The interplay of PTEN and AKT nexus in breast cancer: a molecular perspective.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is a highly prevalent and life-threatening ailment that is commonly detected among the females. The downregulation of PTEN in breast cancer is associated with a poor prognosis, aggressive tumor type, and metastasis to lymph nodes, as it activates the pro-survival pathway PI3K/AKT, which is considered the ultimate proliferative pathway. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The mRNA expression of PTEN and AKT genes was investigated using RT-qPCR and TaqMan primer probe chemistry. Moreover DNA was also isolated from the same tissue samples and exonic regions of both genes were amplified for mutational analysis. The proteins expression of PTEN and AKT from seven human breast cancer cell lines was checked through western blot experiments. RESULT: The study revealed a decrease in PTEN expression in 73.3% of the samples, whereas an increase in AKT expression in 40% of samples was observed when compared to the distant normal breast tissue. Conversely, the remaining 60% of samples exhibited a decrease in AKT mRNA expression. There was no observed alteration in the genetic sequence of AKT and PTEN within the targeted amplified regions of breast cancer samples. The high levels of PTEN protein in T-47D and MDA-MB-453 resulted in a lower p-AKT. Two cell lines ZR-75-1 and MDA-MB-468 appeared to be PTEN negative on western blot but mRNA was detected on RT-qPCR. CONCLUSION: In breast cancer the status/expression of PTEN & AKT at mRNA and protein level might be obliging in forecasting the path of disease progression, treatment and prognosis.

Neuroimaging 'will to fight' for sacred values: an empirical case study with supporters of an Al Qaeda associate.

Violent intergroup conflicts are often motivated by commitments to abstract ideals such as god or nation, so-called 'sacred' values that are insensitive to material trade-offs. There is scant knowledge of how the brain processes costly sacrifices for such cherished causes. We studied willingness to fight and die for sacred values using fMRI in Barcelona, Spain, among supporters of a radical Islamist group. We measured brain activity in radicalized individuals as they indicated their willingness to fight and die for sacred and non-sacred values, and as they reacted to peers' ratings for the same values. We observed diminished activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), inferior frontal gyrus, and parietal cortex while conveying willingness to fight and die for sacred relative to non-sacred values-regions that have previously been implicated in calculating costs and consequences. An overlapping region of the dlPFC was active when viewing conflicting ratings of sacred values from peers, to the extent participants were sensitive to peer influence, suggesting that it is possible to induce flexibility in the way people defend sacred values. Our results cohere with a view that 'devoted actors' motivated by an extreme commitment towards sacred values rely on distinctive neurocognitve processes that can be identified.

Ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal interactions underlie will to fight and die for a cause.

Willingness to fight and die (WFD) has been developed as a measure to capture willingness to incur costly sacrifices for the sake of a greater cause in the context of entrenched conflict. WFD measures have been repeatedly used in field studies, including studies on the battlefield, although their neurofunctional correlates remain unexplored. Our aim was to identify the neural underpinnings of WFD, focusing on neural activity and interconnectivity of brain areas previously associated with value-based decision-making, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). A sample of Pakistani participants supporting the Kashmiri cause was selected and invited to participate in an functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) paradigm where they were asked to convey their WFD for a series of values related to Islam and current politics. As predicted, higher compared to lower WFD was associated with increased ventromedial prefrontal activity and decreased dorsolateral activity, as well as lower connectivity between the vmPFC and the dlPFC. Our findings suggest that WFD more prominently relies on brain areas typically associated with subjective value (vmPFC) rather than integration of material costs (dlPFC) during decision-making, supporting the notion that decisions on costly sacrifices may not be mediated by cost-benefit computation.

Collections, collectives, and individuals: Preschoolers' attributions of intentionality.

Given the complexity of our social worlds, humans must develop the ability to make nuanced interpretations of behavior, including the ability to infer an actor's intentions from perceptual properties of an actor's movements. Consistent with the common perception of a group as a single collective entity and the use of singular nouns to refer to groups, such as a clan, family, team, army, herd, hive, or a gaggle, Bloom and Veres (1999) found that adults attribute intentionality to groups to the same extent that they do to single entities. This study examines the developmental course of both these phenomena by examining the performance of adults and preschoolers on an adaptation of Bloom and Veres' task. Our results show that preschoolers, like adults, readily attribute intentions to a group and that the more they do so, the more they perceive the group as a single collective entity. This effect is largely mediated by increased attributions of goal-directed action and, to a lesser extent by attributions of mental states, consistent with the claim that purposeful, coordinated action makes a collection of individuals conceptually coalesce into an entity.

Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Sacred Values and Vulnerability to Violent Extremism.

Violent extremism is often explicitly motivated by commitment to abstract ideals such as the nation or divine law-so-called "sacred" values that are relatively insensitive to material incentives and define our primary reference groups. Moreover, extreme pro-group behavior seems to intensify after social exclusion. This fMRI study explores underlying neural and behavioral relationships between sacred values, violent extremism, and social exclusion. Ethnographic fieldwork and psychological surveys were carried out among 535 young men from a European Muslim community in neighborhoods in and around Barcelona, Spain. Candidates for an fMRI experiment were selected from those who expressed willingness to engage in or facilitate, violence associated with jihadist causes; 38 of whom agreed to be scanned. In the scanner, participants were assessed for their willingness to fight and die for in-group sacred values before and after an experimental manipulation using Cyberball, a toss ball game known to yield strong feelings of social exclusion. Results indicate that neural activity associated with sacred value processing in a sample vulnerable to recruitment into violent extremism shows marked activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, a region previously associated with sacred values and rule retrieval. Participants also behaviorally expressed greater willingness to fight and die for sacred versus nonsacred values, consistent with previous studies of combatants and noncombatants. The social exclusion manipulation specifically affected nonsacred values, increasing their similarities with sacred values in terms of heightened left inferior frontal activity and greater expressed willingness to fight and die. These findings suggest that sacralization of values interacts with willingness to engage in extreme behavior in populations vulnerable to radicalization. In addition, social exclusion may be a relevant factor motivating violent extremism and consolidation of sacred values. If so, counteracting social exclusion and sacralization of values should figure into policies to prevent radicalization.

The devoted actor's will to fight and the spiritual dimension of human conflict.

Frontline investigations with fighters against the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS), combined with multiple online studies, address willingness to fight and die in intergroup conflict. The general focus is on non-utilitarian aspects of human conflict, which combatants themselves deem 'sacred' or 'spiritual', whether secular or religious. Here we investigate two key components of a theoretical framework we call 'the devoted actor'-sacred values and identity fusion with a group-to better understand people's willingness to make costly sacrifices. We reveal three crucial factors: commitment to non-negotiable sacred values and the groups that the actors are wholly fused with; readiness to forsake kin for those values; and perceived spiritual strength of ingroup versus foes as more important than relative material strength. We directly relate expressed willingness for action to behaviour as a check on claims that decisions in extreme conflicts are driven by cost-benefit calculations, which may help to inform policy decisions for the common defense.

Thinking from God's perspective decreases biased valuation of the life of a nonbeliever.

Religious belief is often thought to motivate violence because it is said to promote norms that encourage tribalism and the devaluing of the lives of nonbelievers. If true, this should be visible in the multigenerational violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis which is marked by a religious divide. We conducted experiments with a representative sample of Muslim Palestinian youth (n = 555), examining whether thinking from the perspective of Allah (God), who is the ultimate arbitrator of religious belief, changes the relative value of Jewish Israelis' lives (compared with Palestinian lives). Participants were presented with variants of the classic "trolley dilemma," in the form of stories where a man can be killed to save the lives of five children who were either Jewish Israeli or Palestinian. They responded from their own perspective and from the perspective of Allah. We find that whereas a large proportion of participants were more likely to endorse saving Palestinian children than saving Jewish Israeli children, this proportion decreased when thinking from the perspective of Allah. This finding raises the possibility that beliefs about God can mitigate bias against other groups and reduce barriers to peace.

Preparation and evaluation of multi particulates drug delivery system using natural polymers.

Simvastatin potassium is a hypolipidemic drug used with exercise, diet, and weight-loss to control elevated cholesterol, or hypercholesterolemia. It is a member of the statin class of pharmaceuticals. Okra mucilage is used to reduce the cholesterol level since microspheres has formulated by using okra mucilage to developed a synergistic effect. Calcium chloride act as a cross linking agent, when react with sodium alginate form a calcium alginate, since develope a gel like microbeads (microspheres). The half life of simvastatin is 2h for simvastatin acid. Simvastatin microspheres were prepared by using sodium alginate in combination with Abelmoschus esculentus (Okra), as drug release modifiers in various proportions to overcome the drug related adverse effects. The drug entrapment efficiency increased progressively with increasing concentration of both sodium alginate and okra mucilage resulting in the formation of larger microspheres entrapping greater amounts of the drug. The prepared microspheres were subjected to various evaluation and in vitro release studies. The particle sizes of the prepared microspheres were determined by optical microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis. The prepared microspheres had good spherical geometry with smooth surface as evidence by SEM. Study the capability of the formulation to withstand the physiological environment of the stomach and small intestine.

Sacred values in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: resistance to social influence, temporal discounting, and exit strategies.

Conflicts over sacred values may be particularly difficult to resolve. Because sacred values are nonfungible with material values, standard attempts to negotiate, such as offering material incentives to compromise, often backfire, increasing moral outrage and support for violent action. We present studies with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza demonstrating three other ways sacred values may make conflict more intractable, focusing on what we call devoted actors, people who regard issues central to the Israel-Palestine conflict as sacred values. We show that devoted actors (1) were less amenable to social influence, (2) perceived conflict-related events in the past as well as expected events in the future to be temporally closer, and (3) were blind to individual opportunities to escape the conflict. These results suggest that sacred values may affect decision making in a number of ways, which, when combined, contribute to common defense and continuation of conflict.

Affective dimensions of intergroup humiliation.

Despite the wealth of theoretical claims about the emotion of humiliation and its effect on human relations, there has been a lack of empirical research investigating what it means to experience humiliation. We studied the affective characteristics of humiliation, comparing the emotional experience of intergroup humiliation to two other emotions humiliation is often confused with: anger and shame. The defining characteristics of humiliation were low levels of guilt and high levels of other-directed outrage (like anger and unlike shame), and high levels of powerlessness (like shame and unlike anger). Reasons for the similarities and differences of humiliation with anger and shame are discussed in terms of perceptions of undeserved treatment and injustice. Implications for understanding the behavioral consequences of humiliation and future work investigating the role of humiliation in social life are discussed.

Cystic degeneration of a carcinoid lung tumor: an uncommon cause of an intrathoracic cyst.

Carcinoid tumor is a rare, slow-growing neuroendocrine tumor that accounts for less than 1% of all lung tumors. It occurs most commonly in the midgut, then the lung, and usually presents as a solid lesion. We report a patient with a typical carcinoid tumor that had undergone cystic degeneration.