1,203 research outputs found
Inter-species variation in the oligomeric states of the higher plant Calvin cycle enzymes glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and phosphoribulokinase
In darkened leaves the Calvin cycle enzymes glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) and phosphoribulokinase (PRK) form a regulatory multi-enzyme complex with the small chloroplast protein CP12. GAPDH also forms a high molecular weight regulatory mono-enzyme complex. Given that there are different reports as to the number and subunit composition of these complexes and that enzyme regulatory mechanisms are known to vary between species, it was reasoned that protein-protein interactions may also vary between species. Here, this variation is investigated. This study shows that two different tetramers of GAPDH (an A2B2 heterotetramer and an A4 homotetramer) have the capacity to form part of the PRK/GAPDH/CP12 complex. The role of the PRK/GAPDH/CP12 complex is not simply to regulate the 'non-regulatory' A4 GAPDH tetramer. This study also demonstrates that the abundance and nature of PRK/GAPDH/CP12 interactions are not equal in all species and that whilst NAD enhances complex formation in some species, this is not sufficient for complex formation in others. Furthermore, it is shown that the GAPDH mono-enzyme complex is more abundant as a 2(A2B2) complex, rather than the larger 4(A2B2) complex. This smaller complex is sensitive to cellular metabolites indicating that it is an important regulatory isoform of GAPDH. This comparative study has highlighted considerable heterogeneity in PRK and GAPDH protein interactions between closely related species and the possible underlying physiological basis for this is discussed. © 2011 The Author(s)
Improved ventricular function during inhalation of PGI(2) aerosol partly relies on enhanced myocardial contractility
Inhaled prostacyclin (PGI(2)) aerosol induces selective pulmonary vasodilation. Further, it improves right ventricular ( RV) function, which may largely rely on pulmonary vasodilation, but also on enhanced myocardial contractility. We investigated the effects of the inhaled PGI(2) analogs epoprostenol (EPO) and iloprost (ILO) on RV function and myocardial contractility in 9 anesthetized pigs receiving aerosolized EPO (25 and 50 ng center dot kg(-1) center dot min(-1)) and, consecutively, ILO (60 ng center dot kg(-1) center dot min(-1)) for 20 min each. We measured pulmonary artery pressure ( PAP), RV ejection fraction (RVEF) and RV end-diastolic-volume (RV-EDV), and left ventricular end-systolic pressure-volume-relation (end-systolic elastance, E-es). EPO and ILO reduced PAP, increased RVEF and reduced RVEDV. E-es was enhanced during all doses tested, which reached statistical significance during EPO25ng and ILO, but not during EPO50ng. PGI(2) aerosol enhances myocardial contractility in healthy pigs, contributing to improve RV function. Copyright (C) 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel
Introduction to the themed issue - Corporate power : agency, communication, influence and social policy
This paper introduces this themed issue of Critical Social Policy on the question of corporate power. Corporate power is recognized as an important agent in social policy making and delivery. However, to date there has been comparatively little attention to the crucial role that lobbying and corporate 'spin' play in helping to shape policy making contexts. This special issue of Critical Social Policy is concerned to bring such issues to the mainstream of social policy analysis. It is argued here that the rise of spin and public relations is a key feature of neoliberalism in the past two decades. These have worked to reshape policy making, resulting in pronounced changes in the content and process of policy making and it is argued that these have tended to marginalize or undermine democratic processes
Influence of intermartensitic transitions on transport properties of Ni2.16Mn0.84Ga alloy
Magnetic, transport, and x-ray diffraction measurements of ferromagnetic
shape memory alloy NiMnGa revealed that this alloy undergoes
an intermartensitic transition upon cooling, whereas no such a transition is
observed upon subsequent heating. The difference in the modulation of the
martensite forming upon cooling from the high-temperature austenitic state
[5-layered (5M) martensite], and the martensite forming upon the
intermartensitic transition [7-layered (7M) martensite] strongly affects the
magnetic and transport properties of the alloy and results in a large thermal
hysteresis of the resistivity and magnetization . The
intermartensitic transition has an especially marked influence on the transport
properties, as is evident from a large difference in the resistivity of the 5M
and 7M martensite, , which is larger than the jump of resistivity at
the martensitic transition from the cubic austenitic phase to the monoclinic 5M
martensitic phase. We assume that this significant difference in between
the martensitic phases is accounted for by nesting features of the Fermi
surface. It is also suggested that the nesting hypothesis can explain the
uncommon behavior of the resistivity at the martensitic transition, observed in
stoichiometric and near-stoichiometric Ni-Mn-Ga alloys.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, REVTEX
Utilization of Epidural Electrodes as a Diagnostic Tool in Intractable Epilepsy—A Technical Note
The utilization of epidural electrodes in the preoperative evaluation of intractable epilepsy is a valuable but underrepresented tool. In recent years, we have adapted the use of cylindrical epidural 1-contact electrodes (1-CE) instead of Peg electrodes. 1-CEs are more versatile since their explantation is a possible bedside procedure. Here we report our experience with 1-CEs as well as associated technical nuances. This retrospective analysis included 56 patients with intractable epilepsy who underwent epidural electrode placement for presurgical evaluation at the Department of Neurosurgery at the Charité University Hospital from September 2011 to July 2021. The median age at surgery was 36.3 years (range: 18–87), with 30 (53.6%) female and 26 (46.4%) male patients. Overall, 507 electrodes were implanted: 93 Fo electrodes, 33 depth electrodes, and 381 epidural electrodes, with a mean total surgical time of 100.5 ± 38 min and 11.8 ± 5 min per electrode. There was a total number of 24 complications in 21 patients (8 Fo electrode dislocations, 6 CSF leaks, 6 epidural electrode dislocations or malfunction, 3 wound infections, and 2 hemorrhages); 11 of these required revision surgery. The relative electrode complication rates were 3/222 (1.4%) in Peg electrodes and 3/159 (1.9%) in 1-CE. In summary, epidural recording via 1-CE is technically feasible, harbours an acceptable complication rate, and adequately replaces Peg electrodes
Does segmentation always improve model performance in credit scoring?
Credit scoring allows for the credit risk assessment of bank customers. A single scoring model (scorecard) can be developed for the entire customer population, e.g. using logistic regression. However, it is often expected that segmentation, i.e. dividing the population into several groups and building separate scorecards for them, will improve the model performance. The most common statistical methods for segmentation are the two-step approaches, where logistic regression follows Classification and Regression Trees (CART) or Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) trees etc. In this research, the two-step approaches are applied as well as a new, simultaneous method, in which both segmentation and scorecards are optimised at the same time: Logistic Trees with Unbiased Selection (LOTUS). For reference purposes, a single-scorecard model is used. The above-mentioned methods are applied to the data provided by two of the major UK banks and one of the European credit bureaus. The model performance measures are then compared to examine whether there is improvement due to the segmentation methods used. It is found that segmentation does not always improve model performance in credit scoring: for none of the analysed real-world datasets, the multi-scorecard models perform considerably better than the single-scorecard ones. Moreover, in this application, there is no difference in performance between the two-step and simultaneous approache
FLOT: Scene Flow on Point Clouds Guided by Optimal Transport
We propose and study a method called FLOT that estimates scene flow on point
clouds. We start the design of FLOT by noticing that scene flow estimation on
point clouds reduces to estimating a permutation matrix in a perfect world.
Inspired by recent works on graph matching, we build a method to find these
correspondences by borrowing tools from optimal transport. Then, we relax the
transport constraints to take into account real-world imperfections. The
transport cost between two points is given by the pairwise similarity between
deep features extracted by a neural network trained under full supervision
using synthetic datasets. Our main finding is that FLOT can perform as well as
the best existing methods on synthetic and real-world datasets while requiring
much less parameters and without using multiscale analysis. Our second finding
is that, on the training datasets considered, most of the performance can be
explained by the learned transport cost. This yields a simpler method,
FLOT, which is obtained using a particular choice of optimal transport
parameters and performs nearly as well as FLOT.Comment: Accepted at ECCV2
Model-based clustering via linear cluster-weighted models
A novel family of twelve mixture models with random covariates, nested in the
linear cluster-weighted model (CWM), is introduced for model-based
clustering. The linear CWM was recently presented as a robust alternative
to the better known linear Gaussian CWM. The proposed family of models provides
a unified framework that also includes the linear Gaussian CWM as a special
case. Maximum likelihood parameter estimation is carried out within the EM
framework, and both the BIC and the ICL are used for model selection. A simple
and effective hierarchical random initialization is also proposed for the EM
algorithm. The novel model-based clustering technique is illustrated in some
applications to real data. Finally, a simulation study for evaluating the
performance of the BIC and the ICL is presented
SNE-RoadSeg: Incorporating Surface Normal Information into Semantic Segmentation for Accurate Freespace Detection
Freespace detection is an essential component of visual perception for
self-driving cars. The recent efforts made in data-fusion convolutional neural
networks (CNNs) have significantly improved semantic driving scene
segmentation. Freespace can be hypothesized as a ground plane, on which the
points have similar surface normals. Hence, in this paper, we first introduce a
novel module, named surface normal estimator (SNE), which can infer surface
normal information from dense depth/disparity images with high accuracy and
efficiency. Furthermore, we propose a data-fusion CNN architecture, referred to
as RoadSeg, which can extract and fuse features from both RGB images and the
inferred surface normal information for accurate freespace detection. For
research purposes, we publish a large-scale synthetic freespace detection
dataset, named Ready-to-Drive (R2D) road dataset, collected under different
illumination and weather conditions. The experimental results demonstrate that
our proposed SNE module can benefit all the state-of-the-art CNNs for freespace
detection, and our SNE-RoadSeg achieves the best overall performance among
different datasets.Comment: ECCV 202
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