Simulating Stochastic Dynamic Interactions with Spatial Information and Flux

Author(s):  
Ozan Kahramanoğulları
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Drew ◽  
Laura M. Machesky

ABSTRACT Dissemination of malignant cells from primary tumours to metastatic sites is a key step in cancer progression. Disseminated tumour cells preferentially settle in specific target organs, and the success of such metastases depends on dynamic interactions between cancer cells and the microenvironments they encounter at secondary sites. Two emerging concepts concerning the biology of metastasis are that organ-specific microenvironments influence the fate of disseminated cancer cells, and that cancer cell-extracellular matrix interactions have important roles at all stages of the metastatic cascade. The extracellular matrix is the complex and dynamic non-cellular component of tissues that provides a physical scaffold and conveys essential adhesive and paracrine signals for a tissue's function. Here, we focus on how extracellular matrix dynamics contribute to liver metastases – a common and deadly event. We discuss how matrix components of the healthy and premetastatic liver support early seeding of disseminated cancer cells, and how the matrix derived from both cancer and liver contributes to the changes in niche composition as metastasis progresses. We also highlight the technical developments that are providing new insights into the stochastic, dynamic and multifaceted roles of the liver extracellular matrix in permitting and sustaining metastasis. An understanding of the contribution of the extracellular matrix to different stages of metastasis may well pave the way to targeted and effective therapies against metastatic disease.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (12) ◽  
pp. 2389-2402
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Ayeh Alhasan ◽  
Kirilee Wagner ◽  
David M Kaplan ◽  
Alexandra Woolgar ◽  
...  

Eye movements provide important signals for joint attention. However, those eye movements that indicate bids for joint attention often occur among non-communicative eye movements. This study investigated the influence of these non-communicative eye movements on subsequent joint attention responsivity. Participants played an interactive game with an avatar which required both players to search for a visual target on a screen. The player who discovered the target used their eyes to initiate joint attention. We compared participants’ saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to the avatar’s joint attention bids when they were preceded by non-communicative eye movements that predicted the location of the target (Predictive Search), did not predict the location of the target (Random Search), and when there were no non-communicative eye gaze movements prior to joint attention (No Search). We also included a control condition in which participants completed the same task, but responded to a dynamic arrow stimulus instead of the avatar’s eye movements. For both eye and arrow conditions, participants had slower SRTs in Random Search trials than No Search and Predictive Search trials. However, these effects were smaller for eyes than for arrows. These data suggest that joint attention responsivity for eyes is relatively stable to the presence and predictability of spatial information conveyed by non-communicative gaze. Contrastingly, random sequences of dynamic arrows had a much more disruptive impact on subsequent responsivity compared with predictive arrow sequences. This may reflect specialised social mechanisms and expertise for selectively responding to communicative eye gaze cues during dynamic interactions, which is likely facilitated by the integration of ostensive eye contact cues.


Author(s):  
T. A. Welton

Various authors have emphasized the spatial information resident in an electron micrograph taken with adequately coherent radiation. In view of the completion of at least one such instrument, this opportunity is taken to summarize the state of the art of processing such micrographs. We use the usual symbols for the aberration coefficients, and supplement these with £ and 6 for the transverse coherence length and the fractional energy spread respectively. He also assume a weak, biologically interesting sample, with principal interest lying in the molecular skeleton remaining after obvious hydrogen loss and other radiation damage has occurred.


Author(s):  
Conly L. Rieder

The behavior of many cellular components, and their dynamic interactions, can be characterized in the living cell with considerable spatial and temporal resolution by video-enhanced light microscopy (video-LM). Indeed, under the appropriate conditions video-LM can be used to determine the real-time behavior of organelles ≤ 25-nm in diameter (e.g., individual microtubules—see). However, when pushed to its limit the structures and components observed within the cell by video-LM cannot be resolved nor necessarily even identified, only detected. Positive identification and a quantitative analysis often requires the corresponding electron microcopy (EM).


Author(s):  
Vijay Krishnamurthi ◽  
Brent Bailey ◽  
Frederick Lanni

Excitation field synthesis (EFS) refers to the use of an interference optical system in a direct-imaging microscope to improve 3D resolution by axially-selective excitation of fluorescence within a specimen. The excitation field can be thought of as a weighting factor for the point-spread function (PSF) of the microscope, so that the optical transfer function (OTF) gets expanded by convolution with the Fourier transform of the field intensity. The simplest EFS system is the standing-wave fluorescence microscope, in which an axially-periodic excitation field is set up through the specimen by interference of a pair of collimated, coherent, s-polarized beams that enter the specimen from opposite sides at matching angles. In this case, spatial information about the object is recovered in the central OTF passband, plus two symmetric, axially-shifted sidebands. Gaps between these bands represent "lost" information about the 3D structure of the object. Because the sideband shift is equal to the spatial frequency of the standing-wave (SW) field, more complete recovery of information is possible by superposition of fields having different periods. When all of the fields have an antinode at a common plane (set to be coincident with the in-focus plane), the "synthesized" field is peaked in a narrow infocus zone.


Author(s):  
John R. Porter

New ceramic fibers, currently in various stages of commercial development, have been consolidated in intermetallic matrices such as γ-TiAl and FeAl. Fiber types include SiC, TiB2 and polycrystalline and single crystal Al2O3. This work required the development of techniques to characterize the thermochemical stability of these fibers in different matrices.SEM/EDS elemental mapping was used for this work. To obtain qualitative compositional/spatial information, the best realistically achievable counting statistics were required. We established that 128 × 128 maps, acquired with a 20 KeV accelerating voltage, 3 sec. live time per pixel (total mapping time, 18 h) and with beam current adjusted to give 30% dead time, provided adequate image quality at a magnification of 800X. The maps were acquired, with backgrounds subtracted, using a Noran TN 5500 EDS system. The images and maps were transferred to a Macintosh and converted into TIFF files using either TIFF Maker, or TNtolMAGE, a Microsoft QuickBASIC program developed at the Science Center. From TIFF files, images and maps were opened in either NIH Image or Adobe Photoshop for processing and analysis and printed from Microsoft Powerpoint on a Kodak XL7700 dye transfer image printer.


Author(s):  
RAD Mackenzie ◽  
G D W Smith ◽  
A. Cerezo ◽  
J A Liddle ◽  
CRM Grovenor ◽  
...  

The position sensitive atom probe (POSAP), described briefly elsewhere in these proceedings, permits both chemical and spatial information in three dimensions to be recorded from a small volume of material. This technique is particularly applicable to situations where there are fine scale variations in composition present in the material under investigation. We report the application of the POSAP to the characterisation of semiconductor multiple quantum wells and metallic multilayers.The application of devices prepared from quantum well materials depends on the ability to accurately control both the quantum well composition and the quality of the interfaces between the well and barrier layers. A series of metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) grown GaInAs-InP quantum wells were examined after being prepared under three different growth conditions. These samples were observed using the POSAP in order to study both the composition of the wells and the interface morphology. The first set of wells examined were prepared in a conventional reactor to which a quartz wool baffle had been added to promote gas intermixing. The effect of this was to hold a volume of gas within the chamber between growth stages, leading to a structure where the wells had a composition of GalnAsP lattice matched to the InP barriers, and where the interfaces were very indistinct. A POSAP image showing a well in this sample is shown in figure 1. The second set of wells were grown in the same reactor but with the quartz wool baffle removed. This set of wells were much better defined, as can be seen in figure 2, and the wells were much closer to the intended composition, but still with measurable levels of phosphorus. The final set of wells examined were prepared in a reactor where the design had the effect of minimizing the recirculating volume of gas. In this case there was again further improvement in the well quality. It also appears that the left hand side of the well in figure 2 is more abrupt than the right hand side, indicating that the switchover at this interface from barrier to well growth is more abrupt than the switchover at the other interface.


1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan G. Kamhi ◽  
Hugh W. Catts ◽  
Daria Mauer ◽  
Kenn Apel ◽  
Betholyn F. Gentry

In the present study, we further examined (see Kamhi & Catts, 1986) the phonological processing abilities of language-impaired (LI) and reading-impaired (RI) children. We also evaluated these children's ability to process spatial information. Subjects were 10 LI, 10 RI, and 10 normal children between the ages of 6:8 and 8:10 years. Each subject was administered eight tasks: four word repetition tasks (monosyllabic, monosyllabic presented in noise, three-item, and multisyllabic), rapid naming, syllable segmentation, paper folding, and form completion. The normal children performed significantly better than both the LI and RI children on all but two tasks: syllable segmentation and repeating words presented in noise. The LI and RI children performed comparably on every task with the exception of the multisyllabic word repetition task. These findings were consistent with those from our previous study (Kamhi & Catts, 1986). The similarities and differences between LI and RI children are discussed.


2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Ruusuvirta ◽  
Heikki Hämäläinen

Abstract Human event-related potentials (ERPs) to a tone continuously alternating between its two spatial loci of origin (middle-standards, left-standards), to repetitions of left-standards (oddball-deviants), and to the tones originally representing these repetitions presented alone (alone-deviants) were recorded in free-field conditions. During the recordings (Fz, Cz, Pz, M1, and M2 referenced to nose), the subjects watched a silent movie. Oddball-deviants elicited a spatially diffuse two-peaked deflection of positive polarity. It differed from a deflection elicited by left-standards and commenced earlier than a prominent deflection of negative polarity (N1) elicited by alone-deviants. The results are discussed in the context of the mismatch negativity (MMN) and previous findings of dissociation between spatial and non-spatial information in auditory working memory.


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