A Stochastic Spatial Model for Tumor Growth

Evolutionary game theory can be used to study the interactions of different cell phenotypes and describe tumor population dynamics. Instead of killing tumor cells, clinical treatment could aim to change the nature of the evolutionary game-- enabling healthy cells to outcompete malignant cells. Most applications of evolutionary game theory to tumor growth have considered the tumor as a homogeneously mixing population that is governed by the replicator equation. We model the tumor population as an interacting particle system (IPS), with discrete individuals, stochastic local interactions, and explicit spatial consideration. Using this model, we see how predictions are changed when space is taken into account. In particular, we consider Basanta's work on glioma progression, the analysis of multiple myeloma proposed by Dingli et al., and Tomlinson's model for tumors containing cytotoxin-producing cells. Our model agrees with Basanta's in that we should have coexistence between the three tumor phenotypes, but the spatial model allows coexistence in a significantly wider region of parameter space. Dingli's tumor population exhibits bistability in a certain parameter regime. Our spatial model predicts a transition between the two stable states at a critical parameter value, so there is no bistability. In Tomlinson's game, the IPS does not allow for coexistence between cell types.Honors thesi

Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards COVID 19 prevention and precaution among non-teaching faculty in a private dental institution

Background: The society must routinely practice precautionary measures and precautions to control the spread of Coronavirus, as no vaccines and antiviral treatments are currently available. This study examines non-teaching faculties knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) related to COVID-19, their relationships and identified the pandemics vulnerable population inorder to provide recommendations for policies and behavioural interventions. Materials and methods: A total of 90 non-teaching staff from a private dental institution participated in this study. A self administered, 12 item questionnaire was circulated among the non-teaching staff. Only completely filled forms were taken into account for analysis by using SPSS software version 23 with Pearson Chi square test method. Results: The final analysis was done using responses from 89 non-teaching faculties. On the whole, knowledge regarding COVID-19 was found to be moderate among these no-teaching staff. Conclusion: This study shows a baseline knowledge regarding this pandemic. Even though the participants had fair knowledge, their attitude towards answering the questions was good

Impacto de las tecnologías emergentes en el desarrollo cognitivo: el papel mediador del apoyo social digital entre estudiantes de educación superior

The aim of the current study is to explore the direct and indirect relationships between emerging technology and cognitive development. This study utilized a cross-sectional research design, employing a questionnaire survey approach for data collection from students in higher education. The multi-point Likert scale was used to measure emerging technology, cognitive development, and digital social support. Data were collected from 500 students, both male and female, studying at Chinese universities. The PLS-SEM approach was applied to analyze the structural relationship among the given variables in this research study. Findings of the study indicated that emerging technology has a positive and significant relationship with cognitive development, and that digital social support positively and significantly mediates the connection between emerging technology and cognitive development among higher education students. It was concluded that both emerging technology and digital social support are predictors of students' cognitive development at the higher education level. The study contributes to the literature on emerging technology, cognitive development, and digital social support in the context of higher education. This study provides valuable theoretical and practical implications for teachers, psychologists, and curriculum developers at the higher education level.  El objetivo del presente estudio es explorar las relaciones directas e indirectas entre la tecnología emergente y el desarrollo cognitivo. Este estudio utilizó un diseño de investigación transversal, empleando un enfoque de encuesta por cuestionario para la recopilación de datos de estudiantes de educación superior. Se utilizó la escala Likert de múltiples puntos para medir la tecnología emergente, el desarrollo cognitivo y el apoyo social digital. Se recopilaron datos de 500 estudiantes, tanto hombres como mujeres, que estudiaban en universidades chinas. Se aplicó el enfoque PLS-SEM para analizar la relación estructural entre las variables dadas en este estudio de investigación. Los hallazgos del estudio indicaron que la tecnología emergente tiene una relación positiva y significativa con el desarrollo cognitivo, y que el apoyo social digital media positiva y significativamente la conexión entre la tecnología emergente y el desarrollo cognitivo entre los estudiantes de educación superior. Se concluyó que tanto la tecnología emergente como el apoyo social digital son predictores del desarrollo cognitivo de los estudiantes en el nivel de educación superior. El estudio contribuye a la literatura sobre tecnología emergente, desarrollo cognitivo y apoyo social digital en el contexto de la educación superior. Este estudio proporciona valiosas implicaciones teóricas y prácticas para profesores, psicólogos y desarrolladores de planes de estudio en el nivel de educación superior.

A Comparative Study of Government and Private Secondary School Teachers towards their Teaching Profession

The present study was undertaken to find and compare the teaching attitude of Government and Private Secondary School Teachers towards their teaching profession. 200 respondents were selected by using by simple random sampling technique. Teaching Attitude Scale developed by J.C. Goyal was used for data collection .The data was subjected to statistical treatment by using Mean, Standard Deviation, and t-value. The result revealed that Government Secondary School Teachers have higher attitude towards their teaching profession than Private Secondary School Teachers. Further comparing on the basis of gender it was found that Government male Teachers have higher teaching attitude towards their teaching profession than females and private female Secondary School Teachers posses’ higher teaching attitude towards their teaching profession than their counterparts. Key words: Government Secondary School Teacher, Private Secondary School Teachers, Attitude, Teaching Profession

How to Best Automate Intersection Management

Recently there has been increased research interest in developing adaptive control systems for autonomous vehicles. This study presents a comparative evaluation of two distinct approaches to automated intersection management for a multiagent system of autonomous vehicles. The first is a centralized heuristic control approach using an extension of the Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM) system. The second is a decentralized neuro-evolution approach that adapts vehicle controllers so as they collectively navigate intersections. This study tests both approaches for controlling groups of autonomous vehicles on a network of interconnected intersections, without the constraints of traffic lights or stop signals. These task environments thus simulate potential future scenarios where vehicles must drive autonomously without specific road infrastructure constraints. The capability of each approach to appropriately handle various types of interconnected intersections, while maintaining an efficient throughput of vehicles and minimizing delay is tested. Results indicate that neuro-evolution is an effective method for automating collective driving behaviors that are robust across a broad range of road networks, where evolved controllers yield comparable task performance or out-perform an AIM controller

Mutations that alter the regulation of the chb operon of Escherichia coli allow utilization of cellobiose

Wild-type strains of Escherichia coli are normally unable to metabolize cellobiose. However, cellobiose-positive (Cel+) mutants arise upon prolonged incubation on media containing cellobiose as the sole carbon source. We show that the Cel+ derivatives carry two classes of mutations that act concertedly to alter the regulation of the chb operon involved in the utilization of N,N'-diacetylchitobiose. These consist of mutations that abrogate negative regulation by the repressor NagC as well as single base-pair changes in the transcriptional regulator chbR that translate into single-amino-acid substitutions. Introduction of chbR from two Cel+ mutants resulted in activation of transcription from the chb promoter at a higher level in the presence of cellobiose, in reporter strains carrying disruptions of the chromosomal chbR and nagC. These transformants also showed a Cel+ phenotype on MacConkey cellobiose medium, suggesting that the wild-type permease and phospho-β-glucosidase, upon induction, could recognize, transport and cleave cellobiose respectively. This was confirmed by expressing the wild-type genes encoding the permease and phospho-β-glucosidase under a heterologous promoter. Biochemical characterization of one of the chbR mutants, chbRN238S, showed that the mutant regulator makes stronger contact with the target DNA sequence within the chb promoter and has enhanced recognition of cellobiose 6-phosphate as an inducer compared with the wild-type regulator

Cell specific apoptosis by RLX is mediated by NFκB in human colon carcinoma HCT-116 cells

BACKGROUND: Resistance to chemotherapy represents a major obstacle in correcting colorectal carcinomas (CRC). Inspite of recent advances in the treatment of metastatic disease, the prognosis of the patients remains poor. RLX, a vasicinone analogue has been reported to possess potent bronchodilator, anti-asthmatic and anti-inflammatory properties. However, its anti-cancer activity is unknown. RESULTS: Here, we report for the first time that RLX has anti-cancer property against panel of human cancer cell lines and most potent activity was found against HCT-116 cells with IC(50) value of 12 μM and have further investigated the involvement of NFκB and caspase-3 in RLX action in CRC apoptosis. Following RLX and BEZ-235 treatment in HCT-116, we observed significant down-regulation of NFκB (1 to 0.1 fold) and up-regulation of caspase-3 (1 to 2 fold) protein expressions. Additionally, morphological studies revealed membrane blebbing, cell shrinkage, chromatin condensation and finally apoptosis in HCT-116 cells. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these findings indicate that RLX is a potent small molecule which triggers apoptosis, and promising potential candidate to be a chemotherapeutic agent

Transcriptomic landscape of lncRNAs in inflammatory bowel disease

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a complex multi-factorial inflammatory disease with Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) being the two most common forms. A number of transcriptional profiling studies have provided compelling evidence that describe the role of protein-coding genes and microRNAs in modulating the immune responses in IBD. METHODS: In the present study, we performed a genome-wide transcriptome profiling of lncRNAs and protein-coding genes in 96 colon pinch biopsies (inflamed and non-inflamed) extracted from multiple colonic locations from 45 patients (CD = 13, UC = 20, controls = 12) using an expression microarray platform. RESULTS: In our study, we identified widespread dysregulation of lncRNAs and protein-coding genes in both inflamed and non-inflamed CD and UC compared to the healthy controls. In cases of inflamed CD and UC, we identified 438 and 745 differentially expressed lncRNAs, respectively, while in cases of the non-inflamed CD and UC, we identified 12 and 19 differentially expressed lncRNAs, respectively. We also observed significant enrichment (P-value <0.001, Pearson’s Chi-squared test) for 96 differentially expressed lncRNAs and 154 protein-coding genes within the IBD susceptibility loci. Furthermore, we found strong positive expression correlations for the intersecting and cis-neighboring differentially expressed IBD loci-associated lncRNA-protein-coding gene pairs. The functional annotation analysis of differentially expressed genes revealed their involvement in the immune response, pro-inflammatory cytokine activity and MHC protein complex. CONCLUSIONS: The lncRNA expression profiling in both inflamed and non-inflamed CD and UC successfully stratified IBD patients from the healthy controls. Taken together, the identified lncRNA transcriptional signature along with clinically relevant parameters suggest their potential as biomarkers in IBD. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13073-015-0162-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Prediction of blood-based biomarkers and subsequent design of bisulfite PCR-LDR-qPCR assay for breast cancer detection

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Background Interrogation of site-specific CpG methylation in circulating tumor DNAs (ctDNAs) has been employed in a number of studies for early detection of breast cancer (BrCa). In many of these studies, the markers were identified based on known biology of BrCa progression, and interrogated using methyl-specific PCR (MSP), a technique involving bisulfite conversion, PCR, and qPCR. Methods In this report, we are demonstrating the development of a novel assay (Multiplex Bisulfite PCR-LDR-qPCR) which can potentially offer improvements to MSP, by integrating additional steps such as ligase detection reaction (LDR), methylated CpG target enrichment, carryover protection (use of uracil DNA glycosylase), and minimization of primer-dimer formation (use of ribose primers and RNAseH2). The assay is designed to for breast cancer-specific CpG markers identified through integrated analyses of publicly available genome-wide methylation datasets for 31 types of primary tumors (including BrCa), as well as matching normal tissues, and peripheral blood. Results Our results indicate that the PCR-LDR-qPCR assay is capable of detecting ~ 30 methylated copies of each of 3 BrCa-specific CpG markers, when mixed with excess amount unmethylated CpG markers (~ 3000 copies each), which is a reasonable approximation of BrCa ctDNA overwhelmed with peripheral blood cell-free DNA (cfDNA) when isolated from patient plasma. The bioinformatically-identified CpG markers are located in promoter regions of NR5A2 and PRKCB, and a non-coding region of chromosome 1 (upstream of EFNA3). Additional bioinformatic analyses would reveal that these methylation markers are independent of patient race and age, and positively associated with signaling pathways associated with BrCa progression (such as those related to retinoid nuclear receptor, PTEN, p53, pRB, and p27). Conclusion This report demonstrates the potential utilization of bisulfite PCR-LDR-qPCR assay, along with bioinformatically-driven biomarker discovery, in blood-based BrCa detection