Copyright c © 2014, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. Whereas DARPA has its “grand challenges”, ours are not so grand. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/ 41215/poker-squares, http://cs.gettysburg. edu/ ̃tneller/games/pokersquares http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/ 152237/sequential-placement-optimization-games You may conside...

We describe the Scene-Graph-As-Bus technique (SGAB), the first step in a staircase of solutions for sharing software components for virtual environments. The goals of SGAB are to allow, with minimal effort, independentlydesigned applications to share component functionality; and for multiple users to share applications designed for single users. This paper reports on the SGAB design for transpa...

Tumor xenografts in immunodeficient mice, while routinely used in cancer research, preclude studying interactions of immune and cancer cells or, if humanized by allogeneic immune cells, are of limited use for tumor-immunological questions. Here, we explore a novel way to generate cancer models with an autologous humanized immune system. We demonstrate that hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell...

Immunodeficient mice engrafted with human HSCs support multidisciplinary translational experimentation, including the study of human hematopoiesis. Heightened levels of human HSC engraftment are observed in immunodeficient mice expressing mutations in the IL2-receptor common γ chain (IL2rg) gene, including NOD-scid IL2rγ(null) (NSG) mice. Engraftment of human HSC requires preconditioning of imm...

Hepatocytes represent an important target for gene therapy and editing of single-gene disorders. In α-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency, one missense mutation results in impaired secretion of AAT. In most patients, lung damage occurs due to a lack of AAT-mediated protection of lung elastin from neutrophil elastase. In some patients, accumulation of misfolded PiZ mutant AAT protein triggers hepatoc...