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Basaloid follicular hamartoma (BFH) is a rare, benign follicular neoplasm which typically presents as brown to skin-colored papules on the face, scalp, and trunk. Histologically, BFH consists of cords and strands of basaloid cells forming cystic structures with scant stroma and should be distinguished from infundibulocystic basal cell carcinoma to avoid overly aggressive treatment. Although BFH has been found to be associated with distinct syndromes, including alopecia, myasthenia gravis, and cystic fibrosis, there is often clinical, histopathologic, and genetic overlap with nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome (NBCCS). In this article, we describe a case of a 13-year-old patient with NBCCS who presented with multiple BFHs and propose that it its inclusion into the diagnostic criteria for NBCCS be considered.

Mounting evidence supports a role for dysregulated long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) in the development of many cancers. A recently discovered function of lncRNAs is to act as microRNA (miR) decoys or competing endogenous RNAs, which sequester specific miRs and relieve negative regulation of mRNA expression by miRs. Although a large number of non-coding RNAs are thought to function as competing endogenous RNAs, miR-sequestering lncRNAs involved in nevus to melanoma transformation remain largely unknown. In this study, we applied a bioinformatics approach to a unique dataset of benign melanocytic nevi and primary melanomas of the skin in order to fill this research gap. We modified a previously published miR target prediction algorithm, RNAhybrid, and improved its search efficiency. We reported the presence of many lncRNAs and miRs deregulated when transitioning from a senescence-like state of nevi to melanoma. We provided evidence of a relatively new and understudied mechanism of gene regulation during this process and identified for the first time lncRNAs (n = 122) that may potentially function as miR decoys as well as their target miRs during nevus to melanoma transformation. The knowledge presented here can be employed for developing biomarkers for diagnostic and risk stratification purposes.

Complex coacervation has become a prominent area of research in the fields of food science, personal care, drug stabilization, and more. However, little has been reported on the kinetics of assembly of coacervation itself. Here, we describe a simple, low-cost way of looking at the kinetics of coacervation by creating poorly mixed samples. In particular, we examine how polymer chain length, the patterning and symmetry of charges on the oppositely charged polyelectrolytes, and the presence of salt and a zwitterionic buffer affect the kinetics of complex coacervation. Our results suggest an interesting relationship between the time for equilibration and the order of addition of polymers with asymmetric patterns of charge. Furthermore, we demonstrated that increasing polymer chain length resulted in a non-monotonic trend in the sample equilibration times as a result of opposing factors such as excluded volume and diffusion. We also observed differences in the rate of sample equilibration based on the presence of a neutral, zwitterionic buffer, as well as the presence and identity of added salt, consistent with previous reports of salt-specific effects on the rheology of complex coacervates. While not a replacement for more advanced characterization strategies, this turbidity-based method could serve as a screening tool to identify interesting and unique phenomena for further study.

Two-dimensional (2D) Pb nanoisland has established an ideal platform for studying the quantum size effects on growth mechanism, electronic structures as well as high-temperature superconductivity. Here, we investigate the growth and quantum well electronic states of the 2D Pb nanoislands on Nb-doped SrTiO3(0 0 1) by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. In contrast to Pb/Si(1 1 1), Pb/Cu(1 1 1) and Pb/Ag(1 1 1), there is no wetting layer of Pb formed on the Nb-doped SrTiO3(0 0 1) surface, resulting in isolated Pb nanoislands with an apparent height of 4 atomic layers as the building blocks for the island growth. According to the thickness-dependent quantum well states resolved in both occupied and unoccupied energy regions, the constant group velocity vg = 1.804 × 106 m/s and the Fermi wavevector kF = 1.575 A−1, have been extracted from a linear fit of the Pb(1 1 1) band dispersion along the Γ - L direction. In addition, the energy-dependent scattering phase shift φ(E) obtained by means of the phase accumulation model shows a metallic-like scattering interface analogous to Pb/Ag(1 1 1). These spatially decoupled 2D Pb nanoislands thus realize an opportunity to explore the intrinsic quantum confinement phenomena in nanoscale superconductors on the doped titanium-oxide-type substrate.

A multi-layer quantum secret sharing protocol based on GHZ states is put forward. In this protocol, Alice wishes to share a secret, carried by the quantum state, with multiple agent nodes in the network. To be specific, the secret is transmitted and shared layer by layer from root Alice to layered agents. Only if all agents at the last layer cooperate together, this secret can be reconstructed accurately. Compared with existing quantum secret sharing protocols, there are two highlights in our proposed protocol. On the one hand, the secret can be distributed to multiple agents only with five-particle GHZ states on account of layered construction. On the other hand, we elaborately design two iterative algorithms under the guidance of computational thinking, Algorithm 1 is helpful to quickly calculate the final collapsed state in each layer, Algorithm 2 is capable of obtaining the specific recovery operation based on the output results of Algorithm 1. Our proposed protocol can be applied to the wireless network in an effort to ensure the security of information delivery.

Biomacromolecules rely on the precise placement of monomers to encode information for structure, function, and physiology. Efforts to emulate this complexity via the synthetic control of chemical sequence in polymers are finding success; however, there is little understanding of how to translate monomer sequence to physical material properties. Here we establish design rules for implementing this sequence-control in materials known as complex coacervates. These materials are formed by the associative phase separation of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes into polyelectrolyte dense (coacervate) and polyelectrolyte dilute (supernatant) phases. We demonstrate that patterns of charges can profoundly affect the charge–charge associations that drive this process. Furthermore, we establish the physical origin of this pattern-dependent interaction: there is a nuanced combination of structural changes in the dense coacervate phase and a 1D confinement of counterions due to patterns along polymers in the supernatant phase., Monomer sequence is an emerging tool to precisely encode information (and thus structure and function) into polymer systems. Here the authors use sequence-control in complex coacervates to understand how monomer sequence translates to physical material properties.

To enhance vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) with the ability to detect road conditions, hybrid VANET-sensor networks (HVSNs) additionally deploy a large number of wireless sensors on road sides, so as to provide a safer driving environment. Most of the previous works on network deployment problems considered too simplified problem settings, and few of them focused on deploying HVSNs. To meet more practical requirements, this paper investigates the problem of deploying roadside units (RSUs) to serve sensors on three different-dimensional road settings (i.e., a one-dimensional road, a road represented as grid points, and a dense network environment) in HVSNs with two objectives (i.e., to minimize the total distance and the total number of hops from sensors to their respective closest RSUs) and two QoS constraints (i.e., for maximal number of hops and capacity). Achieving the two objectives can effectively decrease the probability of transmission interference and lead to shorter transmission time to inform drivers of unexpected events. Since the optimal deployment problems for a grid road and a dense HVSN cannot be solved analytically, this paper creates mathematical programming models for the problems, and further proposes an improved harmony search algorithm. By simulation in different-size instances and statistical analysis, the proposed approaches show promising performance in solving the problems.

Quantum system is inevitably affected by the external environment in the real world. Two controlled quantum dialogue protocols are put forward based on logical χ-type states under collective noise environment. One is against collective-dephasing noise, while the other is against collective-rotation noise. Compared with existing protocols, there exist several outstanding advantages in our proposed protocols: Firstly, the χ-type state is utilized as quantum channels, it possesses better entanglement properties than GHZ state, W state as well as cluster state, which make it difficult to be destroyed by local operations. Secondly, two kinds of logical χ-type states are constructed by us in theory, which can be perfectly immune to the effects of collective noise. Thirdly, the controller can be offline after quantum distribution and permission announcement, without waiting for all the participants to complete the information coding. Fourthly, the security analysis illuminates that our protocols can not only be free from the information leakage, but also resist against the intercept-and-resend attack, the entanglement-and-measure attack, the modification attack, the conspiring attack, and especially the dishonest controller’s attacks.

Dye manufacturing process wastewater (DMPW) generated from production of metal complex dyes might be mainly consisted of organic chelates. It is hypothesized that these organic chelates might form complex with metal ions. As the result, coagulation, frequently employed for dyeing wastewater treatment through sweep-floc mechanism, might not be an effective process to treat DMPW, since Fe(III) or Al(III) might be chelated by organic dye molecules instead of precipitated as metal hydroxides. In this study, carbon/chelated Fe3+ molar ratio (C/Fe ratio) is used to represent the content of organic chelates in DMPW and is subsequently used to explore destruction of these chelates after various treatment processes. Finally, the treatment options for DMPW are proposed based on C/Fe ratio after various treatment processes. The C/Fe ratio of biologically treated DMPW is almost two times higher than that of raw DMPW, indicating that biological treatment process is very effective for destroying chelating funct...

Background: Many prognostic gene signatures have been developed for estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer (BC); however, most have been solely based on mRNA expression data without integrated information on underlying primary drivers such as genomic aberrations. We therefore coupled gene expression and copy number aberration (CNA) in an attempt to improve upon prognostic signatures for ER+ BC. Methods: mRNA expression based discovery was conducted between 172/59 ER+ BC with low/high Ki67 levels after neoadjuvant aromatase inhibition and significant genes (significance analysis of microarray, q-value less than 0.05) were screened by correlation (Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test P less than 0.05) with CNA using Agilent comparative genomic hybridization array. Further interrogation on prognosis of relapse-free survival (RFS) by univariate survival analysis (P less than 0.05) in patients treated with adjuvant endocrine monotherapy from a public data set produced a Copy Number Aberration Driven Endocrine Response (CADER) signature consisting of treatment sensitive/resistant genes. MetaCore (GeneGo Inc) pathway analysis was conducted for enriched pathways. We subsequently applied Nanostring nCounter technology to formalin fixed archival tumor RNA from 620 ER+ adjuvant tamoxifen treated BC (UBC TAM-series) for CADER gene profiling. Patients in multiple independent public data sets and the TAM-series were classified into treatment sensitive defined by up-regulated sensitive gene centroid and down-regulated resistant gene centroid by the median cutoffs, treatment resistant defined with the reverse pattern and indeterminate otherwise. CADER risk stratifications were associated with patient survival outcomes in public cohorts and the TAM-series. The Kaplan-Meier (KM) analysis and Cox models were used for survival analysis. Published PAM50 intrinsic subtypes and subtype based risk of relapse (ROR-S) assignments were used (Nielsen CCR 16:5222, 2010). Results: A 54-gene CADER signature, 27 resistant/27 sensitive genes, was derived. Pathway analysis indicated that CADER was enriched with sensitive genes of cell survival functions while resistant genes were largely drivers of cell cycle progression. CADER stratifications were significantly prognostic of relapse free survival (RFS) in all public cohorts (log rank test P=0.05 for all) and in the UBC TMA-series (P=0.0001, BC specific survival and RFS). CADER showed an additional value (likelihood ratio test P=0.05) in all cohorts when both standard clinical variables and ROR-S were incorporated in multivariate Cox models. CADER were highly concordant with intrinsic subtypes and ROR-S (p=0.0001) in all data sets. However, CADER may stratify risk within ROR-S medium risk patients (P=0.002 METABRIC; P=0.003 and 0.036 in TAM-series for BC specific survival and RFS). Conclusions: We have developed a signature that is prognostic of long-term survival in postmenopausal BC, further splits risk within ROR-S medium risk group and identifies some highly resistant BC in presence of ROR-S and clinical variables (see Ellis et. al. abstract for evaluation of a CADER single sample predictor in the MA12 Phase 3 clinical trial). Citation Format: Jingqin Luo, Li-Wei Chang, Yu Tao, Jeremy Hoog, Samuel Leung, Torsten O Nielsen, Matthew J Ellis. A copy number aberration driven endocrine response gene signature stratifies risk in estrogen receptor positive breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2014 Dec 9-13; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(9 Suppl):Abstract nr P5-10-02.

To satisfy the requirements of quantum network communication, we attempt to investigate how to elaborate multiparty-controlled joint remote state preparation(MCJRSP), especially many-to-many MCJRSP. The key to such protocols is how to design some high-dimensional real unitary matrices to reflect the amplitude information of desired states. Fortunately, with the help of Hurwitz matrix equation, we put forward two N-to-2 multiparty-controlled joint remote state preparation protocols of an arbitrary four-qubit cluster-type state. The highlight of our paper embodies in two aspects. On the one hand, under the supervision of some controllers, two distant receivers can reconstruct the desired states simultaneously. On the other hand, we take into account two different entangled quantum channels and employ the optimal positive operator-valued measure to recover the desired states in the case of non-maximally entangled quantum ones.

SummaryMost B-cell lymphomas arise in the germinal center (GC), where humoral immune responses evolve from potentially oncogenic cycles of mutation, proliferation, and clonal selection. Although lymphoma gene expression diverges significantly from GC B cells, underlying mechanisms that alter the activities of corresponding regulatory elements (REs) remain elusive. Here we define the complete pathogenic circuitry of human follicular lymphoma (FL), which activates or decommissions REs from normal GC B cells and commandeers enhancers from other lineages. Moreover, independent sets of transcription factors, whose expression was deregulated in FL, targeted commandeered versus decommissioned REs. Our approach revealed two distinct subtypes of low-grade FL, whose pathogenic circuitries resembled GC B or activated B cells. FL-altered enhancers also were enriched for sequence variants, including somatic mutations, which disrupt transcription-factor binding and expression of circuit-linked genes. Thus, the pathogenic regulatory circuitry of FL reveals distinct genetic and epigenetic etiologies for GC B-cell transformation.

BACKGROUND. Melanoma is a heterogeneous malignancy. We set out to identify the molecular underpinnings of high-risk melanomas, those that are likely to progress rapidly, metastasize, and result in poor outcomes. METHODS. We examined transcriptome changes from benign states to early-, intermediate-, and late-stage tumors using a set of 78 treatment-naive melanocytic tumors consisting of primary melanomas of the skin and benign melanocytic lesions. We utilized a next-generation sequencing platform that enabled a comprehensive analysis of protein-coding and -noncoding RNA transcripts. RESULTS. Gene expression changes unequivocally discriminated between benign and malignant states, and a dual epigenetic and immune signature emerged defining this transition. To our knowledge, we discovered previously unrecognized melanoma subtypes. A high-risk primary melanoma subset was distinguished by a 122-epigenetic gene signature (“epigenetic” cluster) and TP53 family gene deregulation (TP53, TP63, and TP73). This subtype associated with poor overall survival and showed enrichment of cell cycle genes. Noncoding repetitive element transcripts (LINEs, SINEs, and ERVs) that can result in immunostimulatory signals recapitulating a state of “viral mimicry” were significantly repressed. The high-risk subtype and its poor predictive characteristics were validated in several independent cohorts. Additionally, primary melanomas distinguished by specific immune signatures (“immune” clusters) were identified. CONCLUSION. The TP53 family of genes and genes regulating the epigenetic machinery demonstrate strong prognostic and biological relevance during progression of early disease. Gene expression profiling of protein-coding and -noncoding RNA transcripts may be a better predictor for disease course in melanoma. This study outlines the transcriptional interplay of the cancer cell’s epigenome with the immune milieu with potential for future therapeutic targeting. FUNDING. National Institutes of Health ({"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"CA154683","term_id":"35062023","term_text":"CA154683"}}CA154683, {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"CA158557","term_id":"35069983","term_text":"CA158557"}}CA158557, {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"CA177940","term_id":"35109217","term_text":"CA177940"}}CA177940, CA087497-13), Tisch Cancer Institute, Melanoma Research Foundation, the Dow Family Charitable Foundation, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Multi-sender authentication codes are always viewed as an extension of the traditional point-to-point message authentication. Multi-sender authentication codes allow a group of senders to construct an authenticated message such that the receiver can verify the authenticity of the received message. In this paper, a new construction of multi-sender authentication code from singular pseudo-symplectic geometry over finite fields is put forward. Both the parameters and the probabilities of successful deceptions from a part of senders are computed by the method of matrices and combinatorial enumeration. Finally, we appropriately adjust the parameters of our scheme for achieving the optimum case.

This paper presents a high speed intra panel interface which applies point to point topology, phase locked loop (PLL) type clock data recovery (CDR) and DC self-adjusting data encoder. The preliminary measurement result on Altera stratix5 FPGA platform shows that the maximum data rate can be operated up to 5Gbps/lane.

Waterweed-like SnO 2 nanowires (NWs) were synthesized via a two-step thermal chemical vapor deposition (TVCD) process. Nanowhiskers with enlarged surface-to-volume ratio can be grown on NWs accurately, because of the product synthesized via the two-step process. These NWs and nanowhiskers with unusual [1 0 1] and [ 1 2 1 ¯ ] growth directions have very straight and uniform diameters and lengths. Photoluminescence shows that waterweed-like SnO 2 NWs have three prominent emission bands at 540, 612, and 668 nm. The waterweed-like SnO 2 can be applied in optoelectronic devices and potential applications to lithium-ion batteries, because of its high surface-to-volume ratio and high electric capacity properties.

Indium oxide (In2O3) nanorods, nanotowers and tin-doped (Sn:In = 1:100) indium oxide (ITO) nanorods have been fabricated by thermal evaporation. The morphology, microstructure and chemical composition of these three nanoproducts are characterized by FE-SEM, HRTEM and XPS. To further investigate the optoelectronic properties, the I–V curves and cathodoluminescence (CL) spectra are measured. The electrical resistivity of In2O3 nanorods, nanotowers and ITO nanorods are 1.32 kΩ, 0.65 kΩ and 0.063 kΩ, respectively. CL spectra of these three nanoproducts clearly indicate that tin-doped (Sn:In = 1:100) indium oxide (ITO) nanorods cause a blue shift. No doubt ITO nanorods obtain the highest performance among these three nanoproducts, and this also means that Sn-doped In2O3 nanostructures would be the best way to enhance the optoelectronic properties. Additionally, the growing mechanism and the optoelectronic properties of these three nanostructures are discussed. This study is beneficial to the applications of In2O3 nanorods, nanotowers and ITO nanorods in optoelectronic nanodevices.

Summary To correlate the variable clinical features of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer with somatic alterations, we studied pre-treatment tumour biopsies accrued from patients in a study of neoadjuvant aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy by massively parallel sequencing and analysis. Eighteen significantly mutated genes were identified, including five genes (RUNX1, CBFB, MYH9, MLL3 and SF3B1) previously linked to hematopoietic disorders. Mutant MAP3K1 was associated with Luminal A status, low grade histology and low proliferation rates whereas mutant TP53 associated with the opposite pattern. Moreover, mutant GATA3 correlated with suppression of proliferation upon AI treatment. Pathway analysis demonstrated mutations in MAP2K4, a MAP3K1 substrate, produced similar perturbations as MAP3K1 loss. Distinct phenotypes in ER+ breast cancer are associated with specific patterns of somatic mutations that map into cellular pathways linked to tumor biology but most recurrent mutations are relatively infrequent. Prospective clinical trials based on these findings will require comprehensive genome sequencing.

Two distinct types of Flk-1+ mesoderm, hemangiogenic and cardiogenic, are thought to contribute to blood, vessel, and cardiac cell lineages. However, our understanding of how Flk-1+ mesoderm is specified is currently limited. In the present study, we investigated whether ER71, an Ets transcription factor essential for hematopoietic and endothelial cell lineage development, could modulate the hemangiogenic or cardiogenic outcome of the Flk-1+ mesoderm. We show that Flk-1+ mesoderm can be divided into Flk-1+PDGFRα− hemangiogenic and Flk-1+PDGFRα+ cardiogenic mesoderm. ER71-deficient embryonic stem cells produced only the Flk-1+PDGFRα+ cardiogenic mesoderm, which generated SMCs and cardiomyocytes. Enforced ER71 expression in the wild-type embryonic stem cells skewed toward the Flk-1+PDGFRα− mesoderm formation, which generated hematopoietic and endothelial cells. Whereas hematopoietic and endothelial cell genes were positively regulated by ER71, cardiac and Wnt signaling pathway genes were negatively regulated by ER71. We show that ER71 could inhibit Wnt signaling in VE-cadherin–independent as well as VE-cadherin–dependent VE-cadherin/β-catenin/Flk-1 complex formation. Enforced β-catenin could rescue cardiogenic mesoderm in the context of ER71 overexpression. In contrast, ER71-deficient Flk-1+ mesoderm displayed enhanced Wnt signaling, which was reduced by ER71 re-introduction. We provide the molecular basis for the antagonistic relationship between hemangiogenic and cardiogenic mesoderm specification by ER71 and Wnt signaling.

In the peripheral nervous system, Schwann cells (SCs) surrounding damaged axons undergo an injury response that is driven by an intricate transcriptional program and is critical for nerve regeneration. To examine whether these injury-induced changes in SCs are also regulated posttranscriptionally by miRNAs, we performed miRNA expression profiling of mouse sciatic nerve distal segment after crush injury. We also characterized the SC injury response in mice containing SCs with disrupted miRNA processing due to loss of Dicer. We identified 87 miRNAs that were expressed in mouse adult peripheral nerve, 48 of which were dynamically regulated after nerve injury. Most of these injury-regulated SC miRNAs were computationally predicted to inhibit drivers of SC dedifferentiation/proliferation and thereby re-enforce the transcriptional program driving SC remyelination. SCs deficient in miRNAs manifested a delay in the transition between the distinct differentiation states required to support peripheral nerve regeneration. Among the miRNAs expressed in adult mouse SCs, miR-34a and miR-140 were identified as functional regulators of SC dedifferentiation/proliferation and remyelination, respectively. We found that miR-34a interacted with positive regulators of dedifferentiation and proliferation such as Notch1 and Ccnd1 to control cell cycle dynamics in SCs. miR-140 targeted the transcription factor Egr2, a master regulator of myelination, and modulated myelination in DRG/SC cocultures. Together, these results demonstrate that SC miRNAs are important modulators of the SC regenerative response after nerve damage.