Single-Circulating Tumor Cell Whole Genome Amplification to Unravel Cancer Heterogeneity and Actionable Biomarkers

The field of single-cell analysis has advanced rapidly in the last decade and is providing new insights into the characterization of intercellular genetic heterogeneity and complexity, especially in human cancer. In this regard, analyzing single circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is becoming particularly attractive due to the easy access to CTCs from simple blood samples called “liquid biopsies”. Analysis of multiple single CTCs has the potential to allow the identification and characterization of cancer heterogeneity to guide best therapy and predict therapeutic response. However, single-CTC analysis is restricted by the low amounts of DNA in a single cell genome. Whole genome amplification (WGA) techniques have emerged as a key step, enabling single-cell downstream molecular analysis. Here, we provide an overview of recent advances in WGA and their applications in the genetic analysis of single CTCs, along with prospective views towards clinical applications. First, we focus on the technical challenges of isolating and recovering single CTCs and then explore different WGA methodologies and recent developments which have been utilized to amplify single cell genomes for further downstream analysis. Lastly, we list a portfolio of CTC studies which employ WGA and single-cell analysis for genetic heterogeneity and biomarker detection.     

Preferred Orientations in Iodide Titanium

The wire textures for cold rolled and recrystallized iodide titanium and the sheet textures for this material produced by cold and hot rolling, and recrystallization at a series of temperatures were determined. The effect of the α → β transformation on the sheet texture was noted.     

美国的下一代航空运输系统——发展愿景、成就与未来方向

1. Introduction The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) manages the lar-gest air traffic control system in the world. This system controls approximate...     

板载电源模块--开放式与封闭式的选择

目前,分布式电源架构被广泛用于通信和计算设备中,该电源架构经常采用板载电源(BMP)模块,在尽可能靠近负载点的地方进行电源变换.     

Low-Power Log-Domain CMOS Filter Bank for 2-D Sound Source Localization

This paper proposes the design of a novel current-mode front-end for the extraction of localization spectral cues from two audio signals, together with test results. The front-end consists of two parallel filter banks, envelope extraction and comparison circuitry, together with an AGC loop. The extracted cues are intended to be further processed in order to determine the source azimuth and elevation. A current-mode log-domain implementation using subthreshold MOS operation is used for micropower operation while still achieving a good bandwidth and linearity. A current-mode solution is also preferred because of the ease of implementation of certain mathematical operations. The front-end splits the input signals into different frequency bands and computes monaural and interaural spectral cues from the resulting signal envelopes for each band. The front-end has been optimized to operate at a supply voltage of 1.8 V and most blocks have been designed using a differential architecture. To our knowledge, this is the first log-domain implementation of a front-end for 2-D localization cues extraction. The design has been carried out using a standard double-poly double-metal 0.8 m CMOS process with V _T = 0.8 V. The bandpass filters which form the main core of the chip exhibit a measured dynamic range of 62 dB corresponding to 1.9% THD, while the total power dissipation is 890 W.     

A Practical Cross-Layer Mechanism For Fairness in 802.11 Networks

Many companies, organizations and communities are providing wireless hotspots that provide networking access using 802.11b wireless networks. Since wireless networks are more sensitive to variations in bandwidth and environmental interference than wired networks, most networks support a number of transmission rates that have different error and bandwidth properties. Access points can communicate with multiple clients running at different rates, but this leads to unfair bandwidth allocation. If an access point communicates with a mix of clients using both 1 Mb/s and 11 Mb/s transmission rates, the faster clients are effectively throttled to 1 Mb/s as well. This happens because the 802.11 MAC protocol approximate “station fairness”, with each station given an equal chance to access the media. We provide a solution to provide “rate proportional fairness”, where the 11 Mb/s stations receive more bandwidth than the 1 Mb/s stations. Unlike previous solutions to this problem, our mechanism is easy to implement, works with common operating systems and requires no change to the MAC protocol or the stations. Joseph Dunn received an M.S. in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003, and B. S. in coputer science and mathematics from the University of Arizona in 2001. His research interests are in the general area of computer systems, primarily focusing on security and scalability in distributed systems. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Michael Neufeld received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in December of 2004, having previously received an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2000 and an A.B. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1993. His research interests are in the general area of computer system, specifically concentrating on wireless networking, software defind/cognitive radio, and streerable antennas. He is currently a postdoc in the Computer Science department at the University of Calorado at Boulder pursuing research related to software defined radio and new MAC protocols for steerable phase array antennas. Anmol Sheth is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pune, India in 2001. He has been co-leading the development of the MANTIS operating system. He has co-authored three papers include MAC layer protocol design, energy-efficient wireless communication, and adapting communications to mobility. Dirk Grunwald received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1989 and joined the University of Colorado the same year. His work addresses research and teaching in the broad area of “computer systems”, which includes computer architecture, operating systems, networks, and storage systems. His interests also include issues in pervasive computing, novel computing models, and enjoying the mountains. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and in Electrical and Computer Engineering and is also the Director of the Colorado Center for Information Storage. John Bennett is a Professor of Computer Science with a joint appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also serves as Associate Dean for Education in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. He joined the CU-Boulder faculty in 2000, after serving on the faculty of Rice University for 11 years. While at Rice, Bennett pioneered a course in engineering design for both engineering and non-engineering students that has been emulated at several universities and high schools. In addition to other teaching awards, Bennett received the Keck Foundation National Award for Engineering Teaching Excellence for his work on this course. Bennett received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Washington. Prior to completing his doctoral studies, he was a U.S. Naval Officer for several years and founded and served as President of Pacific Mountain Research, Inc., where he supervised the design and development of a number of commercial computing systems. Bennett's primary research interests are broadly focused in the area of distributed systems, and more narrowly in distributed information management and distributed robotic macrosensors.     

Automatic quantification of changes in bone in serial MR images of joints

Recent innovations in drug therapies have made it highly desirable to obtain sensitive biomarkers of disease progression that can be used to quantify the performance of candidate disease modifying drugs. In order to measure potential image-based biomarkers of disease progression in an experimental model of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we present two different methods to automatically quantify changes in a bone in in-vivo serial magnetic resonance (MR) images from the model. Both methods are based on rigid and nonrigid image registration to perform the analysis. The first method uses segmentation propagation to delineate a bone from the serial MR images giving a global measure of temporal changes in bone volume. The second method uses rigid body registration to determine intensity change within a bone, and then maps these into a reference coordinate system using nonrigid registration. This gives a local measure of temporal changes in bone lesion volume. We detected significant temporal changes in local bone lesion volume in five out of eight identified candidate bone lesion regions, and significant difference in local bone lesion volume between male and female subjects in three out of eight candidate bone lesion regions. But the global bone volume was found to be fluctuating over time. Finally, we compare our findings with histology of the subjects and the manual segmentation of bone lesions.     

Electrochemically Tuned Properties for Electrolyte‐Free Carbon Nanotube Sheets

Injecting high electronic charge densities can profoundly change the optical, electrical, and magnetic properties of materials. Such charge injection in bulk materials has traditionally involved either dopant intercalation or the maintained use of a contacting electrolyte. Tunable electrochemical charge injection and charge retention, in which neither volumetric intercalation of ions nor maintained electrolyte contact is needed, are demonstrated for carbon nanotube sheets in the absence of an applied field. The tunability of electrical conductivity and electron field emission in the subsequent material is presented. Application of this material to supercapacitors may extend their charge‐storage times because they can retain charge after the removal of the electrolyte.     

Municipalities as a Driver for Wireless Broadband Access

Municipalities can form a driving force behind the deployment of new telecom infrastructure. While a telecom operator focuses on direct (financial) profits, a municipality is mainly interested in the social benefits for its inhabitants. In this paper, we evaluate a wireless municipality network from both a technical and an economic point of view. WiFi and WiMAX are considered as the most suited technologies for this purpose. A detailed techno-economic study has been performed including forecasting of the user adoption, dimensioning of the wireless network and modelling the related costs and revenues. The trade-off between installing a high number of relatively cheap WiFi access points, and a smaller number of more expensive WiMAX base stations for delivering full coverage is investigated in several scenarios.