Inhibition of anaphylactic histamine release from heterologously sensitized mast cells: differential effects of drugs which interfere with calcium influx.

Drug effects were studied on anaphylactic histamine release from rat mast cells sensitized in vitro with mouse IgE antibody. When histamine release was elicited by adding Ca-++ at various times after antigen-stimulation of sensitized cells in Ca++-free medium, the drugs to be tested were added shortly before each Ca++ addition. Quercetin was effective only when added before or immediately after antigen. Theophylline and disodium cromoglycate (DSCG) were active irrespective of the time interval between antigen and Ca++ addition. Verapamil was more effective when added before or simultaneously with antigen than when added later. When tested in the two-stage experiments, quercetin showed inhibition only in Stage 1 and verapamil was inhibitive primarily in Stage 1, while theophylline and DSCG wee only inhibitive in Stage 2. It seems that quercetin selectively and verapamil primarily act to block calcium-gate opening resulting from antigen-antibody interaction on the mast cell membrane, while theophylline and DSCG selectively inhibit the passage of calcium through open calcium channels.</p

脊髄虚血―再潅流障害が引き起こす運動機能低下に対する微小重力培養間葉系幹細胞の効果

広島大学(Hiroshima University)博士(保健学)Doctor of Philosophy in Health Sciencedoctora

Small GTP-binding protein Rho-mediated signaling promotes proliferation of rheumatoid synovial fibroblasts

Rho is a major small GTP-binding protein that is involved in the regulation of various cell functions, including proliferation and cell migration, through activation of multiple signaling molecules in various types of cells. We studied its roles in synovial fibroblasts (SFs) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and clarified its relevance to RA synovitis, with the following results. 1)We found that the thrombin receptor was overexpressed on RA synovial fibroblasts (RA SFs) and that thrombin induced a marked proliferation and progression of the cell cycle to the S phase in these cells. 2)We also found that thrombin efficiently activated Rho. 3)Rho activation and proliferation and the progression of the cell cycle to the S phase were completely blocked by p115RGS (an N-terminal regulator of the G-protein signaling domain of p115RhoGEF) and by the C-terminal fragments of Gα13 (an inhibitor of the interaction of receptors with G13). 4)Thrombin induced the secretion of IL-6 by RA SFs, but this action was blocked by p115RGS or Gα13. Our findings show that the actions of thrombin on the proliferation of RA SFs, cell-cycle progression to the S phase, and IL-6 secretion were mainly mediated by the G13 and RhoGEF pathways. These results suggest that p115RGS and Gα13 could be potent inhibitors of such functions. A rational design of future therapeutic strategies for RA synovitis could perhaps include the exploitation of the Rho pathway to directly reduce the growth of synovial cells

The Impact of Multicast Layering on Network Fairness

Many definitions of fairness for multicast networks assume that sessions are single-rate, requiring that each multicast session trans- mits data to all of its receivers at the same rate. These defini- tions do not account for multi-rate approaches, such as layering, that permit receiving rates within a session to be chosen indepen- dently. We identify four desirable fairness properties for multicast networks, derived from properties that hold within the max-min fair allocations of unicast networks. We extend the definition of multicast max-min fairness to networks that contain multi-rate sessions, and show that all four fairness properties hold in a multi- rate max-min fair allocation, but need not hold in a single-rate max-min fair allocation. We then show that multi-rate max-min fair rate allocations can be achieved via intra-session coordinated joins and leaves of multicast groups. However, in the absence of coordination, the resulting max-min fair rate allocation uses link bandwidth inefficiently, and does not exhibit some of the desir- able fairness properties. We evaluate this inefficiency for several layered multi-rate congestion control schemes, and find that, in a protocol where the sender coordinates joins, this inefficiency has minimal impact on desirable fairness properties. Our results indicate that sender-coordinated layered protocols show promise for achieving desirable fairness properties for allocations in large- scale multicast networks

Promoting Mental Health Awareness at URI

Honors Project Abstract: Megan Kurose (Marketing) Promoting Mental Health Awareness at URI Sponsor: Sara Murphy (Thanatology) In 2012, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) published a survey report on mental health entitled “College Students Speak”. The survey included in the report was web-based, and received 765 responses from individuals diagnosed with a mental health conditions who are currently or were enrolled in college within the past five years. Responses were collected from August 2011 to November 2011. According to the report, 57% of survey respondents did not request mental health accommodations from their school. The consequences of not receiving proper help and treatment are devastating and potentially life-threatening – suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students and third leading cause of death for young Americans ages 15 to 24. After talking to more than forty undergraduate students and interviewing Dr. Lindsey Anderson, director of URI’s Psychological Consultation Center, I learned that on-campus awareness of mental health programs and resources is relatively low. Many students appear to be unaware of the totality of services offered, and are failing to access the full scope of healthcare available here at the university. For my project, I planned and executed a “Mental Health Awareness Day” to help improve awareness of the various mental-health related organizations that exist on campus. The following organizations from URI ran informational and interactive booths at the event: Counseling Center, Psychological Consultation Center, Health Center, Gender and Sexuality Center, Emergency Medical Services, Campus Police, NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Club, UReca (URI Eating Concerns Advisors) Club, Couples and Family Therapy Clinic, Women’s Center, Disability Services, Dean of Students Office, Substance Abuse Prevention Services, and Housing and Residential Life. During the event, I administered surveys to help judge the current state of need for and awareness of mental health care among students at URI. The feedback generated from the surveys was then collated into a report, which was presented to Student Affairs Administration. The purpose of the report was to make administrators more aware of the current state of need on campus, and to persuade key supervisory personnel at the University to invest further resources in the delivery of mental health care. Megan Kurose [email protected] (401) 829-125

Conformal-Projective Geometry of Statistical Manifolds

Conformal-projective geometry of statistical manifolds, a natural generalization of conformal geometry of Riemannian manifolds, is studied in this paper. In particular, several fundamental results in the geometry are given: a geometric criterion for two statistical manifolds to be conformally-projectively equivalent; conditions for a statistical manifold to be conformally-projectively flat; properties of umbilical hypersurfaces of a conformally-projectively flat statistical manifold

Optimal Caching and Routing in Hybrid Networks

Hybrid networks consisting of MANET nodes and cellular infrastructure have been recently proposed to improve the performance of military networks. Prior work has demonstrated the benefits of in-network content caching in a wired, Internet context. We investigate the problem of developing optimal routing and caching policies in a hybrid network supporting in-network caching with the goal of minimizing overall content-access delay. Here, needed content may always be accessed at a back-end server via the cellular infrastructure; alternatively, content may also be accessed via cache-equipped "cluster" nodes within the MANET. To access content, MANET nodes must thus decide whether to route to in-MANET cluster nodes or to back-end servers via the cellular infrastructure; the in-MANET cluster nodes must additionally decide which content to cache. We model the cellular path as either i) a congestion-insensitive fixed-delay path or ii) a congestion-sensitive path modeled as an M/M/1 queue. We demonstrate that under the assumption of stationary, independent requests, it is optimal to adopt static caching (i.e., to keep a cache's content fixed over time) based on content popularity. We also show that it is optimal to route to in-MANET caches for content cached there, but to route requests for remaining content via the cellular infrastructure for the congestion-insensitive case and to split traffic between the in-MANET caches and cellular infrastructure for the congestion-sensitive case. We develop a simple distributed algorithm for the joint routing/caching problem and demonstrate its efficacy via simulation.Comment: submitted to Milcom 201