Cells as delivery vehicles for cancer therapeutics

Cell-based therapeutics have advanced significantly over the past decade and are poised to become a major pillar of modern medicine. Three cell types in particular have been studied in detail for their ability to home to tumors and to deliver a variety of different payloads. Neural stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and monocytes have each been shown to have great potential as future delivery systems for cancer therapy. A variety of other cell types have also been studied. These results demonstrate that the field of cell-based therapeutics will only continue to grow

Two quantum analogues of Fisher information from a large deviation viewpoint of quantum estimation

We discuss two quantum analogues of Fisher information, symmetric logarithmic derivative (SLD) Fisher information and Kubo-Mori-Bogoljubov (KMB) Fisher information from a large deviation viewpoint of quantum estimation and prove that the former gives the true bound and the latter gives the bound of consistent superefficient estimators. In another comparison, it is shown that the difference between them is characterized by the change of the order of limits.Comment: LaTeX with iopart.cls, iopart12.clo, iopams.st

Harmonic Analysis of Boolean Networks: Determinative Power and Perturbations

Consider a large Boolean network with a feed forward structure. Given a probability distribution on the inputs, can one find, possibly small, collections of input nodes that determine the states of most other nodes in the network? To answer this question, a notion that quantifies the determinative power of an input over the states of the nodes in the network is needed. We argue that the mutual information (MI) between a given subset of the inputs X = {X_1, ..., X_n} of some node i and its associated function f_i(X) quantifies the determinative power of this set of inputs over node i. We compare the determinative power of a set of inputs to the sensitivity to perturbations to these inputs, and find that, maybe surprisingly, an input that has large sensitivity to perturbations does not necessarily have large determinative power. However, for unate functions, which play an important role in genetic regulatory networks, we find a direct relation between MI and sensitivity to perturbations. As an application of our results, we analyze the large-scale regulatory network of Escherichia coli. We identify the most determinative nodes and show that a small subset of those reduces the overall uncertainty of the network state significantly. Furthermore, the network is found to be tolerant to perturbations of its inputs

Inconsistency of the MLE for the joint distribution of interval censored survival times and continuous marks

This paper considers the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) for the joint distribution function of an interval censored survival time and a continuous mark variable. We provide a new explicit formula for the MLE in this problem. We use this formula and the mark specific cumulative hazard function of Huang and Louis (1998) to obtain the almost sure limit of the MLE. This result leads to necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency of the MLE which imply that the MLE is inconsistent in general. We show that the inconsistency can be repaired by discretizing the marks. Our theoretical results are supported by simulations.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figure

Cell Based Drug Delivery: Micrococcus luteus Loaded Neutrophils as Chlorhexidine Delivery Vehicles in a Mouse Model of Liver Abscesses in Cattle

Citation: Wendel, S. O., Menon, S., Alshetaiwi, H., Shrestha, T. B., Chlebanowski, L., Hsu, W. W., . . . Troyer, D. L. (2015). Cell Based Drug Delivery: Micrococcus luteus Loaded Neutrophils as Chlorhexidine Delivery Vehicles in a Mouse Model of Liver Abscesses in Cattle. Plos One, 10(5), 13. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0128144The recent WHO report on antibiotic resistances shows a dramatic increase of microbial resistance against antibiotics. With only a few new antibiotics in the pipeline, a different drug delivery approach is urgently needed. We have obtained evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of a cell based drug delivery system that utilizes the innate immune system as targeting carrier for antibacterial drugs. In this study we show the efficient loading of neutrophil granulocytes with chlorhexidine and the complete killing of E. coli as well as Fusobacterium necrophorum in in-vitro studies. Fusobacterium necrophorum causes hepatic abscesses in cattle fed high grain diets. We also show in a mouse model that this delivery system targets infections of F. necrophorum in the liver and reduces the bacterial burden by an order of magnitude from approximately 2.10(6) to 1.10(5)

Regularity Properties and Pathologies of Position-Space Renormalization-Group Transformations

We reconsider the conceptual foundations of the renormalization-group (RG) formalism, and prove some rigorous theorems on the regularity properties and possible pathologies of the RG map. Regarding regularity, we show that the RG map, defined on a suitable space of interactions (= formal Hamiltonians), is always single-valued and Lipschitz continuous on its domain of definition. This rules out a recently proposed scenario for the RG description of first-order phase transitions. On the pathological side, we make rigorous some arguments of Griffiths, Pearce and Israel, and prove in several cases that the renormalized measure is not a Gibbs measure for any reasonable interaction. This means that the RG map is ill-defined, and that the conventional RG description of first-order phase transitions is not universally valid. For decimation or Kadanoff transformations applied to the Ising model in dimension $d \ge 3$, these pathologies occur in a full neighborhood $\{ \beta > \beta_0 ,\, |h| < \epsilon(\beta) \}$ of the low-temperature part of the first-order phase-transition surface. For block-averaging transformations applied to the Ising model in dimension $d \ge 2$, the pathologies occur at low temperatures for arbitrary magnetic-field strength. Pathologies may also occur in the critical region for Ising models in dimension $d \ge 4$. We discuss in detail the distinction between Gibbsian and non-Gibbsian measures, and give a rather complete catalogue of the known examples. Finally, we discuss the heuristic and numerical evidence on RG pathologies in the light of our rigorous theorems.Comment: 273 pages including 14 figures, Postscript, See also ftp.scri.fsu.edu:hep-lat/papers/9210/9210032.ps.

Virtual Infrastructure based Routing Algorithm for IoT enabled Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Gateway

The IoT technology is seeking the attention of industry and researcher day by day due to its large number of applications and is off monitoring and controlling the object from the remote location. The very basic and important element of IoT is wireless sensor network where sensor nodes are attached with the object and generates the sensory data related to the object an actuator can provide the movement to the object. To make it a success reliable and efficient communication model is the main requirement. To fulfil the objective related to IoT application success in this paper a communication protocol called virtual infrastructure based routing algorithm is proposed. In this proposal a virtual cross region structure is formed in the central of the sensor network, which is called meeting region. In this meeting region the sensor nodes send their generated data and the gateway node receives those data.&nbsp; The problem of energy hole, the mobile gateway node is considered in this proposal. The proposed algorithm is implemented using the standard wireless sensor network simulator tool and compared the performance of the proposed algorithm with the existing algorithm based on some standard performance metrics. The simulation outcome exhibits that the proposed algorithm outperformed the existing algorithms in different performance metrics

Large deviations of the sample mean in general vector spaces

Let X1, X2, &#183;&#183;&#183; be a sequence of i.i.d. random vectors taking values in a space V, let X-n = (X1 + &#183;&#183;&#183; + Xn)/n, and for J &#8834; V let an(J) = n-1log P(X-n&#8712; J). A powerful theory concerning the existence and value of limn&#8594;&#8734; an(J) has been developed by Lanford for the case when V is finite-dimensional and X1 is bounded. The present paper is both an exposition of Lanford's theory and an extension of it to the general case. A number of examples are considered; these include the cases when X1 is a Brownian motion or Brownian bridge on the real line, and the case when X-n is the empirical distribution function based on the first n values in an i.i.d. sequence of random variables (the Sanov problem)

Integrated nutrient management in calendula (Calendula officinalis L.) grown in partially reclaimed sodic soil condition

To study the effect of nutrient management on growth and flower yield of Calendula, field experiments were carried out during 2009 and 2010. Results indicated that significantly higher plant height (40.6 cm), number of leaves (142) at 90 days, total number of flowers plant-1 (126), total fresh weight of flowers (87.5 q ha-1) and dry weight of flowers (25.0 q ha-1) were observed by the application of 10 t farmyard manure (FYM) + ½ NPK + spraying of micronutrients followed by sole application of recommended dose of inorganic fertilizer (i.e. NPK@ 80:30:30 kg ha-1) which was at par with application of half dose of recommended dose of inorganic fertilizer supplemented with half dose of organic fertilizer. Application of 20 t FYM ha-1 improved the soil physicochemical parameters i.e. pH, EC, organic carbon and available NPK in comparison to control. &nbsp

Integrated nutrient management in calendula (Calendula officinalis L.) grown in partially reclaimed sodic soil condition

To study the effect of nutrient management on growth and flower yield of Calendula, field experiments were carried out during 2009 and 2010. Results indicated that significantly higher plant height (40.6 cm), number of leaves (142) at 90 days, total number of flowers plant-1 (126), total fresh weight of flowers (87.5 q ha-1) and dry weight of flowers (25.0 q ha-1) were observed by the application of 10 t farmyard manure (FYM) + ½ NPK + spraying of micronutrients followed by sole application of recommended dose of inorganic fertilizer (i.e. NPK@ 80:30:30 kg ha-1) which was at par with application of half dose of recommended dose of inorganic fertilizer supplemented with half dose of organic fertilizer. Application of 20 t FYM ha-1 improved the soil physicochemical parameters i.e. pH, EC, organic carbon and available NPK in comparison to control. &nbsp