1,761 research outputs found
Improved predictions by Pcons.net using multiple templates
Summary: Multiple templates can often be used to build more accurate homology models than models built from a single template. Here we introduce PconsM, an automated protocol that uses multiple templates to build protein models. PconsM has been among the top-performing methods in the recent CASP experiments and consistently perform better than the single template models used in Pcons.net. In particular for the easier targets with many alternative templates with a high degree of sequence identity, quality is readily improved with a few percentages over the highest ranked model built on a single template. PconsM is available as an additional pipeline within the Pcons.net protein structure prediction server
Burn Care in the Greek and Roman Antiquity
The last century brought about more rapid new developments in the treatment of burns, which significantly lowered the mortality of burn injuries. However, burns were already treated in antiquity, where the threshold from spirituality to scientific medicine originated. The existing literature on burn treatment is very limited and there are many cross-references, some of them incorrect. The aim of this work by an interdisciplinary team of historians and physicians is to offer a more precise reproduction of the burn treatment of Greek and Roman antiquity using original texts in context and with a modern scientific background. There are many sources from ancient doctors on the subject of burn treatment, as well as the treatment of burned-out wounds and frostbite, which have not yet been mentioned. The literature research also showed an understanding of scientific contexts in ancient medicine, such as antiseptics or rheology. Interestingly, there was a change in burn medicine from everyday Greek medicine to Roman military medicine with other burn patterns. The care of patients using analgetics and the therapy of burn shock arose from the literature. The ancient world is considered to be the foundation of medicine, but it is believed to have been based mainly on shamanism rather than science. However, already more than two millennia ago, burns were correctly assessed and treated according to today’s scientific standards and scientific relationships were recognized
Reality Conditions and Ashtekar Variables: a Different Perspective
We give in this paper a modified self-dual action that leads to the
-ADM formalism without having to face the difficult second class
constraints present in other approaches (for example if one starts from the
Hilbert-Palatini action). We use the new action principle to gain some new
insights into the problem of the reality conditions that must be imposed in
order to get real formulations from complex general relativity. We derive also
a real formulation for Lorentzian general relativity in the Ashtekar phase
space by using the modified action presented in the paper.Comment: 22 pages, LATEX, Preprint CGPG-94/10-
Continuous transport of Pacific-derived anthropogenic radionuclides towards the Indian Ocean
Unusually high concentrations of americium and plutonium have been observed in a sediment core collected from the eastern Lombok Basin between Sumba and Sumbawa Islands in the Indonesian Archipelago. Gamma spectrometry and accelerator mass spectrometry data together with radiometric dating of the core provide a high-resolution record of ongoing deposition of anthropogenic radionuclides. A plutonium signature characteristic of the Pacific Proving Grounds (PPG) dominates in the first two decades after the start of the high yield atmospheric tests in 1950’s. Approximately 40–70% of plutonium at this site in the post 1970 period originates from the PPG. This sediment record of transuranic isotopes deposition over the last 55 years provides evidence for the continuous long-distance transport of particle-reactive radionuclides from the Pacific Ocean towards the Indian Ocean
Nodding syndrome in Tanzania may not be associated with circulating anti-NMDA- and anti-VGKC receptor antibodies or decreased pyridoxal phosphate serum levels-a pilot study
Background: Nodding syndrome (NS) is a seemingly progressive epilepsy disorder of unknown underlying cause. We investigated association of pyridoxal-phosphate serum levels and occurrence of anti-neuronal antibodies against N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor and voltage gated potassium channel (VGKC) complex in NS patients.Methods: Sera of a Tanzanian cohort of epilepsy and NS patients and community controls were tested for the presence of anti-NMDA-receptor and anti-VGKC complex antibodies by indirect immunofluorescence assay. Furthermore pyridoxal-phosphate levels were measured.Results: Auto-antibodies against NMDA receptor or VGKC (LG1 or Caspr2) complex were not detected in sera of patients suffering from NS (n=6), NS plus other seizure types (n=16), primary generalized epilepsy (n=1) and community controls without epilepsy (n=7). Median Pyridoxal-phosphate levels in patients with NS compared to patients with primary generalized seizures and community controls were not significantly different. However, these median pyridoxal-phosphate levels are significantly lower compared to the range considered normal in Europeans.Conclusions: In this pilot study NS was not associated with serum anti-NMDA receptor or anti-VGKC complex antibodies and no association to pyridoxal-phosphate serum levels was found.Key words: nodding syndrome, epilepsy, anti-neuronal antibodies, pyridoxal-phosphat
Getting the basics right-staging in head and neck cancer
The cornerstone of oncology literature and therefore medical practice is the ability to compare outcomes of treatment modalities for different stages of cancer
Covariance properties and regularization of conserved currents in tetrad gravity
We discuss the properties of the gravitational energy-momentum 3-form within
the tetrad formulation of general relativity theory. We derive the covariance
properties of the quantities describing the energy-momentum content under
Lorentz transformations of the tetrad. As an application, we consider the
computation of the total energy (mass) of some exact solutions of Einstein's
general relativity theory which describe compact sources with asymptotically
flat spacetime geometry. As it is known, depending on the choice of tetrad
frame, the formal total integral for such configurations may diverge. We
propose a natural regularization method which yields finite values for the
total energy-momentum of the system and demonstrate how it works on a number of
explicit examples.Comment: 36 pages, Revtex, no figures; small changes, published versio
On the energy of homogeneous cosmologies
An energy for the homogeneous cosmological models is presented. More
specifically, using an appropriate natural prescription, we find the energy
within any region with any gravitational source for a large class of gravity
theories--namely those with a tetrad description--for all 9 Bianchi types. Our
energy is given by the value of the Hamiltonian with homogeneous boundary
conditions; this value vanishes for all regions in all Bianchi class A models,
and it does not vanish for any class B model. This is so not only for
Einstein's general relativity but, moreover, for the whole 3-parameter class of
tetrad-teleparallel theories. For the physically favored one parameter
subclass, which includes the teleparallel equivalent of Einstein's theory as an
important special case, the energy for all class B models is, contrary to
expectation, negative.Comment: 11 pages, reformated with minor change
Ruled Laguerre minimal surfaces
A Laguerre minimal surface is an immersed surface in the Euclidean space
being an extremal of the functional \int (H^2/K - 1) dA. In the present paper,
we prove that the only ruled Laguerre minimal surfaces are up to isometry the
surfaces R(u,v) = (Au, Bu, Cu + D cos 2u) + v (sin u, cos u, 0), where A, B, C,
D are fixed real numbers. To achieve invariance under Laguerre transformations,
we also derive all Laguerre minimal surfaces that are enveloped by a family of
cones. The methodology is based on the isotropic model of Laguerre geometry. In
this model a Laguerre minimal surface enveloped by a family of cones
corresponds to a graph of a biharmonic function carrying a family of isotropic
circles. We classify such functions by showing that the top view of the family
of circles is a pencil.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures. Minor correction: missed assumption (*) added to
Propositions 1-2 and Theorem 2, missed case (nested circles having nonempty
envelope) added in the proof of Pencil Theorem 4, missed proof that the arcs
cut off by the envelope are disjoint added in the proof of Lemma
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