Characterization of Murine Breast Cancer Cell Lines for Anti-Cancer Vaccine

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States (1). While treatments involving radiation and chemotherapy currently exist, disease must be detected early in order for the treatments to be somewhat effective, and there is no effective treatment after metastasis occurs (2). Additionally, current therapies do not mitigate tumor immunosuppression. Decreasing the tumor-associated immunosuppressive conditions while activating antitumor immunity could prevent recurrence and metastasis, possibly leading to an effective treatment for cancer (3). Tumor cell vaccines could possibly address this issue and have become a recent topic of research. They have the potential to generate tumor regression and antitumor immune responses, but they have had low clinical response rates and poor immunogenicity so far (3, 4). We suspect the failure of cancer vaccines to be due to the immunosuppression and heterogeneity of breast cancers. Thus, to determine how and why different breast cancers induce different levels of immunosuppression, we studied different cancer cell lines of varying levels of immunogenicity. The study included five murine breast cancer cell lines, 4T1, 4T07, 66cl4, 168FARN, and 67NR. These are sister cell lines that were isolated from a Balb/cfC3H mouse and that differ in aggressiveness and metastatic capability. The production of immunosuppressive cytokines GM-CSF, G-CSF, M-CSF, IL-6, MCP-1, TGF-β, and VEGF was quantified for each of these cell lines. We also studied the effect these cytokines have on the expansion of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), which are known to suppress the immune response, and found that high levels of G-CSF are correlated with high numbers of MDSCs. A correlation between G-CSF levels and MDSC accumulation in these breast cancer cell lines could lead to future studies in which the effects of G-CSF are blocked in order to develop effective autologous breast cancer vaccines

A historical review of the shad fisheries of North America

A review of the relative productivity and value of the shad fisheries of North America as reflected in recorded commercial catches. A review of reasons for the decline that are biological and socioeconomic. Factors that have been held responsible are: pollution; destruction or impairment of spawning and nursery areas; overfishing; hydroelectric and canal dams; natural fluctuations in abundance. Natural catastrophes, parasites, and predators are not considered important in causing the decrease in commercial production. Attempts to rehabilitate the fisheries by various means of stocking artificially-reared fry and pond-reared fingerling shad, appear to have failed in every instance. Introduction of shad fry on the Pacific Coast has resulted in a major fishery. The most significant program is a controlled catch management plan, operating at this time [1953] only in Maryland

First results on applying a non-linear effect formalism to alliances between political parties and buy and sell dynamics

We discuss a non linear extension of a model of alliances in politics, recently proposed by one of us. The model is constructed in terms of operators, describing the \emph{interest} of three parties to form, or not, some political alliance with the other parties. The time evolution of what we call \emph{the decision functions} is deduced by introducing a suitable hamiltonian, which describes the main effects of the interactions of the parties amongst themselves and with their \emph{environments}, {which are }generated by their electors and by people who still have no clear {idea }for which party to vote (or even if to vote). The hamiltonian contains some non-linear effects, which takes into account the role of a party in the decision process of the other two parties. Moreover, we show how the same hamiltonian can also be used to construct a formal structure which can describe the dynamics of buying and selling financial assets (without however implying a specific price setting mechanism).Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.0173

Elementary Quantum Mechanical Principles and Social Science: Is There a Connection?

In this paper we provide first for a brief overview of some of the work which has been performed on the interface of quantum mechanics and macroscopic systems (such as economics). We then provide for an overview of how such quantum mechanical concepts can enter financial option pricing theory. We round off the paper with some suggestions on where this area of research can be heading in the near future.superposition; wave function; Black-Scholes option price; information function; probability amplitude; Schrödinger equation; Newton- Bohm trajectory; mean forward (backward) derivative

The Spectatorial press in Dutch

The present paper outlines the main periods and tendencies in Dutch moral weekly publishing. Although academic research has, for a long time, been focussed on Justus van Effen, who published spectatorial magazines in both French and Dutch, many other writers between 1718 and the 1790s also took part in the endeavour of moral weekly writing or reacted to it by producing ‘anti-spectators’

Eighteenth-century theatrical war plays and the experience of war

In my paper I will discuss ‘war plays’ as they were presented on the 18th-century stage in relation to the question how the identification of the audience with ‘the military’ was realized or prohibited by means of theatricality. Masquerade-like spectacles like the great military camps, invited the public to imagine itself being a soldier, adopting military appearance and wearing the same uniforms as the soldiers during their maneuvers. Also the military spectacles performed on stage in the first half of the century until the late 1770-ies provided a ‘realistic’ experience of war spectacle. On the other hand it was also by way of theatrical performances that the audience was enabled to critically reflect on this masquerade-like adoption of a ‘military self’ and to envision imitated military behavior as artificial, childish and ‘unreal’. How then did war acts as a commercial spectacular theatrical event relate to the aim to get a better insight, not only in the play of war but also in the internal perspective of the solider, his feelings, fears and doubts? Which tensions between and within theatre texts occur where war acts are presented as playful experiences

Towards a formalization of a two traders market with information exchange

This paper shows that Hamiltonians and operators can also be put to good use even in contexts which are not purely physics based. Consider the world of finance. The work presented here {models a two traders system with information exchange with the help of four fundamental operators: cash and share operators; a portfolio operator and an operator reflecting the loss of information. An information Hamiltonian is considered and an additional Hamiltonian is presented which reflects the dynamics of selling/buying shares between traders. An important result of the paper is that when the information Hamiltonian is zero, portfolio operators commute with the Hamiltonian and this suggests that the dynamics are really due to the information. Under the assumption that the interaction and information terms in the Hamiltonian have similar strength, a perturbation scheme is considered on the interaction parameter. Contrary to intuition, the paper shows that up to a second order in the interaction parameter, a key factor in the computation of the portfolios of traders will be the initial values of the loss of information (rather than the initial conditions on the cash and shares). Finally, the paper shows that a natural outcome from the inequality of the variation of the portfolio of trader one versus the variation of the portfolio of trader two, begs for the introduction of `good' and `bad' information. It is shown that `good' information is related to the reservoirs (where an infinite set of bosonic operators are used) which model rumors/news and external facts, whilst `bad' information is associated with a set of two modes bosonic operators.Comment: In press in Physica Script