Truncated O-Glycan-Bearing MUC16 Enhances Pancreatic Cancer Cells Aggressiveness via α4β1 Integrin Complexes and FAK Signaling

Elevated levels of Mucin-16 (MUC16) in conjunction with a high expression of truncated O-glycans is implicated in playing crucial roles in the malignancy of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, the mechanisms by which such aberrant glycoforms present on MUC16 itself promote an increased disease burden in PDAC are yet to be elucidated. This study demonstrates that the CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genetic deletion of MUC16 in PDAC cells decreases tumor cell migration. We found that MUC16 enhances tumor malignancy by activating the integrin-linked kinase and focal adhesion kinase (ILK/FAK)-signaling axis. These findings are especially noteworthy in truncated O-glycan (Tn and STn antigen)-expressing PDAC cells. Activation of these oncogenic-signaling pathways resulted in part from interactions between MUC16 and integrin complexes (α4β1), which showed a stronger association with aberrant glycoforms of MUC16. Using a monoclonal antibody to functionally hinder MUC16 significantly reduced the migratory cascades in our model. Together, these findings suggest that truncated O-glycan containing MUC16 exacerbates malignancy in PDAC by activating FAK signaling through specific interactions with α4 and β1 integrin complexes on cancer cell membranes. Targeting these aberrant glycoforms of MUC16 can aid in the development of a novel platform to study and treat metastatic pancreatic cancer.     

Asymmetric tensor field visualization for surfaces

Asymmetric tensor field visualization can provide important insight into fluid flows and solid deformations. Existing techniques for asymmetric tensor fields focus on the analysis, and simply use evenly-spaced hyperstreamlines on surfaces following eigenvectors and dual-eigenvectors in the tensor field. In this paper, we describe a hybrid visualization technique in which hyperstreamlines and elliptical glyphs are used in real and complex domains, respectively. This enables a more faithful representation of flow behaviors inside complex domains. In addition, we encode tensor magnitude, an important quantity in tensor field analysis, using the density of hyperstreamlines and sizes of glyphs. This allows colors to be used to encode other important tensor quantities. To facilitate quick visual exploration of the data from different viewpoints and at different resolutions, we employ an efficient image-space approach in which hyperstreamlines and glyphs are generated quickly in the image plane. The combination of these techniques leads to an efficient tensor field visualization system for domain scientists. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our visualization technique through applications to complex simulated engine fluid flow and earthquake deformation data. Feedback from domain expert scientists, who are also co-authors, is provided.     

A prototyping language for real-time software

PSDL is a language for describing prototypes of real-time software systems. It is most useful for requirements analysis, feasibility studies, and the design of large embedded systems. PSDL has facilities for recording and enforcing timing constraints, and for modeling the control aspects of real-time systems using nonprocedural control constraints, operator abstractions, and data abstractions. The language has been designed for use with an associated prototyping methodology. PSDL prototypes are executable if supported by a software base containing reusable software components in an underlying programming language (e.g. Ada)     

Moving object detection in the encrypted domain

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The privacy-preserving moving object detection has drawn a lot of interest lately. Nevertheless, current approaches use Paillier’s scheme for encryption...     

Rolling Friction Enhanced Free‐Standing Triboelectric Nanogenerators and their Applications in Self‐Powered Electrochemical Recovery Systems

Heavy metals contained in wastewater are one of the most serious pollutions in natural resources. A self‐powered electrochemical recovery system for collecting Cu ions in wastewater by incorporating a rolling friction enhanced freestanding triboelectric nanogenerator (RF‐TENG) is developed here. The RF‐TENG utilizes integrated cylindrical surfaces using the conjunction of rolling electrification and freestanding electrostatic induction, which shows outstanding output performance and ultrarobust stability. By using the kinetic energy of flowing water, a collection efficiency of up to 80% for Cu²⁺ ions in wastewater has been achieved. Self‐powered electrochemical systems are one of the most promising applications of TENGs for independent and sustainable driving of electrochemical reactions without the need for any additional power supply. This research is a substantial advancement towards the practical applications of triboelectric nanogenerators and self‐powered electrochemical systems.     

Image contrast enhancement for preserving mean brightness without losing image features

Histogram equalization is a well-known and effective technique for improving the contrast of images. However, the traditional histogram equalization (HE) method usually results in extreme contrast enhancement, which causes an unnatural look and visual artifacts of the processed image. In this paper, we propose a novel histogram equalization method that is composed of an automatic histogram separation module and an intensity transformation module. First, the proposed histogram separation module is a combination of the proposed prompt multiple thresholding procedure and an optimum peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) calculation to separate the histogram in small-scale detail. As the final step of the proposed process, the use of the intensity transformation module can enhance the image with complete brightness preservation for each generated sub-histogram. Experimental results show that the proposed method not only retains the shape features of the original histogram but also enhances the contrast effectively.     

Fabrication of Pb1‐xSnxTe/PbTe heterojunctions by liquid phase epitaxy

Abstract

Pb_1‐x Sn _x Te epitaxial layers were successfully grown on PbTe substrates by liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) technique. The compositions and surface morphology of the epitaxial Pb_1‐x Sn _x Te layers were controlled in the LPE growth, and p‐Pb_1‐x Sn _x Te/n‐PbTe heterodiodes with a good junction‐perfection factor were made.     

On the interfacing between QEMU and SystemC for virtual platform construction: Using DMA as a case

In this paper, we present an interface for the hardware modeled in SystemC to access those modeled in QEMU on a QEMU and SystemC-based virtual platform. By using QEMU as the instruction-accurate instruction set simulator (IA-ISS) and its capability to run a full-fledged operating system such as Linux, the virtual platform with the proposed interface can be used to facilitate the co-design of hardware models and device drivers at the early stage of Electronic System Level (ESL) design flow. In other words, by using such a virtual platform, the hardware models and associated device drivers can be cross verified while they are being developed so that malfunctions in the hardware models or the device drivers can be easily detected. Moreover, the virtual platform with the proposed interface is capable of providing statistics of instructions executed, memory accessed, and I/O performed at the instruction-accurate level—thus not only making it easy to evaluate the performance of the hardware models but also making it possible for design space exploration.