BEYOND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE CASE OF BEHAVIORISM AND ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

The paper focuses on an analysis of the potential impact that the behaviorist and ethnomethodological paradigms may have on academic sociology. Structural analysis in the sociology of sociology (Friedrichs, 1974; Mullins, 1973) is criticized and countered with an analysis which stresses the subjective process of theory acceptance and rejection exploiting Gouldner's concept of "domain assumptions" (1970). Utilizing data from a large survey of sociologists queried during the mid-sixties (Sprehe, 1967), the fit between various groupings of sociologists' "domain assumptions" and the "background assumptions " of each theory are analyzed. The results ofsuch an analysis suggest that ethnomethodology may be more attractive to certain groupings of sociologists than behaviorism, thus contradicting in part the argument advanced on the basis ofa structural analysis. The paper calls for a recognition of the dialectical interplay between "structural conditions" and "subjective forces" in the adoption and rejection oftheory

Windows .NET Network Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST)

BACKGROUND: BLAST is one of the most common and useful tools for Genetic Research. This paper describes a software application we have termed Windows .NET Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST), which enhances the BLAST utility by improving usability, fault recovery, and scalability in a Windows desktop environment. Our goal was to develop an easy to use, fault tolerant, high-throughput BLAST solution that incorporates a comprehensive BLAST result viewer with curation and annotation functionality. RESULTS: W.ND-BLAST is a comprehensive Windows-based software toolkit that targets researchers, including those with minimal computer skills, and provides the ability increase the performance of BLAST by distributing BLAST queries to any number of Windows based machines across local area networks (LAN). W.ND-BLAST provides intuitive Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) for BLAST database creation, BLAST execution, BLAST output evaluation and BLAST result exportation. This software also provides several layers of fault tolerance and fault recovery to prevent loss of data if nodes or master machines fail. This paper lays out the functionality of W.ND-BLAST. W.ND-BLAST displays close to 100% performance efficiency when distributing tasks to 12 remote computers of the same performance class. A high throughput BLAST job which took 662.68 minutes (11 hours) on one average machine was completed in 44.97 minutes when distributed to 17 nodes, which included lower performance class machines. Finally, there is a comprehensive high-throughput BLAST Output Viewer (BOV) and Annotation Engine components, which provides comprehensive exportation of BLAST hits to text files, annotated fasta files, tables, or association files. CONCLUSION: W.ND-BLAST provides an interactive tool that allows scientists to easily utilizing their available computing resources for high throughput and comprehensive sequence analyses. The install package for W.ND-BLAST is freely downloadable from . With registration the software is free, installation, networking, and usage instructions are provided as well as a support forum

An integrated approach to use genetic resources for resurrection plants to enhance drought tolerance in breeding-extension programs [abstract]

Only abstract of poster available.Track V: BiomassThe ultimate goals of this project are to gain a basic understanding of the unique gene and gene regulatory networks that are necessary and sufficient for vegetative tissues to withstand dehydration and then rapidly recover upon rehydration and to use the knowledge gained to develop crops, maize and forage grasses that maintain biomass production under drought condition. Our approach is to combine comparative genomics and phylogenetics to identify genes and gene networks that are adaptive and central to the tolerance of cellular dehydration. This involves the use of resurrection species as models for dehydration tolerance coupled with a suite of comparative bioinformatic tools that allows for the phylogenetic assessment of gene expression patterns in response to dehydration and rehydration. Once the key genetic elements have been identified and assessed we will use a transgenic functional assessment of their involvement in the phenotype, both at a molecular and physiological level, of drought tolerance. One of our key resurrection species is the South African grass Sporobolus stapfianus, which is capable of surviving -240 MPa of water deficit (a hundred times lower than most crop plants). This plant not only serves as a model for monocot crops such as maize and switchgrass, our major targets for crop improvement, but also serves as a direct possibility for an alternate forage grass and biomass source. The improvement of biomass production under drought conditions is not only important for sustainable biofuel production but also for food and energy security. Funded by a CSREES-NRI Grant of $450,000 over three years to PI Mel Oliver USDA-ARS-PGRU Columbia, CoPIs Robert Sharp, University of Missouri; John Cushman, University of Nevada, Reno; Paxton Payton, USDA-ARS-PSRU Lubbock

The rehydration transcriptome of the desiccation-tolerant bryophyte Tortula ruralis: transcript classification and analysis

BACKGROUND: The cellular response of plants to water-deficits has both economic and evolutionary importance directly affecting plant productivity in agriculture and plant survival in the natural environment. Genes induced by water-deficit stress have been successfully enumerated in plants that are relatively sensitive to cellular dehydration, however we have little knowledge as to the adaptive role of these genes in establishing tolerance to water loss at the cellular level. Our approach to address this problem has been to investigate the genetic responses of plants that are capable of tolerating extremes of dehydration, in particular the desiccation-tolerant bryophyte, Tortula ruralis. To establish a sound basis for characterizing the Tortula genome in regards to desiccation tolerance, we analyzed 10,368 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from rehydrated rapid-dried Tortula gametophytes, a stage previously determined to exhibit the maximum stress induced change in gene expression. RESULTS: The 10, 368 ESTs formed 5,563 EST clusters (contig groups representing individual genes) of which 3,321 (59.7%) exhibited similarity to genes present in the public databases and 2,242 were categorized as unknowns based on protein homology scores. The 3,321 clusters were classified by function using the Gene Ontology (GO) hierarchy and the KEGG database. The results indicate that the transcriptome contains a diverse population of transcripts that reflects, as expected, a period of metabolic upheaval in the gametophyte cells. Much of the emphasis within the transcriptome is centered on the protein synthetic machinery, ion and metabolite transport, and membrane biosynthesis and repair. Rehydrating gametophytes also have an abundance of transcripts that code for enzymes involved in oxidative stress metabolism and phosphorylating activities. The functional classifications reflect a remarkable consistency with what we have previously established with regards to the metabolic activities that are important in the recovery of the gametophytes from desiccation. A comparison of the GO distribution of Tortula clusters with an identical analysis of 9,981 clusters from the desiccation sensitive bryophyte species Physcomitrella patens, revealed, and accentuated, the differences between stressed and unstressed transcriptomes. Cross species sequence comparisons indicated that on the whole the Tortula clusters were more closely related to those from Physcomitrella than Arabidopsis (complete genome BLASTx comparison) although because of the differences in the databases there were more high scoring matches to the Arabidopsis sequences. The most abundant transcripts contained within the Tortula ESTs encode Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins that are normally associated with drying plant tissues. This suggests that LEAs may also play a role in recovery from desiccation when water is reintroduced into a dried tissue. CONCLUSION: The establishment of a rehydration EST collection for Tortula ruralis, an important plant model for plant stress responses and vegetative desiccation tolerance, is an important step in understanding the genome level response to cellular dehydration. The type of transcript analysis performed here has laid the foundation for more detailed functional and genome level analyses of the genes involved in desiccation tolerance in plants

The response of Asterochloris erici (Ahmadjian) Skaloud et Peksa to desiccation: a proteomic approach

18 p.The study of desiccation tolerance of lichens, and of their chlorobionts in particular, has frequently focused on the anti-oxidant system that protects the cell against photo-oxidative stress during dehydration/rehydration cycles. In this study, we used proteomic and transcript analyses to assess the changes associated with desiccation in the isolated phycobiont Aste-rochloris erici. Algae were dried either slowly (5?6 h) or rapidly (<60 min), and rehydrated after 24 h in the desiccated state. To identify proteins that accumulated during the drying or rehydration processes, we employed two-dimensional (2D) difference gel electrophoresis (DIGE) coupled with individual protein identi?cation using trypsin digestion and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Proteomic analyses revealed that desiccation caused an increase in relative abundance of only 11?13 proteins, regard-less of drying rate, involved in glycolysis, cellular protection, cytoskeleton, cell cycle, and targeting and degradation. Tran-scripts of ?ve Hsp90 and two b-tubulin genes accumulated primarily at the end of the dehydration process. In addition, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images indicate that ultrastructural cell injuries, perhaps resulting from physical or mechanical stress rather than metabolic damage, were more intense after rapid dehydration. This occurred with no major change in the proteome. These results suggest that desiccation tolerance of A. erici is achieved by constitu-tive mechanisms.Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciónGeneralitat ValencianaUnited States Department of Agricultur

Sporobolus stapfianus: Insights into desiccation tolerance in the resurrection grasses from linking transcriptomics to metabolomics

Predominant clusters of SDATs that share distinct patterns of abundance during dehydration: A. Predominant patterns of abundance for transcripts in clusters that exhibited increased abundance during dehydration. B. Predominant patterns of abundance for transcripts in clusters that exhibited a decreased abundance during dehydration. (PDF 226 kb

Bioprosthetic mitral valve thrombosis less than one year after replacement and an ablative MAZE procedure: a case report

Occurrence of bioprosthetic valve thrombosis less than a year after replacement is very uncommon. Here, we describe a case of a 57 year old male, who presented 10 months after receiving a bioprosthetic mitral valve replacement with a two week history of dyspnea on exertion, worsening orthopnea and decreased exercise tolerance. Echocardiography revealed severe mitral regurgitation (MR), thrombosis of the posterior mitral leaflet, left atrial (LA) mural thrombus and a depressed left ventricular ejection fraction of twenty-five percent. Given severe clot burden and decompensated heart failure (New York Heart Association - NYHA class III) repeat sternotomy was done to replace the bioprosthetic mitral valve and remove LA mural thrombus. MR was resolved postoperatively. This brief report further reviews promoting factors, established guidelines and management strategies of bioprosthetic valve thrombosis