Pregnancy postponement and childlessness leads to chronic hypervascularity of the breasts and cancer risk

Epidemiologists have established that women with small families, and particularly nulliparae, are prone to develop breast cancer later in life. We report that physiological mammary hypervascularity may be an intermediate reason against the background that breast-core vascularity is normal in pregnancy but pathological in the vascularisation of cancer. We examined breast ‘core’ vascularity in nulliparae during their potential reproductive life and in parous women after their last birth but before their menopause. Fifty clinically normal pre-menopausal non-pregnant women (100 breasts) were studied daily for one ‘luteal positive’ menstrual cycle. Their parity history varied from zero to five babies. Under controlled domestic conditions each wore a special electronic thermometric bra to automatically record breast ‘core’ temperature changes as a measure of mammary tissue blood flow. In the nulliparae there was a rise of breast vascularity throughout reproductive life. In the parous women, a year or so after each birth, breast vascularity was reset at a lower level than before the pregnancy; thereafter, as in nulliparae, there was progressive increase in mammary vascularity until the menopause

How heel oxygenation changes under pressure

The mechanism of heel pressure ulcers after hip surgery is not entirely understood. The purpose of this one-group, prospective, repeated-measures design study was to examine how the external pressure of the bed surface affects heel skin oxygen tension in adults on the first 3 days after hip surgery. Transcutaneous oxygen sensors were placed on the plantar surface of each foot, close to the heels. Measures were taken on room air and with an oxygen challenge with the heels (1) suspended above the bed surface (preload), (2) on the bed surface for 15 minutes (loading), and (3) again suspended above the bed surface for 15 minutes (unloading). Eighteen hip surgery patients (mean age 58.3±16.1 years) from two hospitals participated. When compared with preload on room air, both loading and unloading on all 3 days resulted in a reduction in heel oxygen tension bilaterally (p\u3c0.001). Heel oxygenation decreased without the anticipated hyperemic response, raising the question of whether this is a sign of increased pressure ulcer risk. Further work is needed to understand why this short period of external pressure results in decreased oxygenation and why oxygen tension does not return to baseline when pressure is removed

Evolutionary dynamic optimisation of airport security lane schedules

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Reducing costs whilst maintaining passenger satisfaction is an important problem for airports. One area this can be applied is the security lane checks at the airport. However, reducing costs through reducing lane openings typically increases queue length and hence passenger dissatisfaction. This paper demonstrates that evolutionary methods can be used to optimise airport security lane schedules such that passenger dissatisfaction and staffing costs can be minimised. However, it is shown that these schedules typically over-fit the forecasts of passenger arrivals at security such that in actuality significant passenger delays can occur with deviations from the forecast. Consequently, this paper further demonstrates that dynamic evolutionary re-optimisation of these schedules can significantly mitigate this over-fitting problem with much reduced passenger delays

The spectra of lifted digraphs

We present a method to derive the complete spectrum of the lift \mathrm{\Gamma\alpha} of a base digraph \mathrm{\Gamma}, with voltage assignment α on a (finite) group $\textit{G}$. The method is based on assigning to \mathrm{\Gamma} a quotient-like matrix whose entries are elements of the group algebra \mathds{C}[$\textit{G}$], which fully represents \mathrm{\Gamma\alpha}. This allows us to derive the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the lift in terms of those of the base digraph and the irreducible characters of G. Thus, our main theorem generalizes some previous results of Lovász and Babai concerning the spectra of Cayley digraphs

Iron chelation therapy in the myelodysplastic syndromes and aplastic anemia: a review of experience in South Korea

Emerging clinical data indicate that transfusion-dependent patients with bone marrow-failure syndromes (BMFS) are at risk of the consequences of iron overload, including progressive damage to hepatic, endocrine, and cardiac organs. Despite the availability of deferoxamine (DFO) in Korea since 1998, data from patients with myelodysplastic syndromes, aplastic anemia, and other BMFS show significant iron overload and damage to the heart and liver. The recent introduction of deferasirox, a once-daily, oral iron chelator, may improve the availability of iron chelation therapy to iron-overloaded patients, and improve compliance in patients who may otherwise find adherence to the DFO regimen difficult

Non-classical ProIL-1beta activation during mammary gland infection is pathogen-dependent but caspase-1 independent

Infection of the mammary gland with live bacteria elicits a pathogen-specific host inflammatory response. To study these host-pathogen interactions wild type mice, NF-kappaB reporter mice as well as caspase-1 and IL-1beta knockout mice were intramammarily challenged with Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). The murine mastitis model allowed to compare the kinetics of the induced cytokine protein profiles and their underlying pathways. In vivo and ex vivo imaging showed that E. coli rapidly induced NF-kappaB inflammatory signaling concomitant with high mammary levels of TNF-alpha, IL-1 alpha and MCP-1 as determined by multiplex analysis. In contrast, an equal number of S. aureus bacteria induced a low NF-kappaB activity concomitant with high mammary levels of the classical IL-1beta fragment. These quantitative and qualitative differences in local inflammatory mediators resulted in an earlier neutrophil influx and in a more extensive alveolar damage post-infection with E. coli compared to S. aureus. Western blot analysis revealed that the inactive proIL-1beta precursor was processed into pathogen-specific IL-1beta fragmentation patterns as confirmed with IL-1beta knockout animals. Additionally, caspase-1 knockout animals allowed to investigate whether IL-1beta maturation depended on the conventional inflammasome pathway. The lack of caspase-1 did not prevent extensive proIL-1beta fragmentation by either of S. aureus or E. coli. These non-classical IL-1beta patterns were likely caused by different proteases and suggest a sentinel function of IL-1beta during mammary gland infection. Thus, a key signaling nodule can be defined in the differential host innate immune defense upon E. coli versus S. aureus mammary gland infection, which is independent of caspase-1

Robustness and evolutionary dynamic optimisation of airport security schedules

Reducing security lane operations whilst minimising passenger waiting times in unforseen circumstances is important for airports. Evolutionary methods can design optimised schedules but these tend to over-fit passenger arrival forecasts resulting in lengthy waiting times for unforeseen events. Dynamic re-optimisation can mitigate for this issue but security lane schedules are an example of a constrained problem due to the human element preventing major modifications. This paper postulates that for dynamic re-optimisation to be more effective in constrained circumstances consideration of schedule robustness is required. To reduce over-fitting a simple methodology for evolving more robust schedules is investigated. Random delays are introduced into forecasts of passenger arrivals to better reflect actuality and a range of these randomly perturbed forecasts are used to evaluate schedules. These steps reduced passenger waiting times for actual events for both static and dynamic policies with minimal increases in security operations