Forecasting the South African rand 's variance and covariance using conditional heteroskedastic and realized volatility models

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references

Evaluation of the Potential HMGA1-EF24 Nexus in Human Colon Cancer

The architectural chromatin binding proteins High Mobility Group A1 (HMGA1) are proteins expressed at high levels in malignant cancers and induce neoplastic transformation. The protein is increased as the last step of the Wnt/B-catenin/TCF-4 pathway and mediates drug resistance, therefore correlating with a poor patient prognosis. HMGA1-mediated chemoresistance results from a self-protective process called cellular senescence. Analogs of the antioxidant, curcumin, when used in combination with traditional chemotherapeutic agents, are useful treatment options for drug resistant tumors. This study had two specific aims. The first being to investigate how colon cancer cells HCT116 respond to treatment with EF24. The second aim was to evaluate how hmga1 expression changed as a result of treatment with EF24. Our preliminary findings showed that cell viability decreased after 24-hour treatment with low-dose EF24, as indicated by an MTS assay, with notable discrepancies between cells that underwent a pulsed treatment regimen versus those that underwent continuous treatment. Furthermore, we demonstrated that cells exhibited fragmented DNA when treated with low-dose EF24, which is characteristic of apoptotic cells. At higher, pulsed doses, senescence activity increased, indicating the induction of a senescence pathway. Lastly, gene expression studies indicated that hmga1 was significantly down regulated in cells treated with continuous, low-dose EF24. Further investigation of this pathway could lead to decreased toxicity and increased viability of combination cancer therapies

Assessing Current Programs and Reentry Needs in Trinidad and Tobago: Insights from Offenders – An Exploratory Study

Much literature in the United States explores how offenders’ perceive current programs and reentry challenges. However, little is known about such needs in the Trinidad and Tobago Prison System (TTPS). This research was designed to determine what are the perceived reentry needs of the sampled offenders? As such, fifty offenders in the TTPS were asked about how they perceive current services provided by TTPS, what programs they believe are necessary for success on release, and their anxiety level about (release) returning to the community in order to gauge their perceptions about anticipated reentry needs. Over all, respondents’ identified employment, life skills, and access to educational programs as major reentry needs

Considering Pigeons for Carrying Delay Tolerant Networking based Internet traffic in Developing Countries

There are many regions in the developing world that suffer from poor infrastructure and lack of connection to the Internet and Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN). Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) is a technology that has been advocated for providing store-and-forward network connectivity in these regions over the past few years. DTN often relies on human mobility in one form or another to support transportation of DTN data. This presents a socio-technical problem related to organizing how the data should be transported. In some situations the demand for DTN traffic can exceed that which is possible to support with human mobility, so alternative mechanisms are needed. In this paper we propose using live carrier pigeons (columba livia) to transport DTN data. Carrier pigeons have been used for transporting packets of information for a long time, but have not yet been seriously considered for transporting DTN traffic. We provide arguements that this mode of DTN data transport provides promise, and should receive attention from research and development projects. We provide an overview of pigeon characteristics to analyze the feasibility of using them for data transport, and present simulations of a DTN network that utilizes pigeon transport in order to provide an initial investigation into expected performance characteristics