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Aims: Atherosclerotic plaques vulnerable to rupture are almost always inflamed, and carry a large lipid core covered by a thin fibrous cap. The other components may include neovascularisation, intraplaque haemorrhage and spotty calcification. In contrast, stable plaques are characterised by a predominance of smooth muscle cells and collagen, and lipid core is usually deep seated or absent. This study is a proof of principle experiment to evaluate the feasibility of multiphoton microscopy (MPM) to identify aforementioned plaque components. Methods and Results: MPM is a nonlinear optical technique that allows imaging based on intrinsic tissue signals including autofluorescence and higher-order scattering. In our study, MPM imaging was performed on morphologically diverse aortic and coronary artery plaques obtained during autopsy. Various histologically verified plaque components including macrophages, cholesterol crystals, haemorrhage, collagen and calcification were recognised by MPM. Conclusions: Recognition of the distinct signatures of various plaque components suggests that MPM has the potential to offer next-generation characterisation of atherosclerotic plaques. The higher lateral resolution (comparable to histology) images generated by MPM for identifying plaque components might complement larger field of view and greater imaging depth currently available with optical coherence tomography imaging. As the next step MPM would need to be evaluated for intact vessel imaging ex vivo and in vivo. © 2017 The Authors Journal of Microscopy © 2017 Royal Microscopical Society

For the past few years, immunotherapy has recently shown considerable clinical benefit in CRC therapy, and the application of immunologic therapies in cancer treatments continues to increase perennially. Interleukin-12, an ideal candidate for tumor immunotherapy, could activate both innate and adaptive immunities. In this study, we developed a novel gene delivery system with a self-assembly method by MPEG-PLA and DOTAP(DMP) with zeta-potential value of 38.5mV and size of 37.5nm. The supernatant of lymphocytes treated with supernatant from Ct26 transfected pIL12 with DMP could inhibit Ct26 cells growth ex vivo. Treatment of tumor-bearing mice with DMP-pIL12 complex has significantly inhibited tumor growth at both the subcutaneous and peritoneal model in vivo by inhibiting angiogenesis, promoting apoptosis and reducing proliferation. The IL-12 plasmid and DMP complex may be used to treat the colorectal cancer in clinical as a new drug. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This article examines one informant's approach to the relationship between ideological concepts and political power. I argue that ideological representation must be understood on its own terms, rather than within a larger theory of discourse. I point toward three key qualities of every encounter with ideological representation: subjectivity, discontinuity, and commitment. The fieldwork on which this article is based occurred in Berlin, Germany, during the fall 2014. During this period, my research focused on activists committed to overturning the sanctioning policy (Sanktionspolitik), which allows case managers to dock the unemployment benefits of their clients. [ideology, subjectivity, welfare state, Germany]

This book draws on historical and cross-disciplinary studies to critically examine penal practices in Scandinavia. The Nordic countries are often hailed by international observers as ‘model societies’, with egalitarian welfare policies, low rates of poverty, humane social policies and human rights...

The original title for this work was “Mathematical Literacy, What Is It and Why You Need it”. The current title reflects that there can be no real learning in any subject, unless questions of who, what, when, where, why and how are raised in the minds of the learners. The book is not a mathematical text, and there are no assigned exercises or exams. It is written for reasonably intelligent and curious individuals, both those who value mathematics, aware of its many important applications and others who have been inappropriately exposed to mathematics, leading to indifference to the subject, fear and even loathing. These feelings are all consequences of meaningless presentations, drill, rote learning and being lost as the purpose of what is being studied. Mathematics education needs a radical reform. There is more than one way to accomplish this. Here the author presents his approach of wrapping mathematical ideas in a story. To learn one first must develop an interest in a problem and the curiosity to find how masters of mathematics have solved them. What is necessary to be mathematically literate? It’s not about solving algebraic equations or even making a geometric proof. These are valuable skills but not evidence of literacy. We often seek answers but learning to ask pertinent questions is the road to mathematical literacy. Here is the good news: new mathematical ideas have a way of finding applications. This is known as “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.”

We introduce a novel application of feature ranking methods to the fault localization problem. We envision the problem of localizing causes of failures as instances of ranking program's elements where elements are conceptualized as features. In this paper, we define features as program's statements. However, in its fine-grained definition, the idea of program's features can refer to any traits of programs. This paper proposes feature ranking-based algorithms. The algorithms analyze execution traces of both passing and failing test cases, and extract the bug signatures from the failing test cases. The proposed procedure extracts possible combinations of program's elements when executed together from bug signatures. The feature ranking-based algorithms then order statements according to the suspiciousness of the combinations. When viewed as sequences, the combination of program's elements produced and traced in bug signatures can be utilized to reason about the common longest subsequence. The common longest subsequence of bug signatures represents the common statements executed by all failing test cases and thus provides a means for identifying statements that contain possible faults. Our evaluation indicates that the proposed feature-based fault localization outperforms existing fault localization ranking schemes. © 2017 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Vulnerabilities need to be detected and removed from software. Although previous studies demonstrated the usefulness of employing prediction techniques in deciding about vulnerabilities of software components, the improvement of effectiveness of these prediction techniques is still a grand challenging research question. This paper employed a technique based on a deep neural network with rectifier linear units trained with stochastic gradient descent method and batch normalization, for predicting vulnerable software components. The features are defined as continuous sequences of tokens in source code files. Besides, a statistical feature selection algorithm is then employed to reduce the feature and search space. We evaluated the proposed technique based on some Java Android applications, and the results demonstrated that the proposed technique could predict vulnerable classes, i.e., software components, with high precision, accuracy and recall.

Although research on substance use disorders (SUDs) largely focuses on the developed world, treatment programs from the developing world seldom get international attention. Focusing on India, this study was designed (1) to describe India’s treatment programs, and (2) to report Indian perspectives on critical factors related to treating SUDs. An online survey instrument was created, based on mixed-methods approach with concurrent strategies, to collect data. Participants were India’s clinicians (N = 112). Indian treatment approach suggests that SUDs must be treated by a multidisciplinary treatment team with a comprehensive plan that must include systemically focused clinical interventions in patients’/clients’ relevant relational systems. Findings may have relevance to clinicians, researchers, and policy makers globally. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.