Covalently bound substrate at the regulatory site triggers allosteric enzyme activation

The mechanism by which the enzyme pyruvate decarboxylase from yeast is activated allosterically has been elucidated. A total of seven three-dimensional structures of the enzyme, of enzyme variants or of enzyme complexes form two yeast species (three of them reported here for the first time) provide detailed atomic resolution snapshots along the activation coordinate. The prime event is the covalent binding of the substrate pyruvate to the side chain of cysteine 221, thus forming a thiohemiketal. This reaction causes the shift of a neighbouring amino acid, which eventually leads to the rigidification of two otherwise flexible loops, where one of the loops provides two histidine residues necessary to complete the enzymatically competent active site architecture. The structural data are complemented and supported by kinetic investigations and binding studies and provide a consistent picture of the structural changes, which occur upon enzyme activation

Das Bootsgrab von Balladoole, Isle of Man

"In the final months of World War II, excavations were carried out on the Isle of Man, leading to the uncovering of a boat grave in the vicinity of Balladoole, to the west of Castletown. The excavations were led by Gerhard Bersu, the chief director of the Roman-Germanic Commission in Frankfurt, who had fled from Germany during his period of internment. More than ten years later, D.M. Wilson presented the excavation results on the basis of Bersu’s reports (Bersu/Wilson 1966). In this article, the burial offerings found in the grave are analysed with regard to provenance and date on the basis of the present state of research. The offerings comprise insular Celtic objects as well as foreign goods from the Continent. The grave thus documents contacts with both the Celtic West and the Carolingian Empire of the late ninth century / ca. 900. At the same time, the adherence to the custom of burial in a boat is indicative of close ties with Western Scandinavia." (author's abstract

The impact of overweight and obesity on health-related quality of life in childhood – results from an intervention study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The negative impact of overweight (including obesity) and related treatment on children's and adolescents' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has been shown in few specific samples thus far. We examined HRQoL and emotional well-being in overweight children from an outpatient treatment sample as well as changes of these parameters during treatment.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a cross-sectional design, self-reported HRQoL of 125 overweight (including obese) children who contacted a treatment facility, but had not yet receive treatment, were compared to 172 children from randomly selected schools using independent two-sample t-tests. Additionally, in a longitudinal design, the overweight children were retested by administering the same questionnaire at the end of the intervention (after one year). It included measures such as the body mass index (BMI), the general health item (GHI), the KINDL^R, and the Child Dynamic Health Assessment Scale (ChildDynHA). Comparisons were based on dependent t-tests and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overweight children showed statistically significant impairment in the GHI (Cohen's d = 0.59) and emotional well-being (ChildDynha) (d = 0.33) compared to the school children. With respect to HRQoL, the friends dimension of the KINDL^Rwas significantly impaired in the overweight group (d = 0.33). However, no impairment was found for the total HRQoL score or other KINDL^Rsubdimensions. Regarding the longitudinal part of our study, most of the children improved their BMI, but the majority (87.5%) remained overweight. Nevertheless, the participants' perceived health, emotional well-being, and generic as well as disease-specific HRQoL improved during intervention.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The findings emphasize the importance of patient-reported outcomes such as HRQoL. Even though overweight and obesity might accompany most of the children throughout their lifetime, the impairment associated with this chronic condition can be considerably reduced. Opportunities of health promotion in overweight/obese children and adolescents are discussed.</p

Utilizing Explainable AI for improving the Performance of Neural Networks

Nowadays, deep neural networks are widely used in a variety of fields that have a direct impact on society. Although those models typically show outstanding performance, they have been used for a long time as black boxes. To address this, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has been developing as a field that aims to improve the transparency of the model and increase their trustworthiness. We propose a retraining pipeline that consistently improves the model predictions starting from XAI and utilizing state-of-the-art techniques. To do that, we use the XAI results, namely SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values, to give specific training weights to the data samples. This leads to an improved training of the model and, consequently, better performance. In order to benchmark our method, we evaluate it on both real-life and public datasets. First, we perform the method on a radar-based people counting scenario. Afterward, we test it on the CIFAR-10, a public Computer Vision dataset. Experiments using the SHAP-based retraining approach achieve a 4% more accuracy w.r.t. the standard equal weight retraining for people counting tasks. Moreover, on the CIFAR-10, our SHAP-based weighting strategy ends up with a 3% accuracy rate than the training procedure with equal weighted samples.Comment: accepted at ICMLA 202

Die Proteomanalyse von Bulbus olfactorius, Cerebellum und Cortex cerebri der juvenilen, adulten und gealterten Ratte: eine ontogenetische Studie

Das Ziel ist es, einen Einblick in die Entwicklung des Rattengehirns mit dem Fokus auf Expressionsunterschiede von Proteinen innerhalb des Bulbus olfactorius, des Cerebellums und des Cortex cerebri der juvenilen, adulten und gealterten Ratte zu den Zeitpunkten (P7, P90, P637) mittels 2D-Gelelektrophorese und anschließender massenspektrometrischer Identifikation zu erhalten, um so eine Bestimmung von Proteinen vorzunehmen, die einen Einfluss auf das Überleben und die Differenzierung von transplantierten Progenitorzellen in neonatale und adulte Caudatus-Putamen Komplexe haben könnten

An Empirical Study of Customers’ Behavioral Intention to Use Ridepooling Services – An Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model

Shared mobility services for passenger transportation become increasingly popular all over the world. As services like carsharing are already well-established and well-accepted, ride pooling services are at their early stage and currently within first implementations. The most critical success factor of such services is the customer acceptance. We investigate the acceptance of 115 German questionnaire respondents using and extending the Technology Acceptance Model. Results indicate that the success factors of the developed model serve as useful predictors of the behavioral intention to use ridepooling services. Perceived compatibility was identified to have the strongest impact whereas perceived ease of use and perceived safety are not relevant for accepting ridepooling services. Based on these findings, our paper provides management implications and recommendations to improve acceptance and success of ridepooling services in Germany

Fermentability of whole oat flour, PeriTec flour and bran by Lactobacillus plantarum

4 páginas, 2 tablas, 1 figuraWhole oat flour obtained by hammer milling was fermented with Lactobacillus plantarum along with white flour and bran in order to compare the suitability of these substrates for the production of a probiotic beverage. The three substrates show a viable cell concentration at the end of fermentation above the minimum required in a probiotic product. The highest cell concentration was observed in white flour (9.16 Log10 CFU/mL) and the lowest in the bran sample (8.17 Log10 CFU/mL)Peer reviewe