Functional linear models are useful in longitudinal data analysis. They include many classical and recently proposed statistical models for longitudinal data and other functional data. Recently, smoothing spline and kernel methods have been proposed for estimating their coefficient functions nonparametrically but these methods are either intensive in computation or inefficient in performance. To overcome these drawbacks, in this paper, a simple and powerful twostep alternative is proposed. In particular, the implementation of the proposed approach via local polynomial smoothing is discussed. Methods for estimating standard deviations of estimated coefficient functions are also proposed. Some asymptotic results for the local polynomial estimators are established. Two longitudinal data sets, one of which involves timedependent covariates, are used to demonstrate the approach proposed. Simulation studies

Although stem cell therapy holds promise as a potential treatment in a number of diseases, the tumorigenicity of embryonic stem cells (ESC) and induced pluripotent stem cells remains a major obstacle. <i>In vitro</i> predifferentiation of ESCs can help prevent the risk of teratoma formation, yet proliferating neural progenitors can generate tumors, especially in the presence of immunosuppressive therapy. In this study, we investigated the effects of the microenvironment on stem cell growth and teratoma development using undifferentiated ESCs. Syngeneic ESC transplantation triggered an inflammatory response that involved the recruitment of bone marrow (BM)derived macrophages. These macrophages differentiated into an M2 or angiogenic phenotype that expressed multiple angiogenic growth factors and proteinases, such as macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), VEGF, and matrix metalloproteinase 9

LPS is a main causative agent of septic shock. There is a lack of effective therapies. In vitro studies have shown that uptake of apoptotic cells actively inhibits the secretion by activated macrophages (M) of proinflammatory mediators such as TNF- and that such uptake increases the antiinflammatory and immunosuppressive cytokine TGF-. We therefore investigated the protective effect of apoptotic cells against LPS-induced endotoxic shock in mice. The current report is the first study to demonstrate that administration of apoptotic cells can protect mice from LPS-induced death, even when apoptotic cells were administered 24 h after LPS challenge. The beneficial effects of administration of apoptotic cells included 1) reduced circulating proinflammatory cytokines, 2) suppression of polymorphonuclear neutrophil infiltration in target organs, and 3) decreased serum LPS levels. LPS can quickly bind to apoptotic cells

We study a class of nonlinear nonlocal cochlear models of the transmission line type, describing the motion of basilar membrane (BM) in the cochlea. They are damped dispersive partial differential equations (PDEs) driven by time dependent boundary forcing due to the input sounds. The global well-posedness in time follows from energy estimates. Uniform bounds of solutions hold in the case of bounded nonlinear damping. When the input sounds are multi-frequency tones, and the nonlinearity in the PDEs is cubic, we construct smooth quasi-periodic solutions (multi-tone solutions) in the weakly nonlinear regime, where new frequencies are generated due to nonlinear interaction. When the input consists of two tones at frequencies f 1, f 2 (f 1&lt; f 2), and high enough intensities, numerical results illustrate the formation of combination tones at 2f 1 f 2 and 2f 2 f 1, in agreement with hearing experiments. We visualize

Macrophages play an important role in the inflammatory responses involved with spinal cord injury (SCI). We have previously demonstrated that infiltrated bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs) engulf myelin debris, forming myelin-laden macrophages (mye-M). These mye-M promote disease progression through their pro-inflammatory phenotype, enhanced neurotoxicity, and impaired phagocytic capacity for apoptotic cells. We thus hypothesize that the excessive accumulation of mye-M is the root of secondary injury, and that targeting mye-M represents an efficient strategy to improve the local inflammatory microenvironment in injured spinal cords and to further motor neuron function recovery. In this study, we administer murine embryonic stem cell conditioned media (ESC-M) as a cell-free stem cell based therapy to treat a mouse model of SCI. We showed that BMDMs, but not microglial cells, engulf myelin debris generated at the injury site. Phagocytosis of myelin debris leads to the formation of mye-M in the injured spinal cord, which are surrounded by activated microglia cells. These mye-M are pro-inflammatory and lose the normal macrophage phagocytic capacity for apoptotic cells. We therefore focus on how to trigger lipid efflux from mye-M and thus restore their function. Using ESC-M as an immune modulating treatment for inflammatory damage after SCI, we rescued mye-M function and improved functional locomotor recovery. ESC-M treatment on mye-M resulted in improved exocytosis of internalized lipids and a normal capacity for apoptotic cell phagocytosis. Furthermore, when ESC-M was administered