Chylous Leak During Posterior Approach to Juvenile Scoliosis Surgery: A Case Report.

CaseWe report the first documented case of chylous leak recognized intraoperatively during posterior spinal instrumentation and fusion for juvenile scoliosis in a female patient with a history of thoracotomy and decortication for an empyema.ConclusionsThoracic duct injury can lead to severe morbidity and mortality because of chylothorax formation. Although chylous leaks are a well-documented complication of the anterior approach to spine surgery, leaks during the posterior approach are rarely reported. When these chylous leaks are recognized intraoperatively, the likelihood of serious complications may be minimized by drain placement before closure

Searching for Inflow Towards Massive Starless Clump Candidates Identified in the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey

Recent Galactic plane surveys of dust continuum emission at long wavelengths have identified a population of dense, massive clumps with no evidence for on-going star formation. These massive starless clump candidates are excellent sites to search for the initial phases of massive star formation before the feedback from massive star formation effects the clump. In this study, we search for the spectroscopic signature of inflowing gas toward starless clumps, some of which are massive enough to form a massive star. We observed 101 starless clump candidates identified in the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS) in HCO+ J = 1-0 using the 12m Arizona Radio Observatory telescope. We find a small blue excess of E = (Nblue - Nred)/Ntotal = 0.03 for the complete survey. We identified 6 clumps that are good candidates for inflow motion and used a radiative transfer model to calculate mass inflow rates that range from 500 - 2000 M /Myr. If the observed line profiles are indeed due to large-scale inflow motions, then these clumps will typically double their mass on a free fall time. Our survey finds that massive BGPS starless clump candidates with inflow signatures in HCO+ J = 1-0 are rare throughout our Galaxy.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Metabolic analysis of the interaction between plants and herbivores

Insect herbivores by necessity have to deal with a large arsenal of plant defence metabolites. The levels of defence compounds may be increased by insect damage. These induced plant responses may also affect the metabolism and performance of successive insect herbivores. As the chemical nature of induced responses is largely unknown, global metabolomic analyses are a valuable tool to gain more insight into the metabolites possibly involved in such interactions. This study analyzed the interaction between feral cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and small cabbage white caterpillars (Pieris rapae) and how previous attacks to the plant affect the caterpillar metabolism. Because plants may be induced by shoot and root herbivory, we compared shoot and root induction by treating the plants on either plant part with jasmonic acid. Extracts of the plants and the caterpillars were chemically analysed using Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography/Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (UPLCT/MS). The study revealed that the levels of three structurally related coumaroylquinic acids were elevated in plants treated on the shoot. The levels of these compounds in plants and caterpillars were highly correlated: these compounds were defined as the ‘metabolic interface’. The role of these metabolites could only be discovered using simultaneous analysis of the plant and caterpillar metabolomes. We conclude that a metabolomics approach is useful in discovering unexpected bioactive compounds involved in ecological interactions between plants and their herbivores and higher trophic levels.

A Fluoride-Derived Electrophilic Late-Stage Fluorination Reagent for PET Imaging

The unnatural isotope fluorine-18 $(^{18}F)$ is used as a positron emitter in molecular imaging. Currently, many potentially useful $^{18}F$-labeled probe molecules are inaccessible for imaging because no fluorination chemistry is available to make them. The 110-minute half-life of $^{18}F$ requires rapid syntheses for which $[^{18}F]$fluoride is the preferred source of fluorine because of its practical access and suitable isotope enrichment. However, conventional $[^{18}F]$fluoride chemistry has been limited to nucleophilic fluorination reactions. We report the development of a palladium-based electrophilic fluorination reagent derived from fluoride and its application to the synthesis of aromatic $^{18}F$-labeled molecules via late-stage fluorination. Late-stage fluorination enables the synthesis of conventionally unavailable positron emission tomography (PET) tracers for anticipated applications in pharmaceutical development as well as preclinical and clinical PET imaging.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog

Axion Theory and Model Building

Axions are light pseudoscalar bosons postulated with many motivations in particle physics and cosmology, including the strong CP problem and the dark matter in our Universe. In this lecture notes, we discuss a variety of known ultraviolet (UV) theories for axions and their low energy properties. We are primarily concerned with the quantum chromodynamics axion solving the strong CP problem, as well as lighter axion-like particles. In regard to their UV origin, such light axions may arise from the spontaneous breakdown of a linearly realized global Peccei-Quinn U(1) symmetry in the context of 4-dimensional effective field theories, or they may originate from a gauge field in higher dimensional theories. It is noted that different UV models for these axions predict a distinctive pattern of low energy axion couplings, which may have interesting implications for laboratory, astrophysical, or cosmological studies of axions. We also provide an introductory discussion of the effective field theory for axions from p-form gauge fields in string theory with concrete examples.Comment: 20 pages, contribution to 1st Training School of the COST Action COSMIC WISPers (CA21106

Versatile RNA Interference Nanoplatform for Systemic Delivery of RNAs

Development of nontoxic, tumor-targetable, and potent in vivo RNA delivery systems remains an arduous challenge for clinical application of RNAi therapeutics. Herein, we report a versatile RNAi nanoplatform based on tumor-targeted and pH-responsive nanoformulas (NFs). The NF was engineered by combination of an artificial RNA receptor, Zn(II)-DPA, with a tumor-targetable and drug-loadable hyaluronic acid nanoparticle, which was further modified with a calcium phosphate (CaP) coating by in situ mineralization. The NF can encapsulate small-molecule drugs within its hydrophobic inner core and strongly secure various RNA molecules (siRNAs, miRNAs, and oligonucleotides) by utilizing Zn(II)-DPA and a robust CaP coating. We substantiated the versatility of the RNAi nanoplatform by demonstrating effective delivery of siRNA and miRNA for gene silencing or miRNA replacement into different human types of cancer cells in vitro and into tumor-bearing mice in vivo by intravenous administration. The therapeutic potential of NFs coloaded with an anticancer drug doxorubicin (Dox) and multidrug resistance 1 gene target siRNA (siMDR) was also demonstrated in this study. NFs loaded with Dox and siMDR could successfully sensitize drug-resistant OVCAR8/ADR cells to Dox and suppress OVCAR8/ADR tumor cell proliferation in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. This gene/drug delivery system appears to be a highly effective nonviral method to deliver chemo- and RNAi therapeutics into host cells.National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.)National Institutes of Health (U.S.)AXA Research Fund (Postdoctoral Fellowship)National Research Foundation of Korea (Postdoctoral Fellowship 2013R1A6A3A03)National Research Foundation of Korea (Grant 2009-0080734

Pharmaceutical screen identifies novel target processes for activation of autophagy with a broad translational potential

Autophagy is a conserved homeostatic process active in all human cells and affecting a spectrum of diseases. Here we use a pharmaceutical screen to discover new mechanisms for activation of autophagy. We identify a subset of pharmaceuticals inducing autophagic flux with effects in diverse cellular systems modelling specific stages of several human diseases such as HIV transmission and hyperphosphorylated tau accumulation in Alzheimer’s disease. One drug, flubendazole, is a potent inducer of autophagy initiation and flux by affecting acetylated and dynamic microtubules in a reciprocal way. Disruption of dynamic microtubules by flubendazole results in mTOR deactivation and dissociation from lysosomes leading to TFEB (transcription factor EB) nuclear translocation and activation of autophagy. By inducing microtubule acetylation, flubendazole activates JNK1 leading to Bcl-2 phosphorylation, causing release of Beclin1 from Bcl-2-Beclin1 complexes for autophagy induction, thus uncovering a new approach to inducing autophagic flux that may be applicable in disease treatment

Dual role for B-1a cells in immunity to influenza virus infection

B-1 cells are known to contribute most of the “natural antibodies” that are secreted in the steady state, antibodies which are crucial for protection against many pathogens including influenza virus. Whether the CD5+ B-1a subset plays a role during an active immune response is incompletely understood. In contrast to recent data suggesting a passive role for B-1a cells, data provided here show strong highly localized activation of B-1 cells in the draining lymph nodes of the respiratory tract after influenza infection. B-1 cells are identified as a major source for both steady state and infection-induced local virus-neutralizing IgM. The CD5+ B-1a subset is the main B-1 cell subset generating this response. B-1a cell responses are generated by their increased local accumulation rather than by antigen-specific expansion. Our study reveals that during infection with influenza, CD5-expressing B-1a cells respond to and contribute to protection, presumably without the need for B cell receptor–mediated antigen-specific signals, which are known to induce the death of B-1a cells rather than activation. With that, our data reveal fundamental differences in the response regulation of B-1 and B-2 cells during an infection

Observation of compositional domains within individual copper indium sulfide quantum dots

The origin of photoluminescence in copper indium sulfide (CIS) quantum dots (Qdots) has previously been ascribed to a donor-acceptor pair (DAP) recombination, with a crystal lattice defect implicated as the origin of the donor state. In this study, electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) was used to observe defect-rich compositional domains within individual CIS Qdots, supporting a model of defect-state-mediated photoluminescence for these particles, and identifying them as an ideal model system for future study of lattice defects on Qdot properties