The effect of statins on testosterone in men and women, a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

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The Tree Of Knowledge Project : organic designs as virtual learning spaces

Author name used in this publication: Dean A. F. GuiAuthor name used in this publication: Gigi AuYeung2012-2013 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Affinity chromatography in dynamic combinatorial libraries: one-pot amplification and isolation of a strongly binding receptor

We report the one-pot amplification and isolation of a nanomolar receptor in a multibuilding block aqueous dynamic combinatorial library using a polymer-bound template. By appropriate choice of a poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide)-based support, unselective ion-exchange type behaviour between the oppositely charged cationic guest and polyanionic hosts was overcome, such that the selective molecular recognition arising in aqueous solution reactions is manifest also in the analogous templated solid phase DCL syntheses. The ability of a polymer bound template to identify and isolate a synthetic receptor via dynamic combinatorial chemistry was not compromised by the large size of the library, consisting of well over 140 theoretical members, demonstrating the practical advantages of a polymer-supported DCL methodology

Collaborative learning in the virtual English class : a Hong Kong case study

Author name used in this publication: Dora Wong2011-2012 > Academic research: refereed > Chapter in an edited book (author)Version of RecordPublishe

Good to use for virtual consultation time : second life activities for and beyond the technical and web-based English writing classroom

Author name used in this manuscript: Dean A. F. GuiAuthor name used in this manuscript: Dora Wong2011-2012 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

The C. Elegans Heterochronic Gene lin-46 Affects Developmental Timing at Two Larval Stages and Encodes a Relative of the Scaffolding Protein Gephyrin

The succession of developmental events in the C. elegans larva is governed by the heterochronic genes. When mutated, these genes cause either precocious or retarded developmental phenotypes, in which stage-specific patterns of cell division and differentiation are either skipped or reiterated, respectively. We identified a new heterochronic gene, lin-46, from mutations that suppress the precocious phenotypes caused by mutations in the heterochronic genes lin-14 and lin-28. lin-46 mutants on their own display retarded phenotypes in which cell division patterns are reiterated and differentiation is prevented in certain cell lineages. Our analysis indicates that lin-46 acts at a step immediately downstream of lin-28, affecting both the regulation of the heterochronic gene pathway and execution of stage-specific developmental events at two stages: the third larval stage and adult. We also show that lin-46 is required prior to the third stage for normal adult cell fates, suggesting that it acts once to control fates at both stages, and that it affects adult fates through the let-7 branch of the heterochronic pathway. Interestingly, lin-46 encodes a protein homologous to MoeA of bacteria and the C-terminal domain of mammalian gephyrin, a multifunctional scaffolding protein. Our findings suggest that the LIN-46 protein acts as a scaffold for a multiprotein assembly that controls developmental timing, and expand the known roles of gephyrin-related proteins to development

The financial cost of doctors emigrating from sub-Saharan Africa: human capital analysis

Objective To estimate the lost investment of domestically educated doctors migrating from sub-Saharan African countries to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States

Altered thymic differentiation and modulation of arthritis by invariant NKT cells expressing mutant ZAP70

Various subsets of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells with different cytokine productions develop in the mouse thymus, but the factors driving their differentiation remain unclear. Here we show that hypomorphic alleles of Zap70 or chemical inhibition of Zap70 catalysis leads to an increase of IFN-gamma-producing iNKT cells (NKT1 cells), suggesting that NKT1 cells may require a lower TCR signal threshold. Zap70 mutant mice develop IL-17-dependent arthritis. In a mouse experimental arthritis model, NKT17 cells are increased as the disease progresses, while NKT1 numbers negatively correlates with disease severity, with this protective effect of NKT1 linked to their IFN-gamma expression. NKT1 cells are also present in the synovial fluid of arthritis patients. Our data therefore suggest that TCR signal strength during thymic differentiation may influence not only IFN-gamma production, but also the protective function of iNKT cells in arthritis

Semantic contextualisation of social tag-based profiles and item recommendations

Proceedigns of 12th International Conference, EC-Web 2011, Toulouse, France, August 30 - September 1, 2011.The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23014-1_9We present an approach that efficiently identifies the semantic meanings and contexts of social tags within a particular folksonomy, and exploits them to build contextualised tag-based user and item profiles. We apply our approach to a dataset obtained from Delicious social bookmarking system, and evaluate it through two experiments: a user study consisting of manual judgements of tag disambiguation and contextualisation cases, and an offline study measuring the performance of several tag-powered item recommendation algorithms by using contextualised profiles. The results obtained show that our approach is able to accurately determine the actual semantic meanings and contexts of tag annotations, and allow item recommenders to achieve better precision and recall on their predictions.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (TIN2008-06566-C04-02), and the Community of Madrid (CCG10- UAM/TIC-5877