Profiling changes in the metastatic potential of breast cancer cells exposed to flow

Most cancer related deaths can be directly attributed to blood bourne metastasis.Metastasis is the process by which tumor cells leave the initial tumor travel through thecirculatory or lymphatic system to distant sites where secondary tumors are formed.One important part of metastasis is epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), inwhich cells lose their epithelial cell morphology and gain a mesenchymal morphology.This transition causes enhanced migratory capacity, invasiveness, and resistance tocell death, creating a more metastatic cell. In this study we used a parallel plate flowchamber to create conditions that would encourage EMT in breast cancer cells. Severalbreast cancer cell lines were exposed to high shear stress (10 dyn/cm2) for 20 hours.RNA was collected from static and flow exposed cells. RT-qPCR was used to comparethe expression of four genes known to be related to EMT or cell invasiveness. Wefound that TSP-1 gene expression was strongly upregulated, MMP-14 was slightlyupregulated, ICAM-1 was slightly downregulated, and TGFR1 gene expression didnot change. TSP-1 has been shown to increase tumor cell migration and invasivenessand MMP-14 has also been associated with increased tumor cell invasiveness. ICAM-1is an intercellular adhesion molecule that plays different roles in cell to cell adhesion.The loss of ICAM-1 and the up regulation of TSP-1 and MMP-14 show that the cellsexposed to flow lose some intercellular interaction and gain increased mobility andinvasiveness, all of which is indicative of EMT. These results show for the first timethat fluid forces can upregulate genes involved in cancer cell EMT. This will be used infuture studies to investigate more about the metastatic potential of breast cancer cells.1

On the bias-variance tradeoff : textbooks need an update

L’objectif principal de cette thèse est de souligner que le compromis biais-variance n’est pas toujours vrai (p. ex. dans les réseaux neuronaux). Nous plaidons pour que ce manque d’universalité soit reconnu dans les manuels scolaires et enseigné dans les cours d’introduction qui couvrent le compromis. Nous passons d’abord en revue l’historique du compromis entre les biais et les variances, sa prévalence dans les manuels scolaires et certaines des principales affirmations faites au sujet du compromis entre les biais et les variances. Au moyen d’expériences et d’analyses approfondies, nous montrons qu’il n’y a pas de compromis entre la variance et le biais dans les réseaux de neurones lorsque la largeur du réseau augmente. Nos conclusions semblent contredire les affirmations de l’oeuvre historique de Geman et al. (1992). Motivés par cette contradiction, nous revisitons les mesures expérimentales dans Geman et al. (1992). Nous discutons du fait qu’il n’y a jamais eu de preuves solides d’un compromis dans les réseaux neuronaux lorsque le nombre de paramètres variait. Nous observons un phénomène similaire au-delà de l’apprentissage supervisé, avec un ensemble d’expériences d’apprentissage de renforcement profond. Nous soutenons que les révisions des manuels et des cours magistraux ont pour but de transmettre cette compréhension moderne nuancée de l’arbitrage entre les biais et les variances.The main goal of this thesis is to point out that the bias-variance tradeoff is not always true (e.g. in neural networks). We advocate for this lack of universality to be acknowledged in textbooks and taught in introductory courses that cover the tradeoff. We first review the history of the bias-variance tradeoff, its prevalence in textbooks, and some of the main claims made about the bias-variance tradeoff. Through extensive experiments and analysis, we show a lack of a bias-variance tradeoff in neural networks when increasing network width. Our findings seem to contradict the claims of the landmark work by Geman et al. (1992). Motivated by this contradiction, we revisit the experimental measurements in Geman et al. (1992). We discuss that there was never strong evidence for a tradeoff in neural networks when varying the number of parameters. We observe a similar phenomenon beyond supervised learning, with a set of deep reinforcement learning experiments. We argue that textbook and lecture revisions are in order to convey this nuanced modern understanding of the bias-variance tradeoff

Creating an Incident Response Plan

In any organization, it is important to be prepared in the event of a major incident that might impact and impede critical operations. The best practice that an organization can take to ensure that such an incident may be handled well is to develop a plan in preparation for such an event. In order to aid my organization in preparing for adverse incidents, I have worked to create an incident response plan based on our organization. This plan is developed to cater to our manufacturing organization with 4 major locations and an IT team of about a dozen individuals. By having an incident response plan developed, we can be more effective at managing any incidents that might occur

Topological Crystalline Bose Insulator in Two Dimensions via Entanglement Spectrum

Strongly correlated analogues of topological insulators have been explored in systems with purely on-site symmetries, such as time-reversal or charge conservation. Here, we use recently developed tensor network tools to study a quantum state of interacting bosons which is featureless in the bulk, but distinguished from an atomic insulator in that it exhibits entanglement which is protected by its spatial symmetries. These properties are encoded in a model many-body wavefunction that describes a fully symmetric insulator of bosons on the honeycomb lattice at half filling per site. While the resulting integer unit cell filling allows the state to bypass `no-go' theorems that trigger fractionalization at fractional filling, it nevertheless has nontrivial entanglement, protected by symmetry. We demonstrate this by computing the boundary entanglement spectra, finding a gapless entanglement edge described by a conformal field theory as well as degeneracies protected by the non-trivial action of combined charge-conservation and spatial symmetries on the edge. Here, the tight-binding representation of the space group symmetries plays a particular role in allowing certain entanglement cuts that are not allowed on other lattices of the same symmetry, suggesting that the lattice representation can serve as an additional symmetry ingredient in protecting an interacting topological phase. Our results extend to a related insulating state of electrons, with short-ranged entanglement and no band insulator analogue.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures Added additional reference

Paul L. Dunbar: A Tale of Two Worlds

Dimensions: 30 inches wide, 36 inches tallInkjet on matte paper, printed on both sides Artist\u27s narrative: Letter 3 is a poem full of despair and sadness. While Paul Laurence Dunbar does have limited moments of happiness, he is mostly addressing his sorrow and negativity to his friend J.N. Matthews regarding the publication of his work. Dunbar lists his discouragement and blames himself several times throughout his writing. He is very annoyed at himself for his disappointments because he has only been able to sell two of his hymns. He even addresses a statement saying: “But enough of myself and my disappointments,” stating that he believes he is a failure. He does eventually state that he finds happiness throughout his friend\u27s writing, Will W. Pfrimmer\u27s Driftwood. He says: “I have found a wealth of beauty in his lines.” Paul ends his poem saying: “I want to write more, but my bell keeps ringing so I must close; With kindest regards, I am your friend, Paul Laurence Dunbar.” The imagery within the poster symbolizes how Dunbar is running out of time but must continue writing. This is a true reflection of the highs and lows of Paul Laurence Dunbar. The Serif font Typeka is used throughout my posters to represent the typewriter that Paul Laurence Dunbar used. Typeka is designed by E-Lan Ronen and T-26, a digital type of foundry established by Carlos Segura.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stu_vad_dunbarletters/1005/thumbnail.jp