The influence of portal blood upon lipid metabolism in normal and diabetic dogs and baboons

It has been reported that hyperlipidemia can be alleviated in human beings with an end to side portacaval shunt. Understanding the mechanism of the effect has important implications, including the possibility of devising other ways of lowering serum lipid levels. In this investigation, the influence of splanchnic venous blood on lipid metabolism was evaluated in dogs and baboons by altering the portal venous inflow to all, or portions, of the liver and by measuring the effects on different end points, including the serum lipid concentrations and the rate of hepatic lipid synthesis. In other studies, analyses have been made regarding the effect of alloxan induced insulinopenia and of total pancreatectomy on these processes. The results indicate that the effect of complete portal diversion upon serum lipids is mainly due to diversion of the hormone rich venous return from the upper splanchnic organs, although the bypass of the nutritionally rich blood returning from the intestines may play a secondary role. Therefore, a reduction of hepatic lipid synthesis is an important, although not necessarily the sole, factor in the antilipidemic influence of portacaval shunt. The effects upon synthesis and blood lipids are due more to the diversion of endogenous hormones than to the bypass of intestinal nutrients. The substances in portal venous blood that subserve hepatic lipid metabolism are presumably largely the same as the hepatotrophic factors which have been described before as profoundly affecting hepatic structure, function, and the capacity for regeneration. These portal blood factors are multiple and interrelated, but the single most important one seems to be insulin

Non-Fermi Liquid behavior at the Orbital Ordering Quantum Critical Point in the Two-Orbital Model

The critical behavior of a two-orbital model with degenerate $d_{xz}$ and $d_{yz}$ orbitals is investigated by multidimensional bosonization. We find that the corresponding bosonic theory has an overdamped collective mode with dynamical exponent $z=3$, which appears to be a general feature of a two-orbital model and becomes the dominant fluctuation in the vicinity of the orbital-ordering quantum critical point. Since the very existence of this $z=3$ overdamped collective mode induces non-Fermi liquid behavior near the quantum critical point, we conclude that a two-orbital model generally has a sizable area in the phase diagram showing non-Fermi liquid behavior. Furthermore, we show that the bosonic theory resembles the continuous model near the d-wave Pomeranchuk instability, suggesting that orbital order in a two-orbital model is identical to nematic order in a continuous model. Our results can be applied to systems with degenerate $d_{xz}$ and $d_{yz}$ orbitals such as iron-based superconductors and bilayer strontium ruthenates Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

從人到書，從書到人 : 對文學課本的反思與期望 = From man to book, and book to man : reflections and expectations towards literary textbooks

作者認為文學是教育中不可缺少的成分，它可説是社會、文化與人的「情感教育」。若果一個社會對文學教育不夠重視，它或會因此而有所缺失，甚至乎會喪失「集體回憶」。不同地區的文學教育的表達或體現可以是多形式，包括獨立課程，如香港，或融入語文課程之內，如內地及台灣。教材出版，則是體現課程、展現課程的工具，用以協助教與學，因此兩者的關係極為密切。已故的出版家及社會語言學家陳原曾著有一書：《書和人和我》（1994），以出版人的身份去談書與人的關係，以及彼此間的種種聯想與抒發。從來出版人的終極關心都是文化和人，作者在此書的啟發下，去思考文學教育的發展，並嘗試借用陳原的説法，從人出發。從人去看書，看人需要怎樣的書；再從書去看人，看書怎樣可形塑人

Molecular pharmacology of DNA topoisomerase II drugs

Ph. D. ThesisTopoisomerase II (TOP2) is an important anti-cancer drug target. This study demonstrates that proteasomal inhibition by MG132 or PS341 potentiates the effect of TOP2 poisons on cell growth inhibition. Mitoxantrone was potentiated the most. The presence of the proteasome inhibitor MG132 prolonged the half-life of drug-induced DNA-TOP2 complexes stabilised by mitoxantrone or etoposide. Genotoxicity was measured in K562 cells using in vitro micronucleus assays for combinations of a proteasome inhibitor (MG132 or PS341) and mitoxantrone and for each agent alone. Combinations that potentiated the cytotoxicity reduced the genotoxicity. This suggests that combining a proteasome inhibitor with a TOP2 drug has the potential to reduce late toxicities such as therapy related leukaemia. The genotoxicity of six TOP2 poisons was determined by high throughput in vitro micronucleus assays in three Nalm-6 cell lines with differing TOP2 levels. Lower genotoxicity was observed in TOP2B knock-out and TOP2A knock-down cells, suggesting both TOP2A and TOP2B have a role in genotoxicity triggered by TOP2 poisonsBloodwis

Undocumented Asian Immigrants: Securing Higher Education and Cultural Citizenship

This research investigates how undocumented Asian immigrants navigate the obstacles of higher education. It inquires how undocumented Asian immigrant students navigated the higher education process and how institutional actors influenced their college experience, revealing the intimate interactions between undocumented students and the institutional actors. The political economy of their college application process is understood through the frameworks of liminal legality, narratives, cultural citizenship, borders and boundaries, and governmentality of migration, all of which frame the process of the data analysis. Through the interviews of college-graduated undocumented Asian immigrants and ethnography at a local high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, this research finds that institutional actors perform a critical role in the context of their higher education process, inviting inclusionary and exclusionary spaces of belonging. Although many recent studies have illustrated the role of cultural citizenship manifest in the civic engagement of undocumented immigrants, few have seriously considered the intimate and structured terms of higher education access and process as a claim to cultural citizenship. The participants’ personal experiences with higher education is constructed in a political-social economy different from one person to another, producing versatile narratives of experiences of inclusion and exclusion in US society. By advocating for themselves, undocumented Asian students are claiming their rights to citizenship in the higher education process