Comprehensive Mutational and Phenotypic Characterization of New Metastatic Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cell Lines Reveal Novel Drug Susceptibilities

Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is a common skin cancer. Most patients who develop metastases (2–5%) present with advanced disease that requires a combination of radical surgery and adjuvant radiation therapy. There are few effective therapies for refractory disease. In this study, we describe novel patient-derived cell lines from cSCC metastases of the head and neck (designated UW-CSCC1 and UW-CSCC2). The cell lines genotypically and phenotypically resembled the original patient tumor and were tumorogenic in mice. Differences in cancer-related gene expression between the tumor and cell lines after various culturing conditions could be largely reversed by xenografting and reculturing. The novel drug susceptibilities of UW-CSCC1 and an irradiated subclone UW-CSCC1-R to drugs targeting cell cycle, PI3K/AKT/mTOR, and DNA damage pathways were observed using high-throughput anti-cancer and kinase-inhibitor compound libraries, which correlate with either copy number variations, targetable mutations and/or the upregulation of gene expression. A secondary screen of top hits in all three cell lines including PIK3CA-targeting drugs supports the utility of targeting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway in this disease. UW-CSCC cell lines are thus useful preclinical models for determining targetable pathways and candidate therapeutics.     

Synthesis and characterization of conductive neural tissue engineering scaffolds based on urethane-polycaprolactone

Polymeric biomaterials play a key role in enhancement of lengthy nerve regeneration and various types of scaffolds were used to pave the way for nerve regeneration. Electrospun fibrous scaffolds have special potential applicability in controlling the cell behaviors such as adhesion, growth, proliferation and function. This study attempted to design a conductive and porous fibrous scaffold containing polycaprolactone (PCL) and polyaniline (PANI) with controllable degradation rate by adding urethane groups in scaffold structures. FTIR and NMR analysis was used to characterize the chemical bonds. Morphology, porosity, conductivity and degradation rate of scaffolds were also evaluated. To assess the cell–scaffold interaction, PC-12 cell line was cultured on the scaffolds. Results showed that the degradation rate of composite samples significantly increased in 50 time period. It seems that these results suggest that the composite fibrous scaffolds having proportions of UPCL/PCL/PANI45:20:35 exhibit the most balanced properties that meet all of the required specifications for neural cells and possess a potential application in neural tissue engineering.     

Comparison between single-phase and two-phases CFD modeling of laminar forced convection flow of nanofluids in a circular tube under constant heat flux

In this article, forced convection heat transfer with laminar and developed flow for water-Al₂O₃ nanofluid inside a circular tube under constant heat flux from the wall was numerically investigated using computational fluid dynamics method. Both single and two-phase models are accomplished for either constant or temperature dependent properties. For this study nanofluids with size particles equal to 100 nm and particle concentrations of 1 and 4 wt% were used. It is observed that the nanoparticles when dispersed in base fluid such as water enhance the convective heat transfer coefficient. The Nusselt number and heat transfer coefficient of nanofluids were obtained for different nanoparticle concentrations and various Reynolds numbers. Heat transfer was enhanced by increasing the concentration of nanoparticles in nanofluid and Reynolds number. Also, a correlation based on the dimensionless numbers was obtained for the prediction the Nusselt number. The modeling results showed that the predicted values were in very good agreement with reference experimental data.     

Generalized IRA Erasure Correcting Codes for Hybrid Iterative/Maximum Likelihood Decoding

The design of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes under hybrid iterative / maximum likelihood decoding is addressed for the binary erasure channel (BEC). Specifically, we focus on generalized irregular repeat-accumulate (GeIRA) codes, which offer both efficient encoding and design flexibility. We show that properly designed GeIRA codes tightly approach the performance of an ideal maximum distance separable (MDS) code, even for short block sizes. For example, our (2048,1024) code reaches a codeword error rate of 10^-5 at channel erasure probability isin= 0.450, where an ideal (2048,1024) MDS code would reach the same error rate at isin = 0.453.     

Optimisation of soya bean oil bleaching by ultrasonic processing and investigate the physico‐chemical properties of bleached soya bean oil

In this study, an ultrasonic bleaching method for soya bean oil under different conditions was optimised by monitoring the reduction of oil‐containing colourants. Ultrasonic power, clay content, temperature and time had a significant interaction effect on (P < 0.05) the reduction of oil pigments and colourants. Under optimised conditions, red and yellow colour indices in the ultrasound‐bleached soya bean oil reduced to 74.44% and 75.55%, and 54.18% and 58.85%, respectively, at amplitudes of 85% and 65%. Carotenoid and chlorophyll concentrations also reduced to 81.19% and 83.62%, and 94.66% and 95.26%, respectively, at 85% and 65% ultrasonic power. The overall contents of sterols and tocopherols decreased using ultrasonic bleaching process compared with the neutralised soya bean oil. Although the peroxide value (PV) of the soya bean oil after ultrasonic and control bleaching reduced, this index was higher in the ultrasonic bleached oil than the control one. The results showed that the ultrasonic bleaching process could be an alternative to the industrial bleaching method as it reduced clay usage, temperature and time of bleaching about 35%, 35% and 10%, respectively.     

On the inverse symbol-error probability for diversity reception

This paper addresses the problem of finding the inverse symbol-error probability (SEP) expression for coherent detection of M-ary phase-shift keying with multichannel reception and maximal ratio combining in Rayleigh fading. To this aim, we derive upper and lower bounds on SEP that are simply invertible and uniformly tight for all values of signal-to-noise ratio. This enables us to obtain tight bounds on the inverse SEP and on the symbol-error outage (SEO), i.e., SEP-based outage probability. As an example of application to digital mobile radio, the SEO in a log-normal shadowing environment is analyzed.