Search results for "Election"
showing 10 items of 2159 documents
Experimental evolution of an oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus with increased selectivity for p53-deficient cells
2014
Experimental evolution has been used for various biotechnological applications including protein and microbial cell engineering, but less commonly in the field of oncolytic virotherapy. Here, we sought to adapt a rapidly evolving RNA virus to cells deficient for the tumor suppressor gene p53, a hallmark of cancer cells. To achieve this goal, we established four independent evolution lines of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in p53-knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts (p53-/- MEFs) under conditions favoring the action of natural selection. We found that some evolved viruses showed increased fitness and cytotoxicity in p53-/- cells but not in isogenic p53+/+ cells, indicating gene-specifi…
Pharmacogenomics: a tool to prevent and cure coronary heart disease.
2007
Inflammation and genetics play an important role in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease (CHD). This is supported by epidemiological studies which have thoroughly investigated the association between CHD and gene polymorphisms of the inflammatory molecules. Moreover, efforts to find elective therapy have not been rewarding and, despite the increasing appreciation of the role of genetics in CHD and myocardial infarction (MI) pathogenesis, pharmacogenomic approaches to uncover drug target have not been extensively explored. A critical search of published literature has suggested few inflammatory genes directly involved in the risk to develop CHD and MI. The selected genes are, the pro- …
Selection and Gratitude: Anonymity and gratitude
2018
What kind of candidate is selected into a job when the principal has to appoint a committee to measure the candidate's ability and select a winner through a call specifying a wage for the job? In a model where the principal fixes the wage anticipating the committee's choice, under a rather natural assumption about the committee's objective we find that if the committee takes into account the candidate's gratitude a candidate with less than first best ability will be selected in equilibrium. First best selection is achieved if the committee is anonymous to the candidates. If the committee could also set the wage the first best candidate would be selected, but the principal would be worse off…
OFN Capital Budgeting Under Uncertainty and Risk
2017
The aim of this chapter is to propose a new approach to incorporating uncertainty into capital budgeting. The chapter presents methods that can be used by an investor when the decision maker wants to be able to make an investment decision where there are alternative investment projects. This kind of problem is undertaken under the conditions of uncertainty and risk using Ordered Fuzzy Numbers (OFN). The starting point is the concept of Ordered Fuzzy Numbers. The chapter illustrates the implementation of the proposed approach with an example where two alternative investment projects are analyzed. The authors present the capital budgeting problem using a numerical example. The described metho…
Selection and micropropagation of valuable caper genotypes
2020
The high quality of the various biotypes present in the natural or cultivated state is one of the main features for caper production. Up to now, however, no selection activity has been carried out in order to identify the most suitable accessions for providing better quality products. In this paper, we report the first results of a selection of caper genotypes characterised by significant qualitative traits. A micropropagation protocol was evaluated in order to improve and allow the multiplication of the most promising Capparis spinosa L. subsp. spinosa genotypes, selected in Salina (Aeolian Islands), Sicily (Italy), in collaboration with the most important local growers.
Regulatory T-Cells in Antitumor Therapy: Isolation and Functional Testing of CD4<SUP>+</SUP>CD25<SUP>+</SUP> Regulatory T-Cel…
2004
Naturally occurring CD4+CD25+ T regulatory cells originate from the thymus and play a central role regarding the maintenance of peripheral tolerance by suppression of autoreactive T-cell populations. However, T regulatory cells can have beneficial as well as harmful effects. On the one hand, they prevent a variety of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases; but on the other hand, they concomitantly inhibit antitumor immune reactions by suppressing tumor-specific T-cell responses. Therefore, these ambivalent properties of T regulatory cells require detailed investigation especially with respect to a potential therapeutic exploitation of these cells. A prerequisite for such analyses is the isola…
Cement selection criteria for full coverage restorations: A comprehensive review of literature
2021
Background Proper cement selection in fixed prosthesis plays a determinative role in providing long-term serviceability, retention, caries prevention, and patient satisfaction. This study, reviews different luting agent characteristics and their application based on different clinical situations and different types of full coverage restorations. Material and methods An electronic search was conducted through PubMed, Medline, and Google scholar using following keywords or combinations: restoration, full coverage, PFM, porcelain fused to metal, all ceramic, zirconia, ceramic, casting, fixed partial denture, cement*, dental cement, cement selection, and retention. The most related articles wer…
Effectiveness of local feature selection in ensemble learning for prediction of antimicrobial resistance
2008
In the real world concepts are often not stable but change over time. A typical example of this in the biomedical context is antibiotic resistance, where pathogen sensitivity may change over time as pathogen strains develop resistance to antibiotics that were previously effective. This problem, known as concept drift (CD), complicates the task of learning a robust model. Different ensemble learning (EL) approaches (that instead of learning a single classifier try to learn and maintain a set of classifiers over time) have been shown to perform reasonably well in the presence of concept drift. In this paper we study how much local feature selection (FS) can improve ensemble performance for da…
Artificial intelligence for affective computing : an emotion recognition case study.
2020
This chapter provides an introduction on the benefits of artificial intelligence (Al) techniques for the field of affective computing, through a case study about emotion recognition via brain (electroencephalography EEG) signals. Readers are first pro-vided with a general description of the field, followed by the main models of human affect, with special emphasis to Russell's circumplex model and the pleasur-arousal-dominance (PAD) model. Finally, an AI-based method for the detection of affect elicited via multimedia stimuli is presented. The method combines both connectivity-and channel-based EEG features with a selection method that considerably reduces the dimensionality of the data and …
Leader of my Heart!
2015
The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed the emergence of ‘new’ media technologies which have contributed to reshaping the relationships between politicians, journalists and the general public in Western democracies and around the world (Fox and Ramos, 2012; Lilleker and Jackson, 2013). After diverse early attempts in several countries to harness these new tools during election periods, their use by Barack Obama’s campaign team in the 2008 US presidential elections is often cited as one of the first examples in which they appeared to contribute positively to mobilising sympathisers and party activists around the campaign (Thimm, 2011). In the subsequent 2010 UK general ele…