Asset Allocation under the Basel Accord Risk Measures

Financial institutions are currently required to meet more stringent capital requirements than they were before the recent financial crisis; in particular, the capital requirement for a large bank's trading book under the Basel 2.5 Accord more than doubles that under the Basel II Accord. The significant increase in capital requirements renders it necessary for banks to take into account the constraint of capital requirement when they make asset allocation decisions. In this paper, we propose a new asset allocation model that incorporates the regulatory capital requirements under both the Basel 2.5 Accord, which is currently in effect, and the Basel III Accord, which was recently proposed and is currently under discussion. We propose an unified algorithm based on the alternating direction augmented Lagrangian method to solve the model; we also establish the first-order optimality of the limit points of the sequence generated by the algorithm under some mild conditions. The algorithm is simple and easy to implement; each step of the algorithm consists of solving convex quadratic programming or one-dimensional subproblems. Numerical experiments on simulated and real market data show that the algorithm compares favorably with other existing methods, especially in cases in which the model is non-convex

Draft Genome Sequence of Streptomyces sp. Strain CT34, Isolated from a Ghanaian Soil Sample

Copyright © 2015 Zhai et al. This work was supported by the China “973” program (2012CB721001), the “863” Program (2012AA092201), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170467), and the EU FP7 project PharmaSea (312184). K.K., M.J., and H.D. thank the Royal Society–Leverhulme Trust Africa for the financial support (award AA090088) that enabled the sampling of sediments and subsequent isolation of this unique Ghanaian strain.Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

Suppression of long non-coding RNA H19 inhibits proliferation, cell migration and invasion in human cervical cancer cells

Purpose: To determine the expression profile of lncRNA H19 in different cervical cancers, and to decipher its function in the growth and metastasis of cervical cancer.Methods: The analysis LncRNA H19 expression was performed using quantitative real timepolymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Cell counting kit 8 (CCK8) assay was used to assess the viability of the cells. The cells were transfected with Si-H19 using Lipofectamine 2000 and the metastasis of cells was determined by cell migration and invasion assay. Immunoblotting was used to evaluate the protein expression.Results: The lncRNA H19 expression was considerably enhanced in cervical cancer cells, and was about 2.6 to 5.3 times more in cervical cancer cells relative to non-cancer cells. Inhibition of lncRNA caused significant reduction in cervical cancer cell growth in a time-dependent manner. In addition while silencing of lncRNA inhibited the metastasis of HeLa cells. Cell migration and invasion was about 26 % in Si-H19 transfected cervical cancer cells, relative to 65 % in Si-NC cervical HeLa cells. Similarly, cell invasion was 45 % in Si-H19 cervical HeLa cells relative to the negative control (Si-NC). Inhibition of HeLa cell metastasis was also concomitant with decline of metalloproteinases (MMP)-2 and 9expression.Conclusion: lncRNA regulates the growth and metastasis of cervical cancer cells. Thus, IncRNA may be an important therapeutic agent for cervical cancer.Keywords: Cervical cancer, lncRNA, Proliferation, Invasio

Cryo-EM structures of the air-oxidized and dithionite-reduced photosynthetic alternative complex III from Roseiflexus castenholzii

Alternative complex III (ACIII) is a multisubunit quinol:electron acceptor oxidoreductase that couples quinol oxidation with transmembrane proton translocation in both the respiratory and photosynthetic electron transport chains of bacteria. The coupling mechanism, however, is poorly understood. Here, we report the cryo-EM structures of air-oxidized and dithionite-reduced ACIII from the photosynthetic bacteriu

Projected changes of ecosystem productivity and their responses to extreme heat events in northern asia

Change of ecosystem productivity and its response to climate extremes in the context of global warming are of great interest and particular concern for ecosystem management and adaptation. Using the simulations with and without the CO2 fertilization effect from the Yale Interactive Biosphere (YIBs) model driven by seven CMIP5 climate models, this article investigates the future change in the gross primary productivity (GPP) of the Northern Asian ecosystem as well as the impacts from extreme heat events under the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. The results show an overall increase of GPP in Northern Asia during the growing season (May-September) under both scenarios, in which the CO2 fertilization effect plays a dominant role. The increases in GPP under RCP8.5 are larger than that under RCP2.6, and the greatest projected increases occur in western Siberia and Northeast China. The extreme heat events are also projected to increase generally and their influences on the Northern Asian ecosystem GPP exhibit spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Under the RCP2.6 scenario, the positive and adverse effects from the extreme heat events coexist in Northern Asia during the middle of the 21st century. During the end of the 21st century, the areas dominated by positive effects are expected to expand particularly in Northeast China and central-western Siberia. For the RCP8.5 scenario, the facilitation effects of the extreme heat events are widely distributed in Northern Asia during the middle of the 21st century, which tends to decline in both intensity and extent during the end of the 21st century. The case is similar after the CO2 fertilization effect is excluded

Morphology-Enhanced CAM-Guided SAM for weakly supervised Breast Lesion Segmentation

Breast cancer diagnosis challenges both patients and clinicians, with early detection being crucial for effective treatment. Ultrasound imaging plays a key role in this, but its utility is hampered by the need for precise lesion segmentation-a task that is both time-consuming and labor-intensive. To address these challenges, we propose a new framework: a morphology-enhanced, Class Activation Map (CAM)-guided model, which is optimized using a computer vision foundation model known as SAM. This innovative framework is specifically designed for weakly supervised lesion segmentation in early-stage breast ultrasound images. Our approach uniquely leverages image-level annotations, which removes the requirement for detailed pixel-level annotation. Initially, we perform a preliminary segmentation using breast lesion morphology knowledge. Following this, we accurately localize lesions by extracting semantic information through a CAM-based heatmap. These two elements are then fused together, serving as a prompt to guide the SAM in performing refined segmentation. Subsequently, post-processing techniques are employed to rectify topological errors made by the SAM. Our method not only simplifies the segmentation process but also attains accuracy comparable to supervised learning methods that rely on pixel-level annotation. Our framework achieves a Dice score of 74.39% on the test set, demonstrating compareable performance with supervised learning methods. Additionally, it outperforms a supervised learning model, in terms of the Hausdorff distance, scoring 24.27 compared to Deeplabv3+'s 32.22. These experimental results showcase its feasibility and superior performance in integrating weakly supervised learning with SAM. The code is made available at: https://github.com/YueXin18/MorSeg-CAM-SAM

The Effect of Adoptive Immunotherapy after Percutaneous Microwave Ablation in Recurrent Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients with Hepatitis B: A Preliminary Study

To observe the influence of adoptive immunotherapy combination with percutaneous microwave ablation (PMWA) on peripheral blood examination, hepatic function examination and serum alpha fetoprotein (AFP) in recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with hepatitis B. Fourteen recurrent HCC patients with 31 lesions (D≤6.0cm, fewer than four tumors) were treated with radical PMWA and continuous four courses of adoptive immunotherapy, which were administrated at 1, 2, 3 and 4 months after PMWA, respectively. Under sonographic guidance, tumor lysate-pulsed DCs (1ml) were injected into bilateral groin lymph nodes at 9th day, while CTL (25ml) were injected into the abdominal cavity at 11th day and CIK (100ml) was infused intravenously at 14th day after hemospasis in one course of treatment, respectively. Peripheral blood examination, serum AFP and hepatic function were reviewed 1, 3, 6 months after adoptive immunotherapy. The number of white blood cell (WBC), lymphocyte (LYM), serum albumin (ALB) and cholinesterase (CHE) were detected increase significantly at 3 and 6 months after therapy compared to pre-therapy (p0.05). Platelet (PLT) was detected increased significantly at 6 months after therapy (p0.05) compared to pre-therapy. Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were detected decreased significantly at 1, 3 and 6 months after therapy (p0.05). As to serum AFP, it was detected decreased gradually, while there was no difference during the follow-up (6-16 months). No severe adverse effects were observed. Adoptive immunotherapy prescribed soon after PMWA was safe and ameliorated the laboratory examination and the immunity status of recurrent HCC patients, which may improve the prognosis

Research progress of neoantigen-based dendritic cell vaccines in pancreatic cancer

The mutation of the crucial genes such as tumor suppressors or oncogenes plays an important role in the initiation and development of tumors. The non-synonymous mutations in the tumor cell genome will produce non-autologous proteins (neoantigen) to activate the immune system by activating CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Neoantigen-based peptide vaccines have exhibited exciting therapeutic effects in treating various cancers alone or in combination with other therapeutic strategies. Furthermore, antigen-loaded DC vaccines are more powerful in inducing stronger immune responses than vaccines generated by antigens and adjuvants. Therefore, neoantigen-based dendritic cell (DC) vaccines could achieve promising effects in combating some malignant tumors. In this review, we summarized and discussed the recent research progresses of the neoantigen, neoantigen-based vaccines, and DC-based vaccine in pancreatic cancers (PCs). The combination of the neoantigen and DC-based vaccine in PC was also highlighted. Therefore, our work will provide more detailed evidence and novel opinions to promote the development of a personalized neoantigen-based DC vaccine for PC