Interaction between radiation and drug damage in mammalian cells. II. The effect of actinomycin-D on the repair of the sublethal radiation damage in plateau phase cells

The effect of actinomycin-D (AMD) on radiation damage repair was studied in plateau phase V79 Chinese hamster cells. Sublethal radiation damage repair, as demonstrated by survival fluctuations following two x-ray exposures separted by time, was observed in our plateau phase cells. Plateau phase cells exposed to 0.01-0.04 mug/ml AMD (a nontoxic regimen to 8 hours) between x-ray exposures were less able to repair sublethal damage. If plateau phase cells were plated at low dilutions into fresh medium (conditions for resuming exponential growth) immediately after the first x-ray dose, and exposed to 0.01--0.04 mug/ml AMD until the second dose, inhibition of sublethal damage repair and additional cell killing were observed particularly at 0.04 mug/ml AMD. It is suggested that radiation-drug damage interactions should be studied in plateau phase cells and in cells resuming exponential growth after plateau phase (possibly analogous to "recruitment"), as well as in exponential phase cultures.     

Effects of hypothalamic temperature changes on the sweat rate in Macaca mulatta

The concept of cardiac reconditioning centers for the prevention and rehabilitation of coronary patients has been tremendously successful in Germany over the past 20 years. At least 40 such centers are located throughout the country. Physicians, nurses, and physical therapists work closely together in the various facets of the rehabilitation process. The financial backing for these facilities is primarily through governmental and regional insurance companies, whose officials are apparently convinced that in the long run supporting preventive measures is financially sound. Objective data supporting their convictions come from studies such as that of Brusis, who showed that such as that of 1,500 employees was diminished by nearly 70 percent during a two-year period after cardiac reconditioning, as compared to a similar time period before the rehabilitation experience. Subjective benefits, which are extremely difficult to quantitate in meaningful terms, were nonetheless expressed by nearly all the patients with whom I conversed. Perhaps they have experienced the same feelings that Mark Twain did when he observed that "all frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps; the Great Spirit of the Mountains breathed his own peace upon their hurt minds and sore hearts and healed them."     

The emotional aftermath of adoption

Adopted children are emotionally vulnerable. Adoptive parents must cope with more complex problems than biologic parents. The family physician can provide valuable counseling. Preadoption counseling focuses on motivation and ambivalence. After adoption, however, serious, sometimes predictable, issues arise, such as: how and when to tell the child he is adopted; the child's search for knowledge; the problem of subsequent divorce; the birth of a natural sibling, and the involvement of other family members. New concepts include "open adoption" and "single parent adoption."     

Development of a collaborative CAD/CAM system

This paper presents the development of a collaborative CAD/CAM system (COCADCAM). COCADCAM extends an existing single-location CAD/CAM system to a multi-location CAD/CAM application so that two geographically dispersed CAD/CAM users can work together on a three-dimensional CAD-geometry coediting and CAD-related tasks collaboratively and dynamically. COCADCAM dynamically supports CAD data communication that are not available in traditional single-location CAD/CAM. The dynamic data communication is achieved through the development of networking algorithms and CAD/CAM functions in this paper. The networking algorithms based on UNIX Interprocess Communication (IPC), the Network File System (NFS), and a connection-oriented client and server model under the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite. The CAD/CAM functions included surface modelling, simulation of a milling toolpath, and post-processing of an NC program following collaborative CAD-geometry coediting, which are directly or indirectly supported by the Application Programming Interface (API) of the CAD/CAM software. The networking algorithms and CAD/CAM functions together can facilitate an environment for CAD-geometry coediting and related tasks such as design, analysis and manufacture. COCADCAM has been successfully implemented through local area network (LAN) and the Internet; a remote machining cell is also linked so that the generated NC program based on a coedited free-form surface can be used for the physical machining operation. The algorithm proposed by COCADCAM can be referenced for the extension of other single-location CAD/CAM systems to multi-location applications.     

Mining Web informative structures and contents based on entropy analysis

We study the problem of mining the informative structure of a news Web site that consists of thousands of hyperlinked documents. We define the informative structure of a news Web site as a set of index pages (or referred to as TOC, i.e., table of contents, pages) and a set of article pages linked by these TOC pages. Based on the Hyperlink Induced Topics Search (HITS) algorithm, we propose an entropy-based analysis (LAMIS) mechanism for analyzing the entropy of anchor texts and links to eliminate the redundancy of the hyperlinked structure so that the complex structure of a Web site can be distilled. However, to increase the value and the accessibility of pages, most of the content sites tend to publish their pages with intrasite redundant information, such as navigation panels, advertisements, copy announcements, etc. To further eliminate such redundancy, we propose another mechanism, called InfoDiscoverer, which applies the distilled structure to identify sets of article pages. InfoDiscoverer also employs the entropy information to analyze the information measures of article sets and to extract informative content blocks from these sets. Our result is useful for search engines, information agents, and crawlers to index, extract, and navigate significant information from a Web site. Experiments on several real news Web sites show that the precision and the recall of our approaches are much superior to those obtained by conventional methods in mining the informative structures of news Web sites. On the average, the augmented LAMIS leads to prominent performance improvement and increases the precision by a factor ranging from 122 to 257 percent when the desired recall falls between 0.5 and 1. In comparison with manual heuristics, the precision and the recall of InfoDiscoverer are greater than 0.956.     

Development of the eroded opening during electrochemical boring of hole

Electrochemical machining (ECM) has been increasingly recognized as a potential tool for mini-scale machining. Using the ECM process to erode a hole of hundreds of micrometres on a thin metal sheet is analysed in this paper. The purpose of this study is to predict the hole formation, particularly when boring through the hole. A theoretical method is presented to illustrate how the machined profile evolves. The analysis is based on the fundamental law of electrolysis and the integral of the electrochemical reaction over the finite width of the tool electrode. A concept of redistribution of electric charge is adopted in the model when the hole is bored through. The approach of the model is verified experimentally.     

A study on surface polishing of SiC with a tribochemical reaction mechanism

This work investigates the surface polishing of silicon carbide SiC using the tribochemical reaction mechanism. Different metal discs – cast iron, AISI 304 stainless steel, S45C medium carbon steel plated chromium, brass and copper – are used to polish SiC in water and kerosene, respectively. The experimental results show that ferrous metal discs can effectively polish SiC in water. Also, no surface damage or scratches on the polished surface of SiC are observed by this method. The polishing debris was analyzed by electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis. The analyzed results indicate that the polishing surface of SiC is removed tribochemically with the aid of catalytic effect of iron oxide. Moreover, in this process the maximum material removal rate is about 0.06 m/h.     

Clean up of Petroleum-Hydrocarbon Contaminated Soils Using Enhanced Bioremediation System: Laboratory Feasibility Study

The objective of this study was to assess the potential of applying enhanced bioremediation on the treatment of petroleum-hydrocarbon contaminated soils. Microcosm experiments were conducted to determine the optimal biodegradation conditions. The control factors included oxygen content, nutrient addition, addition of commercially available mixed microbial inocula, addition of wood chip and rice husk mixtures (volume ratio = 1:1) as bulking agents, and addition of organic amendments (chicken manures). Results indicate that the supplement of microbial inocula or chicken manures could significantly increase the microbial populations in soils, and thus enhance the efficiency of total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) removal (initial TPH = 5,500?mg/kg). The highest first-order TPH decay rate and removal ratio were approximately 0.015?day?1 and 85%, respectively, observed in microcosms containing microbial inocula (mass ratio of soil to inocula = 50:1), nutrient, and bulking agent (volume ratio of soil to bulking agent = 10 to 1) during 155 days of incubation. Results indicate that the first-order TPH decay rates of 0.015 and 0.0142?day?1 can be obtained with the addition of microbial inocula and chicken manures, respectively, compared with the decay rate of 0.0069?day?1 under intrinsic conditions. Thus, chicken manures have the potential to be used as substitutes of commercial microbial inocula. The decay rate and removal ratio can be further enhanced to 0.0196?day?1 and 87%, respectively, with frequent soil shaking and air replacement. Results will be useful in designing an ex situ soil bioremediation systems (e.g., biopile and land farming) for practical application.     

miR-486-5p and miR-22-3p Enable Megakaryocytic Differentiation of Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells without Thrombopoietin

Megakaryocytes release submicron size microparticles (MkMPs) in circulation. We have shown that MkMPs target CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) to induce megakaryocytic differentiation, and that small RNAs in MkMPs play an important role in the development of this phenotype. Here, using single-molecule real-time (SMRT) RNA sequencing (RNAseq), we identify the synergetic effect of two microRNAs (miRs), miR-486-5p and miR-22-3p (highly enriched in MkMPs), in driving the Mk differentiation of HSPCs in the absence of thrombopoietin (TPO). Separately, our data suggest that the MkMP-induced Mk differentiation of HSPCs is enabled through JNK and PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling. The interaction between the two signaling pathways is likely mediated by a direct target of miR-486-5p and a negative regulator of PI3K/Akt signaling, the phosphatase and tensin homologue (PTEN) protein. Our data provide a possible mechanistic explanation of the biological effect of MkMPs in inducing megakaryocytic differentiation of HSPCs, a phenotype of potential physiological significance in stress megakaryopoiesis.