Microsatellites within the feline androgen receptor are suitable for X chromosome-linked clonality testing in archival material

Objectives A hallmark of neoplasms is their origin from a single cell; that is, clonality. Many techniques have been developed in human medicine to utilise this feature of tumours for diagnostic purposes. One approach is X chromosome-linked clonality testing using polymorphisms of genes encoded by genes on the X chromosome. The aim of this study was to determine if the feline androgen receptor gene was suitable for X chromosome-linked clonality testing. Methods The feline androgen receptor gene, was characterised and used to test clonality of feline lymphomas by PCR and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, using archival formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded material. Results Clonality of the feline lymphomas under study was confirmed and the gene locus was shown to represent a suitable target in clonality testing. Conclusions and relevance Because there are some pitfalls using X chromosome- linked clonality testing, further studies are necessary to establish this technique in the cat

Molecular characterization of the feline T-cell receptor γ alternate reading frame protein (TARP) ortholog

T-cell receptor γ alternate reading frame protein (TARP) is expressed by human prostate epithelial, prostate cancer, and mammary cancer cells, but is not found in normal mammary tissue. To date, this protein has only been described in humans. Additionally, no animal model has been established to investigate the potential merits of TARP as tumor marker or a target for adoptive tumor immunotherapy. In this study conducted to characterize feline T-cell receptor γ sequences, constructs very similar to human TARP transcripts were obtained by RACE from the spleen and prostate gland of cats. Transcription of TARP in normal, hyperplastic, and neoplastic feline mammary tissues was evaluated by conventional RT-PCR. In felines similarly to the situation reported in humans, a C-region encoding two open reading frames is spliced to a J-region gene. In contrast to humans, the feline J-region gene was found to be a pseudogene containing a deletion within its recombination signal sequence. Our findings demonstrated that the feline TARP ortholog is transcribed in the prostate gland and mammary tumors but not normal mammary tissues as is the case with human TARP

Precision determination of the dpi -> NN transition strength at threshold

An unusual but effective way to determine at threshold the dpi -> NN transition strength is to exploit the hadronic ground-state broadening in pionic deuterium, accessible by x-ray spectroscopy. The broadening is dominated by the true absorption channel dpi- -> nn, which is related to s-wave pion production pp -> dpi+ by charge symmetry and detailed balance. Using the exotic atom circumvents the problem of Coulomb corrections to the cross section as necessary in the production experiments. Our dedicated measurement finds (1171+23/-49) meV for the broadening yielding (252+5/-11) \mub.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Absolute spin-valve effect with superconducting proximity structures

We investigate spin dependent transport in hybrid superconductor(S)--normal-metal(N)--ferromagnet(F) structures under conditions of proximity effect. We demonstrate the feasibility of the absolute spin-valve effect for a certain interval of voltages in a system consisting of two coupled tri-layer structures. Our results are also valid for non-collinear magnetic configurations of the ferromagnets.Comment: 1 TEX file, 2 Postscript files. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Pionic Deuterium

The strong interaction shift and broadening in pionic deuterium have been remeasured with high statistics by means of the (3p-1s) X-ray transition using the cyclotron trap and a high-resolution crystal spectrometer. Preliminary results are (-2325+/-31) meV (repulsive) for the shift and (1171+23/-49} meV for the width, which yields precise values for the pion-deuteron scattering length and the threshold parameter for pion production.Comment: Conf. Proc. Few Body 19 (FB19), August 31 - September 5, 2009, Bonn, Germany 9 pages, 13 figure

Ambient-aware continuous care through semantic context dissemination

Background: The ultimate ambient-intelligent care room contains numerous sensors and devices to monitor the patient, sense and adjust the environment and support the staff. This sensor-based approach results in a large amount of data, which can be processed by current and future applications, e. g., task management and alerting systems. Today, nurses are responsible for coordinating all these applications and supplied information, which reduces the added value and slows down the adoption rate. The aim of the presented research is the design of a pervasive and scalable framework that is able to optimize continuous care processes by intelligently reasoning on the large amount of heterogeneous care data. Methods: The developed Ontology-based Care Platform (OCarePlatform) consists of modular components that perform a specific reasoning task. Consequently, they can easily be replicated and distributed. Complex reasoning is achieved by combining the results of different components. To ensure that the components only receive information, which is of interest to them at that time, they are able to dynamically generate and register filter rules with a Semantic Communication Bus (SCB). This SCB semantically filters all the heterogeneous care data according to the registered rules by using a continuous care ontology. The SCB can be distributed and a cache can be employed to ensure scalability. Results: A prototype implementation is presented consisting of a new-generation nurse call system supported by a localization and a home automation component. The amount of data that is filtered and the performance of the SCB are evaluated by testing the prototype in a living lab. The delay introduced by processing the filter rules is negligible when 10 or fewer rules are registered. Conclusions: The OCarePlatform allows disseminating relevant care data for the different applications and additionally supports composing complex applications from a set of smaller independent components. This way, the platform significantly reduces the amount of information that needs to be processed by the nurses. The delay resulting from processing the filter rules is linear in the amount of rules. Distributed deployment of the SCB and using a cache allows further improvement of these performance results

Modelling of Optical Detection of Spin-Polarized Carrier Injection into Light-Emitting Devices

We investigate the emission of multimodal polarized light from Light Emitting Devices due to spin-aligned carriers injection. The results are derived through operator Langevin equations, which include thermal and carrier-injection fluctuations, as well as non-radiative recombination and electronic g-factor temperature dependence. We study the dynamics of the optoelectronic processes and show how the temperature-dependent g-factor and magnetic field affect the polarization degree of the emitted light. In addition, at high temperatures, thermal fluctuation reduces the efficiency of the optoelectronic detection method for measuring spin-polarization degree of carrier injection into non-magnetic semicondutors.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, replaced by revised version. To appear in Phys. Rev.

First observation of Dorylus ant feeding in Budongo chimpanzees supports absence of stick-tool culture

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no 283871.The use of stick- or probe-tools is a chimpanzee universal, recorded in all long-term study populations across Africa, except one: Budongo, Uganda. Here, after 25-years of observation, stick-tool use remains absent under both natural circumstances and strong experimental scaffolding. Instead, the chimpanzees employ a rich repertoire of leaf-tools for a variety of dietary and hygiene tasks. One use of stick-tools in other communities is in feeding on the aggressive Dorylus ‘army-ant’ species, consumed by chimpanzees at all long-term study sites outside of mid-Western Uganda. Here we report the first observation of army-ant feeding in Budongo, in which individuals from the Waibira chimpanzee community employed detached leaves to feed on a ground swarm. We describe the behaviour and discuss whether or not it can be considered tool-use, together with its implication for the absence of stick-tool ‘culture’ in Budongo chimpanzees.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A Search for Selectrons and Squarks at HERA

Data from electron-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 300 GeV are used for a search for selectrons and squarks within the framework of the minimal supersymmetric model. The decays of selectrons and squarks into the lightest supersymmetric particle lead to final states with an electron and hadrons accompanied by large missing energy and transverse momentum. No signal is found and new bounds on the existence of these particles are derived. At 95% confidence level the excluded region extends to 65 GeV for selectron and squark masses, and to 40 GeV for the mass of the lightest supersymmetric particle.Comment: 13 pages, latex, 6 Figure

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.