Breaking the Language Barrier: A Report on English Language Services in Greater Boston

Assesses Massachusetts' English for Speakers of Other Languages system, demand and supply for services, their quantity and quality, and challenges such as lack of coordination. Recommends ways to reduce gaps in services and raise efficiency and quality

New Enhance Approach Based on RC4 for the Grid Security

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Foregut microbiome in development of esophageal adenocarcinoma

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA), the type of cancer linked to heartburn due to gastroesophageal reflux diseases (GERD), has increased six fold in the past 30 years. This cannot currently be explained by the usual environmental or by host genetic factors. EA is the end result of a sequence of GERD-related diseases, preceded by reflux esophagitis (RE) and Barrett’s esophagus (BE). Preliminary studies by Pei and colleagues at NYU on elderly male veterans identified two types of microbiotas in the esophagus. Patients who carry the type II microbiota are >15 fold likely to have esophagitis and BE than those harboring the type I microbiota. In a small scale study, we also found that 3 of 3 cases of EA harbored the type II biota. The findings have opened a new approach to understanding the recent surge in the incidence of EA. 

Our long-term goal is to identify the cause of GERD sequence. The hypothesis to be tested is that changes in the foregut microbiome are associated with EA and its precursors, RE and BE in GERD sequence. We will conduct a case control study to demonstrate the microbiome disease association in every stage of GERD sequence, as well as analyze the trend in changes in the microbiome along disease progression toward EA, by two specific aims. Aim 1 is to conduct a comprehensive population survey of the foregut microbiome and demonstrate its association with GERD sequence. Furthermore, spatial relationship between the esophageal microbiota and upstream (mouth) and downstream (stomach) foregut microbiotas as well as temporal stability of the microbiome-disease association will also be examined. Aim 2 is to define the distal esophageal metagenome and demonstrate its association with GERD sequence. Detailed analyses will include pathway-disease and gene-disease associations. Archaea, fungi and viruses, if identified, also will be correlated with the diseases. A significant association between the foregut microbiome and GERD sequence, if demonstrated, will be the first step for eventually testing whether an abnormal microbiome is required for the development of the sequence of phenotypic changes toward EA. If EA and its precursors represent a microecological disease, treating the cause of GERD might become possible, for example, by normalizing the microbiota through use of antibiotics, probiotics, or prebiotics. Causative therapy of GERD could prevent its progression and reverse the current trend of increasing incidence of EA

The Role of MgO Modifier on Physical, Structural, Optical andThermoluminescence Properties of Lithium Borate Glass System

Synthesis of lithium borate glass system was carried using the melt quenching technique with varying concentrations ofmagnesium followed by analysing the different characteristics such as physical, structural, optical and thermoluminesceneusing various techniques eg. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV-Visspectroscopy, and Thermoluminescence (TL). The obtained XRD pattern confirmed the amorphous nature of the preparedsamples. Relevant physical parameters have been evaluated to study the response of these properties with respect tomagnesium content. The density and molar volume values showed that the network structure changed with increasingmagnesium content. It is evident from the FTIR spectra that the network of the prepared samples predominantly containsBO3 and BO4 units. The UV-vis spectra confirmed a decrease in the direct and indirect band gap values with increase inMgO content. Optical parameters namely refractive index, electronic polarizability, reflection loss and dielectric constantwere also calculated and found to be in good correlation with other studies. Following gamma rays irradiation with differentdoses, TL glow curves of prepared glasses were analysed. Deconvolution of TL glow curves was done using glow curveconvolution deconvolution (GCCD) function and trapping parameters of isolated peaks viz. activation energy and frequencyfactor have been determined

Simrank: Rapid and sensitive general-purpose k-mer search tool

Terabyte-scale collections of string-encoded data are expected from consortia efforts such as the Human Microbiome Project (http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/hmp). Intra- and inter-project data similarity searches are enabled by rapid k-mer matching strategies. Software applications for sequence database partitioning, guide tree estimation, molecular classification and alignment acceleration have benefited from embedded k-mer searches as sub-routines. However, a rapid, general-purpose, open-source, flexible, stand-alone k-mer tool has not been available. Here we present a stand-alone utility, Simrank, which allows users to rapidly identify database strings the most similar to query strings. Performance testing of Simrank and related tools against DNA, RNA, protein and human-languages found Simrank 10X to 928X faster depending on the dataset. Simrank provides molecular ecologists with a high-throughput, open source choice for comparing large sequence sets to find similarity