8,302 research outputs found
The Human Thioesterase II Protein Binds to a Site on HIV-1 Nef Critical for CD4 Down-regulation
A HIV-1 Nef affinity column was used to purify a 35-kDa Nef-interacting protein from T-cell lysates. The 35-kDa protein was identified by peptide microsequence analysis as the human thioesterase II (hTE) enzyme, an enzyme previously identified in a yeast two-hybrid screen as a potential Nef-interacting protein. Immunofluorescence studies showed that hTE localizes to peroxisomes and that coexpression of Nef and hTE leads to relocalization of Nef to peroxisomes. Interaction of Nef and hTE was abolished by point mutations in Nef at residues Asp108, Leu112, Phe121, Pro122, and Asp123. All of these mutations also abrogated the ability of Nef to down-regulate CD4 from the surface of HIV-infected cells. Based on the x-ray and NMR structures of Nef, these residues define a surface on Nef critical for CD4 down-regulation. A subset of these mutations also affected the ability of Nef to down-regulate major histocompatibility complex class I. These results, taken together with previous studies, identify a region on Nef critical for most of its known functions. However, not all Nef alleles bind to hTE with high affinity, so the role of hTE during HIV infection remains uncertain
A specific deficit of auditory processing in children with Rolandic Epilepsy and their relatives
Previous research shows that children with Rolandic Epilepsy have deficits of auditory processing. We wanted to confirm the nature of this deficit and whether it aggregates in families. We compared 40 children with Rolandic Epilepsy and 32 unaffected siblings with 99 typically developing children and 71 parents of RE children with 31 healthy adults on a battery of auditory processing tests. We also examined ear advantage in children with RE, their siblings and parents using population norms and measured non-word reading performance. We found a specific deficit for competing words in patients, their siblings and their parents, suggesting that this particular impairment of auditory processing present in children with RE, is heritable and likely to be persistent. Importantly, scores on this subtest in patients and siblings were significantly correlated with non-word reading performance. We saw increased rates of atypical left ear advantage in patients and siblings but no evidence of this in parents. We present these findings as evidence of familial incidence of dichotic listening and ear advantage abnormalities in relatives of children with Rolandic Epilepsy
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Cross-accent intelligibility of speech in noise: Long-term familiarity and short-term familiarization
Listeners must cope with a great deal of variability in the speech signal, and thus theories of speech perception must also account for variability, which comes from a number of sources, including variation between accents. It is well-known that there is a processing cost when listening to speech in an accent other than one’s own, but recent work has suggested that this cost is reduced when listening to a familiar accent widely represented in the media, and/or when short amounts of exposure to an accent are provided. Little is known, however, about how these factors (long-term familiarity and short-term familiarization with an accent) interact. The current study tested this interaction by playing listeners difficult-to-segment sentences in noise, before and after a familiarization period where the same sentences were heard in the clear, allowing us to manipulate short-term familiarization. Listeners were speakers of either Glasgow English or Standard Southern British English, and they listened to speech in either their own or the other accent, thereby allowing us to manipulate long-term familiarity. Results suggest that both long-term familiarity and short-term familiarization mitigate the perceptual processing costs of listening to an accent that is not one’s own, but seem not to compensate for them entirely, even when the accent is widely heard in the media
Variants within the MMP3 gene are associated with achilles tendinopathy: possible interaction with the COL5A1 gene
Objectives: Sequence variation within the COL5A1 and TNC genes are known to associate with Achilles tendinopathy. The primary aim of this case-control genetic association study was to investigate whether variants within the matrix metalloproteinase 3 (MMP3) gene also contributed to both Achilles tendinopathy and Achilles tendon rupture in a Caucasian population. A secondary aim was to establish whether variants within the MMP3 gene interacted with the COL5A1 rs12722 variant to raise risk of these pathologies.
Methods: 114 subjects with symptoms of Achilles tendon pathology and 98 healthy controls were genotyped for MMP3 variants rs679620, rs591058 and rs650108.
Results: As single markers, significant associations were found between the GG genotype of rs679620 (OR = 2.5, 95% CI 1.2 to 4.90, p = 0.010), the CC genotype of rs591058 (OR = 2.3, 95% CI 1.1 to 4.50, p = 0.023) and the AA genotype of rs650108 (OR = 4.9, 95% CI 1.0 to 24.1, p = 0.043) and risk of Achilles tendinopathy. The ATG haplotype (rs679620, rs591058, and rs650108) was under-represented in the tendinopathy group when compared to the control group (41% vs 53%, p = 0.038). Finally, the G allele of rs679620 and the T allele of COL5A1 rs12722 significantly interacted to raise risk of AT (p = 0.006). No associations were found between any of the MMP3 markers and Achilles tendon rupture.
Conclusion: Variants within the MMP3 gene are associated with Achilles tendinopathy. Furthermore, the MMP3 gene variant rs679620 and the COL5A1 marker rs12722 interact to modify the risk of tendinopathy. These data further support a genetic contribution to a common sports related injur
Can a Bose gas be saturated?
Bose-Einstein condensation is unique among phase transitions between
different states of matter in the sense that it occurs even in the absence of
interactions between particles. In Einstein's textbook picture of an ideal gas,
purely statistical arguments set an upper bound on the number of particles
occupying the excited states of the system, and condensation is driven by this
saturation of the quantum vapour. Dilute ultracold atomic gases are celebrated
as a realisation of Bose-Einstein condensation in close to its purely
statistical form. Here we scrutinise this point of view using an ultracold gas
of potassium (39K) atoms, in which the strength of interactions can be tuned
via a Feshbach scattering resonance. We first show that under typical
experi-mental conditions a partially condensed atomic gas strongly deviates
from the textbook concept of a saturated vapour. We then use measurements at a
range of interaction strengths and temperatures to extrapolate to the
non-interacting limit, and prove that in this limit the behaviour of a Bose gas
is consistent with the saturation picture. Finally, we provide evidence for the
universality of our observations through additional measurements with a
different atomic species, 87Rb. Our results suggest a new way of characterising
condensation phenomena in different physical systems.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
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Medical Waste Co-Firing Comes of Age
In early 1992 DONLEE Technologies, Inc., in cooperation with the Department of Energy Fossil Energy Program, completed pilot testing of simulated non-infectious waste combustion, co-fired with coal, at its test facility in York, Pennsylvania. The goal of this testing was to demonstrate the ability of fluidized bed combustion to completely destruct medical waste with minimized dioxin emissions. The test facility is a full scale circulating fluidized bed unit with a maximum heat input capability of ten million BTU per hour. The tests showed that the circulating fluidized bed system is ideally suited to meet the medical/infectious waste destruction needs of the health care industry. The dioxin emission levels proved to be significantly lower than those from presently operating MWIS. Based on the successful test results, a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy Fossil Energy Power Systems, DONLEE Technologies, and the Veterans Administration was reached to design, construct, and test a demonstration unit at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Plant design and construction was started in 1993, with DONLEE Technologies functioning as both the technology supplier and the plant EPC contractor. After some delay the construction of the demonstration unit finally reached completion in the spring of 1996. The unit is currently undergoing initial shakedown and testing to verify the base operating parameters. The unit will first be fired with coal only, followed by the introduction of non-infectious waste and finally total waste, including the ``red bag`` material. The program calls for an extended testing period of up to one year. While the unit is being operated as part of the stream supply system at the VA Hospital, the hospital`s waste is destroyed via combustion in the Fluidized Bed Unit
Report of the QCD Tools Working Group
We report on the activities of the ``QCD Tools for heavy flavors and new
physics searches'' working group of the Run II Workshop on QCD and Weak Bosons.
The contributions cover the topics of improved parton showering and comparisons
of Monte Carlo programs and resummation calculations, recent developments in
Pythia, the methodology of measuring backgrounds to new physics searches,
variable flavor number schemes for heavy quark electro-production, the
underlying event in hard scattering processes, and the Monte Carlo MCFM for NLO
processes.Comment: LaTeX, 47 pages, 41 figures, 10 tables, uses run2col.sty, to appear
in the Proceedings of the Workshop on "QCD and Weak Boson Physics in Run II",
Fermilab, March - November 199
Ultraviolet Detection of the Binary Companion to the Type IIb SN 2001ig
We present HST/WFC3 ultraviolet imaging in the F275W and F336W bands of the
Type IIb SN 2001ig at an age of more than 14 years. A clear point source is
detected at the site of the explosion having and
mag. Despite weak constraints on both the
distance to the host galaxy NGC 7424 and the line-of-sight reddening to the
supernova, this source matches the characteristics of an early B-type main
sequence star having K and . A BPASS v2.1 binary evolution model, with
primary and secondary masses of 13 M and 9 M respectively,
is found to resemble simultaneously in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram both the
observed location of this surviving companion, and the primary star
evolutionary endpoints for other Type IIb supernovae. This same model exhibits
highly variable late-stage mass loss, as expected from the behavior of the
radio light curves. A Gemini/GMOS optical spectrum at an age of 6 years reveals
a narrow He II emission line, indicative of continuing interaction with a dense
circumstellar medium at large radii from the progenitor. We review our findings
on SN 2001ig in the context of binary evolution channels for stripped-envelope
supernovae. Owing to the uncrowded nature of its environment in the
ultraviolet, this study of SN 2001ig represents one of the cleanest detections
to date of a surviving binary companion to a Type IIb supernova.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Resubmitted to ApJ after minor changes requested
by refere
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