Program Chair: Kimberly Keeton (HP, USA) Saurabh Bagchi (Purdue University, USA) Wendy Bartlett (... more Program Chair: Kimberly Keeton (HP, USA) Saurabh Bagchi (Purdue University, USA) Wendy Bartlett (HP, USA) Elisa Bertino (Purdue University, USA) Peter Buchholz (University of Dortmund, Germany) Juan Carrasco (University ofCatalunya, Spain) Lucy Cherkasova (HP Labs, USA) Michel Cukier (University of Maryland, USA), Felicita Di Giandomenico (ISTI-CNR, Italy) Tadashi Dohi (University of Hiroshima, Japan) Susanna Donatelli (University of Torino, Italy) Babak Falsafi (EPFL, Switzerland) Armando Fox (University of California, ...
Mon - Khmer Studies: a journal of Austroasiatic philology, 2014
This paper reports on acoustic realization of rhythmic structure of Vietnamese narrative prose sp... more This paper reports on acoustic realization of rhythmic structure of Vietnamese narrative prose speech.Eight speakers of Saigon dialect read part of a short story.Acoustic measurements including duration and intensity were taken for every syllable.Syllables were labelled into four types: s (standalone monosyllable); s0 (first syllable of a three-word phrase/chunk in which it is the modifier of a bisyllabic word, e.g., cái ý kiến, thật âu yếm); s1, and s2 (first and second syllables of a bisyllabic word/chunk, e.g., ý kiến, âu yếm).One-, two-and three-syllable units/chunks were also labelled utterance final / non-final.For utterance-medial and utterance-final chunks,the monosyllable had significantly longer duration and stronger intensity.Within bisyllabic words, second syllables had longer duration and stronger intensity than first syllables.Within three-syllable phrases/chunks, the first syllable of a three-word phrase/chunk wasnot significantly different from the first syllable of ...
We isolated a gene encoding a 218 kDa myosin-like protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a m... more We isolated a gene encoding a 218 kDa myosin-like protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a monoclonal antibody directed against human platelet myosin as a probe. The protein sequence encoded by the MLP1 gene (for myosin-like protein) contains extensive stretches of a heptad-repeat pattern suggesting that the protein can form coiled coils typical of myosins. Immunolocalization experiments using affinity-purified antibodies raised against a TrpE-MLP1 fusion protein showed a dot-like structure adjacent to the nucleus in yeast cells bearing the MLP1 gene on a multicopy plasmid. In mouse epithelial cells the yeast anti-MLP1 antibodies stained the nucleus. Mutants bearing disruptions of the MLP1 gene were viable, but more sensitive to ultraviolet light than wild-type strains, suggesting an involvement of MLP1 in DNA repair. The MLP1 gene was mapped to chromosome 11, 25 cM from metl.
The sensitivity to surface profile of non-contact optical imaging, such as spatial frequency doma... more The sensitivity to surface profile of non-contact optical imaging, such as spatial frequency domain imaging, may lead to incorrect measurements of optical properties and consequently erroneous extrapolation of physiological parameters of interest. Previous correction methods have focused on calibration-based, model-based, and computationbased approached. We propose an experimental method to correct the effect of surface profile on spectral images. Three-dimensional (3D) phantoms were built with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic using an accurate 3D imaging and an emergent 3D printing technique. In this study, our method was utilized for the correction of optical properties (absorption coefficient μ a and reduced scattering coefficient μ s ′) of objects obtained with a spatial frequency domain imaging system. The correction method was verified on three objects with simple to complex shapes. Incorrect optical properties due to surface with minimum 4 mm variation in height and 80 degree in slope were detected and improved, particularly for the absorption coefficients. The 3D phantom-based correction method is applicable for a wide range of purposes. The advantages and drawbacks of the 3D phantombased correction methods are discussed in details.
2006 25th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS'06), 2006
We consider the problem of ensuring high data availability in federated content sharing systems. ... more We consider the problem of ensuring high data availability in federated content sharing systems. Ideally, such a system would provide high data availability in a device transparent manner so that users are not faced with the timeconsuming and error-prone task of managing data replicas across the constituent devices of the system. We propose a novel unified availability model and a decentralized replication algorithm to approximate this ideal. Our availability model addresses three different concerns: availability during connected operation (online), availability during disconnected operation (offline), and availability after permanent disconnection from the federated system (ownership). Our replication algorithm centers around the intuition that devices should selfishly use their local storage to ensure offline and ownership availability for their individual owners. Excess storage, however, is used communally to ensure high online availability for all shared content. Evaluation of an implementation shows that our algorithm rapidly reaches stable and communally desirable configurations when there is sufficient space. Consistent with the fact that devices in a federated system are owned by different users, however, as space becomes highly constrained, the system approaches a non-cooperative configuration where devices only hoard content to serve their individual owners' needs.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 1998
The more advanced methods for identifying unsafe intersections and evaluating the safety effect o... more The more advanced methods for identifying unsafe intersections and evaluating the safety effect of treatment are based on an Empirical Bayesian framework that requires the use of safety performance functions relating the expected safety of an intersection to characteristics such as traffic flow. Aggregate and disaggregate models were developed to estimate the safety performance of three-legged and four-legged signalized intersections on Ontario provincial roads. Models were disaggregated by time period, accident severity, and environment class. Two levels of models were calibrated for different levels of data availability and model requirements. For Level 1, the safety of an intersection was estimated as a function of the sum of all entering flows; separate estimates were obtained for rear-end, right angle, and turning movement accidents, the three most prominent impact types. In Level 2, specific patterns were defined by the movements of involved vehicles prior to collision, and ac...
Background The aim of this study was to assess the management of cervical necrosis (CN) following... more Background The aim of this study was to assess the management of cervical necrosis (CN) following radiotherapy (RT) and the impact of smoking status. This rare complication mimics a neoplastic recurrence, and causes concern among attending physicians. Methods Between July 2008 and March 2013, 5 women on 285 with localized cervical cancer had a CN following RT. Patients were treated with concomitant chemoradiation. The medical records were reviewed to abstract demographic and clinical information until March 2013. Results 1.75% (95% confidence interval: 0.23 to 3.28%) developed CN. All patients were smokers with a mean of 19.5 pack-years (range: 7.5-45 pack-years). All patients were treated with weekly Cisplatin chemotherapy and external beam radiation to the pelvis, 45 Gy in 25 fractions. Four patients received an extra boost with a median dose of 7.2 Gy (range: 5.4-10 Gy). All patients had intracavitary brachytherapy (range: 27.9 to 30 Gy). Clinical presentation was similar for all...
ABSTRACT This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author. The Publisher apologizes f... more ABSTRACT This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may causeThe full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.
Evolution of genes and genomes on the Drosophila phylogeny Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium* Comp... more Evolution of genes and genomes on the Drosophila phylogeny Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium* Comparative analysis of multiple genomes in a phylogenetic framework dramatically improves the precision and sensitivity of evolutionary inference, producing more robust results than single-genome analyses can provide. The genomes of 12 Drosophila species, ten of which are presented here for the first time (sechellia, simulans, yakuba, erecta, ananassae, persimilis, willistoni, mojavensis, virilis and grimshawi), illustrate how rates and patterns of sequence divergence across taxa can illuminate evolutionary processes on a genomic scale. These genome sequences augment the formidable genetic tools that have made Drosophila melanogaster a pre-eminent model for animal genetics, and will further catalyse fundamental research on mechanisms of development, cell biology, genetics, disease, neurobiology, behaviour, physiology and evolution. Despite remarkable similarities among these Drosophila species, we identified many putatively non-neutral changes in protein-coding genes, non-coding RNA genes, and cis-regulatory regions. These may prove to underlie differences in the ecology and behaviour of these diverse species.
This study investigates the mechanism of hormonal regulation of p53 gene expression in MCF-7 huma... more This study investigates the mechanism of hormonal regulation of p53 gene expression in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells. 17-Estradiol (E2) induced a 2-fold increase in p53 mRNA levels and a 2-to 3-fold increase in p53 protein. Analysis of the p53 gene promoter has identified a minimal E2responsive region at ؊106 to ؊40, and mutation/ deletion analysis of the promoter showed that motifs that bind CCAAT-binding transcription factor-1 (CTF-1) and nuclear factor B (NFB) proteins are required for hormone responsiveness. The p65 subunit of NFB was identified in both nuclear and cytosolic fractions of untreated MCF-7 cells; however, formation of the nuclear NFB complex was E2 independent. Hormonal activation of constructs containing p53 promoter inserts (؊106 to ؊40) and the GAL4-p65 fusion proteins was inhibited by the intracellular Ca 2؉ ion chelator EGTA-AM and Ca 2؉ / calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CaMK) inhibitor KN-93. Constitutively active CaMKIV but not CaMKI activated p65, and treatment of MCF-7 cells with E2 induced phosphorylation of CaMKIV but not CaMKI. The results indicate that hormonal activation of p53 though nongenomic pathways was CaMKIV-dependent and involved cooperative p65-CTF-1 interactions.
This study investigated the intelligibility of native and Mandarin-accented English speech for na... more This study investigated the intelligibility of native and Mandarin-accented English speech for native English and native Mandarin listeners. The word-final voicing contrast was considered (as in minimal pairs such as `cub' and `cup') in a forced-choice word identification task. For these particular talkers and listeners, there was evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners (i.e., native Mandarin listeners were more accurate than native English listeners at identifying Mandarinaccented English words). However, there was no evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for talkers (i.e., native Mandarin listeners did not find Mandarin-accented English speech more intelligible than native English speech). When listener and talker phonological proficiency (operationalized as accentedness) was taken into account, it was found that the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners held only for the low phonological proficiency listeners and low phonological proficiency speech. The intelligibility data were also considered in relation to various temporal-acoustic properties of native English and Mandarin-accented English speech in effort to better understand the properties of speech that may contribute to the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit.
Treatment of various substituted semicarbazones of aromatic aldehydes with sulfur monochloride yi... more Treatment of various substituted semicarbazones of aromatic aldehydes with sulfur monochloride yields the corresponding substituted 2,4‐dihydro‐1,2,4‐triazol‐3‐ones. With thiosemicarbazones, the products are derivatives either of the 2‐amino‐1,3,4 thiadiazole or of the 2,4‐dihydro‐1,2,4‐triazole‐3‐thione depending on the experimental conditions.
Electrical injuries are devastating and are difficult to manage due to the complexity of the tiss... more Electrical injuries are devastating and are difficult to manage due to the complexity of the tissue damage and physiological impacts. A paucity of literature exists which describes models for electrical injury. To date, those models have been used primarily to demonstrate thermal and morphological effects at the points of contact. Creating a more representative model for human injury and further elucidating the physics and pathophysiology of this unique form of tissue injury could be helpful in designing stage-appropriate therapy and improving limb salvage. An electrical burn delivery system was developed to accurately and reliably deliver electrical current at varying exposure times. A series of Sprague-Dawley rats were anesthetized and subjected to injury with 1000 V of direct current at incremental exposure times (2-20 seconds). Whole blood and plasma were obtained immediately before shock, immediately postinjury, and then hourly for 3 hours. Laser Doppler images of tissue adjacent to the entrance and exit wounds were obtained at the outlined time points to provide information on tissue perfusion. The electrical exposure was nonlethal in all animals. The size and the depth of contact injury increased in proportion to the exposure times and were reproducible. Skin adjacent to injury (both entrance and exit sites) exhibited marked edema within 30 minutes. In adjacent skin of upper extremity wounds, mean perfusion units increased immediately postinjury and then gradually decreased in proportion to the severity of the injuries. In the lower extremity, this phenomenon was only observed for short contact times, while longer contact times had marked malperfusion throughout. In the plasma, interleukin-10 and vascular endothelial growth factor levels were found to be augmented by injury. Systemic transcriptome analysis revealed promising information about signal networks involved in dermatological, connective tissue, and neurological pathophysiological processes. A reliable and reproducible in vivo model has been developed for characterizing the pathophysiology of high-tension electrical injury. Changes in perfusion were observed near and between entrance and exit wounds that appear consistent with injury severity. Further studies are underway to correlate differential mRNA expression with injury severity.
Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, 2012
Vegetable oils have been considered as an alternative to diesel fuel due to their comparable prop... more Vegetable oils have been considered as an alternative to diesel fuel due to their comparable properties and performance. However, the high viscosity of vegetable oil causes engine durability problems with long‐term usage. Vegetable oil viscosity can be reduced by blending with diesel fuel in thermodynamically stable mixtures using microemulsion fuel formulation techniques. This work focuses on the formulation of microemulsion fuels comprising diesel fuel and canola oil as the oil phase with ethanol and sec‐butanol as viscosity reducers as well as 1‐octanol and oleyl amine as surfactant/cosurfactant. Selective tests on an instrumented diesel engine were performed for formulated microemulsion fuels and No. 2 diesel fuel for comparison. The results show that formulated microemulsion fuels have fuel properties that meet the ASTM requirements for viscosity, cloud point, and pour point for biodiesel. Even more important, they have phase stability over a wide range of temperatures (−10 to ...
International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, 2009
In this review, the authors concluded that radiotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer was ass... more In this review, the authors concluded that radiotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer was associated with long-term increases in cardiac morbidity and mortality. There was insufficient information provided about the conduct of the review and the quality of the included studies to assess the accuracy and reliability of the authors' conclusions. Authors' objectives To assess the interaction between treatment era and follow-up duration on the reported effect of radiotherapy on cardiac events in patients treated for breast cancer. Searching The database MEDLINE was searched to December 2007 to locate relevant English-language studies; search terms were reported. Reference lists of retrieved articles were also searched. Study selection Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating patients treated with radiotherapy for breast cancer and subsequent treatment-related cardiac morbidity and mortality, were eligible for inclusion. Studies were excluded from the review if they: were published as abstracts only; failed to provide adequate information on the numbers of patients irradiated; failed to report cardiac toxicity in clearly designated risk units (hazard ratio, relative risk, odds ratio, incidence ratio and risk ratio); evaluated cardiac toxicity by the analysis of radiographic changes (for example, by single photon emission computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging). RCTs, cancer registry database studies, and institutional reviews were included. Cardiac toxicity was assessed by comparing patients who had received radiotherapy to those who had not; patients who received radiotherapy for leftsided breast cancer compared to patients who received radiotherapy for right-sided breast cancer; and evaluations of both of the other comparisons. Varying definitions of cardiac toxicity and different cardiac endpoints were reported including overall cardiac mortality/morbidity and specific cardiac diseases (myocardial infarction, ischaemic heart disease, cardiovascular disease and valvular heart disease). Two reviewers independently and collaboratively reviewed the abstracts and selected the full text articles for inclusion in the review. Assessment of study quality The authors did not state that they assessed validity. Data extraction Data were collected from trials that reported cardiac toxicity risk in clear designated risk units (hazard ratio, relative risk, odds ratio, incidence ratio and risk ratio). Where median follow-up duration was not specifically reported, the reviewers estimated follow-up durations using other information provided in each study. To examine the relationships between the treatment era, duration of follow-up and the risk of cardiac morbidity or mortality, the authors compared the trials by the following groupings: commencing before or after 1980, and with follow-up duration less than or greater then 10 years. The reviewers did not state how the data were extracted for the review, or how many reviewers performed the data extraction.
Program Chair: Kimberly Keeton (HP, USA) Saurabh Bagchi (Purdue University, USA) Wendy Bartlett (... more Program Chair: Kimberly Keeton (HP, USA) Saurabh Bagchi (Purdue University, USA) Wendy Bartlett (HP, USA) Elisa Bertino (Purdue University, USA) Peter Buchholz (University of Dortmund, Germany) Juan Carrasco (University ofCatalunya, Spain) Lucy Cherkasova (HP Labs, USA) Michel Cukier (University of Maryland, USA), Felicita Di Giandomenico (ISTI-CNR, Italy) Tadashi Dohi (University of Hiroshima, Japan) Susanna Donatelli (University of Torino, Italy) Babak Falsafi (EPFL, Switzerland) Armando Fox (University of California, ...
Mon - Khmer Studies: a journal of Austroasiatic philology, 2014
This paper reports on acoustic realization of rhythmic structure of Vietnamese narrative prose sp... more This paper reports on acoustic realization of rhythmic structure of Vietnamese narrative prose speech.Eight speakers of Saigon dialect read part of a short story.Acoustic measurements including duration and intensity were taken for every syllable.Syllables were labelled into four types: s (standalone monosyllable); s0 (first syllable of a three-word phrase/chunk in which it is the modifier of a bisyllabic word, e.g., cái ý kiến, thật âu yếm); s1, and s2 (first and second syllables of a bisyllabic word/chunk, e.g., ý kiến, âu yếm).One-, two-and three-syllable units/chunks were also labelled utterance final / non-final.For utterance-medial and utterance-final chunks,the monosyllable had significantly longer duration and stronger intensity.Within bisyllabic words, second syllables had longer duration and stronger intensity than first syllables.Within three-syllable phrases/chunks, the first syllable of a three-word phrase/chunk wasnot significantly different from the first syllable of ...
We isolated a gene encoding a 218 kDa myosin-like protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a m... more We isolated a gene encoding a 218 kDa myosin-like protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae using a monoclonal antibody directed against human platelet myosin as a probe. The protein sequence encoded by the MLP1 gene (for myosin-like protein) contains extensive stretches of a heptad-repeat pattern suggesting that the protein can form coiled coils typical of myosins. Immunolocalization experiments using affinity-purified antibodies raised against a TrpE-MLP1 fusion protein showed a dot-like structure adjacent to the nucleus in yeast cells bearing the MLP1 gene on a multicopy plasmid. In mouse epithelial cells the yeast anti-MLP1 antibodies stained the nucleus. Mutants bearing disruptions of the MLP1 gene were viable, but more sensitive to ultraviolet light than wild-type strains, suggesting an involvement of MLP1 in DNA repair. The MLP1 gene was mapped to chromosome 11, 25 cM from metl.
The sensitivity to surface profile of non-contact optical imaging, such as spatial frequency doma... more The sensitivity to surface profile of non-contact optical imaging, such as spatial frequency domain imaging, may lead to incorrect measurements of optical properties and consequently erroneous extrapolation of physiological parameters of interest. Previous correction methods have focused on calibration-based, model-based, and computationbased approached. We propose an experimental method to correct the effect of surface profile on spectral images. Three-dimensional (3D) phantoms were built with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic using an accurate 3D imaging and an emergent 3D printing technique. In this study, our method was utilized for the correction of optical properties (absorption coefficient μ a and reduced scattering coefficient μ s ′) of objects obtained with a spatial frequency domain imaging system. The correction method was verified on three objects with simple to complex shapes. Incorrect optical properties due to surface with minimum 4 mm variation in height and 80 degree in slope were detected and improved, particularly for the absorption coefficients. The 3D phantom-based correction method is applicable for a wide range of purposes. The advantages and drawbacks of the 3D phantombased correction methods are discussed in details.
2006 25th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS'06), 2006
We consider the problem of ensuring high data availability in federated content sharing systems. ... more We consider the problem of ensuring high data availability in federated content sharing systems. Ideally, such a system would provide high data availability in a device transparent manner so that users are not faced with the timeconsuming and error-prone task of managing data replicas across the constituent devices of the system. We propose a novel unified availability model and a decentralized replication algorithm to approximate this ideal. Our availability model addresses three different concerns: availability during connected operation (online), availability during disconnected operation (offline), and availability after permanent disconnection from the federated system (ownership). Our replication algorithm centers around the intuition that devices should selfishly use their local storage to ensure offline and ownership availability for their individual owners. Excess storage, however, is used communally to ensure high online availability for all shared content. Evaluation of an implementation shows that our algorithm rapidly reaches stable and communally desirable configurations when there is sufficient space. Consistent with the fact that devices in a federated system are owned by different users, however, as space becomes highly constrained, the system approaches a non-cooperative configuration where devices only hoard content to serve their individual owners' needs.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 1998
The more advanced methods for identifying unsafe intersections and evaluating the safety effect o... more The more advanced methods for identifying unsafe intersections and evaluating the safety effect of treatment are based on an Empirical Bayesian framework that requires the use of safety performance functions relating the expected safety of an intersection to characteristics such as traffic flow. Aggregate and disaggregate models were developed to estimate the safety performance of three-legged and four-legged signalized intersections on Ontario provincial roads. Models were disaggregated by time period, accident severity, and environment class. Two levels of models were calibrated for different levels of data availability and model requirements. For Level 1, the safety of an intersection was estimated as a function of the sum of all entering flows; separate estimates were obtained for rear-end, right angle, and turning movement accidents, the three most prominent impact types. In Level 2, specific patterns were defined by the movements of involved vehicles prior to collision, and ac...
Background The aim of this study was to assess the management of cervical necrosis (CN) following... more Background The aim of this study was to assess the management of cervical necrosis (CN) following radiotherapy (RT) and the impact of smoking status. This rare complication mimics a neoplastic recurrence, and causes concern among attending physicians. Methods Between July 2008 and March 2013, 5 women on 285 with localized cervical cancer had a CN following RT. Patients were treated with concomitant chemoradiation. The medical records were reviewed to abstract demographic and clinical information until March 2013. Results 1.75% (95% confidence interval: 0.23 to 3.28%) developed CN. All patients were smokers with a mean of 19.5 pack-years (range: 7.5-45 pack-years). All patients were treated with weekly Cisplatin chemotherapy and external beam radiation to the pelvis, 45 Gy in 25 fractions. Four patients received an extra boost with a median dose of 7.2 Gy (range: 5.4-10 Gy). All patients had intracavitary brachytherapy (range: 27.9 to 30 Gy). Clinical presentation was similar for all...
ABSTRACT This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author. The Publisher apologizes f... more ABSTRACT This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may causeThe full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.
Evolution of genes and genomes on the Drosophila phylogeny Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium* Comp... more Evolution of genes and genomes on the Drosophila phylogeny Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium* Comparative analysis of multiple genomes in a phylogenetic framework dramatically improves the precision and sensitivity of evolutionary inference, producing more robust results than single-genome analyses can provide. The genomes of 12 Drosophila species, ten of which are presented here for the first time (sechellia, simulans, yakuba, erecta, ananassae, persimilis, willistoni, mojavensis, virilis and grimshawi), illustrate how rates and patterns of sequence divergence across taxa can illuminate evolutionary processes on a genomic scale. These genome sequences augment the formidable genetic tools that have made Drosophila melanogaster a pre-eminent model for animal genetics, and will further catalyse fundamental research on mechanisms of development, cell biology, genetics, disease, neurobiology, behaviour, physiology and evolution. Despite remarkable similarities among these Drosophila species, we identified many putatively non-neutral changes in protein-coding genes, non-coding RNA genes, and cis-regulatory regions. These may prove to underlie differences in the ecology and behaviour of these diverse species.
This study investigates the mechanism of hormonal regulation of p53 gene expression in MCF-7 huma... more This study investigates the mechanism of hormonal regulation of p53 gene expression in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells. 17-Estradiol (E2) induced a 2-fold increase in p53 mRNA levels and a 2-to 3-fold increase in p53 protein. Analysis of the p53 gene promoter has identified a minimal E2responsive region at ؊106 to ؊40, and mutation/ deletion analysis of the promoter showed that motifs that bind CCAAT-binding transcription factor-1 (CTF-1) and nuclear factor B (NFB) proteins are required for hormone responsiveness. The p65 subunit of NFB was identified in both nuclear and cytosolic fractions of untreated MCF-7 cells; however, formation of the nuclear NFB complex was E2 independent. Hormonal activation of constructs containing p53 promoter inserts (؊106 to ؊40) and the GAL4-p65 fusion proteins was inhibited by the intracellular Ca 2؉ ion chelator EGTA-AM and Ca 2؉ / calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CaMK) inhibitor KN-93. Constitutively active CaMKIV but not CaMKI activated p65, and treatment of MCF-7 cells with E2 induced phosphorylation of CaMKIV but not CaMKI. The results indicate that hormonal activation of p53 though nongenomic pathways was CaMKIV-dependent and involved cooperative p65-CTF-1 interactions.
This study investigated the intelligibility of native and Mandarin-accented English speech for na... more This study investigated the intelligibility of native and Mandarin-accented English speech for native English and native Mandarin listeners. The word-final voicing contrast was considered (as in minimal pairs such as `cub' and `cup') in a forced-choice word identification task. For these particular talkers and listeners, there was evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners (i.e., native Mandarin listeners were more accurate than native English listeners at identifying Mandarinaccented English words). However, there was no evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for talkers (i.e., native Mandarin listeners did not find Mandarin-accented English speech more intelligible than native English speech). When listener and talker phonological proficiency (operationalized as accentedness) was taken into account, it was found that the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for listeners held only for the low phonological proficiency listeners and low phonological proficiency speech. The intelligibility data were also considered in relation to various temporal-acoustic properties of native English and Mandarin-accented English speech in effort to better understand the properties of speech that may contribute to the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit.
Treatment of various substituted semicarbazones of aromatic aldehydes with sulfur monochloride yi... more Treatment of various substituted semicarbazones of aromatic aldehydes with sulfur monochloride yields the corresponding substituted 2,4‐dihydro‐1,2,4‐triazol‐3‐ones. With thiosemicarbazones, the products are derivatives either of the 2‐amino‐1,3,4 thiadiazole or of the 2,4‐dihydro‐1,2,4‐triazole‐3‐thione depending on the experimental conditions.
Electrical injuries are devastating and are difficult to manage due to the complexity of the tiss... more Electrical injuries are devastating and are difficult to manage due to the complexity of the tissue damage and physiological impacts. A paucity of literature exists which describes models for electrical injury. To date, those models have been used primarily to demonstrate thermal and morphological effects at the points of contact. Creating a more representative model for human injury and further elucidating the physics and pathophysiology of this unique form of tissue injury could be helpful in designing stage-appropriate therapy and improving limb salvage. An electrical burn delivery system was developed to accurately and reliably deliver electrical current at varying exposure times. A series of Sprague-Dawley rats were anesthetized and subjected to injury with 1000 V of direct current at incremental exposure times (2-20 seconds). Whole blood and plasma were obtained immediately before shock, immediately postinjury, and then hourly for 3 hours. Laser Doppler images of tissue adjacent to the entrance and exit wounds were obtained at the outlined time points to provide information on tissue perfusion. The electrical exposure was nonlethal in all animals. The size and the depth of contact injury increased in proportion to the exposure times and were reproducible. Skin adjacent to injury (both entrance and exit sites) exhibited marked edema within 30 minutes. In adjacent skin of upper extremity wounds, mean perfusion units increased immediately postinjury and then gradually decreased in proportion to the severity of the injuries. In the lower extremity, this phenomenon was only observed for short contact times, while longer contact times had marked malperfusion throughout. In the plasma, interleukin-10 and vascular endothelial growth factor levels were found to be augmented by injury. Systemic transcriptome analysis revealed promising information about signal networks involved in dermatological, connective tissue, and neurological pathophysiological processes. A reliable and reproducible in vivo model has been developed for characterizing the pathophysiology of high-tension electrical injury. Changes in perfusion were observed near and between entrance and exit wounds that appear consistent with injury severity. Further studies are underway to correlate differential mRNA expression with injury severity.
Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, 2012
Vegetable oils have been considered as an alternative to diesel fuel due to their comparable prop... more Vegetable oils have been considered as an alternative to diesel fuel due to their comparable properties and performance. However, the high viscosity of vegetable oil causes engine durability problems with long‐term usage. Vegetable oil viscosity can be reduced by blending with diesel fuel in thermodynamically stable mixtures using microemulsion fuel formulation techniques. This work focuses on the formulation of microemulsion fuels comprising diesel fuel and canola oil as the oil phase with ethanol and sec‐butanol as viscosity reducers as well as 1‐octanol and oleyl amine as surfactant/cosurfactant. Selective tests on an instrumented diesel engine were performed for formulated microemulsion fuels and No. 2 diesel fuel for comparison. The results show that formulated microemulsion fuels have fuel properties that meet the ASTM requirements for viscosity, cloud point, and pour point for biodiesel. Even more important, they have phase stability over a wide range of temperatures (−10 to ...
International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, 2009
In this review, the authors concluded that radiotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer was ass... more In this review, the authors concluded that radiotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer was associated with long-term increases in cardiac morbidity and mortality. There was insufficient information provided about the conduct of the review and the quality of the included studies to assess the accuracy and reliability of the authors' conclusions. Authors' objectives To assess the interaction between treatment era and follow-up duration on the reported effect of radiotherapy on cardiac events in patients treated for breast cancer. Searching The database MEDLINE was searched to December 2007 to locate relevant English-language studies; search terms were reported. Reference lists of retrieved articles were also searched. Study selection Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating patients treated with radiotherapy for breast cancer and subsequent treatment-related cardiac morbidity and mortality, were eligible for inclusion. Studies were excluded from the review if they: were published as abstracts only; failed to provide adequate information on the numbers of patients irradiated; failed to report cardiac toxicity in clearly designated risk units (hazard ratio, relative risk, odds ratio, incidence ratio and risk ratio); evaluated cardiac toxicity by the analysis of radiographic changes (for example, by single photon emission computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging). RCTs, cancer registry database studies, and institutional reviews were included. Cardiac toxicity was assessed by comparing patients who had received radiotherapy to those who had not; patients who received radiotherapy for leftsided breast cancer compared to patients who received radiotherapy for right-sided breast cancer; and evaluations of both of the other comparisons. Varying definitions of cardiac toxicity and different cardiac endpoints were reported including overall cardiac mortality/morbidity and specific cardiac diseases (myocardial infarction, ischaemic heart disease, cardiovascular disease and valvular heart disease). Two reviewers independently and collaboratively reviewed the abstracts and selected the full text articles for inclusion in the review. Assessment of study quality The authors did not state that they assessed validity. Data extraction Data were collected from trials that reported cardiac toxicity risk in clear designated risk units (hazard ratio, relative risk, odds ratio, incidence ratio and risk ratio). Where median follow-up duration was not specifically reported, the reviewers estimated follow-up durations using other information provided in each study. To examine the relationships between the treatment era, duration of follow-up and the risk of cardiac morbidity or mortality, the authors compared the trials by the following groupings: commencing before or after 1980, and with follow-up duration less than or greater then 10 years. The reviewers did not state how the data were extracted for the review, or how many reviewers performed the data extraction.
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