Neuroendocrine Tumor‐Targeted Upconversion Nanoparticle‐Based Micelles for Simultaneous NIR‐Controlled Combination Chemotherapy and Photodynamic Therapy,and Fluorescence Imaging

Although neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are slow growing, they are frequently metastatic at the time of discovery and no longer amenable to curative surgery, emphasizing the need for the development of other treatments. In this study, multifunctional upconversion nanoparticle (UCNP)‐based theranostic micelles are developed for NET‐targeted and near‐infrared (NIR)‐controlled combination chemotherapy and photodynamic therapy (PDT), and bioimaging. The theranostic micelle is formed by individual UCNP functionalized with light‐sensitive amphiphilic block copolymers poly(4,5‐dimethoxy‐2‐nitrobenzyl methacrylate)‐polyethylene glycol (PNBMA‐PEG) and Rose Bengal (RB) photosensitizers. A hydrophobic anticancer drug, AB3, is loaded into the micelles. The NIR‐activated UCNPs emit multiple luminescence bands, including UV, 540 nm, and 650 nm. The UV peaks overlap with the absorption peak of photocleavable hydrophobic PNBMA segments, triggering a rapid drug release due to the NIR‐induced hydrophobic‐to‐hydrophilic transition of the micelle core and thus enabling NIR‐controlled chemotherapy. RB molecules are activated via luminescence resonance energy transfer to generate ¹O₂ for NIR‐induced PDT. Meanwhile, the 650 nm emission allows for efficient fluorescence imaging. KE108, a true pansomatostatin nonapeptide, as an NET‐targeting ligand, drastically increases the tumoral uptake of the micelles. Intravenously injected AB3‐loaded UCNP‐based micelles conjugated with RB and KE108—enabling NET‐targeted combination chemotherapy and PDT—induce the best antitumor efficacy.     

Advances in data processing for open-path Fourier transform infrared spectrometry of greenhouse gases

The automated quantification of three greenhouse gases, ammonia, methane, and nitrous oxide, in the vicinity of a large dairy farm by open-path Fourier transform infrared (OP/FT-IR) spectrometry at intervals of 5 min is demonstrated. Spectral pretreatment, including the automated detection and correction of the effect of interrupting the infrared beam, is by a moving object, and the automated correction for the nonlinear detector response is applied to the measured interferograms. Two ways of obtaining quantitative data from OP/FT-IR data are described. The first, which is installed in a recently acquired commercial OP/FT-IR spectrometer, is based on classical least-squares (CLS) regression, and the second is based on partial least-squares (PLS) regression. It is shown that CLS regression only gives accurate results if the absorption features of the analytes are located in very short spectral intervals where lines due to atmospheric water vapor are absent or very weak; of the three analytes examined, only ammonia fell into this category. On the other hand, PLS regression works allowed what appeared to be accurate results to be obtained for all three analytes.     

Body image, attitudes to weight, and misperceptions of figure preferences of the opposite sex: A comparison of men and women in two generations.

This study explores some possible causes of the recent increase in dieting and eating disorders among American women. Measures on body image, attitudes to eating and weight, and eating behaviors were collected from male (sons) and female (daughters) college students and their biological parents. All groups but the sons considered their current body shape to be heavier than their ideal. Mothers and daughters believed that men (of their own generation) prefer much thinner women than these men actually prefer. Mothers and daughters both showed great concern about weight and eating. Although fathers resembled mothers and daughters in their perception of being overweight, they were more similar to their sons in being relatively unconcerned about weight and eating. Hence, the major factor in concern about weight is sex rather than generation or discrepancy between perception of current and ideal body shape. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using hypertext for college course information

A hypertext browsing system was compared with a linearly based command-line system for accessing information concerning college transfer courses. Usability engineering guidelines were used in ascertaining student expectations and in designing the hypertext system. A prototype was tested against a linearly based command-line system. Performance in completing two tasks was significantly faster using the hypertext system. User perceptions of the hypertext system were more favorable than those of the linearly based system. These results are discussed relative to other studies which have not found a preference for hypertext systems. Differences in the type of task used as well as the need for incorporating usability engineering guidelines are emphasized.     

A differential deficit in time- versus event-based prospective memory in Parkinson's disease.

Objective: The aim of the current study was to clarify the nature and extent of impairment in time- versus event-based prospective memory in Parkinson's disease (PD). Prospective memory is thought to involve cognitive processes that are mediated by prefrontal systems and are executive in nature. Given that individuals with PD frequently show executive dysfunction, it is important to determine whether these individuals may have deficits in prospective memory that could impact daily functions, such as taking medications. Although it has been reported that individuals with PD evidence impairment in prospective memory, it is still unclear whether they show a greater deficit for time- versus event-based cues. Method: Fifty-four individuals with PD and 34 demographically similar healthy adults were administered a standardized measure of prospective memory that allows for a direct comparison of time-based and event-based cues. In addition, participants were administered a series of standardized measures of retrospective memory and executive functions. Results: Individuals with PD demonstrated impaired prospective memory performance compared to the healthy adults, with a greater impairment demonstrated for the time-based tasks. Time-based prospective memory performance was moderately correlated with measures of executive functioning, but only the Stroop Neuropsychological Screening Test emerged as a unique predictor in a linear regression. Conclusions: Findings are interpreted within the context of McDaniel and Einstein's (2000) multiprocess theory to suggest that individuals with PD experience particular difficulty executing a future intention when the cue to execute the prescribed intention requires higher levels of executive control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Therapists-in-training who experience a client suicide: Implications for supervision.

Client suicide is often an extraordinarily painful process for clinicians, especially those still in training. Given their training status, supervisees may look to their graduate programs and supervisors for guidance and support when such an event occurs. This study qualitatively examined the experiences of 13 prelicensure doctoral supervisees regarding their client's suicide. Findings suggest that these supervisees received minimal graduate training about suicide and that support from others, including supervisors, helped them cope with their client's death. Supervisors are advised to normalize and process supervisees' experiences of client suicide. Implications for training and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improving the usability of standard schemas

Due to the development of XML and other data models such as OWL and RDF, sharing data is an increasingly common task since these data models allow simple syntactic translation of data between applications. However, in order for data to be shared semantically, there must be a way to ensure that concepts are the same. One approach is to employ commonly usedschemas—called standard schemas —which help guarantee that syntactically identical objects have semantically similar meanings. As a result of the spread of data sharing, there has been widespread adoption of standard schemas in a broad range of disciplines and for a wide variety of applications within a very short period of time. However, standard schemas are still in their infancy and have not yet matured or been thoroughly evaluated. It is imperative that the data management research community takes a closer look at how well these standard schemas have fared in real-world applications to identify not only their advantages, but also the operational challenges that real users face.     

A General Model for Authenticated Data Structures

Query answers from on-line databases can easily be corrupted by hackers or malicious database publishers. Thus it is important to provide mechanisms which allow clients to trust the results from on-line queries. Authentic publication allows untrusted publishers to answer securely queries from clients on behalf of trusted off-line data owners. Publishers validate answers using hard-to-forge verification objects VOs), which clients can check efficiently. This approach provides greater scalability, by making it easy to add more publishers, and better security, since on-line publishers do not need to be trusted. To make authentic publication attractive, it is important for the VOs to be small, efficient to compute, and efficient to verify. This has lead researchers to develop independently several different schemes for efficient VO computation based on specific data structures. Our goal is to develop a unifying framework for these disparate results, leading to a generalized security result. In this paper we characterize a broad class of data structures which we call Search DAGs, and we develop a generalized algorithm for the construction of VOs for Search DAGs. We prove that the VOs thus constructed are secure, and that they are efficient to compute and verify. We demonstrate how this approach easily captures existing work on simple structures such as binary trees, multi-dimensional range trees, tries, and skip lists. Once these are shown to be Search DAGs, the requisite security and efficiency results immediately follow from our general theorems. Going further, we also use Search DAGs to produce and prove the security of authenticated versions of two complex data models for efficient multi-dimensional range searches. This allows efficient VOs to be computed (size O(log N + T)) for typical one- and two-dimensional range queries, where the query answer is of size T and the database is of size N. We also show I/O-efficient schemes to construct the VOs. For a system with disk blocks of size B, we answer one-dimensional and three-sided range queries and compute the VOs with O(log_B N + T/B) I/O operations using linear size data structures.