Smoking, dementia and cognitive decline in the elderly, a systematic review.

Background. Nicotine may aid reaction time, learning and memory, but smoking increases cardiovascular risk. Cardiovascular risk factors have been linked to increased risk of dementia. A previous meta-analysis found that current smokers were at higher risk of subsequent dementia, Alzheimers disease, vascular dementia and cognitive decline. Methods. In order to update and examine this further a systematic review and meta-analysis was carried out using different search and inclusion criteria, database selection and more recent publications. Both reviews were restricted to those aged 65 and over. Results. The review reported here found a significantly increased risk of Alzheimers disease with current smoking and a likely but not significantly increased risk of vascular dementia, dementia unspecified and cognitive decline. Neither review found clear relationships with former smoking. Conclusion. Current smoking increases risk of Alzheimers disease and may increase risk of other dementias. This reinforces need for smoking cessation, particularly aged 65 and over. Nicotine alone needs further investigation. © 2008 Peters et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

In vitro induction of tumour-specific immunity V. Detection of common antigenic determinatnts of murine fibrosarcomas.

Two 3-methylcholanthrene and a spontaneous BALB/c fibrosarcoma were examined for tumour-associated antigens (TAA) by in vivo and in vitro induction of tumour-immune responses. When BALB/c mice were immunized to these fibrosarcomas by surgical tumour removal, cross-reacting tumour-associated transplantation antigens (TATA) were detected on all 3 tumours. Cytotoxic effector cells (CL) were then induced in vitro by co-culture of BALB/c spleen cells with the spontaneous, or one of the carcinogen-induced fibrosarcomas. These CL were shown to be cytotoxic T cells (Tc) and to be directed against cross-reacting TAA on all 3 tumours, by two in vitro 51Cr-release assay systems, direct 51Cr-release cytotoxicity and cellular competitive inhibition of 51Cr release. Further studies demonstrated that the fibrosarcoma TAA involved in in vitro induction of Tc were not present on normal adult or foetal tissues. A secondary cytotoxic response was also detected in vitro when spleen cells from mice immunized to a carcinogen-induced fibrosarcoma were tested. The patterns of cross-reactivity detected by the in vivo and primary in vitro tumour-immune responses suggested that the TAA detected in vivo (TATA) were not identical to the TAA detected in vitro

Fuel conservative guidance concept for shipboard landing of powered-life aircraft

A simulation study was undertaken to investigate the application of energy conservative guidance (ECG) software, developed at NASA Ames Research Center, to improve the time and fuel efficiency of powered lift airplanes operating from aircraft carriers at sea. When a flightpath is indicated by a set of initial conditions for the aircraft and a set of positional waypoints with associated airspeeds, the ECG software synthesizes the necessary guidance commands to optimize fuel and time along the specified path. A major feature of the ECG system is the ability to synthesize a trajectory that will allow the aircraft to capture the specified path at any waypoint with the desired heading and airspeed from an arbitrary set of initial conditions. Five paths were identified and studied. These paths demonstrate the ECG system's ability to save flight time and fuel by more efficiently managing the aircraft's capabilities. Results of this simulation study show that when restrictions on the approach flightpath imposed for manual operation are removed completely, fuel consumption during the approach was reduced by as much as 49% (610 lb fuel) and the time required to fly the flightpath was reduced by as much as 41% (5 min). Savings due to ECG were produced by: (1) shortening the total flight time; (2) keeping the airspeed high as long as possible to minimize time spent flying in a regime in which more engine thrust is required for lift to aid the aerodynamic lift; (3) minimizing time spent flying at constant altitude at slow airspeeds; and (4) synthesizing a path from any location for a direct approach to landing without entering a holding pattern or other fixed approach path

Natural cytotoxicity of haemopoietic cell populations against murine lymphoid tumours.

Homozygous nude and normal mice of 3 strains, BALB/c, CBA and C57BL, were used as sources of nucleated haemopoietic "natural killer" (NK) cells. These killer cells could lyse a wide range of syngeneic and allogeneic lymphoid tumour cell lines in vitro, and it was found that cell suspensions from nude mice were always significantly more active than those from normal mice, and that the most active effector population was a polymorph-enriched peritoneal-exudate cell suspension. Eosinophils did not appear to be involved in the phenomenon, and mononuclear peritoneal-exudate cell suspensions were actually highly inhibitory. Three non-lymphoid tumours, a carcinoma, a fibrosarcoma and a mastocytoma, were totally resistant to in vitro lysis. Although all susceptible tumour cell lines were C-type virus-associated, not all of these tumours were killed by all strain sources of spleen cells, indicating a specificity of killing

When and where do you want to hide? Recommendation of location privacy preferences with local differential privacy

In recent years, it has become easy to obtain location information quite precisely. However, the acquisition of such information has risks such as individual identification and leakage of sensitive information, so it is necessary to protect the privacy of location information. For this purpose, people should know their location privacy preferences, that is, whether or not he/she can release location information at each place and time. However, it is not easy for each user to make such decisions and it is troublesome to set the privacy preference at each time. Therefore, we propose a method to recommend location privacy preferences for decision making. Comparing to existing method, our method can improve the accuracy of recommendation by using matrix factorization and preserve privacy strictly by local differential privacy, whereas the existing method does not achieve formal privacy guarantee. In addition, we found the best granularity of a location privacy preference, that is, how to express the information in location privacy protection. To evaluate and verify the utility of our method, we have integrated two existing datasets to create a rich information in term of user number. From the results of the evaluation using this dataset, we confirmed that our method can predict location privacy preferences accurately and that it provides a suitable method to define the location privacy preference

Revitalization in a scattered language community: Problems and methods from the perspective of Mutsun language revitalization

This article addresses revitalization of a dormant language whose prospective speakers live in scattered geographical areas. In comparison to increasing the usage of an endangered language, revitalizing a dormant language (one with no living speakers) requires different methods to gain knowledge of the language. Language teaching for a dormant language with a scattered community presents different problems from other teaching situations. In this article, we discuss the types of tasks that must be accomplished for dormant-language revitalization, with particular focus on development of teaching materials. We also address the role of computer technologies, arguing that each use of technology should be evaluated for how effectively it increases fluency. We discuss methods for achieving semi-fluency for the first new speakers of a dormant language, and for spreading the language through the community

Supergravity Instabilities of Non-Supersymmetric Quantum Critical Points

Motivated by the recent use of certain consistent truncations of M-theory to study condensed matter physics using holographic techniques, we study the SU(3)-invariant sector of four-dimensional, N=8 gauged supergravity and compute the complete scalar spectrum at each of the five non-trivial critical points. We demonstrate that the smaller SU(4)^- sector is equivalent to a consistent truncation studied recently by various authors and find that the critical point in this sector, which has been proposed as the ground state of a holographic superconductor, is unstable due to a family of scalars that violate the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. We also derive the origin of this instability in eleven dimensions and comment on the generalization to other embeddings of this critical point which involve arbitrary Sasaki-Einstein seven manifolds. In the spirit of a resurging interest in consistent truncations, we present a formal treatment of the SU(3)-invariant sector as a U(1)xU(1) gauged N=2 supergravity theory coupled to one hypermultiplet.Comment: 46 page

Electromagnetic Casimir piston in higher dimensional spacetimes

We consider the Casimir effect of the electromagnetic field in a higher dimensional spacetime of the form $M\times \mathcal{N}$, where $M$ is the 4-dimensional Minkowski spacetime and $\mathcal{N}$ is an $n$-dimensional compact manifold. The Casimir force acting on a planar piston that can move freely inside a closed cylinder with the same cross section is investigated. Different combinations of perfectly conducting boundary conditions and infinitely permeable boundary conditions are imposed on the cylinder and the piston. It is verified that if the piston and the cylinder have the same boundary conditions, the piston is always going to be pulled towards the closer end of the cylinder. However, if the piston and the cylinder have different boundary conditions, the piston is always going to be pushed to the middle of the cylinder. By taking the limit where one end of the cylinder tends to infinity, one obtains the Casimir force acting between two parallel plates inside an infinitely long cylinder. The asymptotic behavior of this Casimir force in the high temperature regime and the low temperature regime are investigated for the case where the cross section of the cylinder in $M$ is large. It is found that if the separation between the plates is much smaller than the size of $\mathcal{N}$, the leading term of the Casimir force is the same as the Casimir force on a pair of large parallel plates in the $(4+n)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. However, if the size of $\mathcal{N}$ is much smaller than the separation between the plates, the leading term of the Casimir force is $1+h/2$ times the Casimir force on a pair of large parallel plates in the 4-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, where $h$ is the first Betti number of $\mathcal{N}$. In the limit the manifold $\mathcal{N}$ vanishes, one does not obtain the Casimir force in the 4-dimensional Minkowski spacetime if $h$ is nonzero.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

QUANTITATIVE FEATURES OF A SANDWICH RADIOIMMUNOLABELING TECHNIQUE FOR LYMPHOCYTE SURFACE RECEPTORS

The present study was designed to devise and characterize an indirect or sandwich radioimmunolabeling technique for the study of lymphocyte surface receptors of immunoglobulin nature. Mouse lymphocytes from various sources were treated by the method of Shortman et al. to remove debris and damaged cells. This was an important preliminary step, as without it, little meaning could be attached to bulk scintillation counting of labeled cell suspensions, in view of the marked tendency of dead or damaged cells to adsorb protein nonspecifically. Next, cells were reacted at 0°C for 30 min with graded dilutions of unlabeled rabbit antisera against defined mouse Ig chains. After washing, the cells were reacted with a sheep anti-rabbit globulin reagent labeled with 125I, again at graded concentrations. After further washing, lymphocyte labeling was quantitated by both bulk scintillation counting and radioautography. Conditions were defined in which nonthymus-derived cells (B cells) but not thymus-derived cells (T cells) could be labeled. Most B cells displayed κ- and µ-chains on their surface, but some also displayed α- and γ2-chains, though in smaller amounts. When the concentration of both the first and the second reagents were raised considerably, conditions were defined under which virtually all T cells could be labeled by polyvalent antiglobulin sera, anti-κ sera, or, with more difficulty, by anti-µ sera. A large series of control experiments confirmed the serologic specificity of this labeling. It was shown that under equivalent conditions, B cells bind 100–400 times more antiglobulin than do T cells. The theoretical implications of the results are briefly discussed. It is argued that the sandwich approach offers certain technical advantages over direct labeling procedures for further analyses of T cell receptors and for studies of receptor metabolism