Lineage commitment and tumorigenesis, traits distinguishing stem cells, have not been well characterized and compared in mesenchymal stem cells derived from human dental pulp (DP-MSCs) and bone marrow (BM-MSCs). Here, we report DP-MSCs exhibit increased osteogenic potential, possess decreased adipogenic potential, form dentin pulp-like complexes, and are resistant to oncogenic transformation when compared to BM-MSCs. Genome-wide RNA-seq and differential expression analysis reveal differences in adipocyte and osteoblast differentiation pathways, bone marrow neoplasm pathway, and PTEN/PI3K/AKT pathway. Higher PTEN expression in DP-MSCs than in BM-MSCs is responsible for the lineage commitment and tumorigenesis differences in both cells. Additionally, the PTEN promoter in BM-MSCs exhibits higher DNA methylation levels and repressive mark H3K9Me2 enrichment when compared to DP-MSCs, which is mediated by increased DNMT3B and G9a expression, respectively. The study demonstrates how several epigenetic factors broadly affect lineage commitment and tumorigenesis, which should be considered when developing therapeutic uses of stem cells.

Summary:We report a retrospective analysis of VZV infection after haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) in children. Thirty-three (30%) of the total 109 children who were transplanted during a 7 year period developed post-transplant VZV infection. Twenty-four of these 33 (73%) children had VZV infection within 1 year following HSCT. The cumulative incidences of post-transplant VZV infection at 1 and 5 years were 26% and 45%, respectively. The positive and negative predictive values of pretransplant VZV serology in recipients on the development of HZ following HSCT were 39% and 88%, respectively. Pretransplant VZV seropositivity in recipients was the only risk factor for post-transplant herpes zoster (HZ) infection on multivariate analysis. All patients responded to acyclovir. The median duration of VZV infection was 5 days. Three (11%) and one (3%) children with HZ developed visceral dissemination and post-herpetic neuralgia, respectively. No mortality was directly attributed to VZV infection. VZV infection remains a major cause of morbidity in children after HSCT. Further studies are warranted to evaluate the potential use of VZV vaccine in these children. Bone Marrow Transplantation (2000) 25, 167-172. Keywords: haematopoietic stem cell transplantation; herpes zoster; paediatric; varicella-zoster virus Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) is a herpes virus that causes chickenpox (CP) as a primary infection and herpes zoster (HZ) when the latent virus is reactivated. It is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised patients. Ten percent of children with leukaemia on maintenance chemotherapy died of VZV infection in the preacyclovir era. 1 Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is now the treatment of choice for some malignant and nonmalignant conditions in children. However, these patients are at high risk of having severe VZV infection because of significant and prolonged immunosuppression in the post-transplant period. The incidence of VZV infec- tion in children following HSCT varied from 23% to 67%. [2][3][4][5][6] Herpes zoster is one of the common late infections in post-transplant patients. The median onset of HZ following HSCT occurred at the fifth month. 7 However, risk factors for post-transplant VZV infection in children are less well defined because there are few reports on this subject. In this study, we review the incidence, risk factors, treatment and clinical outcome of VZV infection in children who underwent HSCT at our centre. Patients and methods Study population and design

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In this study, the Al2O3 nanoparticles were incorporated into polymer as a nono-composite dielectric for used in a flexible amorphous Indium-Gallium-Zinc Oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistor (TFT) on a polyethylene naphthalate substrate by solution process. The process temperature was well below 100 °C. The a-IGZO TFT exhibit a mobility of 5.13 cm2/V s on the flexible substrate. After bending at a radius of 4 mm (strain = 1.56%) for more than 100 times, the performance of this a-IGZO TFT was nearly unchanged. In addition, the electrical characteristics are less altered after positive gate bias stress at 10 V for 1500 s. Thus, this technology is suitable for use in flexible displays.

Variable-bit-rate (VBR) encoded videos can provide a more consistent visual quality than constant-bit-rate (CBR) encoded videos. However, the long-range bit-rate variations in VBR videos make it difficult to efficiently provide quality-of-service control in a video-on-demand system. Existing scheduling algorithms such as Optimal Smoothing, which requires both downward and upward bandwidth reallocations to adapt to the video bit-rate variations, simply cannot guarantee video delivery in networks with mixed video and data traffic. This study tackles this limitation by investigating a new scheduling algorithm with monotonic-decreasing rate allocations for scheduling video data transmissions. By eliminating upward bandwidth reallocations, the proposed scheduler can guarantee video delivery even in the presence of other data traffic in the same network. Moreover, results show that the proposed scheduler can achieve such performance guarantee without tradeoff in performance or resource requirements. This paper presents this new monotonic-decreasing rate scheduler, analyzes its fundamental properties, and evaluates its performance using a large number of real-world VBR video traces (274 DVD movies) in extensive trace-driven simulations.

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Superconducting Tl-Ca-Ba-CuO thin films less than 1 pm thick have been prepared on Y-stabilized ZrO, (100). MgO (100). and SrTiO, (100) substrates using thermal evaporation and a two-step annealing process involving the growth of BaCuO, films followed by exsilu crystallization and thalliation under thallium oxide vapours. We have been able to fabricate reasonably uniform films of t h e TI,Ca, Ba,Cu,O. (2122) and Ti,Ca,Ba,Cu,O, (2223) superconducting phases, and have successfully reduced the density of impurity phases by controlling the stoichiometry and morphology of the precursor films and the thalliation conditions. In addition, a 150 pm wide, and 1 cm long, track patterned in one of these films using standard photolithography techniques shows a T,, of 102 K. a J, in excess of IO4 A cm-' at 90 K and a strong bolometric response when illuminated with an He-Ne 1 mW laser