General Purpose Alarm Device: A programmable annunciator.

The General Purpose Alarm Device (GPAD) shines lights and makes loud noises to draw the attention of a human being to a problem. It provides a programmable, 80 character display to provide textual information. As an inexpensive modular annunciator, it is intended to decrease the cost of any system that requires complex monitoring and rapid human intervention.

Factors affecting overall survival in 51 adult Filipino patients undergoing stereotactic radiosurgery for spine metastases.

Objectives: Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) is part of the multimodality treatment for patients with cancer. The objective of this study is to determine factors which influence overall survival (OS) of Filipino patients who underwent SRS for metastatic tumors of the spine.

Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of a cohort of Filipino patients treated with spine SRS for metastatic tumors in a single institution.

Galectin-9 bridges human B cells to vascular endothelium while programming regulatory pathways.

Humoral immunity is reliant on efficient recruitment of circulating naïve B cells from blood into peripheral lymph nodes (LN) and timely transition of naive B cells to high affinity antibody (Ab)-producing cells. Current understanding of factor(s) coordinating B cell adhesion, activation and differentiation within LN, however, is incomplete. Prior studies on naïve B cells reveal remarkably strong binding to putative immunoregulator, galectin (Gal)-9, that attenuates BCR activation and signaling, implicating Gal-9 as a negative regulator in B cell biology.