtss1 was restored when patients achieved complete remission. Forced expression of Mtss1 decreased clonogenic capacity and motility of murine myeloid progenitor cells and reduced tumor growth. Viral transduction of Mtss1 into lineage depleted SCLtTA/Bcr-Abl bone marrow cells decreased leukemic cell burden in recipients, and leukemogenesis was reduced upon injection of Mtss1 overexpressing murine myeloid 32D cells. Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy and reversion of Bcr-Abl expression increased Mtss1 expression but failed to restore it to control levels. CML patient samples revealed higher DNA methylation of specific Mtss1 promoter CpG sites that contain binding sites for Kaiso and Rest transcription factors. In summary, we identified a novel tumor suppressor in CML stem cells that is downregulated by both Bcr-Abl kinase-dependent and -independent mechanisms. Restored Mtss1 expression markedly inhibits primitive leukemic cell biology in vivo, providing a therapeutic rationale for the Bcr-Abl-Mtss1 axis to target TKI resistant CML stem cells in patients

Leukemia Gene Atlas – A Public Platform for Integrative Exploration of Genome-Wide Molecular Data

Leukemias are exceptionally well studied at the molecular level and a wealth of high-throughput data has been published. But further utilization of these data by researchers is severely hampered by the lack of accessible integrative tools for viewing and analysis. We developed the Leukemia Gene Atlas (LGA) as a public platform designed to support research and analysis of diverse genomic data published in the field of leukemia. With respect to leukemia research, the LGA is a unique resource with comprehensive search and browse functions. It provides extensive analysis and visualization tools for various types of molecular data. Currently, its database contains data from more than 5,800 leukemia and hematopoiesis samples generated by microarray gene expression, DNA methylation, SNP and next generation sequencing analyses. The LGA allows easy retrieval of large published data sets and thus helps to avoid redundant investigations. It is accessible at www.leukemia-gene-atlas.org