Colorado Native Plant Society Newsletter, Vol. 3 No. 4, July-August 1979

The Colorado Native Plant Society Newsletter will be published on a bimonthly basis. The contents will consist primarily of a calendar of events, notes of interest, editorials, listings of new members and conservation news. Until there is a Society journal, the Newsletter will include short articles also. The deadline for the Newsletter is one month prior to its release.https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1015/thumbnail.jp

Colorado Native Plant Society Newsletter, Vol. 3 No. 3, May-June 1979

The Colorado Native Plant Society Newsletter will be published on a bimonthly basis. The contents will consist primarily of a calendar of events, notes of interest, editorials, listings of new members and conservation news. Until there is a Society journal, the Newsletter will include short articles also. The deadline for the Newsletter is one month prior to its release.https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1014/thumbnail.jp

Evaluating predictive pharmacogenetic signatures of adverse events in colorectal cancer patients treated with fluoropyrimidines

The potential clinical utility of genetic markers associated with response to fluoropyrimidine treatment in colorectal cancer patients remains controversial despite extensive study. Our aim was to test the clinical validity of both novel and previously identified markers of adverse events in a broad clinical setting. We have conducted an observational pharmacogenetic study of early adverse events in a cohort study of 254 colorectal cancer patients treated with 5-fluorouracil or capecitabine. Sixteen variants of nine key folate (pharmacodynamic) and drug metabolising (pharmacokinetic) enzymes have been analysed as individual markers and/or signatures of markers. We found a significant association between TYMP S471L (rs11479) and early dose modifications and/or severe adverse events (adjusted OR = 2.02 [1.03; 4.00], p = 0.042, adjusted OR = 2.70 [1.23; 5.92], p = 0.01 respectively). There was also a significant association between these phenotypes and a signature of DPYD mutations (Adjusted OR = 3.96 [1.17; 13.33], p = 0.03, adjusted OR = 6.76 [1.99; 22.96], p = 0.002 respectively). We did not identify any significant associations between the individual candidate pharmacodynamic markers and toxicity. If a predictive test for early adverse events analysed the TYMP and DPYD variants as a signature, the sensitivity would be 45.5 %, with a positive predictive value of just 33.9 % and thus poor clinical validity. Most studies to date have been under-powered to consider multiple pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic variants simultaneously but this and similar individualised data sets could be pooled in meta-analyses to resolve uncertainties about the potential clinical utility of these markers

Model Checking CTL is Almost Always Inherently Sequential

The model checking problem for CTL is known to be P-complete (Clarke, Emerson, and Sistla (1986), see Schnoebelen (2002)). We consider fragments of CTL obtained by restricting the use of temporal modalities or the use of negations---restrictions already studied for LTL by Sistla and Clarke (1985) and Markey (2004). For all these fragments, except for the trivial case without any temporal operator, we systematically prove model checking to be either inherently sequential (P-complete) or very efficiently parallelizable (LOGCFL-complete). For most fragments, however, model checking for CTL is already P-complete. Hence our results indicate that, in cases where the combined complexity is of relevance, approaching CTL model checking by parallelism cannot be expected to result in any significant speedup. We also completely determine the complexity of the model checking problem for all fragments of the extensions ECTL, CTL+, and ECTL+

Diffusion Processes on Small-World Networks with Distance-Dependent Random-Links

We considered diffusion-driven processes on small-world networks with distance-dependent random links. The study of diffusion on such networks is motivated by transport on randomly folded polymer chains, synchronization problems in task-completion networks, and gradient driven transport on networks. Changing the parameters of the distance-dependence, we found a rich phase diagram, with different transient and recurrent phases in the context of random walks on networks. We performed the calculations in two limiting cases: in the annealed case, where the rearrangement of the random links is fast, and in the quenched case, where the link rearrangement is slow compared to the motion of the random walker or the surface. It has been well-established that in a large class of interacting systems, adding an arbitrarily small density of, possibly long-range, quenched random links to a regular lattice interaction topology, will give rise to mean-field (or annealed) like behavior. In some cases, however, mean-field scaling breaks down, such as in diffusion or in the Edwards-Wilkinson process in "low-dimensional" small-world networks. This break-down can be understood by treating the random links perturbatively, where the mean-field (or annealed) prediction appears as the lowest-order term of a naive perturbation expansion. The asymptotic analytic results are also confirmed numerically by employing exact numerical diagonalization of the network Laplacian. Further, we construct a finite-size scaling framework for the relevant observables, capturing the cross-over behaviors in finite networks. This work provides a detailed account of the self-consistent-perturbative and renormalization approaches briefly introduced in two earlier short reports.Comment: 36 pages, 27 figures. Minor revisions in response to the referee's comments. Furthermore, some typos were fixed and new references were adde

PML as a potential predictive factor of oxaliplatin/fluoropyrimidine-based first line chemotherapy efficacy in colorectal cancer patients

PML regulates a wide range of pathways involved in tumorigenesis, such as apoptosis, which is also one of the main mechanisms through which oxaliplatin and fluoropyrimidine exert their antineoplastic activity. The present study aims to investigate PML expression as a predictive factor of oxaliplatin/fluoropyrimidine therapy efficacy. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: 74 metastatic colorectal cancer patients who received oxaliplatin/floropyrimidine-based first line therapy have been included in this retrospective study. PML expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: PML down-regulation was detected in 39 (52.7%) patients (14 complete and 25 partial PML loss). RR was significantly lower (25.6%) in patients with PML down-regulation than in patients with preserved PML expression (60%) (P\u2009=\u20090.006). Median TTP was 5.5 months when PML was down-regulated versus 11.9 months in case of preserved PML expression (P\u2009<\u20090.0001). A statistical significant difference was also detected in OS (15.6 and 24.5 months respectively, P\u2009=\u20090.003). The impact of PML down-regulation on TTP and OS was statistically significant also in a multivariate model. CONCLUSIONS: This study represents the first evidence of a possible correlation between PML protein expression and outcome of metastatic colorectal cancer patients treated with oxaliplatin/fluoropyrimidine-based first line therapy

Reply: KRAS status analysis and anti-EGFR therapies: is comprehensiveness a biologist's fancy or a clinical necessity?

We thank Dr Lopez-Crapez et al 2010 to have taken cue fro

Analysis of the coupled dynamics of an offshore floating multi-purpose platform : part A - rigid body analysis

A multi-purpose platform (MPP) is an offshore system designed to serve the purposes of more than one offshore industry. Indeed, over the past decades, a number of industries have expanded, or are expanding, from onshore to offshore locations (renewables, aquaculture, tourism, mineral extractions, etc.), and the research on these type of platform is increasing. In the present work, a MPP able to accommodate wind turbines, wave energy converters, and aquaculture systems are considered. This work presents the first part (Part A) of the analyses of the dynamics of the floating support structure for this MPP, focusing on the rigid body dynamic response, while its complementary hydroelastic analysis is presented in Part B (OMAE2019-96282). The aim here is to assess the dynamic response of the platform with respect to the preliminary requirements imposed by the wind turbine, the aquaculture system, and the other ancillary systems. After describing the platform analyzed, and explaining the aero-hydro coupled model of dynamics approach adopted, two independent analyses are conducted, one using the SESAM package by DNV-GL, and another using ANSYS AQWA, in order to verify the results, in absence of experimental data. Considering a severe, but still operational, load case, the preliminary results seem to demonstrate that the chosen platform can satisfy the dynamics constraints imposed by the payload systems