Characterisation of paracrine Wnt regulators in colorectal cancer microenvironment

Aberrant Wnt activation is commonly found in colorectal cancer (CRC), especially in cells adjacent to the tumour microenvironment (TME). This indicates the crucial interaction between tumour cells and their niche. Comprehensive transcriptomic analyses by the Cancer Genome Atlas project show genes that are differentially upregulated in tumour stromal population. Of these, a cluster of genes includes markers of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) that are associated with poor survival. I hypothesise that a subset of CRCs is dependent on paracrine Wnt activation from the surrounding CAFs for tumour progression. PERIOSTIN (POSTN) is a matricellular protein that is often upregulated in CAFs and is associated with poor CRC prognosis. Human primary fibroblasts established from CRC tissues are found to retain transcriptomic and functional profiles that are distinct between normal and cancer-associated populations in vitro, including POSTN upregulation in CAFs. In vitro gain-of-function studies show that POSTN potentiates Wnt activation in Wnt ligand-dependent manner, and promotes Wnt receptor stabilisation via yet unclear mechanism(s) interacting with Wnt components on cell membrane. To better study paracrine Wnt activation, a 3D model is developed in which intestinal epithelial cells reside on top of fibroblasts. Co-culture of normal small intestinal epithelial cells with normal fibroblasts show an organised, differentiated crypt/villi-like structure of the epithelial layer, whereas disorganised multi-layered epithelial cells with altered polarity are observed with CAFs. Moreover, the contribution of CAF-derived POSTN in tumour progression is assessed utilising the 3D model system and in vivo xenograft formation approaches. This project demonstrates POSTN is upregulated in CRC and acts as a potential CAF-derived Wnt regulator, providing insight into a novel Wnt regulation that may be at play in CRC tumour progression. The tissue-engineered 3D co-culture system will be a useful tool to study different cell type interactions without sacrificing biomimetic organisation by providing a simple and malleable system

Neural Activation on Guided Imagery and Music: A Functional MRI Study

Music and imagery have been used for working emotions such as awareness, arousal, enhancement, reflection and transformation of emotions in therapeutic relationship; these are crucial processes in music psychotherapy. To illuminate the empirical adequacy of concepts of theory in guided imagery and music (GIM) as one of music psychotherapeutic methods, the present study investigated the neural bases of arousal and emotional processing in response to recall and re-experience of personal negative emotional episodes via GIM and the efficacy of GIM for arousal and emotional processing via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. For this study, classical music and verbal stimuli were presented to 24 righthanded healthy participants, to measure the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal changes during arousal and emotional processing through GIM. Volume analyses for the contrast of GIM to guided imagery (GI) or music and region of interest (ROI) analysis for the difference of three conditions - GIM, music, and GI – were conducted in the regions of bilateral amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate gyrus. Results included that in the contrast of GIM to music, 11 neural regions (left anterior cingulate gyrus, left amygdala, left thalamus, left claustrum, left insula, bilateral precentral gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, right cuneus, and bilateral culmen) were activated, whereas there was no activated neural regions in the contrast of music to GIM. In the contrast of GIM to GI, 9 neural regions (right posterior cingulate gyrus, bilateral parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral precentral gyrus, left superior frontal gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus, bilateral middle occipital gyrus, bilateral cuneus, right lingual gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule) were activated, whereas 3 neural regions 10 (right superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior parietal lobule) were activated in the contrast of GI to GIM. The ROI analysis revealed statistically significant differences among three conditions in bilateral amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate gyrus. Findings suggest that guided imagery and music as multimodal stimuli are effective approach in emotional work with personal episodic memories, indicating activation of various neural regions functioning in emotions, various kinds of sensory modalities, integration of cross-modal sensory, episodic memory, empathy, and out-ofbody experience

Systematic study of the role of the indirect RKKY exchange interaction in ultrafast spin dynamics of 4f antiferromagnets

Dissipation-free manipulation of magnetic order remains a long-standing goal for future spin- tronic devices, and is of particular focus in the field of ultrafast magnetism. Ferromagnets, which have long been the primary focus of this field, suffer from inherent angular momentum dissipation, which sets fundamental limits on achievable time scales and energy efficiency. In contrast, antiferromagnets can overcome these limits, and achieve dissipation-free spin dynamics by direct angular momentum transfer between opposing magnetic sublattices. While presenting appealing prospects for devices, a fundamental understanding of how such transfer is mediated remains largely unexplored, in particular when indirect magnetic couplings are at play. A prime example is the indirect Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) exchange coupling, in which conduction electrons mediate between localized moments. There are two important aspects of RKKY coupling: (i) the inter-atomic coupling between localized moments and (ii) the intra-atomic coupling between localized moments and itinerant conduction electrons. This thesis explores these two different aspects of the RKKY coupling by studying ultrafast spin dynamics of 4f antiferromagnets experimentally

evidence from the afrobarometer data on 20 African countries

Thesis(Master) -- KDI School: Master of Development Policy, 2022With the ongoing importance on the role of traditional chiefs, the paper investigates the impact of precolonial centralization of ethnic groups on the public goods provision and trust level toward chiefs today. With the question whether the succession of the traditional institutions is affected by the type colonial rule either by Britain or France, I match Afrobarometer data with Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas and other data sets. The paper documents three main findings. First, I find a strong positive association between precolonial ethnic political centralization and trust toward local chiefs today among Anglophone countries, but a negative association among Francophone countries. Second, there is a strong positive association for both countries colonized by Britain or France in terms of infrastructure. Third, I find a strong positive association between precolonial centralization and wellbeing among Anglophone countries, but no impact in Francophone countries. The similar pattern of positive and robust association on the infrastructure implies that precolonial centralization was conducive to African public goods provision with different colonial rule having a limited impact. On the other hand, the opposite pattern of association on the trust toward local chiefs implies that different colonial rule has affected social capital of contemporary traditional institutions differently. Under the assumption that local accountability mechanism holds, positive association among Anglophone countries implies that the precolonial institutions have been more likely to survive under British indirect rule compared to French direct rule. The findings suggest that contemporary African development, particularly access to public goods provision or local chieftaincy system are linked to the preexisting ethnic institutions as well as the legacies of colonialism.OutstandingmasterpublishedSang eun LE

Little Core Based System on Chip Platform for Internet of Thing

Although the technology scaling has enabled designers to integrate a large number of hardware blocks onto a single chip realizing System on Chip (SoC), problems arising from leakage current have made power reduction an important issue. The IoT platform has restricted power consumption because of battery power. In this paper, we propose our little core based IoT platform focusing on the low power and expandability. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of our proposal to the IoT

A Scalable Large Format Display Based on Zero Client Processor

This paper proposes zero client module that targets Large  Format Display (LFD) system for display wall. Increased resolution in modern LFD requires a high bandwidth channel and a high performance display controller to transfer the image data to the monitor. The key idea is to use a Gagabit-Etherent communication based Daisy-Chain to transfer an image data. This communication supports sufficient bandwidth for image data transfer. As a result, we implement the LFD system using tha zero  client module and LFDmonitors