Immunologic aspect of ovarian cancer and p53 as tumor antigen

Ovarian cancer represents the fifth leading cause of death from all cancers for women. During the last decades overall survival has improved due to the use of new chemotherapy schedules. Still, the majority of patients die of this disease. Research reveals that ovarian cancer patients exhibit significant immune responses against their tumor. In this review the knowledge obtained thus far on the interaction of ovarian cancer tumor cells and the immune system is discussed. Furthermore the role of p53 as tumor antigen and its potential role as target antigen in ovarian cancer is summarized. Based on the increased knowledge on the role of the immune system in ovarian cancer major improvements are to be expected of immunotherapy based treatment of this disease

Explaining Student Behavior at Scale: The Influence of Video Complexity on Student Dwelling Time

Understanding why and how students interact with educational videos is essential to further improve the quality of MOOCs. In this paper, we look at the complexity of videos to explain two related aspects of student behavior: the dwelling time (how much time students spend watching a video) and the dwelling rate (how much of the video they actually see). Building on a strong tradition of psycholinguistics, we formalize a definition for information complexity in videos. Furthermore, building on recent advancements in time-on-task measures we formalize dwelling time and dwelling rate based on click-stream trace data. The resulting computational model of video complexity explains 22.44% of the variance in the dwelling rate for students that finish watching a paragraph of a video. Video complexity and student dwelling show a polynomial relationship, where both low and high complexity increases dwelling. These results indicate why students spend more time watching (and possibly contemplating about) a video. Furthermore, they show that even fairly straightforward proxies of student behavior such as dwelling can already have multiple interpretations; illustrating the challenge of sense-making from learning analytics.Centre for Innovatio

Cholinergic Denervation Patterns Across Cognitive Domains in Parkinson's Disease

BackgroundThe cholinergic system plays a key role in cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Previous acetylcholinesterase positron emission tomography imaging studies found memory, attention, and executive function correlates of global cortical cholinergic losses. Vesicular acetylcholine transporter positron emission tomography allows for more accurate topographic assessment of not only cortical but also subcortical cholinergic changes.ObjectiveThe objectiveof this study was to investigate the topographic relationship between cognitive functioning and regional cholinergic innervation in patients with PD.MethodsA total of 86 nondemented patients with PD (mean ± SD age 67.8 ± 7.6 years, motor disease duration 5.8 ± 4.6 years), and 12 healthy control participants (age 67.8 ± 7.8 years) underwent cholinergic [18F]Fluoroethoxybenzovesamicol positron emission tomography imaging. Patients with PD underwent neuropsychological assessment. The z scores for each cognitive domain were determined using an age‐matched, gender‐matched, and educational level–matched control group. Correlations between domain‐specific cognitive functioning and cholinergic innervation were examined, controlling for motor impairments and levodopa equivalent dose. Additional correlational analyses were performed using a mask limited to PD versus normal aging binding differences to assess for disease‐specific versus normal aging effects.ResultsVoxel‐based whole‐brain analysis demonstrated partial overlapping topography across cognitive domains, with most robust correlations in the domains of memory, attention, and executive functioning (P < 0.01, corrected for multiple comparisons). The shared pattern included the cingulate cortex, insula/operculum, and (visual) thalamus.ConclusionOur results confirm and expand on previous observations of cholinergic system involvement in cognitive functioning in PD. The topographic overlap across domains may reflect a partially shared cholinergic functionality underlying cognitive functioning, representing a combination of disease‐specific and aging effects. © 2020 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder SocietyPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167040/1/mds28360_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167040/2/mds28360.pd

Future of Pharmacogenetics in Cardiovascular Diseases

Introduction: Pharmacogenetics is the study of variations in DNA sequence as related to drug response (European Medicines Agency [EMA], 2007). Several gene-drug interactions have been discovered in the field of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). These gene-drug interactions can help to identify nonresponse to drugs, estimate dose requirements or identify an increased risk of developing adverse drug reactions. An individualized approach based on pharmacogenetic testing will provide physicians and pharmacists with tools for decision making about pharmacotherapy. While pharmacogenetic testing is already part of everyday practice in oncology, it is not widely implemented in the field of CVDs. However, in the near future, pharmacogenetics will probably also play a valuable role in this field as well

Short-term effects of side-alternating Whole-Body Vibration on cognitive function of young adults

Recent research in rodents and humans revealed that Whole-Body Vibration (WBV) is beneficial for cognitive functions. However, the optimal WBV conditions are not established: contrary to vertical WBV, side-alternating WBV was not investigated before. The present study investigated the short-term effects of side-alternating WBV in standing and sitting posture on specific cognitive function of young adults. We used a balanced cross-over design. Sixty healthy young adults (mean age 21.7 ± 2.0 years, 72% female) participated. They were exposed to three bouts of two-minute side-alternating WBV (frequency 27 Hz) and three control conditions in two different sessions. In one session a sitting posture was used and in the other session a standing (semi-squat) posture. After each condition selective attention and inhibition was measured with the incongruent condition of the Stroop Color-Word Interference Test. WBV significantly (p = 0.026) improved selective attention and inhibition in the sitting posture, but not in the standing posture. The sitting posture was perceived as more comfortable, joyous and less exhaustive as compared to the standing posture. This study demonstrated that side-alternating WBV in sitting posture improves selective attention and inhibition in healthy young adults. This indicates that posture moderates the cognitive effect of WBV, although the effects are still small. Future studies should focus on the working mechanisms and further optimization of settings, especially in individuals who are unable to perform active exercise

Mechanics of epithelial tissue formation

A key process in the life of any multicellular organism is its development from a single egg into a full grown adult. The first step in this process often consists of forming a tissue layer out of randomly placed cells on the surface of the egg. We present a model for generating such a tissue, based on mechanical interactions between the cells, and find that the resulting cellular pattern corresponds to the Voronoi tessellation of the nuclei of the cells. Experimentally, we obtain the same result in both fruit flies and flour beetles, with a distribution of cell shapes that matches that of the model, without any adjustable parameters. Finally, we show that this pattern is broken when the cells grow at different rates.Animal science