Commentary to Professor Stephen D. Krasner

Comment on Professor Stephen D. Krasner\u27s The Hole in the Whole: Sovereignty, Shared Sovereignty, and International La

Commentary to Professor Stephen D. Krasner

Comment on Professor Stephen D. Krasner\u27s The Hole in the Whole: Sovereignty, Shared Sovereignty, and International La

The Global Financial Crisis: Will State Emergency Measures Trigger International Investment Disputes?

This perspective evaluates the possibility that emergency measures that countries are currently taking to mitigate the effects of the global financial crisis will give rise to liability under international investment law

全球金融危机：国家紧急措施是否会引发国际投资争端?

本文评估了目前许多国家为了减轻全球金融危机的影响而采取的应对措施，并认为根据国际投资法，这些举措可能会引起赔偿责任

Development of assistance systems for user groups with specific handicaps – a challenge for the ergonomic design process

The goal to develop an assistance system for handicapped users with several impairments was successfully achieved. The design process as a whole lifecycle with iterative processes was shortened by several reasons. But this newly applied design process with underlying design rules given from mechatronic and biomedical products results into a usable system for the targeted groups as well as for other potential users. The main components of the design process were an intensive task analysis and determining of user profiles and user requirements

Simultaneous identification of long similar substrings in large sets of sequences

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sequence comparison faces new challenges today, with many complete genomes and large libraries of transcripts known. Gene annotation pipelines match these sequences in order to identify genes and their alternative splice forms. However, the software currently available cannot simultaneously compare sets of sequences as large as necessary especially if errors must be considered.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We therefore present a new algorithm for the identification of almost perfectly matching substrings in very large sets of sequences. Its implementation, called ClustDB, is considerably faster and can handle 16 times more data than VMATCH, the most memory efficient exact program known today. ClustDB simultaneously generates large sets of exactly matching substrings of a given minimum length as seeds for a novel method of match extension with errors. It generates alignments of maximum length with a considered maximum number of errors within each overlapping window of a given size. Such alignments are not optimal in the usual sense but faster to calculate and often more appropriate than traditional alignments for genomic sequence comparisons, EST and full-length cDNA matching, and genomic sequence assembly. The method is used to check the overlaps and to reveal possible assembly errors for 1377 <it>Medicago truncatula </it>BAC-size sequences published at <url>http://www.medicago.org/genome/assembly_table.php?chr=1</url>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The program ClustDB proves that window alignment is an efficient way to find long sequence sections of homogenous alignment quality, as expected in case of random errors, and to detect systematic errors resulting from sequence contaminations. Such inserts are systematically overlooked in long alignments controlled by only tuning penalties for mismatches and gaps.</p> <p>ClustDB is freely available for academic use.</p

Regulation of renin gene expression in kidneys of eNOS- and nNOS-deficient mice

Our study aimed to assess the roles of nitric oxide derived from endothelium NO-synthase (eNOS) and macula densa neuronal NO-synthase (nNOS) in the regulation of renal renin expression. For this purpose renin mRNA levels and renin content were determined in kidneys of wild-type (wt), nNOS-deficient (nNOS–/–), and eNOS-deficient (eNOS–/–) mice, in which the renin system was suppressed by feeding a high-salt diet (NaCl 4%), or was stimulated by feeding a low-salt (NaCl 0.02%) diet together with the converting-enzyme inhibitor ramipril (10 mg kg –1 day –1 ). In all mouse strains, renin mRNA levels were inversely related to the rate of sodium intake. In eNOS–/– mice renin mRNA levels and renal renin content were 50% lower than in wt mice at each level of salt intake, whilst in nNOS–/– mice renin expression was not different from wt controls. Administration of the general NO-synthase inhibitor nitro- l -arginine methyl ester ( l -NAME, 50 mg kg –1 day –1 ) to mice kept on the low-salt/ramipril regimen caused a decrease of renal renin mRNA levels in wt and nNOS–/– mice, but not in eNOS–/– mice. These observations suggest that neither eNOS nor nNOS is essential for up- or downregulation of renin expression. eNOS-derived NO appears to enhance renin expression, whereas nNOS-derived NO does not.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42244/1/424-439-5-567_s004249900214.pd