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Tumour necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a death ligand cytokine known for its cytotoxic activity against malignantly transformed cells. TRAIL induces cell death through binding to death receptors DR4 and DR5. The inhibitory decoy receptors (DcR1 and DcR2) co-expressed with death receptor 4 (DR4)/DR5 on the same cell can block the transmission of the apoptotic signal. Here, we show that DcRs also regulate TRAIL sensitivity at a supracellular level and thus represent a mechanism by which the microenvironment can diminish tumour TRAIL sensitivity. Mathematical modelling and layered or spheroid stroma–extracellular matrix–tumour cultures were used to model the tumour microenvironment. By engineering TRAIL to escape binding by DcRs, we found that DcRs do not only act in a cell-autonomous or cis-regulatory manner, but also exert trans-cellular regulation originating from stromal cells and affect tumour cells, highlighting the potent inhibitory effect of DcRs in the tumour tissue and the necessity of selective targeting of the two death-inducing TRAIL receptors to maximise efficacy.

It has been shown that Pd(CH3CN)2Cl2catalyzes the rearrangement of allylic esters. Carbamates rearrange more rapidly than acetates which in turn rearrange more rapidly than carbonates. Allylic carbamates are more rapidly isomerized by Pd(CH3CN)2Cl2than by Hg(OCOCF3)2. The rearrangement proceeds well except in cases where the central carbon of the allylic system is fully substituted.In contrast to the reported rearrangement of allylic carbamates by Hg2+and previous reports of Pd2+-catalyzed rearrangements of allylic esters, this work showed the latter are extremely Especific; thus, Eallylic acetates yield equilibrium mixtures free of Zallylic isomers, under conditions in which Zallylic acetates are unreactive. This Especificity is applied to stereospecific 1,3-diene synthesis from bis E,Z-allylic acetates.

Fifty patients released by the Review Panel are compared with a matched group of 50 patients discharged by the attending physician at one and at two years after separation from hospital. The two groups did not differ with respect to readmission rate or time spent in the community. At two years the physician-discharged patients were functioning better than the Panel-discharged patients in two of the seven areas of functioning; in the other five areas of functioning the adjustment of the two groups did not differ.The implications of these findings for the operation of the Review Panel and for the timely discharge of involuntary patients by attending physicians is discussed.

The hydrophobic sensitizer, aluminium phthalocyanine chloride (AIPcCI), and the amphiphilic sensitizer, cis-disulphonated aluminium phthalocyanine (cis-AIPcS2), were incorporated into small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs) and large unilamellar vesicles (LUVs). AIPcCI exhibits aggregation, which increases with increasing sensitizer concentration, whereas cis-AlPcS2 is monomeric at all concentrations studied. Complex fluorescence decays are observed, showing decay time distributions which broaden with increasing phthalocyanine concentration. The phthalocyanine aggregate, although non-fluorescent, influences the overall photophysical behaviour of the phthalocyanine-vesicle system. The effect of aggregation on the resulting photophysics of phthalocyanines was investigated by comparing aggregated and non-aggregated phthalocyanine systems. The implications for photodynamic therapy (PDT) are briefly discussed.

The photophysics of sulfonated aluminum phthalocyanines, AlPcSn (n = 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4), in cationic reversed micelles of benzyldimethyl-n-hexadecylammonium chloride (BHDC) have been investigated. Absorption and steady-state fluorescence emission spectroscopy indicate that only the di- and trisulfonated derivatives are essentially monomeric. Consequently, the triplet-state properties of only these nonaggregated phthalocyanines were investigated. Both derivatives exhibited enhanced intersystem crossing in this medium compared to homogeneous environments, yet the singlet oxygen quantum yields were found to be comparable to those obtained in homogeneous solutions. Time-resolved fluorescence emission studies yielded decays which were best fitted by a decay time distribution analysis rather than the more commonly used sum of exponentials model. The distributions were seen to broaden with increasing water concentration. The distribution of AlPcSn in the reversed micelles, which appears to be strongly influenced by the extent of sulfonation and the environment within the reversed micelle, is discussed.

Accelerometers, used as vibration pickups in machine health monitoring systems, need physical connection to the machine tool through cables, complicating physical systems. A non-contact laser based vibration sensor has been developed and used for bearing health monitoring in this article. The vibration data have been acquired under speed and load variation. Hilbert transform (HT) has been applied for denoising the vibration signal. An extraction of condition monitoring indicators from both raw and envelope signals has been made, and the dimensionality of these extracted indicators was deducted with principal component analysis (PCA). Sequential floating forward selection (SFFS) method has been implemented for ranking the selected indicators in order of significance for reduction in the input vector size and for finalizing the most optimal indicator set. Finally, the selected indicators are passed to k-nearest neighbor (kNN) and weighted kNN (WkNN) for diagnosing the bearing defects. The comparative analysis of the effectiveness of kNN and WkNN has been executed. It is evident from the experimental results that the vibration signals obtained from developed non-contact sensor compare adequately with the accelerometer data obtained under similar conditions. The performance of WkNN has been found to be slower compared to kNN. The proposed fault detection methodology compares very well with the other reported methods in the literature. The non-contact fault detection methodology has an enormous potential for automatic recognition of defects in the machine, which can provide early signals to avoid catastrophic failure and unplanned equipment shutdowns.