Search results for "g factor"
showing 10 items of 514 documents
Randomized Controlled Trials and real life studies. Approaches and methodologies: a clinical point of view.
2014
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are the "gold standard" for evaluating treatment outcomes providing information on treatments "efficacy". They are designed to test a therapeutic hypothesis under optimal setting in the absence of confounding factors. For this reason they have high internal validity. The strict and controlled conditions in which they are conducted, leads to low generalizability because they are performed in conditions very different from real life usual care. Conversely, real life studies inform on the "effectiveness" of a treatment, that is, the measure of the extent to which an intervention does what is intended to do in routine circumstances. At variance to RCTs, real …
CD40 ligation protects bronchial epithelium against oxidant-induced caspase-independent cell death.
2006
KEYWORDS CLASSIFICATION: 7,8-Dihydro-7,8-dihydroxybenzo(a)pyrene 9,10-oxide;Antigens,CD40;Apoptosis;Bronchi;cytology;Caspases;Cell Cycle;Cell Death;Cell Line,Transformed;Cell Survival;Cell Transformation,Viral;Cytoprotection;drug effects;Epithelial Cells;Humans;Italy;mechanisms of carcinogenesis;metabolism;Oxidants;pharmacology;physiology;Research;Simian virus 40;toxicity;Transcription Factor AP-1. CD40 and its ligand regulate pleiotropic biological responses, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. In many inflammatory lung diseases, tissue damage by environmental or endogenous oxidants plays a major role in disease pathogenesis. As the epithelial barrier is a major t…
An open-label, prospective phase I/II study evaluating the immunogenicity and safety of a ras peptide vaccine plus GM-CSF in patients with non-small …
2007
Mutations of the ras gene have been reported in 20-40% of NSCLC patients. If present, they are critical for the malignant phenotype of these tumors. Therefore, targeting them by specific vaccination is a promising therapeutic approach. In a clinical trial we screened for ras mutations in patients with NSCLC. Patients with ras-positive tumors were immunized six times intradermally with a mixture of seven peptides representing the most common ras mutations. Objectives of the study were the feasibility, efficacy and safety of the vaccination. In addition, the induction of a specific immune reaction was investigated by DTH tests, and the induction of peptide-specific T cells was tested in ex vi…
GM-CSF expression by human lung microvascular endothelial cells: in vitro and in vivo findings.
2002
Recently, many findings indicate that granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic lung diseases. In the present paper, the production of this cytokine in human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (HPMEC) is investigated. In an in vitro study, quiescent HPMEC did not express GM-CSF, either at the transcriptional or at the protein level. After activation for 4 h with tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α (30/300 U/ml), lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 0.1/1 μg/ml), or interleukin (IL)-1β (100 U/ml), a significant release of GM-CSF was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, with a time-dependent increase over 72 h. IL…
A Noncommutative Approach to Ordinary Differential Equations
2005
We adapt ideas coming from Quantum Mechanics to develop a non-commutative strategy for the analysis of some systems of ordinary differential equations. We show that the solution of such a system can be described by an unbounded, self-adjoint and densely defined operator H which we call, in analogy with Quantum Mechanics, the Hamiltonian of the system. We discuss the role of H in the analysis of the integrals of motion of the system. Finally, we apply this approach to several examples.
New special function recurrences giving new indefinite integrals
2018
ABSTRACTSequences of new recurrence relations are presented for Bessel functions, parabolic cylinder functions and associated Legendre functions. The sequences correspond to values of an integer variable r and are generalizations of each conventional recurrence relation, which correspond to r=1. The sequences can be extended indefinitely, though the relations become progressively more intricate as r increases. These relations all have the form of a first-order linear inhomogeneous differential equation, which can be solved by an integrating factor. This gives a very general indefinite integral for each recurrence. The method can be applied to other special functions which have conventional …
Dynamic self-assembly of photo-switchable nanoparticles
2012
Nanoparticles functionalized with photo-switchable ligands can be assembled into a broad range of structures by controlled light exposure. In particular, alternating light exposures provide the means to control formation of assemblies of various sizes and symmetries. Here, we use scaling arguments and Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to study the evolution of reversible aggregates in a solution of periodically irradiated photo-switchable nanoparticles. Scaling estimates of the characteristic size and the mean separation of aggregates agree with the simulations. The transition probabilities in the Kinetic Monte Carlo scheme are derived from a renormalized master equation of the diffusion proc…
Human leucocyte antigen-A2 restricted and Mycobacterium tuberculosis 19-kDa antigen-specific CD8+ T-cell responses are oligoclonal and exhibit a T-ce…
2001
CD8+ T cells can be grouped into two different types of secretory T lymphocytes, based on the cytokine-secretion pattern upon antigen exposure: those with a T-cell cytotoxic type 1 response (Tc1), which secrete interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma), or those with a T-cell cytotoxic type 2 response, which secrete interleukin (IL)-4 and IL-10. We examined the CD8+ T-cell response directed against an immunodominant human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-A2-presented peptide derived from a 19-kDa Mycobacterium tuberculosis-associated antigen. T cells were examined by functional analysis and by T-cell receptor (TCR) complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3)-spectratyping, which defines the complexity of a T-cel…
Reduced virus specific T helper cell induction by autologous dendritic cells in patients with chronic hepatitis B-restoration by exogenous interleuki…
2002
SUMMARYInsufficient stimulatory capacities of autologous dendritic cells (DC) may contribute in part to impaired T cell stimulation and therefore viral persistence in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. In order to characterize the antigen presenting functions of DC from chronic HBV carriers and controls antigen specific T cell responses were analysed. CD34+ peripheral blood progenitor cells were differentiated to immature DC in the presence of GM-CSF, IL-6/IL-6R fusion protein and stem cell factor. Proliferative CD4+ T cell responses and specific cytokine release were analysed in co-cultures of DC pulsed with HBV surface and core antigens or tetanus toxoid and autologo…
Learning via Summarizing Infographics Assignment in Software Engineering Management e-Course?
2020
This Research-to-Practice, Work in Progress Paper focuses on how learners experience creation of infographics as a summarizing assignment in an advanced level e-course on software engineering management (SEM). We have previously investigated how learners perceive infographics as a repeated reflection assignment during a requirements engineering e-course. To complement this research project, we studied how learners experience the use of infographics as a method for summarizing a whole software engineering management course in e-education setting. The SEM course participants (N=36) found that infographics as a summarizing assignment required complex learning that was altogether deemed highly …