A regulatory code for neurogenic gene expression in the Drosophila embryo

Bioinformatics methods have identified enhancers that mediate restricted expression in the Drosophila embryo. However, only a small fraction of the predicted enhancers actually work when tested in vivo. In the present study, co-regulated neurogenic enhancers that are activated by intermediate levels of the Dorsal regulatory gradient are shown to contain several shared sequence motifs. These motifs permitted the identification of new neurogenic enhancers with high precision: five out of seven predicted enhancers direct restricted expression within ventral regions of the neurogenic ectoderm. Mutations in some of the shared motifs disrupt enhancer function, and evidence is presented that the Twist and Su(H) regulatory proteins are essential for the specification of the ventral neurogenic ectoderm prior to gastrulation. The regulatory model of neurogenic gene expression defined in this study permitted the identification of a neurogenic enhancer in the distant Anopheles genome. We discuss the prospects for deciphering regulatory codes that link primary DNA sequence information with predicted patterns of gene expression

Disseminated eruptive giant mollusca contagiosa in an adult psoriasis patient during efalizumab therapy

Molluscum contagiosum is a common viral skin infection in children with atopic diathesis and not rare in HIV patients. We report a 45-year-old psoriasis patient who developed eruptive mollusca contagiosa during an antipsoriatic treatment with efalizumab. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

What has China done for the global refugee problem in the past 20 years? : should China do more?

published_or_final_versionInternational and Public AffairsMasterMaster of International and Public Affair

Periodic Anderson model with electron-phonon correlated conduction band

This paper reports dynamical mean field calculations for the periodic Anderson model in which the conduction band is coupled to phonons. Motivated in part by recent attention to the role of phonons in the $\gamma$-$\alpha$ transition in Ce, this model yields a rich and unexpected phase diagram which is of intrinsic interest. Specifically, above a critical value of the electron-phonon interaction, a first order transition with two coexisting phases develops in the temperature-hybridization plane, which terminates at a second order critical point. The coexisting phases display the familiar Kondo screened and local moment character, yet they also exhibit pronounced polaronic and bipolaronic properties, respectively.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

The disappearing seasonality of Autism conceptions in California

BACKGROUND Autism incidence and prevalence have increased dramatically in the last two decades. The autism caseload in California increased 600% between 1992 and 2006, yet there is little consensus as to the cause. Studying the seasonality of conceptions of children later diagnosed with autism may yield clues to potential etiological drivers. OBJECTIVE To assess if the conceptions of children later diagnosed with autism cluster temporally in a systematic manner and whether any pattern of temporal clustering persists over time. METHOD We searched for seasonality in conceptions of children later diagnosed with autism by applying a one-dimensional scan statistic with adaptive temporal windows on case and control population data from California for 1992 through 2000. We tested for potential confounding effects from known risk factors using logistic regression models. RESULTS There is a consistent but decreasing seasonal pattern in the risk of conceiving a child later diagnosed with autism in November for the first half of the study period. Temporal clustering of autism conceptions is not an artifact of composition with respect to known risk factors for autism such as socio-economic status. CONCLUSION There is some evidence of seasonality in the risk of conceiving a child later diagnosed with autism. Searches for environmental factors related to autism should allow for the possibility of risk factors or etiological drivers that are seasonally patterned and that appear and remain salient for a discrete number of years.Support for this article comes from the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program, part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research through grant number 1. DP1 OD003635-01

Counting Your Customers the Easy Way: An Alternative to the Pareto/NBD Model

Today’s managers are very interested in predicting the future purchasing patterns of their customers, which can then serve as an input into “lifetime value” calculations. Among the models that provide such capabilities, the Pareto/NBD “counting your customers” framework proposed by Schmittlein et al. (1987) is highly regarded. However, despite the respect it has earned, it has proven to be a difficult model to implement, particularly because of computational challenges associated with parameter estimation. We develop a new model, the beta-geometric/NBD (BG/NBD), which represents a slight variation in the behavioral “story” associated with the Pareto/NBD but is vastly easier to implement. We show, for instance, how its parameters can be obtained quite easily in Microsoft Excel. The two models yield very similar results in a wide variety of purchasing environments, leading us to suggest that the BG/NBD could be viewed as an attractive alternative to the Pareto/NBD in most applications

Acoustic radiation-induced static strain in single crystal silicon

Quantitative verification of the existence of static acoustic displacements generated by acoustic waves propagating in single crystal samples of intrinsic silicon is presented. Measurements are made of the static displacements generated by 30 MHz acoustic compressional waves propagating along the 111 , 110 , and 100 crystalline directions. From these measurements the nonlinearity parameters are calculated and found to have the value 3.87 along the 111 direction, 4.23 along the 110 direction, and 2.13 along the 100 direction. These results are in agreement with values obtained independently from harmonic generation and pressure derivative measurements. Implications of the present work to the thermodynamics of single crystals are discussed

Optimising the Diagnosis of Prostate Cancer in Asia

The thesis consists of two parts. The first part is about risk stratification tools in prostate cancer detection in Asian men. The second part is about the use of the Prostate Health Index in prostate cancer detection