Major Hopes Research Articles

Metabolic vulnerability of cancer stem cells and their niche.

Cancer stem cells (CSC) are the leading cause of the failure of anti-tumor treatments. These aggressive cancer cells are preserved and sustained by adjacent cells forming a specialized microenvironment, termed niche, among which tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are critical players. The cycle of tricarboxylic acids, fatty acid oxidation path, and electron transport chain have been proven to play central roles in the development and maintenance of CSCs and TAMs. By improving their oxidative metabolism, cancer cells are able to extract more energy from nutrients, which allows them to survive in nutritionally defective environments. Because mitochondria are crucial bioenergetic hubs and sites of these metabolic pathways, major hopes are posed for drugs targeting mitochondria. A wide range of medications targeting mitochondria, electron transport chain complexes, or oxidative enzymes are currently investigated in phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials against hard-to-treat tumors. This review article aims to highlight recent literature on the metabolic adaptations of CSCs and their supporting macrophages. A focus is provided on the resistance and dormancy behaviors that give CSCs a selection advantage and quiescence capacity in particularly hostile microenvironments and the role of TAMs in supporting these attitudes. The article also describes medicaments that have demonstrated a robust ability to disrupt core oxidative metabolism in preclinical cancer studies and are currently being tested in clinical trials.

A Study on the Congruence between College Major Hopes and Actual Choices of High School Students

A Study on the Congruence between College Major Hopes and Actual Choices of High School Students

A Longitudinal Study on Adverse Events Following COVID-19 Vaccination among Healthcare Workers in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Tiruvallur District, Tamil Nadu

Introduction: COVID 19 Vaccination which was started in January 2021 in India and is one of the major hopes for ending the pandemic. This study was done in a tertiary care hospital in India to understand the adverse events following COVID 19 immunization.
 Methodology: This was a longitudinal study done in a tertiary care hospital in Thiruvallur district. By universal sampling, 1200 healthcare workers who got vaccinated in the hospital from January 20 to January 30, 2021 were study participants. Pre-tested semi structured questionnaire was used for data collection which was used for collecting data regarding socio-demographic details, adverse events immediately following vaccination and late adverse events which were followed up after 48 hours by telemonitoring.
 Results: Around 3.7% of the study participants had immediate reactions, 6.3% developed reactions in waiting room and 50.4% developed late reactions which were mild to moderate in severity and got relieved on medication and rest. Female sex, previous COVID infection and age less than 30 years had statistically significant association with late vaccine reactions
 Conclusion: The study shows that COVID vaccine adverse events though present were mild to moderate in severity and they should not be the reason to defer or refuse COVID vaccination.

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Modern toxicology has embraced in vitro methods, and major hopes are based on the omics technologies and systems biology approaches they bring along (Hartung and McBride, 2011; Hartung et al., 2012). A culture of stringent validation has been developed for such approaches (Leist et al., 2010, 2012a,b), while the quality and usefulness of animal experiments have been little scrutinized. A new study (Seok et al., 2013) now shows the low predictivity of animal responses in the field of inflammation. These findings corroborate earlier findings from comparisons in the fields of neurodegeneration, stroke and sepsis. The low predictivity of animal experiments in research areas allowing direct comparisons of mouse versus human data puts strong doubt on the usefulness of animal data as key technology to predict human safety.

Trauma lead hopes to inspire others.

A nurse who is believed to be the only member of her profession to head one of England's major trauma centres hopes her appointment will encourage others to take up executive duties.

2007 Greek Elections: Signs of Major Political Realignment, Challenges and Hopes for the Left

Finally, the conduct in office of Europe’s Left-wing reformist parties in recent years paved the way for the current triumphal return of the European Right. In his commentary on the 2007 Greek elections, Michalis Spourdalakis explains that this has been a contradictory and complex process. In Greece, the decline of PASOK, while leading to a Right-ward shift, has also repolarized politics between the Right and the Left. This has created openings and opportunities in which new progressive formations, such as the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRISA), are making a mark.

BUILDING ON THE PAST - CHALLENGING THE FUTURE: WILL GENOMICS PROVIDE THE SOLUTION TO HYPERTENSION?

Hypertension is one of the major common polygenic and multifactorial diseases, and continues to constitute a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The pathophysiological mechanisms underlying hypertension have not been elucidated, which significantly limits our ability to treat and prevent hypertension. A frequently asked question is whether genomics will provide the solution to the many remaining unanswered questions as to the causes of hypertension. Genomics, an art by its own virtue, holds its promises, yet the questions we are asking of genomics must be well defined for genomics to meet at least some of our expectations. The hopes and promises of genomics are high and one of the major hopes is that genomics will improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of hypertension and enable us to classify hypertensive syndromes more succinctly and enhance our ability to provide patients with specific anti-hypertensive therapy as well as predict outcome. There is still much to be done but perseverance in the task and a firm belief in genomics and in the immense potential of the human genome is essential.

Can young pups teach an old Dog new tricks? Lessons for British reformers from eastern Europe's new constitutional democracies

This article analyses the process of constitutional reforms in eastern Europe and draws lessons for similar reforms in British politics. It looks, first, at electoral engineering and shows how political actors, pursuing their particular interests, try to turn proportionality back into majoritarianism, and how and why such moves do not necessarily result in their projected outcomes. In a similar vein, it then goes on to analyse parliamentary formal rules, such as standing orders, and demonstrates how attempts to manipulate them can be offset, not just by counter‐manipulation, but by underlying informal rules and cultural norms. Overall, we argue that, because constitutional change is an ongoing and crucially political process, its results are neither wholly predictable nor always welcomed. On the basis of the eastern European experience, we also suggest that constitutional change does not necessarily lead to increased legitimacy of the system, thus undermining one of the major hopes of reformers in Britain.

The DNA revolution in population genetics

Unprecedented clarity has come to our understanding of genetic variation by the analysis of DNA sequences. It is not surprising that the new DNA technologies are leading to a resurgence of interest in population genetics. In this review, I discuss recent progress and future directions towards reconstructing the history of human populations. There is increasing consensus on a recent `Out of Africa' origin of modern humans, which explains why the greatest fraction of genetic diversity is found within populations, rather than between them. The comparison of Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA data shows remarkable sex differences in geographic variation. The analysis of Neanderthal DNA has been a major breakthrough in the study of fossil DNA. Among major hopes for the future are applications to polygenic diseases.

Differentiated Instruction in Belorussian Schools

In the search for ways to transform the schools, major hopes have been placed on the differentiation of instruction. It is expected that this will help the schools to free themselves of the necessity of teaching everyone identically, that it will strengthen the humanities orientation of education, alleviate overload, and make it possible to take the characteristics, capacities, and interests of the children into account. A system of differentiation of instruction has been in the process of adoption in the schools of Oktiabr'skii District in the city of Minsk and Slonimskii District in Grodno Region of the Belorussian SSR since 1988. Experience that has been accumulated in our country and abroad has been taken into account. Analysis has made it possible to discern the general features characterizing this form of instruction. They consist of the following. At a certain age level, generally the age of adolescence, the students are given the right to choose the direction of further instruction. Psychological ...

Iwuré: Medium of Communicating the Desires of Men To the Gods in Yorubaland

Among the Yoruba people of West Africa, the prayerful aspect of the oral medium of communication between man and the gods is known as iwu're. Iwure is the totality of the Yoruba traditional prayer par excellence. To date there has been no special academic treatment of iwure; all we have can only be described as passing remarks. To quote Shorter (1975: 1): Prayer is the central phenomenon of religion, and although the study of religion has received increasingly serious attention from social anthropologists, it would seem that less than justice has been done by them to the subject of prayer. Truly, except for the efforts of the present writer, no one has researched the subject of iwu're in the Yoruba thought system. The focus of this paper, therefore, is an attempt at a purely descriptive account of iwure with particular emphasis on the petitionary aspects of the prayers from man to the gods and the subsequent blessings returning from the gods to man. Yoruba thought sanctions three major hopes and aspirations of men which manifest themselves in the following words:

ÌWurÉ: Medium of Communicating the Desires of Men To the Gods in Yorubaland

Among the Yoruba people of West Africa, the prayerful aspect of the oral medium of communication between man and the gods is known as iwu're. Iwure is the totality of the Yoruba traditional prayer par excellence. To date there has been no special academic treatment of iwure; all we have can only be described as passing remarks. To quote Shorter (1975: 1): Prayer is the central phenomenon of religion, and although the study of religion has received increasingly serious attention from social anthropologists, it would seem that less than justice has been done by them to the subject of prayer. Truly, except for the efforts of the present writer, no one has researched the subject of iwu're in the Yoruba thought system. The focus of this paper, therefore, is an attempt at a purely descriptive account of iwure with particular emphasis on the petitionary aspects of the prayers from man to the gods and the subsequent blessings returning from the gods to man. Yoruba thought sanctions three major hopes and aspirations of men which manifest themselves in the following words:

Chemotherapy for radiation oncologists

Cancer Chemotherapy is a modality which can be curative or palliative depending upon the tumor in question, its stage and prior therapeutic history. One of the major hopes for increasing the curative potential of chemotherapy has been combining it with irradiation and/or surgery to attack micrometastatic disease. This has been called adjuvant chemotherapy. Despite initial enthusiasm and excitement adjuvant chemotherapy has been generally disappointing. The best data exist for Wilms' tumors, Ewing's sarcoma and embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. The data for breast cancer and osteosarcoma are controversial and clearly at this time do not represent a major improvement in therapy. The data for gastrointestinal and lung cancer indicate no meaningful benefit. In the malignant lymphomas, where chemotherapy against microscopic disease is highly positive, adjuvant chemotherapy for early stage disease after curative intent irradiation has been equivocal at best. It therefore appears time to reevaluate the basic tenets of adjuvant chemotherapy as well as the design of future trials.

Mexico: A Matured Latin-American Revolution, 1910-1960

From initially political motivations at its out break in 1910, the credos and ideals of the Mexican Revolution have broadened to include social, economic, and cultural mat ters and changes. Developments in ideologies and events have been uneven. The main focus was on political life from 1917 to 1933; from 1934 to 1940 it was on social, especially agrarian, reforms; there were major shifts toward balanced economic growth, including industrialism, from 1940 to the present. Militarism has waned. Under the Institutional Revolution, since 1940, a second generation of leaders has accepted the often utopian objectives of earlier phases but has emphasized harmony, a directed economy, and national unities rather than class struggle and state socialism as bases for policy. Goals remain autodetermination, liberal democracy, big government, nationalism. Major revolutionary hopes, summarized in Arti cles 3, 27, and 123 of the 1917 Constitution, are being imple mented, but by less doctrinaire means. Revolution has imper ceptibly passed into normal evolution. Lack of predetermined ideology, plus alternatives, compromises, and contradictions in the original 1910-1917 credos of the Revolution have per mitted a salutary flexibility and continuity of the Revolution. A main result of a half century of varied programs has been to reshape society, creating a relatively open system. One effect has been to increase the middle sectors, with a dwindling of the proletarian base from an estimated 90 per cent in pre- revolutionary days to about half that in 1960. As a process, the Revolution continues within stable frameworks.

Scientists and public responsibility

A meeting of the American Physical Society in Boulder, Colorado, is an occasion that brings considerable pleasure to the physicists of the National Bureau of Standards. We value highly the long traditional association of the Society's Washington spring meeting with the Bureau. We naturally regret that the rate of growth of the Society over the past fifteen to twenty years has so completely out-distanced the growth of the Bureau's facilities to accommodate meetings that almost all the Society's technical sessions now have to be held elsewhere. When the radio and cryogenic engineering branches of the Bureau were located here a few years ago, one of our major hopes was that the Bureau, in conjunction with the University of Colorado, would provide a sufficient nucleus of scientific interest that the larger professional societies could be induced to meet here occasionally with the magnificent natural attractions of the area offering only fringe benefits.

THE FUTURE OF PHYSICAL MEDICINE

At last the long delayed development of physical medicine seems to be at hand. Physical medicine includes the employment of the physical and other effective properties of light, heat, cold, water, electricity, massage, manipulation, exercise and mechanical devices for physical and occupational therapy in the diagnosis or treatment of disease. Physical medicine is applied biophysics. Dr. Alan Gregg,¹medical director of the Rockefeller Foundation, said recently "Among my major hopes, let me record the wish that biophysics may be soon recognized as the brother of biochemistry, even if the time is now too late to consider it a twin.... One of the natural outgrowths of such a preclinical science might be the now long overdue development of physical therapy in this country." Physical agents are employed not only for therapy but also for diagnosis; therefore the term physical medicine, long in use in England, is gradually replacing the designation