The Tumor-Suppressive Properties of Neural Stem Cells

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is an aggressive central nervous system malignancy that commonly causes immune suppression in patients to avoid immune recognition and clearance. This complicates treatment options and limits the effectiveness of immunotherapy strategies. Interestingly, GBM formation can stimulate the neurogenic subventricular zone of the cerebral cortex and causes the proliferation and migration of neural stem cells (NSCs) towards the tumor. This migration reflects the NSC wound repair response following CNS injury. Studies using NSCs surgically implanted into GBM tumors showed decreased tumor growth and increased animal survival in mice; however, the mechanisms underlying these anti-tumor properties of NSCs are unknown. Here we performed co-culture proliferation assays in combination with gene expression analysis to show that there is a two-way communication between the NSCs and glioma cells that results in decreased glioma proliferation and changes to survival and apoptotic-related gene expression. These changes correlated with increased expression of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily death receptor ligands by the NSCs. NSCs also were found to express many immune-related cytokines and chemokines involved in immune signaling, suggesting a potential role in mediating anti-tumor immune responses. These results provide the first mechanistic evidence of NSC-mediated tumor suppression

The Confusion of Philip Morris: How the Supreme Court Came to Hold That Punitive Damages Cannot be Used to Punish for Harm to Non-Parties, but that Jurors are Allowed to Consider Harm to Non-Parties When Deciding to Impose Punitive Damages

In Philip Morris USA v. Williams,1 the United States Supreme Court examined the constitutional propriety of a large punitive damages award levied against a defendant tobacco company in favor of a single plaintiff. A jury had awarded $821,000 in compensatory damages and$79.5 million in punitive damages to the widow of a heavy cigarette smoker for her husband\u27s smoking-related death because the tobacco company knowingly and falsely promoted smoking as safe. The Court held that permitting a jury to base any part of a punitive damages award upon a desire to punish the defendant for harming non-parties amounted to a taking of property from the defendant in contravention to the Constitution\u27s Due Process Clause

Patch-based semantic labelling of images.

PhDThe work presented in this thesis is focused at associating a semantics to the content of an image, linking the content to high level semantic categories. The process can take place at two levels: either at image level, towards image categorisation, or at pixel level, in se- mantic segmentation or semantic labelling. To this end, an analysis framework is proposed, and the different steps of part (or patch) extraction, description and probabilistic modelling are detailed. Parts of different nature are used, and one of the contributions is a method to complement information associated to them. Context for parts has to be considered at different scales. Short range pixel dependences are accounted by associating pixels to larger patches. A Conditional Random Field, that is, a probabilistic discriminative graphical model, is used to model medium range dependences between neighbouring patches. Another contribution is an efficient method to consider rich neighbourhoods without having loops in the inference graph. To this end, weak neighbours are introduced, that is, neighbours whose label probability distribution is pre-estimated rather than mutable during the inference. Longer range dependences, that tend to make the inference problem intractable, are addressed as well. A novel descriptor based on local histograms of visual words has been proposed, meant to both complement the feature descriptor of the patches and augment the context awareness in the patch labelling process. Finally, an alternative approach to consider multiple scales in a hierarchical framework based on image pyramids is proposed. An image pyramid is a compositional representation of the image based on hierarchical clustering. All the presented contributions are extensively detailed throughout the thesis, and experimental results performed on publicly available datasets are reported to assess their validity. A critical comparison with the state of the art in this research area is also presented, and the advantage in adopting the proposed improvements are clearly highlighted

I Suoli su substrati acidi in Sardegna: nota 1.: indagine preliminare sui suoli del Massiccio del Monte Limbara

In this first note the Author describes geology, morphology, climate and vegetation of the Limbara massif and reports the first results of the pedological study. The soils differ according to the differentiated altimetric position and vegetative cover; above 1000 meters they are acid and present a strong accumulation of organic matter. These soils have been dassified as Umbrepts. Below 1000 meters the soils become less acid and the organic matter content decreases, they have been classified as Ochrepts and Orthents

I Suoli su substrati acidi in Sardegna: nota 3: alcune osservazioni sui suoli del versante sud-est del Massiccio del Limbara

The Authors describes principal soils of the SE-facing slopes of Limbara relief. Lithic Haplumbrepts are the principal soils above 1100 m, Lithic and Tipic Xerochrepts are widely distributed between 1100 and 700 m and Lithic Xerorthents are the principal soil from 700 to 450 m. In this work differences with the soil of NW-facing slopes are described. In the SE-facing slopes the transition to Xerochrepts isn't gradual, cambie horizon is uncommon and the soils between 800 and 500 m have an higher content of clay and higher saturation

Ancora sul lavoro pubblico: variazioni e modulazioni sul tema

L’idea è stata quella di raccogliere, per poi suggerire, attraverso una selezione di brani di diversi Autori, spunti di riflessione sulle questioni di fondo che il processo di contrattualizzazione/privatizzazione del pubblico impiego pone al giuslavorista, chiamato da tempo a considerare la fattispecie tipica di riferimento del diritto del lavoro inclusiva del rapporto di lavoro alle dipendenze delle pubbliche amministrazioni. Tali questioni, strettamente correlate, ineriscono, da un lato, l’incidenza della natura pubblica del datore di lavoro sul regime contrattuale del rapporto di lavoro privatizzato, dall’altro, l’incidenza del “vincolo di scopo” sull’ampiezza e sulla qualità dell’obbligazione dedotta in contratto dal pubblico dipendente. This study gathers the contributions of several academics with the view of offering a critical approach to fundamental issues relating to the process of contractualization/privatization of public sector employment law, as frequently tackled by labour lawyers in trying to address the notion of employment contract in a comprehensive way. These issues, all closely connected, relate to the public status of the employer vis a vis the (privatized) employment contract and to the impact of the peculiar public purpose in setting out the boundaries and characteristics of the relevant employment obligation

Diagnosability of Fuzzy Discrete Event Systems

In order to more effectively cope with the real-world problems of vagueness, {\it fuzzy discrete event systems} (FDESs) were proposed recently, and the supervisory control theory of FDESs was developed. In view of the importance of failure diagnosis, in this paper, we present an approach of the failure diagnosis in the framework of FDESs. More specifically: (1) We formalize the definition of diagnosability for FDESs, in which the observable set and failure set of events are {\it fuzzy}, that is, each event has certain degree to be observable and unobservable, and, also, each event may possess different possibility of failure occurring. (2) Through the construction of observability-based diagnosers of FDESs, we investigate its some basic properties. In particular, we present a necessary and sufficient condition for diagnosability of FDESs. (3) Some examples serving to illuminate the applications of the diagnosability of FDESs are described. To conclude, some related issues are raised for further consideration.Comment: 14 pages; revisions have been mad