Cloning and expression of truncated CTCF

The CTCF gene maps on chromosome 16 at 16q21- q22.3. It encodes a transcriptional factor protein CTCF called zinc finger protein. CTCF has a number of fUnctions in the cell including controls of cell proliferation by having interactions with other proteins. There are several proteins associated with CTCF. Among them are proteins involved in transcriptional and cell proliferation control, RNA processing, signal transduction, nucleosome components and tumor suppressors. CTCF consists of N-terminal domain, zmc finger domain and C-terminal domain. Extensive research have been done to elucidate the important regions that might play important role in both DNA binding and protein-protein interactions. Previous studies has shown there was a region in the C-domain which has direct interaction with large subunit of RNA polymerase II and controlling various cellular process. In this study, a tnmcated CTCF from the C-terminal domain was produced by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The amplified products was then subcloned into the intermediate cloning vector, pTOP02.1 and transformed into E. coli strain DH5 a. The insert was then cut with respective restriction enzyme to obtain the truncated region and further ligated into pETI6b expression vector for its expression in E. coli strain BL21 (DE3). Expressed protein was separated using SDS-PAGE followed by Western Blotting using a-Histag monoclonal antibody. The truncated CTCF protein was detected to migrate at the size ofapproximately 27kDa despite its theoretical size of 4kDa. This migration was expected and due to anomalous conformational changes during migration

SPATIAL CUES AFFECT NEURAL RESPONSES TO ODDBALL PARADIGM IN THE RAT’S AUDITORY MIDBRAIN

The ability to detect novel sounds in a natural environment has behavioral significance. For instance, novel sounds are important for predation, predator avoidance as well as inter- and intraspecific communications. One of the methods used to study novelty detection is to record neural responses to oddball paradigm. An oddball paradigm is a train of acoustic stimuli in which an oddball sound (Odd) is occasional and randomly interleaved in an otherwise repetitively presented qualitatively different standard sound (Std). Neurons sensitive to novel sounds exist in auditory structures including the auditory midbrain. This study investigated whether neurons in the auditory midbrain use directional cues in the detection of novel sounds. Two free-field speakers were used to present an oddball paradigm. Meanwhile, action potential discharges were recorded from single neurons in the rat’s auditory midbrain. In reference to the frontal midline of an animal, the two sounds were either co-localized in front of the ear contralateral to the recording site, or spatially separated such that one sound was presented at the contralateral ear while the other sound was presented at a different location in the frontal azimuth. It was found that many IC neurons generated stronger responses to Odd than Std. Neurons with transient firing patterns increased their responses to Odd presented at the contralateral ear when Std in the same sequence of an oddball paradigm was presented at a location that was ipsilateral to the side of recording. In contrast, neurons with sustained firing typically did not change their response to the Odd sound at the contralateral ear regardless of the position of Std in the frontal azimuth. These findings suggest that transient neurons use directional cues to detect novel sounds under natural hearing conditions. The results provide insights into neuronal mechanisms underlying both auditory novelty detection and spatial hearing

Community Organizations in Mangrove Forest Management, Paklok Bay, Phuket, Thailand.

This paper focuses on the foundation and the role of community organizations and mangrove forest management in the area of Paklok Bay, Phuket, Thailand. The research was quality research, by interviewing, observation, and using documentary. The study result was found that the foundation of community organization can be classified in two step. The first step, beginning to realize the problems of deterioration of mangrove forest after severe trespassing of economy for trade, and then jointly established conservation group. The second step, making the stability to members and villagers. Role of community organization there are 2 kinds of organization, that are direct managing organization such as coastal resources reservative organization and youth club and indirect managing organization, making the stability that villagers such as saving group, rice group, etc. Keywords: community organization, mangrove forest management, Paklok Ba

Cloning and expression of truncated CTCF

The CTCF gene maps on chromosome 16 at 16q21- q22.3. It encodes a transcriptional factor protein CTCF called zinc finger protein. CTCF has a number of functions in the cell including controls of cell proliferation by having interactions with other proteins. There are several proteins associated with CTCF. Among them are proteins involved in transcriptional and cell proliferation control, RNA processing, signal transduction, nucleosome components and tumor suppressors. CTCF consists of N-tenninal domain, zinc finger domain and C-terminal domain. Extensive research have been done to elucidate the important regions that might play important role in both DNA binding and protein-protein interactions. Previous studies has shown there was a region in the C-domain which has direct interaction with large subunit of RNA polymerase IT and controlling various cellular process. In this study, a truncated CTCF from the C-tenninal domain was produced by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The amplified products was then subcloned into the intermediate cloning vector, pTOP02.1 and transformed into E. coli strain DH5a. The insert was then cut with respective restriction enzyme to obtain the truncated region and further ligated into pET16b expression vector for its expression in E. coli strain BL21 (DE3). Expressed protein was separated using SDS-PAGE followed by Western Blotting using a-Histag monoclonal antibody. The truncated CTCF protein was detected to migrate at the size of approximately 27kDa despite its theoretical size of 4kDa. This migration was expected and due to anomalous conformational changes during migration

Kalman Filtering and Its Real‐Time Applications

Kalman filter was pioneered by Rudolf Emil Kalman in 1960, originally designed and developed to solve the navigation problem in Apollo Project. Since then, numerous applications were developed with the implementation of Kalman filter, such as applications in the fields of navigation and computer vision\u27s object tracking. Kalman filter consists of two separate processes, namely the prediction process and the measurement process, which work in a recursive manner. Both processes are modeled by groups of equations in the state space model to achieve optimal estimation outputs. Prior knowledge on the state space model is needed, and it differs between different systems. In this chapter, the authors outlined and explained the fundamental Kalman filtering model in real‐time discrete form and devised two real‐time applications that implemented Kalman filter. The first application involved using vision camera to perform real‐time image processing for vehicle tracking, whereas the second application discussed the real‐time Global Positioning System (GPS)‐aided Strapdown Inertial Navigation Unit (SINU) system implementation using Kalman filter. Detail descriptions, model derivations, and results are outlined in both applications

Franchising of Financial Institutions

The primary purpose of this thesis was to determine the effect of franchising on a financial institution joining a franchise system. A review of the literature revealed that the marketing related literature was almost totally written from the viewpoint of the franchisor. In addition, no comprehensive study had been done on the results of the participants in franchising of financial institutions since franchising began in that industry in 1982. To investigate the results of franchising in the financial institutions industry, a study of performance measures was conducted on a before-franchising and after-franchising basis on those banks joining a franchise system. The measures of performance used were (1) market share of two primary product areas, deposits and loans; and (2) profitability; as reflected by return on average assets. The primary data in the study were collected on the commercial bank franchisees of First Interstate System from their quarter reports of condition and income filed with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The data were collected for the time period of twenty (20) quarters prior to franchising through the quarter ending June 30, 1987. This represented up to forty (40) quarters of data. There were two generalized research hypotheses: I. Financial institutions joining a franchise system will improve their market share position in both loan and deposit product categories. II. The costs associated with franchising will not negatively affect profitability performance. T he analysis of covariance technique was used to test the hypotheses. A non-parametric sign test was also used. Hypothesis I was rejected. No significant positive effect was found on either the market share of deposits or the market share of loans. The sign test confirmed these findings. Hypothesis II was accepted. No significant negative effect of franchising was found on the profitability performance of the banks tested. The non-parametric sign test confirmed these finding: and showed a significant positive effect on profitability performance. Finally, these results indicated a change in the marketing strategy for First Interstate System. It is currently stressing the marketing and competitive benefits of franchising. This study suggests that a change of emphasis to profitability performance benefits would be in order

Real time global positioning system aided strapdown Inertial Navigation Unit system for unmanned aerial vehicle motion sensing

Inertial Navigation System (INS) is a type of equipment that provides dead reckoning to many operations, which involved in the field of commercial flights and fleets' navigation, military activities, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and others relevant applications for position, velocity and orientation measurements. These applications employed mostly high performance INS, in which these systems are always being imposed with strict rules and regulations by most of the governments in this world. Also, the cost for obtaining a high performance INS is extremely expensive, rendering it to be impractical for implementation in civilian applications. With the recent advancement in Micro Electronic-Mechanical System (MEMS), the inertial navigation unit (INU) has become possible in strapdown configuration. A typical strapdown INU (or SINU) consists of three orthogonally aligned accelerometers and gyroscopes fixed in pre-specified positions. These MEMS type SINU possesses advantages over the high performance INU, such as low cost, small size and abundant in supply. However, the resided stochastic noises that cause the unbound measurement errors had significantly degrade the MEMS INU, rendering it to be unable to function as a standalone navigation instrument. A conventional technique in utilizing the MEMS SINU noisy data is to integrate it with the GPS motion data through Kalman filter, known as the GPS-aided SINU system

Motion Control Of Biped Robot

In this project, a 17-joint high precision biped robot (with 3 -joints on each arm, 5-joints on each leg, and one joint for its head), called KHR-1, is chosen as the platform for studying biped's motion control