Amino acid sequence and distribution of mRNA encoding a major skeletal muscle laminin binding protein: an extracellular matrix-associated protein with an unusual COOH-terminal polyaspartate domain.

Two cDNAs encoding an abundant chicken muscle extracellular matrix (ECM)-associated laminin-binding protein (LBP) have been isolated and sequenced. The predicted primary amino acid sequence includes a probable signal peptide and a site for N-linked glycosylation, but lacks a hydrophobic segment long enough to span the membrane. The COOH terminus consists of an unusual repeat of 33 consecutive aspartate residues. Comparison with other sequences indicates that this protein is different from previously described LBPs and ECM receptors. RNA blot analysis of LBP gene expression showed that LBP mRNA was abundant in skeletal and heart muscle, but barely detectable in other tissues. Blots of chicken genomic DNA suggest that a single gene encodes this LBP. The amino acid sequence and mRNA distribution are consistent with the biochemical characterization described by Hall and co-workers (Hall, D. E., K. A. Frazer, B. C. Hahn, and L. F. Reichardt. 1988. J. Cell Biol. 107:687-697). These analyses indicate that LBP is an abundant ECM-associated muscle protein with an unusually high negative charge that interacts with both membranes and laminin, and has properties of a peripheral, not integral membrane protein. Taken together, our studies show that muscle LBP is a secreted, peripheral membrane protein with an unusual polyaspartate domain. Its laminin and membrane binding properties suggest that it may help mediate muscle cell interactions with the extracellular matrix. We propose the name "aspartactin" for this LBP

Hospitals in Cape Town during the Anglo-Boer war

The choice of Cape Town as the site for the base hospitals during the Anglo-Boer War was for many reasons a logical one. The hospitals that existed in the city at the time were inadequate in size and lacked the required facilities. The unexpectedly large number of w01mded and the epidemics of typhoid and plague demanded an ever-increasing number of hospital beds. These demands were met by expanding existing hospitals, making use of temporary hospitals and converting other buildings into hospitals. Eventually more than 3 000 beds were made available by the 10 hospitals in Cape Town and the system, despite continuing problems, provided a reasonable service under difficult circumstances

Connectionist Temporal Modeling for Weakly Supervised Action Labeling

We propose a weakly-supervised framework for action labeling in video, where only the order of occurring actions is required during training time. The key challenge is that the per-frame alignments between the input (video) and label (action) sequences are unknown during training. We address this by introducing the Extended Connectionist Temporal Classification (ECTC) framework to efficiently evaluate all possible alignments via dynamic programming and explicitly enforce their consistency with frame-to-frame visual similarities. This protects the model from distractions of visually inconsistent or degenerated alignments without the need of temporal supervision. We further extend our framework to the semi-supervised case when a few frames are sparsely annotated in a video. With less than 1% of labeled frames per video, our method is able to outperform existing semi-supervised approaches and achieve comparable performance to that of fully supervised approaches.Comment: To appear in ECCV 201

Past and present potential distribution of the Iberian Abies species: A phytogeographic approach using pollen data and species distribution models

This is the accepted version of the following article: Alba-Sánchez, F., López-Sáez, J. A., Pando, B. B.-d., Linares, J. C., Nieto-Lugilde, D. and López-Merino, L. (2010), Past and present potential distribution of the Iberian Abies species: a phytogeographic approach using fossil pollen data and species distribution models. Diversity and Distributions, 16: 214–228, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2010.00636.x/abstract.Aim - Quaternary palaeopalynological records collected throughout the Iberian Peninsula and species distribution models (SDMs) were integrated to gain a better understanding of the historical biogeography of the Iberian Abies species (i.e. Abies pinsapo and Abies alba). We hypothesize that SDMs and Abies palaeorecords are closely correlated, assuming a certain stasis in climatic and topographic ecological niche dimensions. In addition, the modelling results were used to assign the fossil records to A. alba or A. pinsapo, to identify environmental variables affecting their distribution, and to evaluate the ecological segregation between the two taxa. Location - The Iberian Peninsula. Methods - For the estimation of past Abies distributions, a hindcasting process was used. Abies pinsapo and A. alba were modelled individually, first calibrating the model for their current distributions in relation to the present climate, and then projecting it into the past—the last glacial maximum (LGM) and the Middle Holocene periods—in relation to palaeoclimate simulations. The resulting models were compared with Iberian-wide fossil pollen records to detect areas of overlap. Results - The overlap observed between past Abies refugia—inferred from fossil pollen records—and the SDMs helped to construct the Quaternary distribution of the Iberian Abies species. SDMs yielded two well-differentiated potential distributions: A. pinsapo throughout the Baetic mountain Range and A. alba along the Pyrenees and Cantabrian Range. These results propose that the two taxa remained isolated throughout the Quaternary, indicating a significant geographical and ecological segregation. In addition, no significant differences were detected comparing the three projections (present-day, Mid-Holocene and LGM), suggesting a relative climate stasis in the refuge areas during the Quaternary. Main conclusions - Our results confirm that SDM projections can provide a useful complement to palaeoecological studies, offering a less subjective and spatially explicit hypothesis concerning past geographic patterns of Iberian Abies species. The integration of ecological-niche characteristics from known occurrences of Abies species in conjunction with palaeoecological studies could constitute a suitable tool to define appropriate areas in which to focus proactive conservation strategies.The Andalusian Innovation, Science, and Industry Regional Ministry and the National Plan of the Spanish Government

Therapy of Canine Hyperlipidemia with Bezafibrate.

BackgroundBezafibrate (BZF) is effective in the treatment of hypertriglyceridemia in human patients, but there are no data on its use in dogs.ObjectiveTo assess the safety of BZF in hyperlipidemic dogs and its efficacy in decreasing serum triglyceride (TG) and cholesterol (CHO) concentrations.AnimalsForty-six dogs, 26 females and 20 males, mean (±SD) age of 9 (±3) years, with TG ≥150 mg/dL (33 dogs also were hypercholesterolemic [>300 mg/dL]).MethodsProspective, uncontrolled clinical trial. Dogs were treated with bezafibrate once daily, using 200 mg tablets at a dosage of 4-10 mg/kg (depending on body weight). Serum TG and CHO concentrations and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and creatine kinase (CK) activity before and after 30 days of treatment were compared.ResultsSixteen dogs (34.8%) had primary hyperlipidemia, and 30 dogs (65.2%) had secondary hyperlipidemia (including spontaneous hyperadrenocorticism [41.3%, n = 19/46], chronic treatment with glucocorticoids [10.8%, n = 5/46], and hypothyroidism [15.2%, n = 7/46]). After 30 days, serum TG concentration normalized (<150 mg/dL) in 42 dogs (91.3%) and CHO concentration normalized (<270 mg/dL) in 22 of 33 dogs (66.7%). There was no difference in baseline TG concentration between the primary and secondary hyperlipidemia subgroups, but the decrease in TG concentration after treatment was greater in the primary hyperlipidemia subgroup. No adverse effects were observed, but ALT activity decreased significantly after 30 days of treatment.Conclusions and clinical importanceOver 30 days, BZF was safe and effective in treatment of primary and secondary hyperlipidemia in dogs

Aperiodic String Transducers

Regular string-to-string functions enjoy a nice triple characterization through deterministic two-way transducers (2DFT), streaming string transducers (SST) and MSO definable functions. This result has recently been lifted to FO definable functions, with equivalent representations by means of aperiodic 2DFT and aperiodic 1-bounded SST, extending a well-known result on regular languages. In this paper, we give three direct transformations: i) from 1-bounded SST to 2DFT, ii) from 2DFT to copyless SST, and iii) from k-bounded to 1-bounded SST. We give the complexity of each construction and also prove that they preserve the aperiodicity of transducers. As corollaries, we obtain that FO definable string-to-string functions are equivalent to SST whose transition monoid is finite and aperiodic, and to aperiodic copyless SST

Some new data on Angolan Muridae

Zoologica Africana 2(2): 193-20