A Novel Mouse c-fos Intronic Promoter That Responds to CREB and AP-1 Is Developmentally Regulated In Vivo

BACKGROUND: The c-fos proto-oncogene is an archetype for rapid and integrative transcriptional activation. Innumerable studies have focused on the canonical promoter, located upstream from the transcriptional start site. However, several regulatory sequences have been found in the first intron. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we describe an extremely conserved region in c-fos first intron that contains a putative TATA box, and functional TRE and CRE sites. This fragment drives reporter gene activation in fibroblasts, which is enhanced by increasing intracellular calcium and cAMP and by cotransfection of CREB or c-Fos/c-Jun expression vectors. We produced transgenic mice expressing a lacZ reporter controlled by the intronic promoter. Lac Z expression of this promoter is restricted to the developing central nervous system (CNS) and the mesenchyme of developing mammary buds in embryos 12.5 days post-conception, and to brain tissue in adults. RT-QPCR analysis of tissue mRNA, including the anlage of the mammary gland and the CNS, confirms the existence of a novel, nested mRNA initiated in the first intron. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results provide evidence for a novel, developmentally regulated promoter in the first intron of the c-fos gene

Structure predictions of membrane domains of proteins from the Divisome and BlaR

IAP/Belspo P7/44 project : Integrative Protein Science (iPROS

Learning Users' Habits to Automate Repetitive Tasks

Adapti e ProgrammiD Envi onment (APE), a software assiFDk--- embedded ibe the ViDflFF orks Smalltalkillt acti e programmiF envi onment, watches what the useri doikD draws onmachiY lear nir to learn the user'shabifl , and afterward offers to complete repetizk e tasks onhi or her behalf. The goal of the APE project was threefold: (1) todesifl anassiYDFk able to automate repetiMk e taskswik amiCzflfl amount of user'si9MM ventiFF (2) todesiY anassizCBk able, asi n programmiYFM y-example (also called programmiBCY y-demonstration systems, to replay and automate complex repeti9k e tasks, and (3) todesi9 anassiCzCk that dit upts the user's workaslikDD aspossiMk---9BzF i , that makes the ri9B suggestiB at the riBY moment. As a consequence, APE employs amachik---9flCF nic algor irk we havespecik---CFfl desiik to learnefficik---CF and rapiDM not only what to suggest to the user but also when to make asuggestiYY 14.1 Introducti) Enterie repetiFk e sequences of commands (or repetiFk e tasks)i a wellknown character iter of human-computeriuma actinTo deal wil thi problem, early works haveassoci---DY macro or scr ir languageswig igu - acti eenvi onments---for example, macros i Excel orLi9 scr irki Emacs. They allow the user to wr ik a program that can be ik oked later to perform a sequence of commandsautomatiB94Y . Theli9flDfl9k--- ofthi approachi that, generally, users do not want to or cannot spend too much effort on programmiBM wrikDz a program often takes longer than perfor mik a sequence of commands manuallydiu upts the user's workflow and requi es programmiB knowledge that many users do not have. Recent advances to overcome theseliekDYMYCk came fromdiC4fl ent correlated fields of research: programmi9 by demonstratin (PBD), prediBMC ei9Mfl faces and lear nir irk face agents. PBD..

Learning Users Habits: The APE Project

This paper proposes new results in the field of software assistants helping users of interactive tools in the task of automatically performing repetitive tasks. We propose an innovative integration of such an assistant into an interactive programming environment. In this context, learning to recognize situations in which repetitive tasks occur is difficult because languages describing users actions are complex and because fast learning is mandatory. To achieve this goal we propose an agent-based software assistant that includes a new learning algorithm. The algorithm is incremental, has a very low training time and is able to handle different description languages. In the context of that application, it provides better results than related machine learning algorithms, making our assistant actually usable and efficient. Our software assistant is embodied into the ParcPlace VisualWorks (Smalltalk) programming environment and accessible through the net. Its architecture and algorithm coul..

In- and out-hospital mortality rate in surgical patients.

Death rates after surgery are increasingly analysed for clinical audit and quality assessment. Many studies commonly provide information only on deaths that occur during hospital stay, known as in-hospital death rates. By using hospital data set linked to death certificate registry, we recorded in- and out-hospital deaths within 30 and 60 post-operative days.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Hypocapnia measured by end-tidal carbon dioxide tension during anesthesia is associated with increased 30-day mortality rate

Study objective To evaluate the relationship between intraoperative end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO2) values and clinical outcomes with special attention on 30-day postoperative mortality and secondarily on hospital length of stay (LOS). Design Retrospective, observational study. Setting Surgical theaters of the University Hospital Center of Charleroi. Patients Five thousand three hundred seventeen patients ASA I-IV undergoing various surgical procedures (except pediatric and cardiac surgery) under general anesthesia. Interventions No intervention on the patients. Measurements The mean ETCO2 level measured during anesthesia was secondarily extracted from an electronic information management system. Patients were divided into 2 separate groups based on ETCO2 values less than or greater than or equal to 35 mm Hg. The primary end point was the in- and outhospital mortality in the 30-day period after surgery. The second was the LOS more than 6 days. Main results Hypocapnia occurred in 66% of the patients. Mortality rate at 30-day was 84 of 3554 (2.4%) in the low ETCO2 group vs 15 of 1763 (0.9%) in the other (odds ratio, 2.99 [1.69-5.28]; P < .001). In multivariate analysis, age and ASA scores had significant independent associations with mortality rate. Adjusting for these factors had an effect on the relative odds ratio of ETCO2 on mortality of 1.99 ([1.11-3.56]; P < .001). Patients with low ETCO2 experienced higher LOS (14.1 ± 9.4 vs 13.1 ± 8.9 days; P < .001). Thirty five percent of the patients in the low ETCO2 group were still hospitalized more than 6 days compared with 30% in the other (P < .001). Conclusion Low ETCO2 level during anesthesia is associated with an increase in postoperative mortality rate and LOS. These results emphasize the importance of preventing hypocapnia during anesthesia to improve surgical outcomes.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Malignant tumours of the nasopharynx

Après avoir évoqué les différents facteurs favorisant l'apparition du NPC, les auteurs envisagent alors l'anatomie pathologique, le bilan diagnostique et l'extension tumorale. Enfin, les données actuelles du traitement et différents résultats thérapeutiques sont rapportés