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Unravelling the complexity of cancer-immune interplay : a critical concern for the improved design of anti-cancer therapies
No full textThe immune system has an intricate and complex relationship with tumorigenesis; while it has the capacity to identify and eliminate cancerous cells, the emergence of a tumor signifies its failure to do this. Thus, the immune-tumor interplay is paradoxical as through initial suppression of tumor growth, an immunologically silent or even suppressive tumor evolves. Furthermore, certain immune processes, such as chronic inflammation and immunosuppression, can facilitate malignant progression. Nevertheless, immunotherapeutic approaches can manipulate the immune milieu to improve the therapeutic outcomes of cancer treatments. Furthermore, particular conventional cancer therapies also have immunostimulatory properties in their own right. An in-depth understanding of the intimate involvement of the immune system in tumorigenesis and the potential to manipulate this interaction to improve disease outcomes will enable the development of new and broadly effective cancer therapies.
The role of the salesforce in achieving cooperation from dominant channel partners
No full textThe emergence of large retail chains has resulted in a shift in channel power from manufacturers to retailers. Typically, this shift has reduced the level of cooperation manufacturers now obtain from retail channel partners. In turn, this now limits the ability of manufacturers to implement some components of their preferred marketing strategies. This paper provides a discussion on channel power and cooperation, and the roles of the salesforce and selling teams in attempting to increase cooperation from channel partners.
Prediction of peak oxygen uptake from age and power output at RPE 15 in obese women
No full textThe purpose of this study was to develop a simple, convenient and indirect method for predicting peak oxygen uptake ( V O2peak) from a sub-maximal graded exercise test (GXT), in obese women. Thirty obese women performed GXT to volitional exhaustion. During GXT, oxygen uptake and the power at RPE 15 (PRPE 15) were measured, and V O2peak was determined. Following assessment of the relationships between V O2peak and PRPE 15, age, height and mass were made available in a stepwise multiple regression analysis with VO2peak as the dependent variable. The equation to predict V O2peak was: This study suggests that age and PRPE 15 elicited during a sub-maximal GXT provides a reasonably accurate prediction of V O2peak in obese women.
Are consumers indeed misled? Congruency in consumers attitudes towards wine labelling information versus revealed preferences from a choice experiment
No full textAgricultural economists are increasingly being asked by policy makers and food industry to evaluate the efficacy of labeling programs or to assess if consumers are mislead by existing labeling programs. International food agencies, however, often rely only on stated preference methods in the form of attitude and perception measurement to directly assess consumers’ understanding and evaluation of label information and its importance to their purchase decisions. Attitude measures are increasingly criticized for potentially providing biased estimates of true preferences, as they tend to overstate the importance of product characteristics when evaluated separately. Choice experiments, on the other hand, provide a methodological tool for a holistic product evaluation and force respondents to trade-off several attributes against another. In this study, we assess how closely consumers’ attitudinal measures with respect to food product labeling alternatives (pre- and post-information) correlate with estimates of relative value and importance from a discrete choice experiment (DCE). Data from a recent study commissioned by the Australian wine industry is used to examine whether consumers are being mislead by current food labeling policy which allows a product, only partially derived from wine and of lower technical quality, to be labeled as “Wine Product”. In combination with origin labeling consumers are potentially being misled by the combined label “Wine Product of Australia”. Thus, the overall objective of this research is to compare the results of attitudinal versus choice based methods to examine the efficacy of each method when assessing the impact of labeling information and policy on consumer behavior.
Markov Lemma for Countable Alphabets
No full textStrong typicality and the Markov lemma have been used in the proofs of several multiterminal source coding theorems. Since these two tools can be applied to finite alphabets only, the results proved by them are subject to the same limitation. Recently, a new notion of typicality, namely unified typicality, has been defined. It can be applied to both finite or countably infinite alphabets, and it retains the asymptotic equipartition property and the structural properties of strong typicality. In this paper, unified typicality is used to derive a version of the Markov lemma which works on both finite or countably infinite alphabets so that many results in multiterminal source coding can readily be extended. Furthermore, a simple way to verify whether some sequences are jointly typical is shown.
Temperature and Solution SI(IV) ion-mediated gelation of clay mineral dispersions at low PH
No full textPresence of gangue aluminosilicate clay (e.g., muscovite) minerals plays an important role in controlling mineral ore processability and extraction of valuable metals (e.g., copper, gold). Hydrometallurgical processing of clay minerals at low pH ( 1) and elevated temperature (e.g., 70 C), sometimes lead to viscous gel formation nominally ascribed to leached Si(IV) polycondensation. The gelation process is noted to be both time and Si(IV) concentration dependent, characteristically intense at > 0.2 M Si(IV) for plant mineral pulps. In this study, the influence of solution Si(IV) concentration and temperature (25 vs. 70 C) on the gelation of low Fe-substituted muscovite dispersion was investigated as a function of aging time (4 h) at pH 1. For 30 wt.% solid dispersions aging at both 25 and 70 C and in the presence of < 0.1 M Si(IV), no gelation occurred as the shear yield stress decreased in the course of 4 h. At 25 C, increase of the solution Si(IV) concentration of 0.25 - 1 M had no impact on the yield stress of the aging slurry. At 70 C and in the presence of 1 M Si(IV), however, gelation was significant, reflecting dramatically increased yield stress within 2 h of aging. The gelation induction time decreased with increasing dispersion solid content, whilst it was completely absent at lower Si(IV) concentrations. Strong gelation occurring only at 1 M Si(IV) demonstrates that the proliferation of Si(IV) species alone is necessary but not sufficient cause of gelation which occur at lower Si(IV) concentration (e.g., 0.25 M) under plant conditions, albeit other species (e.g., Al(III) and Fe(III)) prevail. Both intense heating and higher Si(IV) concentration are shown to be conducive to gelation.
Flotation behaviour of coarse composite copper bearing particles in high viscosity medium
No full textThe flotation behaviour of low grade, coarse composite particles from the rougher tailings of copper flotation for two porphyry ores was studied. Different grinding times were used to obtain size distributions for the flotation feed (d80) ranging from 150 to 250 um. Copper containing particles in the fine to intermediate size ranges were recovered in the rougher flotation stage. The rougher tailing was then screened through a 75um laboratory sieve. The +75 um fraction was conditioned with a longer chain collector and floated in either normal viscosity (water) or high viscosity (glycerol-water mixture) medium. The recovery of coarse composite copper bearing particles was found to increase in high viscosity medium. The ability to recover these types of particles may result in a reduction in energy consumption in grinding due to the ability to achieve higher overall recovery of valuable mineral.
The effect of bulk iron concentration on the copper activation of sphalerite at PH9
No full textThree sphalerite samples containing Fe varying from 0 to 15 wt per cent were cleaved in CuSo4 solution at a pH of 9 for up to two hours. Each samples was analysed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and in situ tapping mode atomic force microscopy (TMAFM). The results indicate that bulk heterogeneities plays an important role in the surface properties and alteration products of Fe bearing sphalerites. An increase copper concentration and polysulfide formation at the surface was found to coincide with a decrease in bulk Fe content at pH 9 in contrast to previous results at pH 5. Surface morphology changes show an increase in the size precipitates following Cu activation for sample with increasing Fe content. However, the effect of surface roughness due to increasing Fe content on the surface reactivity as a result of activation is much less noticeable at pH 9 as compared to experiments conducted at pH 5.