Crystallographic analysis of Parasponia andersonii hemoglobin

The x-ray crystal structure of ferric Parasponia andersonii hemoglobin has been determined to 2.3 A resolution by molecular replacement with Rice hemoglobin 1 (rHb1). By means of absorbance spectroscopy, electrochemistry and x-ray crystallography, it has been revealed that depending on the oxidation state, the heme iron can exsist in either the pentacoordinate or hexacoordinate form. Pentacoordination of the heme iron is found primarily in the deoxy ferrous (2+) form, whereas the ferric (3+) form is exhibited predominantly in bis-histidine coordination. This is unique among known forms of hemoglobins. Furthermore, the crystallographic data has provided evidence which supports previous works reporting hexacoordination of the heme iron more closely associated with the ferric state (11)

iOS Application for Inventory in Small Retail Stores

Currently, small retail stores with low technology budgets such as those right here in San Luis Obispo are struggling to integrate new technologies into their companies. This mobile application built for iOS with a Firebase backend is seeking to remove their barriers to entry. I built this application to give small retail stores a customizable application that allows them to display products electronically to customers and maintain accurate inventory both in one place. The construction of this application hinged around three major design decisions: UI design of the color management views, organization of the database, and accessing the database with optimized data queries. Anticipated future improvements are the addition of a tabbed controller for product detail pages, a section store map for clothing locations, and custom store sales events

Louisiana Academic Library Workers and Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying is a problem in many work environments and can take different forms, including spreading gossip, criticism of work, unreasonable workloads, and being excluded. It can cause physical, psychological, and emotional stress, manifesting as depression, anxiety, self-esteem issues, exhaustion, feelings of rage/despair, and in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder or suicide. Little is known, however, about the prevalence of bullying amongst library workers in academic libraries. This comprehensive state-wide study provides a replicable model to explore workplace bullying in a systematic manner amongst all academic library workers, not just librarians

Whey- vs Casein-Based Enteral Formula and Gastrointestinal Function in Children With Cerebral Palsy.

Objectives: Children with severe cerebral palsy (CP) commonly have gastrointestinal (GI) dysfunction. Whey-based enteral formulas have been postulated to reduce gastroesophageal reflux (GOR) and accelerate gastric emptying (GE). The authors investigated whether whey-based (vs casein-based) enteral formulas reduce GOR and accelerate GE in children who have severe CP with a gastrostomy and fundoplication. Methods: Thirteen children received a casein-based formula for 1 week and either a 50% whey whole protein (50% WWP) or a 100% whey partially hydrolyzed protein (100% WPHP) formula for 1 week. Reflux episodes, gastric half-emptying time (GE t1/2), and reported pain and GI symptoms were measured. Results: Whey formulas emptied significantly faster than casein (median [interquartile range (IQR)] GE t1/2, 33.9 [25.3-166.2] min vs 56.6 [46-191] min; P = .033). Reflux parameters were unchanged. GI symptoms were lower in children who received 50% WWP (visual analog symptom score, median [IQR], 0[0-11.8]) vs 100% WPHP (13.0 [2.5-24.8]) (P = .035). Conclusion: This pilot study shows that in children who have severe CP with a gastrostomy and fundoplication, GE of the whey-based enteral formula is significantly faster than casein. The acceleration in GE does not alter GOR frequency, and there appears to be no effect of whey vs casein in reducing acid, nonacid, and total reflux episodes. The results indicate that enteral formula selection may be particularly important for children with severe CP and delayed GE. (JPEN J Parenter Enteral Nutr. 2012;36:118S-123S

Turn-taking in cooperative offspring care: by-product of individual provisioning behavior or active response rule?

ABSTRACT: For individuals collaborating to rear offspring, effective organization of resource delivery is difficult because each carer benefits when the others provide a greater share of the total investment required. When investment is provided in discrete events, one possible solution is to adopt a turn-taking strategy whereby each individual reduces its contribution rate after investing, only increasing its rate again once another carer contributes. To test whether turn-taking occurs in a natural cooperative care system, here we use a continuous time Markov model to deduce the provisioning behavior of the chestnut-crowned babbler (Pomatostomus ruficeps), a cooperatively breeding Australian bird with variable number of carers. Our analysis suggests that turn-taking occurs across a range of group sizes (2-6), with individual birds being more likely to visit following other individuals than to make repeat visits. We show using a randomization test that some of this apparent turn-taking arises as a by-product of the distribution of individual inter-visit intervals ("passive" turn-taking) but that individuals also respond actively to the investment of others over and above this effect ("active" turn-taking). We conclude that turn-taking in babblers is a consequence of both their individual provisioning behavior and deliberate response rules, with the former effect arising through a minimum interval required to forage and travel to and from the nest. Our results reinforce the importance of considering fine-scale investment dynamics when studying parental care and suggest that behavioral rules such as turn-taking may be more common than previously thought. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Caring for offspring is a crucial stage in the life histories of many animals and often involves conflict as each carer typically benefits when others contribute a greater share of the work required. One way to resolve this conflict is to monitor when other carers contribute and adopt a simple "turn-taking" rule to ensure fairness, but natural parental care has rarely been studied in sufficient detail to identify such rules. Our study investigates whether cooperatively breeding chestnut-crowned babblers "take turns" delivering food to offspring, and (if so) whether this a deliberate strategy or simply a by-product of independent care behavior. We find that babblers indeed take turns and conclude that part of the observed turn-taking is due to deliberate responsiveness, with the rest arising from the species' breeding ecology

UV-optical from space

The following subject areas are covered: (1) the science program (star formation and origins of planetary systems; structure and evolution of the interstellar medium; stellar population; the galactic and extragalactic distance scale; nature of galaxy nuclei, AGNs, and QSOs; formation and evolution of galaxies at high redshifts; and cosmology); (2) implementation of the science program; (3) the observatory-class missions (HST; LST - the 6m successor to HST; and next-generation 16m telescope); (4) moderate and small missions (Delta-class Explorers; imaging astrometric interferometer; small Explorers; optics development and demonstrations; and supporting ground-based capabilities); (5) prerequisites - the current science program (Lyman-FUSE; HTS optimization; the near-term science program; data analysis, modeling, and theory funding; and archives); (6) technologies for the next century; and (7) lunar-based telescopes and instruments

Long-lived space observatories for astronomy and astrophysics

NASA's plan to build and launch a fleet of long-lived space observatories that include the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), the Advanced X Ray Astrophysics Observatory (AXAF), and the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) are discussed. These facilities are expected to have a profound impact on the sciences of astronomy and astrophysics. The long-lived observatories will provide new insights about astronomical and astrophysical problems that range from the presence of planets orbiting nearby stars to the large-scale distribution and evolution of matter in the universe. An important concern to NASA and the scientific community is the operation and maintenance cost of the four observatories described above. The HST cost about $1.3 billion (1984 dollars) to build and is estimated to require$160 million (1986 dollars) a year to operate and maintain. If HST is operated for 20 years, the accumulated costs will be considerably more than those required for its construction. Therefore, it is essential to plan carefully for observatory operations and maintenance before a long-lived facility is constructed. The primary goal of this report is to help NASA develop guidelines for the operations and management of these future observatories so as to achieve the best possible scientific results for the resources available. Eight recommendations are given

Hungarian health care students' choices between complementary and alternative medicine or conventional medicine: a cross-sectional survey

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An improved machine learning pipeline for urinary volatiles disease detection:Diagnosing diabetes

Motivation The measurement of disease biomarkers in easily–obtained bodily fluids has opened the door to a new type of non–invasive medical diagnostics. New technologies are being developed and fine–tuned in order to make this possibility a reality. One such technology is Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS), which allows the measurement of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in biological samples such as urine. These VOCs are known to contain a range of information on the relevant person’s metabolism and can in principle be used for disease diagnostic purposes. Key to the effective use of such data are well–developed data processing pipelines, which are necessary to extract the most useful data from the complex underlying biological structure. Results In this study, we present a new data analysis pipeline for FAIMS data, and demonstrate a number of improvements over previously used methods. We evaluate the effect of a series of candidate operational steps during data processing, such as the use of wavelet transforms, principal component analysis (PCA), and classifier ensembles. We also demonstrate the use of FAIMS data in our pipeline to diagnose diabetes on the basis of a simple urine sample using machine learning classifiers. We present results for data generated from a case-control study of 115 urine samples, collected from 72 type II diabetic patients, with 43 healthy volunteers as negative controls. The resulting pipeline combines the steps that resulted in the best classification model performance. These include the use of a two–dimensional discrete wavelet transform, and the Wilcoxon rank–sum test for feature selection. We are able to achieve a best ROC curve AUC of 0.825 (0.747–0.9, 95% CI) for classification of diabetes vs control. We also note that this result is robust to changes in the data pipeline and different analysis runs, with AUC > 0.80 achieved in a range of cases. This is a substantial improvement in performance over previously used data processing methods in this area. Our ability to make strong statements about FAIMS ability to diagnose diabetes is sadly limited, as we found confounding effects from the demographics when including these data in the pipeline. The demographics alone produced a best AUC of 0.87 (0.795–0.94, 95% CI). While the combination of the demographics and FAIMS data resulted in an improvement on the AUC (0.907; 0.848–0.97, 95% CI), it did not prove to be a significant difference. Nevertheless, the pipeline itself shows a significant improvement in performance over more basic methods which have been used with FAIMS data in the past

The practical implications of using standardized estimation equations in calculating the prevalence of chronic kidney disease

BACKGROUND: Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI) chronic kidney disease (CKD) guidelines have focused on the utility of using the modified four-variable MDRD equation (now traceable by isotope dilution mass spectrometry IDMS) in calculating estimated glomerular filtration rates (eGFRs). This study assesses the practical implications of eGFR correction equations on the range of creatinine assays currently used in the UK and further investigates the effect of these equations on the calculated prevalence of CKD in one UK regionMETHODS: Using simulation, a range of creatinine data (30-300 micromol/l) was generated for male and female patients aged 20-100 years. The maximum differences between the IDMS and MDRD equations for all 14 UK laboratory techniques for serum creatinine measurement were explored with an average of individual eGFRs calculated according to MDRD and IDMS &lt; 60 ml/min/1.73 m(2) and 30 ml/min/1.73 m(2). Similar procedures were applied to 712,540 samples from patients &gt; or = 18 years (reflecting the five methods for serum creatinine measurement utilized in Northern Ireland) to explore, graphically, maximum differences in assays. CKD prevalence using both estimation equations was compared using an existing cohort of observed data.RESULTS: Simulated data indicates that the majority of laboratories in the UK have small differences between the IDMS and MDRD methods of eGFR measurement for stages 4 and 5 CKD (where the averaged maximum difference for all laboratory methods was 1.27 ml/min/1.73 m(2) for females and 1.59 ml/min/1.73 m(2) for males). MDRD deviated furthest from the IDMS results for the Endpoint Jaffe method: the maximum difference of 9.93 ml/min/1.73 m(2) for females and 5.42 ml/min/1.73 m(2) for males occurred at extreme ages and in those with eGFR &gt; 30 ml/min/1.73 m(2). Observed data for 93,870 patients yielded a first MDRD eGFR &lt; 60 ml/min/1.73 m(2) in 2001. 66,429 (71%) had a second test &gt; 3 months later of which 47,093 (71%) continued to have an eGFR &lt; 60 ml/min/1.73 m(2). Estimated crude prevalence was 3.97% for laboratory detected CKD in adults using the MDRD equation which fell to 3.69% when applying the IDMS equation. Over 95% of this difference in prevalence was explained by older females with stage 3 CKD (eGFR 30-59 ml/min/1.73 m(2)) close to the stage 2 CKD (eGFR 60-90 ml/min/1.73 m(2)) interface.CONCLUSIONS: Improved accuracy of eGFR is obtainable by using IDMS correction especially in the earlier stages of CKD 1-3. Our data indicates that this improved accuracy could lead to reduced prevalence estimates and potentially a decreased likelihood of onward referral to nephrology services particularly in older females.</p