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Altered expressions of nonmuscle myosin IIA (NMIIA) have been observed in certain types of cancers, but the impact of the alterations in gastric cancer (GC) remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression of NMIIA at the mRNA and protein level in patients with GC and to assess its clinical significance. We investigated the expression of NMIIA in fresh, paired GC tissues by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR; n = 14) and Western blot analysis (n = 36). Simultaneously, we performed immunohistochemistry (IHC) on paraffin embedded specimens, including 96 GC specimens, 30 matched normal specimens and 30 paired metastatic lymph node samples. NMIIA is overexpressed in GC compared with the adjacent normal gastric epithelium (p < 0.001) and high-level NMIIA expression is significantly correlated with the depth of wall invasion, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis and Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) stage. Furthermore, elevated NMIIA expression is an independent prognostic factor in multivariate analysis using the Cox regression model (p = 0.021). These findings indicate that overexpression of NMIIA may contribute to the progression and poor prognosis of GC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Optic nerve regeneration has previously been achieved by injuring the lens, which results in the release of lentogenic factors. However, these lentogenic factors are still unknown. Objectives: To investigate what were the lentogenic factors by examining the effects of lens extract and macrophage-conditioned medium (MCM) on the survival and the neurite outgrowth of rat retinal neurons in vitro. Methods: Retinal neurons were cultured in 4 groups: (1) Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM), (2) DMEMcontaining lens extract, (3) DMEM containing macrophage-conditioned medium (MCM-D), (4) DMEM and medium from macrophages grown with lens extract (MCM-L). Neurite outgrowth and neuron survival time were observed. The density of retinal neurons with neurites and the longest neurites of the cells were measured on days 1, 3 and 5. Results: Retinal neurons survive for 12-14 days in DMEM containing lens extract. However, the cells only survive for 6 days in DMEM and only 7 days in DMEM containing MCM-L or MCM-D. The present results indicate that lens extract may directly promote survival of rat retinal neurons and neurite outgrowth in vitro. The MCM also promoted cell survival and neurite outgrowth but its effects were weaker than that of the lens extract. We postulate that lens extract exerts its effect by direct neurotrophic effects and/or indirectly by activating macrophagesin vitro. Copyright © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Role assignment is a critical element in the role-based collaboration process. There are many factors to consider when decision makers undertake this task. Such factors include a decision maker's preferences and the team's performance. This paper proposes a series of methods, relative to these factors, to solve the group role assignment with balance problem through an association with the one clause at a time approach that is a well-accepted and logic-based association rule mining method. The proposed methods are verified by simulation experiments. The experimental results present the practicability of the proposed solutions. Using the proposed methods, decision makers need only to establish coarse-grain preferences. The fine-grain preferences can be mined. Furthermore, a balance is obtained between the fine-grain preferences and the team's performance.