The regulatory function of sphingosine-1-phosphate signaling axis on regulatory T cells in colorectal cancer

In tumors associated with inflammation such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colorectal cancer (CRC), high numbers of regulatory T cells (Tregs) are associated with both favorable and poor prognoses. The functions of Tregs in CRC remain elusive and have yet to be clearly defined. With new evidence supporting many subsets of Tregs, the research on the development and functions of these cells has begun to come to fruition. The sphingosine 1 phosphate (S1P) pathway was recently reported to regulate the development and function of regulatory T cells. This pathway may shine new light into the pleiotropic nature of these cells in cancer. In this review, we will examine current literature on the many functions of Tregs in CRC and highlight the significance of the S1P signaling pathway in Treg development/function with the implication of novel therapeutic strategies in treatment of CRC patients

Effect of edge decoration on the energy spectrum of semi-infinite lattices

Analytical studies of the effect of edge decoration on the energy spectrum of semi-infinite one-dimensional (1D) lattice chain with Peierls phase transition and zigzag edged graphene (ZEG) are presented by means of transfer matrix method, in the frame of which the sufficient and necessary conditions for the existence of the edge states are determined. For 1D lattice chain, the zero-energy edge state exists when Peierls phase transition happens regardless whether the decoration exists or not, while the non-zero-energy edge states can be induced and manipulated through adjusting the edge decoration. On the other hand, the semi-infinite ZEG model with nearest-neighbor interaction can be mapped into the 1D lattice chain case. The non-zero-energy edge states can be induced by the decoration as well, and we can obtain the condition of the decoration on the edge for the existence of the novel edge states.Comment: 6 pages,4 figure

An investigation of star formation and dust attenuation in major mergers using ultraviolet and infrared data

Merger processes play an important role in galaxy formation and evolution. To study the influence of merger processes on the evolution of dust properties and cosmic star formation rate, we investigate a local sample of major merger galaxies and a control sample of isolated galaxies using GALEX ultraviolet (UV) and Spitzer infrared (IR) images. Through a statistical study, we find that dust attenuation in merger galaxies is enhanced with respect to isolated galaxies. We find this enhancement is contributed mainly by spiral galaxies in spiral-spiral (S-S) pairs, and increases with the increasing stellar mass of a galaxy. Combining the IR and UV parts of star formation rates (SFRs), we then calculated the total SFRs and specific star formation rates (SSFRs). We find the SSFRs to be enhanced in merger galaxies. This enhancement depends on galaxy stellar mass and the companion's morphology, but depends little on whether the galaxy is a primary or secondary component or on the separation between two components. These results are consistent with a previous study based only on IR images. In addition, we investigate the nuclear contributions to SFRs. SFRs in paired galaxies are more concentrated in the central part of the galaxies than in isolate galaxies. Our studies of dust attenuation show that the nuclear parts of pairs most resemble ULIRGs. Including UV data in the present work not only provides reliable information on dust attenuation, but also refines analyses of SFRs.Comment: 21 pages, 21 figure

Object Picture of Quasinormal Modes for Stringy Black Holes

We study the quasinormal modes (QNMs) for stringy black holes. By using numerical calculation, the relations between the QNMs and the parameters of black holes are minutely shown. For (1+1)-dimensional stringy black hole, the real part of the quasinormal frequency increases and the imaginary part of the quasinormal frequency decreases as the mass of the black hole increases. Furthermore, the dependence of the QNMs on the charge of the black hole and the flatness parameter is also illustrated. For (1+3)-dimensional stringy black hole, increasing either the event horizon or the multipole index, the real part of the quasinormal frequency decreases. The imaginary part of the quasinormal frequency increases no matter whether the event horizon is increased or the multipole index is decreased.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Gluon-gluon contributions to the production of continuum diphoton pairs at hadron colliders

We compute the contributions to continuum photon pair production at hadron colliders from processes initiated by gluon-gluon and gluon-quark scattering into two photons through a four-leg virtual quark loop. Complete two-loop cross sections in perturbative quantum chromodynamics are combined with contributions from soft parton radiation resummed to all orders in the strong coupling strength. The structure of the resummed cross section is examined in detail, including a new type of unintegrated parton distribution function affecting azimuthal angle distributions of photons in the pair's rest frame. As a result of this analysis, we predict diphoton transverse momentum distributions in gluon-gluon scattering in wide ranges of kinematic parameters at the Fermilab Tevatron collider and the CERN Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures; published versio

Sediment Loss and Its Cause in Puerto Rico Watersheds

A major environmental concern in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is increased sediment load to water reservoirs, to estuaries, and finally to coral reef areas outside the estuaries. Sediment deposition has significantly reduced the storage capacity of reservoirs, and sediments, with their associated contaminants and nutrients that are adsorbed, can stress corals and negatively impact reef health. To prevent and manage sediment loss it is therefore important to understand local soil erosion and sediment transport processes. The main objective of this study was to determine the influence of landscape characteristics on sediment loss. We analyzed available precipitation and sediment data collected in Puerto Rico during the past three decades, as well as information on land use, soil properties, and topography. Our partial least squares analysis was not very successful in identifying major factors associated with sediment loss due to the complexity of the study\u27s watersheds; however, it was found that topography and rainfall factors do not play a leading role. Sediment loss from the ridge watersheds in Puerto Rico was mainly caused by interactions of development, heavy rainfall events (especially hurricanes), and steep mountainous slopes associated with the ridges. These results improve our understanding of sediment loss resulting from changes in land use/cover within a Puerto Rico watershed, and allow stakeholders to make more informed decisions about land use planning

Exact Hybrid Covariance Thresholding for Joint Graphical Lasso

This paper considers the problem of estimating multiple related Gaussian graphical models from a $p$-dimensional dataset consisting of different classes. Our work is based upon the formulation of this problem as group graphical lasso. This paper proposes a novel hybrid covariance thresholding algorithm that can effectively identify zero entries in the precision matrices and split a large joint graphical lasso problem into small subproblems. Our hybrid covariance thresholding method is superior to existing uniform thresholding methods in that our method can split the precision matrix of each individual class using different partition schemes and thus split group graphical lasso into much smaller subproblems, each of which can be solved very fast. In addition, this paper establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for our hybrid covariance thresholding algorithm. The superior performance of our thresholding method is thoroughly analyzed and illustrated by a few experiments on simulated data and real gene expression data

Accessing tri-gluon correlations in the nucleon via the single spin asymmetry in open charm production

We calculate the single transverse-spin asymmetry for open charm production in $pp$ collisions within the QCD collinear factorization approach. We include contributions from both twist-three quark-gluon and tri-gluon correlation functions. We find that the quark-gluon correlation functions alone generate only a very small asymmetry for open charm production in the kinematic region of current interest at RHIC, so that the observation of any significant single-spin asymmetry would be a clear indication of the presence of tri-gluon correlations inside a polarized proton. We furthermore demonstrate that the tri-gluon contribution could be very different for the production of $D$ and $\bar{D}$ mesons. These features make the single spin asymmetry in open charm production in polarized $pp$ collisions at RHIC an excellent probe of tri-gluon correlation functions.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Berry's phase in the multimode Peierls states

It is shown that Berry's phase associated with the adiabatic change of local variables in the Hamiltonian can be used to characterize the multimode Peierls state, which has been proposed as a new type of the ground state of the two-dimensional(2D) systems with the electron-lattice interaction.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figure

Penerapan Sentiment Analysis Pada Hasil Evaluasi Dosen Dengan Metode Support Vector Machine

The quality of lectures can be determined by some feedbacks from students. From the feedbacks, we can give appreciations for those lectures who get good feedback from students, and evaluations for those who get bad feedback. The problem is classifying large size of feedbacks manually isn\u27t effective and took a lot of time. Therefore, we need a system that can classify feedbacks automatically. These feedbacks will be classified into positive, negative, and neutral, usually called as sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis implementation can be done by several methods, one of them that has a good accuracy is Support Vector Machine (SVM). SVM performance in this research is measured with the level of accuracy. The number of accuracy indicate the success level of system. The conclusion of this research is factors that affects the accuracy. The factors are the range of each classes and number of unique words in the training document