Layout of government registered electronic mail service

This paper presents design and implement a system to exchange electronic mail securely between government officials. Governmental emails exchanging requires high level of security and reliability, encryption can prevent information manipulation, digital signature provides authenticity, and the delivery receipt proves that the user received the message

Harvest epidemiology of Salmonella contamination in EU pig slaughterhouses

Pigs are most often healthy carriers of Salmonella generally without showing any symptoms of disease. Salmonella bacteria are primarily located in the gastrointestinal tract of the subclinical infected pigs and the epidemiology of Salmonella at the slaughterhouse level is first of all a question of direct or indirect fecal contamination of pigs or carcasses (I). During transport and lairage, the proportion of subclinically infected pigs that excrete Salmonella may be increased considerably. Consequently, the risk of cross-contaminating non-infected pigs is also increased (2). During the slaughter process, carcasses may be contaminated or cross-contaminated by manual or mechanical handling

The role of Allee effect in modelling post resection recurrence of glioblastoma

Resection of the bulk of a tumour often cannot eliminate all cancer cells, due to their infiltration into the surrounding healthy tissue. This may lead to recurrence of the tumour at a later time. We use a reaction-diffusion equation based model of tumour growth to investigate how the invasion front is delayed by resection, and how this depends on the density and behaviour of the remaining cancer cells. We show that the delay time is highly sensitive to qualitative details of the proliferation dynamics of the cancer cell population. The typically assumed logistic type proliferation leads to unrealistic results, predicting immediate recurrence. We find that in glioblastoma cell cultures the cell proliferation rate is an increasing function of the density at small cell densities. Our analysis suggests that cooperative behaviour of cancer cells, analogous to the Allee effect in ecology, can play a critical role in determining the time until tumour recurrence

Structure and Function of the Hair Cell Ribbon Synapse

Faithful information transfer at the hair cell afferent synapse requires synaptic transmission to be both reliable and temporally precise. The release of neurotransmitter must exhibit both rapid on and off kinetics to accurately follow acoustic stimuli with a periodicity of 1 ms or less. To ensure such remarkable temporal fidelity, the cochlear hair cell afferent synapse undoubtedly relies on unique cellular and molecular specializations. While the electron microscopy hallmark of the hair cell afferent synapse — the electron-dense synaptic ribbon or synaptic body — has been recognized for decades, dissection of the synapse’s molecular make-up has only just begun. Recent cell physiology studies have added important insights into the synaptic mechanisms underlying fidelity and reliability of sound coding. The presence of the synaptic ribbon links afferent synapses of cochlear and vestibular hair cells to photoreceptors and bipolar neurons of the retina. This review focuses on major advances in understanding the hair cell afferent synapse molecular anatomy and function that have been achieved during the past years

Fibronectin is a stress responsive gene regulated by HSF1 in response to geldanamycin

Fibronectin is an extracellular matrix glycoprotein with key roles in cell adhesion and migration. Hsp90 binds directly to fibronectin and Hsp90 depletion regulates fibronectin matrix stability. Where inhibition of Hsp90 with a C-terminal inhibitor, novobiocin, reduced the fibronectin matrix, treatment with an N-terminal inhibitor, geldanamycin, increased fibronectin levels. Geldanamycin treatment induced a stress response and a strong dose and time dependent increase in fibronectin mRNA via activation of the fibronectin promoter. Three putative heat shock elements (HSEs) were identified in the fibronectin promoter. Loss of two of these HSEs reduced both basal and geldanamycin-induced promoter activity, as did inhibition of the stress-responsive transcription factor HSF1. Binding of HSF1 to one of the putative HSE was confirmed by ChIP under basal conditions, and occupancy shown to increase with geldanamycin treatment. These data support the hypothesis that fibronectin is stress-responsive and a functional HSF1 target gene. COLA42 and LAMB3 mRNA levels were also increased with geldanamycin indicating that regulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) genes by HSF1 may be a wider phenomenon. Taken together, these data have implications for our understanding of ECM dynamics in stress-related diseases in which HSF1 is activated, and where the clinical application of N-terminal Hsp90 inhibitors is intended

Quality of Daily Work & Life Index – A Definition and Its Evaluation in a Fuzzy Way

The aim of this paper is to present a brief sketch of what has been a wide project funded by the Puglia region with a group of researchers at the University of Salento. The purpose of the project was to provide three indexes that are based on the principle of sustainability and gender equality as a new tool to address public policies. Here we will focus our attention on one particular index definition and evaluation in a fuzzy way. This index we named Life would offer, in an aggregated way, an evaluation of the connection between quality of daily work and life

Blended Homing Guidance Law Using Fuzzy Logic

The application of fuzzy logic for the development of guidance laws for homing missiles is presented. Fuzzy logic approximation of the well known proportional navigation guidance law is discussed, followed by the development of a blended guidance law using fuzzy logic. The objective of the latter guidance law is to combine desirable features of three homing guidance laws to enhance the interception of targets performing uncertain maneuvers. Fuzzy logic guidance law development employs triangular, trapezoidal and sigmoidal membership functions. Mamdani-style inference is employed in the fuzzy inference system. Simulation results using point-mass missile model and a spiraling, high-speed ballistic target model are given