Development of a Radioimmunoassay for Pig Pancreatic Kallikrein

Peer Reviewe

On Edge: the impact of race-related vigilance on obesity status in African-Americans

OBJECTIVE: Nearly half of African-Americans are classified as obese. Perceived racism has been associated with obesity, yet the internal experiences of racism have received little attention. African Americans who face racism may ready themselves to cope through survival strategies, including race-related vigilance. This study explores the association between race-related vigilance and obesity in African Americans. DESIGN AND METHODS: The Reactions to Race module of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (years 2002-2010) was used. Our sample size consisted of 12,214 African-Americans. Race-related vigilance was assessed as: How often do you think about your race? and classified as: never, \u3c daily, daily, and \u3e daily. Obesity was dichotomized as body mass index (BMI) \u3e /=30 kg/m2 vs. \u3c 30 kg/m2 using self-reported weight and height. Multivariable logistic models assessed the association between race-related vigilance and obesity. RESULTS: Seventeen percent of respondents reported thinking about their race \u3e daily; 14% daily; 31% \u3c daily, and 39% reported never thinking about their race. Compared to those who reported never thinking about their race, the adjusted odds of obesity were 0.91, 95% CI: 0.72-1.15 among those thinking about their race \u3c daily, 1.09, 95%CI: 0.81-1.46 among those thinking about their race daily, and 1.37, 95% CI: 1.07-1.76 among those thinking about their race \u3e daily. CONCLUSIONS: Frequently thinking about one\u27s race was a risk factor for obesity in African-Americans in this study. Internalized impacts of racism captured through race-related vigilance may be particularly detrimental to African-Americans, driving their risk for obesity

Developing a corpus of strategic conversation in The Settlers of Catan

International audienceWe describe a dialogue model and an implemented annotation scheme for a pilot corpus of annotated online chats concerning bargaining negotiations in the game The Settlers of Catan. We will use this model and data to analyze how conversations proceed in the absence of strong forms of cooperativity, where agents have diverging motives. Here we concentrate on the description of our annotation scheme for negotiation dialogues, illustrated with our pilot data, and some perspectives for future research on the issue

Dynamic compartmentalization of bacteria: accurate division in E. coli

Positioning of the midcell division plane within the bacterium E. coli is controlled by the min system of proteins: MinC, MinD and MinE. These proteins coherently oscillate from end to end of the bacterium. We present a reaction--diffusion model describing the diffusion of min proteins along the bacterium and their transfer between the cytoplasmic membrane and cytoplasm. Our model spontaneously generates protein oscillations in good agreement with experiments. We explore the oscillation stability, frequency and wavelength as a function of protein concentration and bacterial length.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Latex2e, Revtex

A gravitationally lensed quasar discovered in OGLE

Indexación: Scopus; Web of Science.We report the discovery of a new gravitationally lensed quasar (double) from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) identified inside the ~670deg2 area encompassing the Magellanic Clouds. The source was selected as one of ~60 'red W1-W2' mid-infrared objects from WISE and having a significant amount of variability in OGLE for both two (or more) nearby sources. This is the first detection of a gravitational lens, where the discovery is made 'the other way around', meaning we first measured the time delay between the two lensed quasar images of -132 < tAB < -76 d (90 per cent CL), with the median tAB ~-102 d (in the observer frame), and where the fainter image B lags image A. The system consists of the two quasar images separated by 1.5 arcsec on the sky, with I ~20.0mag and I ~19.6mag, respectively, and a lensing galaxy that becomes detectable as I ~21.5 mag source, 1.0 arcsec from image A, after subtracting the two lensed images. Both quasar images show clear AGN broad emission lines at z=2.16 in the New Technology Telescope spectra. The spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting with the fixed source redshift provided the estimate of the lensing galaxy redshift of z ~0.9 ± 0.2 (90 per cent CL), while its type is more likely to be elliptical (the SED-inferred and lens-model stellar mass is more likely present in ellipticals) than spiral (preferred redshift by the lens model). © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/476/1/663/483368

Characteristics and Practices of Adults Who Use Tanning Beds in Private Residences

Recent research shows that 7.7% of individuals who use indoor tanning beds do so in private homes, but little is known about this group. This study evaluated the tanning practices, reasons for tanning, and association with tanning addiction of adults who use tanning beds in private residences

Specific Interaction of Glyceraldehyde 3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase with the 5′-Nontranslated RNA of Hepatitis A Virus

Initiation of translation of hepatitis A virus (HAV) RNA occurs by internal entry and is likely to involve the interaction of trans-acting cellular protein factors with cis-acting structural elements of an internal ribosomal entry segment (IRES) within the 5'-nontranslated RNA. To characterize interactions between African green monkey kidney (BS-C-1) cell proteins and the predicted stem-loop IIIa (nucleotides 155-235) located at the 5' border of the HAV IRES, we utilized an electrophoresis mobility shift assay (EMSA) to identify a 39-kDa RNA-binding protein (p39). Amino-terminal amino acid sequencing of highly purified p39 revealed absolute identity with human glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). The identity of p39 as simian GAPDH was further confirmed by antigenic and biochemical similarities between p39 and human GAPDH. Analysis of the RNA binding properties of simian GAPDH revealed that this cellular protein interacts with two additional sites in the HAV 5'-nontranslated RNA, one located between nucleotides 1-148 and the other between nucleotides 597-746. Competitive EMSAs also demonstrated that GAPDH and human polypyrimidine tract-binding protein, a putative picornavirus translation initiation factor, compete with each other for binding to stem-loop IIIa, suggesting that the relative cytoplasmic abundance of GAPDH and polypyrimidine tract-binding protein in individual cell-types may be an important determinant of viral translation activity. Human GAPDH was found to destabilize the folded structure of the stem-loop IIIa RNA based upon observed decreases in the circular dichroism spectra of this RNA following binding of the protein. This RNA helix-destabilizing activity of GAPDH could directly influence IRES-dependent translation and/or replication of picornavirus RNA

Collective-Intelligence Recommender Systems: Advancing Computer Tailoring for Health Behavior Change Into the 21st Century

BACKGROUND: What is the next frontier for computer-tailored health communication (CTHC) research? In current CTHC systems, study designers who have expertise in behavioral theory and mapping theory into CTHC systems select the variables and develop the rules that specify how the content should be tailored, based on their knowledge of the targeted population, the literature, and health behavior theories. In collective-intelligence recommender systems (hereafter recommender systems) used by Web 2.0 companies (eg, Netflix and Amazon), machine learning algorithms combine user profiles and continuous feedback ratings of content (from themselves and other users) to empirically tailor content. Augmenting current theory-based CTHC with empirical recommender systems could be evaluated as the next frontier for CTHC. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to uncover barriers and challenges to using recommender systems in health promotion. METHODS: We conducted a focused literature review, interviewed subject experts (n=8), and synthesized the results. RESULTS: We describe (1) limitations of current CTHC systems, (2) advantages of incorporating recommender systems to move CTHC forward, and (3) challenges to incorporating recommender systems into CTHC. Based on the evidence presented, we propose a future research agenda for CTHC systems. CONCLUSIONS: We promote discussion of ways to move CTHC into the 21st century by incorporation of recommender systems

The STRong lensing Insights into the dark energy survey (STRIDES) 2017/2018 follow-up campaign: Discovery of 10 lensed quasars and 10 quasar pairs

We report the results of the STRong lensing Insights into the Dark Energy Survey (STRIDES) follow-up campaign of the late 2017/early 2018 season. We obtained spectra of 65 lensed quasar candidates with ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera 2 on the NTT and Echellette Spectrograph and Imager onKeck, confirming 10 newlensed quasars and 10 quasar pairs. Eight lensed quasars are doubly imaged with source redshifts between 0.99 and 2.90, one is triply imaged (DESJ0345.2545, z = 1.68), and one is quadruply imaged (quad: DESJ0053.2012, z = 3.8). Singular isothermal ellipsoid models for the doubles, based on high-resolution imaging from SAMI on Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope or Near InfraRed Camera 2 on Keck, give total magnifications between 3.2 and 5.6, and Einstein radii between 0.49 and 1.97 arcsec. After spectroscopic follow-up, we extract multi-epoch grizY photometry of confirmed lensed quasars and contaminant quasar+star pairs from DES data using parametric multiband modelling, and compare variability in each system's components. By measuring the reduced χ2 associated with fitting all epochs to the samemagnitude, we find a simple cut on the less variable component that retains all confirmed lensed quasars, while removing 94 per cent of contaminant systems. Based on our spectroscopic follow-up, this variability information improves selection of lensed quasars and quasar pairs from 34-45 per cent to 51-70 per cent, with most remaining contaminants being star-forming galaxies. Using mock lensed quasar light curves we demonstrate that selection based only on variability will over-represent the quad fraction by 10 per cent over a complete DES magnitude-limited sample, explained by the magnification bias and hence lower luminosity/more variable sources in quads. © 2020 The Author(s)