University of Duisburg-Essen

About: University of Duisburg-Essen is a education organization based out in Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 16072 authors who have published 39972 publications receiving 1109199 citations.

Communicating the variability of a software-product family to customers

Abstract: Variability is a central concept in software product family development. Variability empowers constructive reuse and facilitates the derivation of different, customer specific products from the product family. If many customer specific requirements can be realised by exploiting the product family variability, the reuse achieved is obviously high. If not, the reuse is low. It is thus important that the variability of the product family is adequately considered when eliciting requirements from the customer. In this paper we sketch the challenges for requirements engineering for product family applications. More precisely we elaborate on the need to communicate the variability of the product family to the customer. We differentiate between variability aspects which are essential for the customer and aspects which are more related to the technical realisation and need thus not be communicated to the customer. Motivated by the successful usage of use cases in single product development we propose use cases as communication medium for the product family variability. We discuss and illustrate which customer relevant variability aspects can be represented with use cases, and for which aspects use cases are not suitable. Moreover we propose extensions to use case diagrams to support an intuitive representation of customer relevant variability aspects.

Human Circulating CD4+CD25highFoxp3+ Regulatory T Cells Kill Autologous CD8+ but Not CD4+ Responder Cells by Fas-Mediated Apoptosis

Abstract: Mechanisms utilized by human regulatory T cells (Treg) for elimination of effector cells may vary. We investigated the possibility that the mechanism of Treg suppression depends on Fas/FasL-mediated apoptosis of responder cells (RC). CD4(+)CD25(high)Foxp3(+) Treg and autologous CD4(+)CD25(-) and CD8(+)CD25(-) subsets of RC were isolated from blood of 25 cancer patients and 15 normal controls and cocultured in the presence of OKT3 and IL-2 (150 or 1000 IU/ml). Suppression of RC proliferation was measured in CFSE assays. RC and Treg apoptosis was monitored by 7-aminoactinomycin D staining in flow-based cytotoxicity assays. Treg from all subjects expressed CD95(+), but only Treg from cancer patients expressed CD95L. These Treg, when activated via TCR plus IL-2, up-regulated CD95 and CD95L expression (p < 0.001) and suppressed CD8(+) RC proliferation (p < 0.001) by inducing Fas-mediated apoptosis. However, Treg cocultured with CD4(+) RC suppressed proliferation independently of Fas/FasL. In cocultures, Treg were found to be resistant to apoptosis in the presence of 1000 IU/ml IL-2, but at lower IL-2 concentrations (150 IU/ml) they became susceptible to RC-induced death. Thus, Treg and RC can reciprocally regulate Treg survival, depending on IL-2 concentrations present in cocultures. This divergent IL-2-dependent resistance or sensitivity of Treg and RC to apoptosis is amplified in patients with cancer.

HLA-G is a potential tumor marker in malignant ascites.

Abstract: Purpose: Molecular approaches as supplements to cytological examination of malignant ascites may play an important role in the clinical management of cancer patients. HLA-G is a potential tumor-associated marker and that one of its isoforms, HLA-G5, produces a secretory protein. This study is to assess the clinical utility of secreted HLA-G levels in differential diagnosis of malignant ascites. Experimental Design: We used ELISA to assess whether secretory HLA-G (sHLA-G) could serve as a marker of malignant ascites in ovarian and breast carcinomas, which represent the most common malignant tumors causing ascites in women. Results: On the basis of immunohistochemistry, 45 (61%) of 74 ovarian serous carcinomas and 22 (25%) invasive ductal carcinomas of the breast demonstrated HLA-G immunoreactivity ranging from 2 to 100% of the tumor cells. HLA-G staining was not detected in a wide variety of normal tissues, including ovarian surface epithelium and normal breast tissue. Revese transcription-PCR demonstrated the presence of HLA-G5 isoform in all of the tumor samples expressing HLA-G. ELISA was performed to measure the sHLA-G in 42 malignant and 18 benign ascites supernatants. sHLA-G levels were significantly higher in malignant ascites than in benign controls ( P versus benign ascites specimens. At 100% specificity, the highest sensitivity to detect malignant ascites was 78% (95% confidence interval, 68–88%) at a cutoff of 13 ng/ml. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that measurement of sHLA-G is a useful molecular adjunct to cytology in the differential diagnosis of malignant versus benign ascites.

The 2021 Magnonics Roadmap.

Abstract: Magnonics is a rather young physics research field in nanomagnetism and nanoscience that addresses the use of spin waves (magnons) to transmit, store, and process information. After several papers and review articles published in the last decade, with a steadily increase in the number of citations, we are presenting the first Roadmap on Magnonics. This a collection of 22 sections written by leading experts in this field who review and discuss the current status but also present their vision of future perspectives. Today, the principal challenges in applied magnonics are the excitation of sub-100 nm wavelength magnons, their manipulation on the nanoscale and the creation of sub-micrometre devices using low-Gilbert damping magnetic materials and the interconnections to standard electronics. In this respect, magnonics offers lower energy consumption, easier integrability and compatibility with CMOS structure, reprogrammability, shorter wavelength, smaller device features, anisotropic properties, negative group velocity, non-reciprocity and efficient tunability by various external stimuli to name a few. Hence, despite being a young research field, magnonics has come a long way since its early inception. This Roadmap represents a milestone for future emerging research directions in magnonics and hopefully it will be followed by a series of articles on the same topic.