Immune-Complexome Analysis Identifies Immunoglobulin-Bound Biomarkers That Predict the Response to Chemotherapy of Pancreatic Cancer Patients

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDA) is an aggressive malignancy with a very poor outcome. Although chemotherapy (CT) treatment has poor efficacy, it can enhance tumor immunogenicity. Tumor-Associated Antigens (TAA) are self-proteins that are overexpressed in tumors that may induce antibody production and can be PDA theranostic targets. However, the prognostic value of TAA-antibody association as Circulating Immune Complexes (CIC) has not yet been elucidated, mainly due to the lack of techniques that lead to their identification. In this study, we show a novel method to separate IgG, IgM, and IgA CIC from sera to use them as prognostic biomarkers of CT response. The PDA Immune-Complexome (IC) was identified using a LTQ-Orbitrap mass spectrometer followed by computational analysis. The analysis of the IC of 37 PDA patients before and after CT revealed differential associated antigens (DAA) for each immunoglobulin class. Our method identified different PDA-specific CIC in patients that were associated with poor prognosis patients. Finally, CIC levels were significantly modified by CT suggesting that they can be used as effective prognostic biomarkers to follow CT response in PDA patients

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

Peer reviewe

The Impacts of Rapid Urbanization on the Thermal Environment: A Remote Sensing Study of Guangzhou, South China

The effect of urbanization on the urban thermal environment (UTE) has attracted increasing research attention for its significant relationship to local climatic change and habitat comfort. Using quantitative thermal remote sensing and spatial statistics methods, here we analyze four Landsat TM/ETM+ images of Guangzhou in South China acquired respectively on 13 October 1990, 2 January 2000, 23 November 2005, and 2 January 2009, to investigate the spatiotemporal variations in the land surface temperature (LST) over five land use/land cover (LULC) types and over different urban/rural zones. The emphases of this study are placed on the urban heat island (UHI) intensity and the relationships among LST, the normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Results show that: (1) the UHI effect existed obviously over the period from 1990 to 2009 and high temperature anomalies were closely associated with built-up land and densely populated and heavily industrialized districts; (2) the UHI intensities represented by the mean LST difference between the urbandowntown area and the suburban area were on average 0.88, 0.49, 0.90 and 1.16 K on the four dates, at the 99.99% confidence level; and (3) LST is related positively with NDBI and negatively with NDVI. The spatiotemporal variation of UTE of Guangzhou could be attributed to rapid urbanization, especially to the expanding built-up and developing land, declining vegetation coverage, and strengthening of anthropogenic and industrial activities which generate increasing amounts of waste heat. This study provides useful information for understanding the local climatic and environment changes that occur during rapid urbanization.</p

Soil carbon isotope ratios of the Zijing site, Qinling Mountains, China: Implications for defining the southern limit of millet agriculture

The inner Qinling Mountain basin is an ideal geographic area for examining the adaptation of the Yellow River Civilization into the transition zone of subtropical and warm temperate climates. Paleosol isotope and other geochemical and geophysical analyses were used to examine ancient farming and animal raising strategies, food structure, and past environment at the Zijing site on the inner Qinling Mountain basin. The organic carbon isotope suggests that the Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers in Zijing could cultivate up to 50% millet-like C-4 plants, developed from the Yellow River Civilization, and 50% C-3-like local plants during the interval from the Yangshao to the Xia-Shang cultures. The carbonate carbon isotope suggests that Zijing farmers could raise livestock on a relatively large scale during the Yangshao and Longshan periods. The carbon isotopic results are in agreement with other geochemical parameters, including soil organic and carbonate carbon contents, as well as the ratio of organic carbon and nitrogen. Magnetic susceptibility indicates a warmer and wetter climate condition from the Yangshao to the Xia-Shang cultures that facilitated agricultural development at this Neolithic site. The long cultural sequence sampled at this site shows that the millet-based agricultural system of the Yellow River Civilization at the Zijing site on the inner Qinling Mountain basin could have been practiced. In addition, the unusually negative delta C-13(sc) values likely also reflected a highly developed ancient agricultural civilization, which potentially has important implications for archaeology in China because of the southernmost record of millet agriculture in the Zijing site.</p

Seasonal variation and size distribution of biogenic secondary organic aerosols at urban and continental background sites of China

Size-resolved biogenic secondary organic aerosols (BSOA) derived from isoprene and monoterpene photooxidation in Qinghai Lake, Tibetan Plateau (a continental background site) and five cities of China were measured using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Concentrations of the determined BSOA are higher in the cities than in the background and are also higher in summer than in winter. Moreover, strong positive correlations (R2&nbsp;=&nbsp;0.44&ndash;0.90) between BSOA and sulfate were found at the six sites, suggesting that anthropogenic pollution (i.e., sulfate) could enhance SOA formation, because sulfate provides a surface favorable for acid-catalyzed formation of BSOA. Size distribution measurements showed that most of the determined SOA tracers are enriched in the fine mode (&lt;&nbsp;3.3&nbsp;&mu;m) except for cis-pinic and cis-pinonic acids, both presented a comparable mass in the fine and coarse (&gt;&nbsp;3.3&nbsp;&mu;m) modes, respectively. Mass ratio of oxidation products derived from isoprene to those from monoterpene in the five urban regions during summer are much less than those in Qinghai Lake region. In addition, in the five urban regions relative abundances of monoterpene oxidation products to SOA are much higher than those of isoprene. Such phenomena suggest that BSOA derived from monoterpenes are more abundant than those from isoprene in Chinese urban areas.</p

Prevalence of Inconsistent Condom Use and Associated Factors Among HIV Discordant Couples in a Rural County in China

A random sample consisting of 88 sexually active people living with HIV (PLWH) and their HIV negative spouses in rural China were interviewed. Data of 68 couples (77.2 %) who gave identical responses to whether they had been using condoms consistently in the last 12 months (n = 136) were analyzed. The results showed that 27.9 % of the discordant couples used condom inconsistently in the last year. Condom non-availability was the most commonly given main reason for not using condoms. Free condoms should be made available to these low-income couples. Suicidal ideation of the PLWH and the spouse's perception on 'whether someone could contract HIV via unprotected sexual intercourse with a HIV positive person' were significantly associated with inconsistent condom use in the last year. Education program should change the cognition about the risk for HIV transmission via unprotected sex. Integrated psychological services to reduce suicidal ideation are greatly warranted

Regional homogeneity of resting-state brain abnormalities in bipolar and unipolar depression

Objective: Bipolar disorder patients experiencing a depressive episode (BD-dep) without an observed history of mania are often misdiagnosed and are consequently treated as having unipolar depression CUD), leading to inadequate treatment and poor outcomes. An essential solution to this problem is to identify objective biological markers that distinguish BD-dep and UD patients at an early stage. However, studies directly comparing the brain dysfunctions associated with BD-dep and UD are rare. More importantly, the specificity of the differences in brain activity between these mental disorders has not been examined. With whole-brain regional homogeneity analysis and region-of-interest (ROI) based receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, we aimed to compare the resting-state brain activity of BD-dep and UD patients. Furthermore, we examined the specific differences and whether these differences were attributed to the brain abnormality caused by BD-dep, UD, or both. Methods: Twenty-one bipolar and 21 unipolar depressed patients, as well as 26 healthy subjects matched for gender, age, and educational levels, participated in the study. We compared the differences in the regional homogeneity (ReHo) of the BD-dep and UD groups and further identified their pathophysiological abnormality. In the brain regions showing a difference between the BD-dep and UD groups, we further conducted receptive operation characteristic (ROC) analyses to confirm the effectiveness of the identified difference in classifying the patients. Results: We observed ReHo differences between the BD-dep and UD groups in the right ventrolateral middle frontal gyrus, right dorsal anterior insular, right ventral anterior insular, right cerebellum posterior gyrus, right posterior cingulate cortex, right parahippocampal gyrus, and left cerebellum anterior gyrus. Further ROI comparisons and ROC analysis on these ROIs showed that the right parahippocampal gyrus reflected abnormality specific to the BD-dep group, while the right middle frontal gyrus, the right dorsal anterior insular, the right cerebellum posterior gyrus, and the right posterior cingulate cortex showed abnormality specific to the UD group. Conclusions: We found brain regions showing resting state ReHo differences and examined their sensitivity and specificity, suggesting a potential neuroimaging biomarker to distinguish between BD-dep and UD patients. We further clarified the pathophysiological abnormality of these regions for each of the two patient populations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Systematic review of Chinese studies of short-term exposure to air pollution and daily mortality

Health effects attributable to air pollution exposure in Chinese population have been least understood. The authors conducted a meta-analysis on 33 time-series and case-crossover studies conducted in China to assess mortality effects of short-term exposure to particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 10 and 2.5 mu m (PM10 and PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O-3) and carbon monoxide (CO). Significant associations between air pollution exposure and increased mortality risks were observed in the pooled estimates for all pollutants of interest. In specific, each 10 mu g/m(3) increase in PM2.5 was askwiated with a 0.38% (95% Confidence Interval, CI: 0.31, 0.45) increase in total mortality, a 0.51% (95% CI: 0.30, 0.73) in respiratory mortality, and a 0.44% (95% CI: 033, 0.54) in cardiovascular mortality. When current annual PM2.5 levels in mega-Chinese cities to be reduced to the WHO Air Quality Guideline (AQG) of 10 mu g/m(3), mortality attributable to short-term exposure to PM2.5 could be reduced by 2.7%, 1.7%, 2.3%, and 62% in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi&#39;an, respectively. The authors recommend future studies on the nature of air pollution concentration and health effect relationships in Chinese population to support setting stringent air quality standards to improve public health.</p