Synergistic effect of a combination of granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor and thymosin α1 on Lewis lung cancer transplanted tumor in mice

Purpose: To study the synergistic effect of a combination of granulocyte-macrophage colonystimulating factor and thymosin-α1 on the treatment of Lewis lung cancer transplanted tumor.Methods: C57BL/6 mice were used. A mouse model of Lewis lung cancer was established using Lewis lung cancer cell lines. The mice were randomly divided into blank control group, polyene taxol (DTX) group, DTX thymosin α1 (Tα-1) group, and DTX granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) group, with 8 mice per group. The degree of tumor inhibition, thymus mass, thymus index, spleen mass, spleen index, IL-6, TNF-1, IFN-1, CD4+, CD8+ T cells and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ were determined by ELISA and flow cytometry.Results: Body mass, thymus mass, thymus index, spleen mass, spleen index, IL-6, TNF-1, IFN-1, CD4+, CD8+ T cells and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ in DTX + Tα-1 group, DTX + GM-CSF group and DTX + Tα-1 + GM-CSF group were significantly elevated (p < 0.05), relative to the corresponding levels in DTXmice (p < 0.05). Body mass, degree of tumor inhibition, thymus mass, thymus index, spleen mass, spleen index, IL-6, TNF-1, IFN-1, CD4, CD8 T cells and CD4+/CD8+ ratio in DTX + Tα-1 + GM-CSF mice were significantly elevated, relative to the DTX + Tα-1 and DTX + GM-CSF groups (p < 0.05). Thestate of the tumor was significantly improved in the DTX + Tα-1 and DTX + GM-CSF mice.Conclusion: A combination treatment of GM-CSF, Tα-1 and DEX effectively enhances the resistance of mice and suppresses chemotherapy-induced decrease in body weight. This finding may be of clinical significance. Keywords: Granulocyte macrophage, Colony-stimulating factor, Thymosin, Docetaxel, Lewis lung cancer, Transplanted tumo

Respuesta de tomate (Solanum lycopersicum L.) a la fertilización con nitrógeno y aplicación de composta.

The effects of municipal biosolid yard-waste compost and fertilizer N applications on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) growth, yield and fruit quality were evaluated in Lajas (Typic Haplusterts) and Juana Díaz (Cumulic Haplustolls) (Fortuna Substation), Puerto Rico, for three years. In Fortuna, an initial application of compost at 50 t/ha significantly improved yields over those in unamended soil, yet a second application of compost the following year at 50 and 100 t/ha, reduced yields. No residual effect of compost on tomato yields was detected the third year. In Fortuna, levels of N fertilization did not significantly affect tomato yields, growth or quality, except in the third year, when tomato yields were significantly higher in soils fertilized with 75 kg N/ha than yields from unfertilized soil. At Lajas, there was a significant crop response to fertilizer N in one of the two site years, when crop response to initial fertilizer N application was evaluated. Compost addition in Lajas did not improve yields or plant agronomic components for the first year of cropping tomato. The use of the SPAD chlorophyll meter may be a useful N diagnostic tool for tomato grown under drip irrigation and polyethylene mulch. In general, maximum SPAD values coincided with maximum yields, depending on the hybrid or variety planted; treatment effects were adequately separated out. The economic optimum N rate was relatively insensitive to fertilizer and tomato price fluctuations in the range selected. The calculated optimum N rate to achieve 99% yield goals was 143 kg N/ha, at sites with initial N application in Lajas, and 165 kg N/ha, respectively, for second and third applications of N in Fortuna, with maximum yields near 54 t/ha.Por tres años se evaluaron los efectos de composta producida a partir de residuos vegetales y biosólidos, y de nitrógeno inorgánico en el crecimiento, rendimiento y calidad de fruta de tomate en las Subestaciones de Lajas (Typic Haplusterts) y Juana Díaz (Cumulic Haplustolls) (Subestación de Fortuna), Puerto Rico. En Fortuna, la aplicación de 50 t/ha aumentó el rendimiento sobre suelo sin enmendar pero una segunda aplicación de 50 y 100 t/ha redujo los rendimientos. No hubo un efecto residual de la composta en el tercer año. Los niveles de fertilización no incrementaron significativamente los rendimientos excepto en el tercer año, cuando los mayores rendimientos se obtuvieron con la aplicación de 75 kg N/ha en forma de fertilizante inorgánico. En Lajas, hubo respuesta a la fertilización inicial en uno de los dos sitios-años. La adición de composta no mejoró los rendimientos ni los componentes agronómicos del tomate. El uso del medidor de clorofila SPAD puede ser útil para la producción de tomate cultivado en bancos elevados, con plástico y riego por goteo porque los valores máximos de SPAD coincidieron con los mayores rendimientos obtenidos. La medida sirvió para evaluar el efecto de los tratamientos, aunque los resultados dependen de la variedad o híbrido utilizado. El nivel óptimo económico obtenido fue poco sensitivo a los precios de fertilizante y tomate seleccionado. El nivel óptimo de fertilización de N para obtener el 99% de rendimiento máximo fue 143 kg N/ha en áreas que recibieron aplicaciones iniciales de N en Lajas, y 165 kg N/ha en áreas con más de un año bajo el cultivo de tomate en Fortuna, con rendimientos cerca de 54 t/ha

Potential of an alkaline-stabilized biosolid to manage nematodes: case studies on soybean cyst and root-knot nematodes

The use of treated biosolids for pest management and soil nutrient augmentation is not a new practice, but it has increased in the last two decades, primarily in the United States (22). In the late 1970s, the first land application regulations were formulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in response to the Clean Water Act (44). Land application of sewage sludge for soil amendment and land reclamation has increased over time as a result of the ban on ocean dumping of wastewater residuals (Ocean Disposal Ban Act of 1988). The Act also minimizes other disposal options, such as land-filling or incineration. In 1993, the Standards for the Use or Disposal of Sewage Sludge (Code of Federal Regulations Title 40, Part 503) was created (45,46). Part 503 (as it is commonly called) set pollutant limits, operational standards for human/animal pathogen and vector-attraction reduction, management practices, and other provisions intended to protect public health and the environment from any reasonably anticipated adverse effects from chemical pollutants and pathogenic organisms. In 1995, the EPA promoted the terminology “biosolids” rather than “sewage sludge” and defined biosolids as “the primarily organic solid product yielded by municipal wastewater treatment processes that can be beneficially recycled as soil amendments and meets the standards of Part 503”. Although the term is sometimes controversial (33), we will use biosolid in reference to the product tested in this research

Next-Generation Full Duplex Networking System Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Full duplex (FD) radio has attracted extensive attention due to its co-time and co-frequency transceiving capability. {However, the potential gain brought by FD radios is closely related to the management of self-interference (SI), which imposes high or even stringent requirements on SI cancellation (SIC) techniques. When the FD deployment evolves into next-generation mobile networking, the SI problem becomes more complicated, significantly limiting its potential gains.} In this paper, we conceive a multi-cell FD networking scheme by deploying a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) at the cell boundary to configure the radio environment proactively. To achieve the full potential of the system, we aim to maximize the sum rate (SR) of multiple cells by jointly optimizing the transmit precoding (TPC) matrices at FD base stations (BSs) and users and the phase shift matrix at RIS. Since the original problem is non-convex, we reformulate and decouple it into a pair of subproblems by utilizing the relationship between the SR and minimum mean square error (MMSE). The optimal solutions of TPC matrices are obtained in closed form, while both complex circle manifold (CCM) and successive convex approximation (SCA) based algorithms are developed to resolve the phase shift matrix suboptimally. Our simulation results show that introducing an RIS into an FD networking system not only improves the overall SR significantly but also enhances the cell edge performance prominently. More importantly, we validate that the RIS deployment with optimized phase shifts can reduce the requirement for SIC and the number of BS antennas, which further reduces the hardware cost and power consumption, especially with a sufficient number of reflecting elements. As a result, the utilization of an RIS enables the originally cumbersome FD networking system to become efficient and practical.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure