3,480 research outputs found
Identification of sites phosphorylated by the vaccinia virus B1R kinase in viral protein H5R
Background: Vaccinia virus gene B1R encodes a erine/threonine protein kinase. In vitro this protein kinase phosphorylates ribosomal proteins Sa and S2 and vaccinia virus protein H5R, proteins that become phosphorylated during infection. Nothing is known about the sites phosphorylated on these proteins or the general substrate specificity of the kinase. The work described is the first to address these questions.
Results: Vaccinia virus protein H5R was phosphorylated by the B1R protein kinase in vitro, digested with V8 protease, and phosphopeptides separated by HPLC. The N-terminal sequence of one radioactively labelled phosphopeptide was determined and found to correspond to residues 81-87 of the protein, with Thr-84 and Thr-85 being phosphorylated. A synthetic peptide based on this region of the protein was shown to be a substrate for the B1R protein kinase, and the extent of phosphorylation was substantially decreased if either Thr residue was replaced by an Ala.
Conclusions: We have identified the first phosphorylation site for the vaccinia virus B1R protein kinase. This gives important information about the substrate-specificity of the enzyme, which differs from that of other known protein kinases. It remains to be seen whether the same site is phosphorylated in vivo
Chemical functionality of interfacial water enveloping nanoscale structural defects in proteins
Building upon a non-Debye multiscale treatment of water dielectrics, this work reveals the biochemical role of interfacial water enveloping nanoscale structural defects in soluble proteins, asserting its role as a chemical base. This quasi-reactant status is already implied by the significant concentration of structural defects in the vicinity of an enzymatically active site, delineating their role as promoters or enhancers of catalytic activity.Fil: Fernandez, Ariel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Oficina de CoordinaciĂłn Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Argentino de Matemática; Argentin
High yields from improved onion strain
FOLLOWING an intensive programme of bulb selection over a period of 10 years, a special strain of the locally developed Spearwood Brown Globe onion has been produced by the Department of Agriculture
Financial, Managerial, and Attitudinal Characteristics of North Dakota Farm Families: Results of the 1986 Farm Survey
Agricultural Finance, Farm Management,
The effects of antifeedant compounds and mineral oil on stylet penetration and transmission of potato virus Y by Myzus persicae (Sulz.) (Hom., Aphididae)
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Geological and Climatic Survey, Camp Bowie Military Reservation Brownwood, Texas
Camp Bowie, a Texas Army National Guard (TXARNG) training area located 6 miles south-southeast of Brownwood, Texas, and comprising 8,755 acres, is presently distributed as two parcels: an original reserve comprising 5,410 acres and a newly acquired adjacent tract to the southeast comprising 3,345 acres (Figure 1). The training area is used for vehicle maintenance and improving combat readiness in the TXARNG and is mandated for company and platoon-level training of reserve and active personnel in the use of armored vehicles and .50-caliber (nonexplosive) training devices. The area is of a size sufficient to implement the Army Training and Evaluation Program (ARTEP). The overall plan includes discontinuing agricultural use and allowing the land to return to a natural, if not original, physical state (Adjutant General's Department of Texas, 1992).
Physiographically, Camp Bowie is on a transition between rolling hills developed on Cretaceous rocks of the Grand Prairie province in the east and the generally lower-relief Osage Plains developed on much older rocks (Triassic, Permian, and Pennsylvanian) to the west (Sellards and others, 1932; Figure 2). These physiographic provinces have also been called Cross Timbers and Prairies, and Rolling Plains, respectively (Gould, 1975). The area is in the Colorado River drainage basin and includes many small intermittent creeks. Water from these streams eventually drains into Pecan Bayou to the east of the camp or Indian Creek to the west. Pecan Bayou and Indian Creek drain south into the Colorado River (Figure 1).Bureau of Economic Geolog
New Perspectives on Customer “Death” Using a Generalization of the Pareto/NBD Model
Several researchers have proposed models of buyer behavior in noncontractual settings that assume that customers are “alive” for some period of time and then become permanently inactive. The best-known such model is the Pareto/NBD, which assumes that customer attrition (dropout or “death”) can occur at any point in calendar time. A recent alternative model, the BG/NBD, assumes that customer attrition follows a Bernoulli “coin-flipping” process that occurs in “transaction time” (i.e., after every purchase occasion). Although the modification results in a model that is much easier to implement, it means that heavy buyers have more opportunities to “die.”
In this paper, we develop a model with a discrete-time dropout process tied to calendar time. Specifically, we assume that every customer periodically “flips a coin” to determine whether she “drops out” or continues as a customer. For the component of purchasing while alive, we maintain the assumptions of the Pareto/NBD and BG/NBD models. This periodic death opportunity (PDO) model allows us to take a closer look at how assumptions about customer death influence model fit and various metrics typically used by managers to characterize a cohort of customers. When the time period after which each customer makes her dropout decision (which we call period length) is very small, we show analytically that the PDO model reduces to the Pareto/NBD. When the period length is longer than the calibration period, the dropout process is “shut off,” and the PDO model collapses to the negative binomial distribution (NBD) model. By systematically varying the period length between these limits, we can explore the full spectrum of models between the “continuous-time-death” Pareto/NBD and the naïve “no-death” NBD.
In covering this spectrum, the PDO model performs at least as well as either of these models; our empirical analysis demonstrates the superior performance of the PDO model on two data sets. We also show that the different models provide significantly different estimates of both purchasing-related and death-related metrics for both data sets, and these differences can be quite dramatic for the death-related metrics. As more researchers and managers make managerial judgments that directly relate to the death process, we assert that the model employed to generate these metrics should be chosen carefully
Estimating CLV Using Aggregated Data: The Tuscan Lifestyles Case Revisited
The Tuscan Lifestyles case (Mason, 2003) offers a simple twist on the standard view of how to value a newly acquired customer, highlighting how standard retention-based approaches to the calculation of expected customer lifetime value (CLV) are not applicable in a noncontractual setting. Using the data presented in the case (a series of annual histograms showing the aggregate distribution of purchases for two different cohorts of customers newly “acquired” by a catalog marketer), it is a simple exercise to compute an estimate of “expected 5 year CLV.” If we wish to arrive at an estimate of CLV that includes the customer\u27s “life” beyond five years or are interested in, say, sorting out the purchasing process (while “alive”) from the attrition process, we need to use a formal model of buying behavior that can be applied on such coarse data. To tackle this problem, we utilize the Pareto/NBD model developed by Schmittlein, Morrison, and Colombo (1987). However, existing analytical results do not allow us to estimate the model parameters using the data summaries presented in the case. We therefore derive an expression that enables us to do this. The resulting parameter estimates and subsequent calculations offer useful insights that could not have been obtained without the formal model. For instance, we were able to decompose the lifetime value into four factors, namely purchasing while active, dropout, surge in sales in the first year and monetary value of the average purchase. We observed a kind of “triple jeopardy” in that the more valuable cohort proved to be better on the three most critical factors
Customer-Base Analysis using Repeated Cross-Sectional Summary (RCSS) Data
We address a critical question that many firms are facing today: Can customer data be stored and analyzed in an easy-to-manage and scalable manner without significantly compromising the inferences that can be made about the customers’ transaction activity? We address this question in the context of customer-base analysis. A number of researchers have developed customer-base analysis models that perform very well given detailed individual-level data. We explore the possibility of estimating these models using aggregated data summaries alone, namely repeated cross-sectional summaries (RCSS) of the transaction data. Such summaries are easy to create, visualize, and distribute, irrespective of the size of the customer base. An added advantage of the RCSS data structure is that individual customers cannot be identified, which makes it desirable from a data privacy and security viewpoint as well. We focus on the widely used Pareto/NBD model and carry out a comprehensive simulation study covering a vast spectrum of market scenarios. We find that the RCSS format of four quarterly histograms serves as a suitable substitute for individual-level data. We confirm the results of the simulations on a real dataset of purchasing from an online fashion retailer
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