Outcome of rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis following autologous stem cell transplantation for hematologic malignancy

Based on successful results in animal models, it has been proposed that high-dose myeloablative therapy followed by autologous bone marrow or stem cell transplantation (ABMT/ASCT) may cure autoimmune disease. The coexistence of autoimmune disease and hematologic malignancy provides an opportunity to examine the response of autoimmune disease to ABMT or ASCT. We describe 4 patients with autoimmune disease (3 with psoriasis and 1 with rheumatoid arthritis) and hematologic malignancy. In each patient, the autoimmune disease remitted posttransplantation, but, in 4 patients with long-term followup, it recurred at 8-24 months. The earliest relapse occurred in a patient treated with interferon-alpha. Our experience suggests that a single autograft with unpurged stem cells is unlikely to cure autoimmune disease, but that other strategies building on this approach are worthy of investigation.     

TopCat: data mining for topic identification in a text corpus

TopCat (topic categories) is a technique for identifying topics that recur in articles in a text corpus. Natural language processing techniques are used to identify key entities in individual articles, allowing us to represent an article as a set of items. This allows us to view the problem in a database/data mining context: Identifying related groups of items. We present a novel method for identifying related items based on traditional data mining techniques. Frequent itemsets are generated from the groups of items, followed by clusters formed with a hypergraph partitioning scheme. We present an evaluation against a manually categorized ground truth news corpus; it shows this technique is effective in identifying topics in collections of news articles.     

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry of Vernonia galamensis oil

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) has been used to identify eight triacylglycerols (TAG) in Vernonia galamensis oil (VO). The TAG include trivernolin, divernoloylstearoylglycerol, divernoloyloleoylglycerol, vernoloyllinoleoylstearoylglycerol, vernoloyllinoleoyloleoylglycerol, and vernoloyldilinoleoylglycerol. Samples for the MALDI/TOF/MS analysis were prepared with alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid (matrix) in an acetonitrile/tetrahydrofuran solvent system. A mol ratio of matrix/VO (44:1) gave reproducible composite spectra, resulting in resolutions greater than 8,000 and signal-to-noise ratios of above 1000 for the most abundant molecular species. 1,3-Dioleoyl-2-stearoylglycerol and 1,2-dioleoyl-3-palmitoylglycerol were used as calibration standards.     

New carbon composite adsorbents for the removal of textile dyes from aqueous solutions: Kinetic,equilibrium, and thermodynamic studies

New carbon composite materials were prepared by pyrolysis of mixture of coffee wastes and red mud at 700 °C with the inorganic: organic ratios of 1.9 (CC-1.9) and 2.2 (CC-2.2). These adsorbents were used to remove reactive orange 16 (RO-16) and reactive red 120 (RR-120) textile dyes from aqueous solution. The CC-1.9 and CC-2.2 materials were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Nitrogen adsorption/desorption curves, scanning electron Microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The kinetic of adsorption data was fitted by general order kinetic model. A three-parameter isotherm model, Liu isotherm model, gave the best fit of the equilibrium data (298 to 323 K). The maximum amounts of dyes removed at 323 K were 144.8 (CC-1.9) and 139.5 mg g^?1 (CC-2.2) for RO-16 dye and 95.76 (CC-1.9) and 93.80 mg g^?1 (CC-2.2) for RR-120 dye. Two simulated dyehouse effluents were used to investigate the application of the adsorbents for effluent treatment.     

Retention of Free Liquids in Landfills Undergoing Vertical Expansion

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the potential release of liquids stored within a waste mass undergoing compression due to a landfill vertical expansion. The mechanism of free liquid generation is initially evaluated and data interpretation methods are developed to estimate the maximum allowable waste thickness that a landfill could reach without releasing liquids stored within the waste. The proposed conceptual framework of free liquid generation is used to evaluate the environmental implications of the vertical expansion of an unlined case history landfill located in southern California. The moisture content of waste in southern California landfills is generally below field capacity. However, if the waste is compressed, its available moisture-holding capacity will decrease and its moisture content may eventually reach field capacity. Additional compression beyond this point will squeeze liquid from the waste. Laboratory testing and field characterization programs were undertaken to evaluate the field capacity, the in-situ moisture distribution, and the unit weight profiles of the waste in the case history landfill. These experimental data were used to evaluate the ability of the landfill to continue to retain moisture after continued waste placement. The evaluation indicated that the moisture content of the waste will not reach its field capacity for the proposed final grading of the case history landfill and, therefore, that the liquids should remain within the waste mass after the vertical expansion.     

The use of lipase (acetone powder) from Vernonia galamensis in the fatty acid analysis of seed oils

Examined in this study is a potential application of Vernonia galamensis lipase (acetone powder) in enzyme-catalyzed hydrolysis of seed oils, most especially of those containing reactive functionalities which are easily affected under drastic hydrolytic and methylating/transesterification conditions during fatty acid analysis. Eight seed oils from V. galamensis, Ximenia kaffra, castor, corn, soyabean, palm kernel, sunflower and olive were hydrolyzed by lipase (acetone powder) followed by methylation using diazomethane in ethyl ether. Results obtained showed that the lipolytic hydrolysis of triglycerides by V. galamensis lipase (acetone powder) was probably nonspecific and did not result in isomerization and as such hydrolyzed the triglycerides of the seed oil in a fashion that the resulting fatty acids were unaltered during hydrolysis. The fatty acids obtained were representative of the parent seed oils. Values reported for the various seed oils were similar to those of previous studies.