PP13, Maternal ABO Blood Groups and the Risk Assessment of Pregnancy Complications

Placental Protein 13 (PP13), an early biomarker of preeclampsia, is a placenta-specific galectin that binds beta-galactosides, building-blocks of ABO blood-group antigens, possibly affecting its bioavailability in blood.We studied PP13-binding to erythrocytes, maternal blood-group effect on serum PP13 and its performance as a predictor of preeclampsia and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Datasets of maternal serum PP13 in Caucasian (n = 1078) and Hispanic (n = 242) women were analyzed according to blood groups. In vivo, in vitro and in silico PP13-binding to ABO blood-group antigens and erythrocytes were studied by PP13-immunostainings of placental tissue-microarrays, flow-cytometry of erythrocyte-bound PP13, and model-building of PP13--blood-group H antigen complex, respectively. Women with blood group AB had the lowest serum PP13 in the first trimester, while those with blood group B had the highest PP13 throughout pregnancy. In accordance, PP13-binding was the strongest to blood-group AB erythrocytes and weakest to blood-group B erythrocytes. PP13-staining of maternal and fetal erythrocytes was revealed, and a plausible molecular model of PP13 complexed with blood-group H antigen was built. Adjustment of PP13 MoMs to maternal ABO blood group improved the prediction accuracy of first trimester maternal serum PP13 MoMs for preeclampsia and IUGR.ABO blood group can alter PP13-bioavailability in blood, and it may also be a key determinant for other lectins' bioavailability in the circulation. The adjustment of PP13 MoMs to ABO blood group improves the predictive accuracy of this test

Dasher

Dasher is an information-efficient text-entry interface, which can be driven by natural continuous pointing gestures or by pressing buttons. Dasher is a competitive text-entry system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used - for example, when operating a computer one-handed, by joystick, touchscreen, trackball, or mouse; when operating a computer with zero hands (i.e., by head-mouse or by eyetracker); on a palmtop computer; on a wearable computer. The gazetracking version of Dasher allows an experienced user to write text as fast as normal handwriting - 29 words per minute; using a mouse, experienced users can write at 39 words per minute. Dasher can be used to write efficiently in any language. Dasher is free software (distributed under the GPL) and is available for many computer platforms, including linux, windows, and android

Stocks of information in personal consumption: a network model with non-rival borrowing and content overlap

Network stocks of information, Clustering in networks, Small world networks, Distributional inequality, 012, 015, 090,