Analysis of Collectivism and Egoism Phenomena within the Context of Social Welfare

Comparative benefits provided by the basic social strategies including collectivism and egoism are investigated within the framework of democratic decision-making. In particular, we study the mechanism of growing "snowball" of cooperation.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Translated from Russian. Original Russian Text published in Problemy Upravleniya, 2008, No. 4, pp. 30-3

Human EHMT2/G9a activates p53 through methylation-independent mechanism

p53 is a critical tumor suppressor in humans. It functions mostly as a transcriptional factor and its activity is regulated by numerous post-translational modifications. Among different covalent modifications found on p53 the most controversial one is lysine methylation. We found that human G9a (hG9a) unlike its mouse orthologue (mG9a) potently stimulated p53 transcriptional activity. Both ectopic and endogenous hG9a augmented p53-dependent transcription of pro-apoptotic genes, including Bax and Puma, resulting in enhanced apoptosis and reduced colony formation. Significantly, shRNA-mediated knockdown of hG9a attenuated p53-dependent activation of Puma. On the molecular level, hG9a interacted with histone acetyltransferase, p300/CBP, resulting in increased histone acetylation at the promoter of Puma. The bioinformatics data substantiated our findings showing that positive correlation between G9a and p53 expression is associated with better survival of lung cancer patients. Collectively, this study demonstrates that depending on the cellular and organismal context, orthologous proteins may exert both overlapping and opposing functions. Furthermore, this finding has important ramifications on the use of G9a inhibitors in combination with genotoxic drugs to treat p53-positive tumors.Oncogene advance online publication, 25 July 2016; doi:10.1038/onc.2016.258

The Alkaline Hydrolysis of Sulfonate Esters: Challenges in Interpreting Experimental and Theoretical Data

Sulfonate ester hydrolysis has been the subject of recent debate, with experimental evidence interpreted in terms of both stepwise and concerted mechanisms. In particular, a recent study of the alkaline hydrolysis of a series of benzene arylsulfonates (Babtie et al., Org. Biomol. Chem. 10, 2012, 8095) presented a nonlinear Brønsted plot, which was explained in terms of a change from a stepwise mechanism involving a pentavalent intermediate for poorer leaving groups to a fully concerted mechanism for good leaving groups and supported by a theoretical study. In the present work, we have performed a detailed computational study of the hydrolysis of these compounds and find no computational evidence for a thermodynamically stable intermediate for any of these compounds. Additionally, we have extended the experimental data to include pyridine-3-yl benzene sulfonate and its N-oxide and N-methylpyridinium derivatives. Inclusion of these compounds converts the Brønsted plot to a moderately scattered but linear correlation and gives a very good Hammett correlation. These data suggest a concerted pathway for this reaction that proceeds via an early transition state with little bond cleavage to the leaving group, highlighting the care that needs to be taken with the interpretation of experimental and especially theoretical data

Studying the efficiency of algorithms for generating the base of fuzzy production rules for the Wang-Mendel neural network

Background. Generation of a consistent base of fuzzy production rules is an important task, but no less important is the task of determining the most efficient generation algorithm. The purpose of this work is to research the effectiveness of six algorithms for generating a base of fuzzy production rules for the Wang-Mendel neural network using the example of solving a classification problem. Materials and methods. All researches werecarried out in the environment of the developed application, in which the software model of the Wang-Mendel network is implemented. The following algorithms have been studied for generating the rule base: an adaptive learning algorithm, the Abe-Len algorithm, a rating algorithm for generating fuzzy production rules, C-Means and C-Ellipses clustering algorithms, and new hybrid algorithm proposed in this paper and based on the Abe-Len algorithm and the rating algorithm. The researches have been done on the basis of four model data sets from the UCI repository: Fisher irises, types of wine drinks, types of breast cancer, and «Space Shuttle» data. Results. The research showed that the hybrid Abe-Len algorithm in combination with the rating algorithm and by the C-Ellipse clustering algorithm provides the best results. At the same time, the C-Ellipse algorithm assumes a manual preliminary selection of the optimal number of clusters, while this is not required in the proposed modification of the Abe-Len algorithm. Conclusions. The conducted research and implemented algorithms made it possible to obtain numerical estimates of the error in solving the classification problem and justify the choice of the most effective algorithms for generating a fuzzy rule base. The combination of the Abe-Len algorithms and the rating algorithm provides the maximum efficiency on the taken data sets