Action Is an Action Is an Action Is an Action

The misuse of legal language is both rampant and problematic. This is particularly true with respect to the terminology employed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This Article begins with a general discussion of the importance of using proper legal terminology (with an emphasis on Rules terminology), followed by a discussion as to why, in spite of the problems caused by the misuse of legal terminology, such misuse persists. The Article then considers six Rules terms that should be familiar to every attorney—action, claim, averment, paper, dismissal, and judgment—and discusses the various ways in which these terms are being misused, and the problems caused thereby. The Article concludes that, in many instances, the cause of the confusion rests in the Rules themselves, suggesting a need for amendment. The Article also proposes a substantial amendment to Rule 58, the rule governing the entry of judgments, in order to allay the numerous problems currently associated with the so-called separate document requirement

The MD Anderson prostate cancer patient-derived xenograft series (MDA PCa PDX) captures the molecular landscape of prostate cancer and facilitates marker-driven therapy development

BACKGROUND: Advances in prostate cancer (PCa) lag behind other tumor types partly due to the paucity of models reflecting key milestones in PCa progression. OBJECTIVE: To develop clinically relevant PCa models. DESIGN: Since 1996 we have generated clinically annotated patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) (the MDA PCa PDX series) linked to specific phenotypes reflecting all aspects of clinical PCa. RESULTS: We studied two cell line-derived xenografts and the first 80 PDXs derived from 47 human PCa donors. Of these, 47 PDXs derived from 22 donors are working models and can be expanded either as cell lines (MDA PCa 2a and 2b) or PDXs. The histopathologic, genomic, and molecular characteristics (AR, ERG, and PTEN loss) maintain fidelity with the human tumor and correlate with published findings. PDX growth response to mouse castration and targeted therapy illustrate their clinical utility. Comparative genomic hybridization and sequencing show significant differences in oncogenic pathways in pairs of PDXs derived from different areas of the same tumor. We also identified a recurrent focal deletion in an area that includes the SPOPL gene in PDXs derived from 7 human donors out of 28 studied (25%). SPOPL is a SPOP paralog, and SPOP mutations define a molecular subclass of PCa. SPOPL deletions are found in 7% of TCGA PCas, which suggests that our cohort is a reliable platform for targeted drug development. CONCLUSIONS: The MDA PCa PDX series is a dynamic resource that captures the molecular landscape of PCas progressing under novel treatments and enables optimization of PCa-specific, marker-driven therapy

Repetition Suppression and Reactivation in Auditory–Verbal Short-Term Recognition Memory

The neural response to stimulus repetition is not uniform across brain regions, stimulus modalities, or task contexts. For instance, it has been observed in many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that sometimes stimulus repetition leads to a relative reduction in neural activity (repetition suppression), whereas in other cases repetition results in a relative increase in activity (repetition enhancement). In the present study, we hypothesized that in the context of a verbal short-term recognition memory task, repetition-related “increases” should be observed in the same posterior temporal regions that have been previously associated with “persistent activity” in working memory rehearsal paradigms. We used fMRI and a continuous recognition memory paradigm with short lags to examine repetition effects in the posterior and anterior regions of the superior temporal cortex. Results showed that, consistent with our hypothesis, the 2 posterior temporal regions consistently associated with working memory maintenance, also show repetition increases during short-term recognition memory. In contrast, a region in the anterior superior temporal lobe showed repetition suppression effects, consistent with previous research work on perceptual adaptation in the auditory–verbal domain. We interpret these results in light of recent theories of the functional specialization along the anterior and posterior axes of the superior temporal lobe

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts