Electroproduction of nucleon resonances

The unitary isobar model MAID has been extended and used for a partial wave analysis of pion photo- and electroproduction in the resonance region W < 2 GeV. Older data from the world data base and more recent experimental results from Mainz, Bates, Bonn and JLab for Q^2 up to 4.0 (GeV/c)^2 have been analyzed and the Q^2 dependence of the helicity amplitudes have been extracted for a series of four star resonances. We compare single-Q^2 analyses with a superglobal fit in a new parametrization of Maid2003 together with predictions of the hypercentral constituent quark model. As a result we find that the helicity amplitudes and transition form factors of constituent quark models should be compared with the analysis of bare resonances, where the pion cloud contributions have been subtracted.Comment: 6 pages Latex including 5 figures, Invited talk at ICTP 4th International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics, Trieste, Italy, 12-16 May 200

Immunolocalization of dually phosphorylated MAPKs in dividing root meristem cells of Vicia faba, Pisum sativum, Lupinus luteus and Lycopersicon esculentum

Key message In plants, phosphorylated MAPKs display constitutive nuclear localization; however, not all studied plant species show co-localization of activated MAPKs to mitotic microtubules. Abstract The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway is involved not only in the cellular response to biotic and abiotic stress but also in the regulation of cell cycle and plant development. The role of MAPKs in the formation of a mitotic spindle has been widely studied and the MAPK signaling pathway was found to be indispensable for the unperturbed course of cell division. Here we show cellular localization of activated MAPKs (dually phosphorylated at their TXY motifs) in both interphase and mitotic root meristem cells of Lupinus luteus, Pisum sativum, Vicia faba (Fabaceae) and Lycopersicon esculentum (Solanaceae). Nuclear localization of activated MAPKs has been found in all species. Colocalization of these kinases to mitotic microtubules was most evident in L. esculentum, while only about 50 % of mitotic cells in the root meristems of P. sativum and V. faba displayed activated MAPKs localized to microtubules during mitosis. Unexpectedly, no evident immunofluorescence signals at spindle microtubules and phragmoplast were noted in L. luteus. Considering immunocytochemical analyses and studies on the impact of FR180204 (an inhibitor of animal ERK1/2) on mitotic cells, we hypothesize that MAPKs may not play prominent role in the regulation of microtubule dynamics in all plant species

Mining and analysis of audiology data to find significant factors associated with tinnitus masker

Objectives: The objective of this research is to find the factors associated with tinnitus masker from the literature, and by using the large amount of audiology data available from a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) hearing aid clinic. The factors evaluated were hearing impairment, age, gender, hearing aid type, mould and clinical comments. Design: The research includes literature survey for factors associated with tinnitus masker, and performs the analysis of audiology data using statistical and data mining techniques. Setting: This research uses a large audiology data but it also faced the problem of limited data for tinnitus. Participants: It uses 1,316 records for tinnitus and other diagnoses, and 10,437 records of clinical comments from a hearing aid clinic. Primary and secondary outcome measures: The research is looking for variables associated with tinnitus masker, and in future, these variables can be combined into a single model to develop a decision support system to predict about tinnitus masker for a patient. Results: The results demonstrated that tinnitus maskers are more likely to be fit to individuals with milder forms of hearing loss, and the factors age, gender, type of hearing aid and mould were all found significantly associated with tinnitus masker. In particular, those patients having Age<=55 years were more likely to wear a tinnitus masker, as well as those with milder forms of hearing loss. ITE (in the ear) hearing aids were also found associated with tinnitus masker. A feedback on the results of association of mould with tinnitus masker from a professional audiologist of a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) was also taken to better understand them. The results were obtained with different accuracy for different techniques. For example, the chi-squared test results were obtained with 95% accuracy, for Support and Confidence only those results were retained which had more than 1% Support and 80% Confidence. Conclusions: The variables audiograms, age, gender, hearing aid type and mould were found associated with the choice of tinnitus masker in the literature and by using statistical and data mining techniques. The further work in this research would lead to the development of a decision support system for tinnitus masker with an explanation that how that decision was obtained

Block of NMDA receptor channels by endogenous neurosteroids: implications for the agonist induced conformational states of the channel vestibule

N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) mediate synaptic plasticity, and their dysfunction is implicated in multiple brain disorders. NMDARs can be allosterically modulated by numerous compounds, including endogenous neurosteroid pregnanolone sulfate. Here, we identify the molecular basis of the use-dependent and voltage-independent inhibitory effect of neurosteroids on NMDAR responses. The site of action is located at the extracellular vestibule of the receptor's ion channel pore and is accessible after receptor activation. Mutations in the extracellular vestibule in the SYTANLAAF motif disrupt the inhibitory effect of negatively charged steroids. In contrast, positively charged steroids inhibit mutated NMDAR responses in a voltage-dependent manner. These results, in combination with molecular modeling, characterize structure details of the open configuration of the NMDAR channel. Our results provide a unique opportunity for the development of new therapeutic neurosteroid-based ligands to treat diseases associated with dysfunction of the glutamate system

Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis for diabetic nephropathy in type 1 diabetes mellitus

BACKGROUND: Diabetic nephropathy is a serious complication of diabetes mellitus and is associated with considerable morbidity and high mortality. There is increasing evidence to suggest that dysregulation of the epigenome is involved in diabetic nephropathy. We assessed whether epigenetic modification of DNA methylation is associated with diabetic nephropathy in a case-control study of 192 Irish patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D). Cases had T1D and nephropathy whereas controls had T1D but no evidence of renal disease. METHODS: We performed DNA methylation profiling in bisulphite converted DNA from cases and controls using the recently developed Illumina Infinium(R) HumanMethylation27 BeadChip, that enables the direct investigation of 27,578 individual cytosines at CpG loci throughout the genome, which are focused on the promoter regions of 14,495 genes. RESULTS: Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) analysis indicated that significant components of DNA methylation variation correlated with patient age, time to onset of diabetic nephropathy, and sex. Adjusting for confounding factors using multivariate Cox-regression analyses, and with a false discovery rate (FDR) of 0.05, we observed 19 CpG sites that demonstrated correlations with time to development of diabetic nephropathy. Of note, this included one CpG site located 18 bp upstream of the transcription start site of UNC13B, a gene in which the first intronic SNP rs13293564 has recently been reported to be associated with diabetic nephropathy. CONCLUSION: This high throughput platform was able to successfully interrogate the methylation state of individual cytosines and identified 19 prospective CpG sites associated with risk of diabetic nephropathy. These differences in DNA methylation are worthy of further follow-up in replication studies using larger cohorts of diabetic patients with and without nephropathy

Identification of Giardia lamblia DHHC Proteins and the Role of Protein S-palmitoylation in the Encystation Process

Protein S-palmitoylation, a hydrophobic post-translational modification, is performed by protein acyltransferases that have a common DHHC Cys-rich domain (DHHC proteins), and provides a regulatory switch for protein membrane association. In this work, we analyzed the presence of DHHC proteins in the protozoa parasite Giardia lamblia and the function of the reversible S-palmitoylation of proteins during parasite differentiation into cyst. Two specific events were observed: encysting cells displayed a larger amount of palmitoylated proteins, and parasites treated with palmitoylation inhibitors produced a reduced number of mature cysts. With bioinformatics tools, we found nine DHHC proteins, potential protein acyltransferases, in the Giardia proteome. These proteins displayed a conserved structure when compared to different organisms and are distributed in different monophyletic clades. Although all Giardia DHHC proteins were found to be present in trophozoites and encysting cells, these proteins showed a different intracellular localization in trophozoites and seemed to be differently involved in the encystation process when they were overexpressed. dhhc transgenic parasites showed a different pattern of cyst wall protein expression and yielded different amounts of mature cysts when they were induced to encyst. Our findings disclosed some important issues regarding the role of DHHC proteins and palmitoylation during Giardia encystation.Fil: Merino, Maria Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Zamponi, Nahuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Vranych, Cecilia Verónica. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Touz, Maria Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Ropolo, Andrea Silvana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; Argentin

Imprisonment and internment: Comparing penal facilities North and South

Recent references to the ‘warehouse prison’ in the United States and the prisión-depósito in Latin America seem to indicate that penal confinement in the western hemisphere has converged on a similar model. However, this article suggests otherwise. It contrasts penal facilities in North America and Latin America in terms of six interrelated aspects: regimentation; surveillance; isolation; supervision; accountability; and formalization. Quantitatively, control in North American penal facilities is assiduous (unceasing, persistent and intrusive), while in Latin America it is perfunctory (sporadic, indifferent and cursory). Qualitatively, North American penal facilities produce imprisonment (which enacts penal intervention through confinement), while in Latin America they produce internment (which enacts penal intervention through release). Closely entwined with this qualitative difference are distinct practices of judicial involvement in sentencing and penal supervision. Those practices, and the cultural and political factors that underpin them, represent an interesting starting point for the explanation of the contrasting nature of imprisonment and internment

Neural Network Parameterizations of Electromagnetic Nucleon Form Factors

The electromagnetic nucleon form-factors data are studied with artificial feed forward neural networks. As a result the unbiased model-independent form-factor parametrizations are evaluated together with uncertainties. The Bayesian approach for the neural networks is adapted for chi2 error-like function and applied to the data analysis. The sequence of the feed forward neural networks with one hidden layer of units is considered. The given neural network represents a particular form-factor parametrization. The so-called evidence (the measure of how much the data favor given statistical model) is computed with the Bayesian framework and it is used to determine the best form factor parametrization.Comment: The revised version is divided into 4 sections. The discussion of the prior assumptions is added. The manuscript contains 4 new figures and 2 new tables (32 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables

Inter-hemispheric EEG coherence analysis in Parkinson's disease : Assessing brain activity during emotion processing

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is not only characterized by its prominent motor symptoms but also associated with disturbances in cognitive and emotional functioning. The objective of the present study was to investigate the influence of emotion processing on inter-hemispheric electroencephalography (EEG) coherence in PD. Multimodal emotional stimuli (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) were presented to 20 PD patients and 30 age-, education level-, and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) while EEG was recorded. Inter-hemispheric coherence was computed from seven homologous EEG electrode pairs (AF3–AF4, F7–F8, F3–F4, FC5–FC6, T7–T8, P7–P8, and O1–O2) for delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands. In addition, subjective ratings were obtained for a representative of emotional stimuli. Interhemispherically, PD patients showed significantly lower coherence in theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands than HC during emotion processing. No significant changes were found in the delta frequency band coherence. We also found that PD patients were more impaired in recognizing negative emotions (sadness, fear, anger, and disgust) than relatively positive emotions (happiness and surprise). Behaviorally, PD patients did not show impairment in emotion recognition as measured by subjective ratings. These findings suggest that PD patients may have an impairment of inter-hemispheric functional connectivity (i.e., a decline in cortical connectivity) during emotion processing. This study may increase the awareness of EEG emotional response studies in clinical practice to uncover potential neurophysiologic abnormalities

Does publication bias inflate the apparent efficacy of psychological treatment for major depressive disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis of US national institutes of health-funded trials

Background The efficacy of antidepressant medication has been shown empirically to be overestimated due to publication bias, but this has only been inferred statistically with regard to psychological treatment for depression. We assessed directly the extent of study publication bias in trials examining the efficacy of psychological treatment for depression. Methods and Findings We identified US National Institutes of Health grants awarded to fund randomized clinical trials comparing psychological treatment to control conditions or other treatments in patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder for the period 1972–2008, and we determined whether those grants led to publications. For studies that were not published, data were requested from investigators and included in the meta-analyses. Thirteen (23.6%) of the 55 funded grants that began trials did not result in publications, and two others never started. Among comparisons to control conditions, adding unpublished studies (Hedges’ g = 0.20; CI95% -0.11~0.51; k = 6) to published studies (g = 0.52; 0.37~0.68; k = 20) reduced the psychotherapy effect size point estimate (g = 0.39; 0.08~0.70) by 25%. Moreover, these findings may overestimate the "true" effect of psychological treatment for depression as outcome reporting bias could not be examined quantitatively. Conclusion The efficacy of psychological interventions for depression has been overestimated in the published literature, just as it has been for pharmacotherapy. Both are efficacious but not to the extent that the published literature would suggest. Funding agencies and journals should archive both original protocols and raw data from treatment trials to allow the detection and correction of outcome reporting bias. Clinicians, guidelines developers, and decision makers should be aware that the published literature overestimates the effects of the predominant treatments for depression