Identifying new signaling pathways involved in engulfment by follicle cells in the Drosophila ovary: a kinase screen

Programmed cell death and cell corpse clearance are an essential part of an organism’s overall health and development. Cell corpses are often engulfed by professional phagocytes such as macrophages. However, in certain tissues, neighboring non-professional cells can also carry out phagocytic functions. Here, we use the Drosophila melanogaster ovary to investigate novel genes required for engulfment by non-professional phagocytes. In the Drosophila ovary, neighboring epithelial cells facilitate the clearance of dying germline cells. We performed an unbiased kinase screen to identify novel proteins and pathways involved in cell clearance in the nurse cell. Several genes identified in this screen were members of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) family. The class II and III PI3Ks are required for nurse cell clearance and acidification during late-stage oogenesis. Class I PI3K is required for progression during engulfment in mid-stage oogenesis. This kinase screen has revealed novel genes for further exploration and investigation.2019-02-28T00:00:00

Pattern discovery in sequence databases : algorithms and applications to DNA/protein classification

Sequence databases comprise sequence data, which are linear structural descriptions of many natural entities. Approximate pattern discovery in a sequence database can lead to important conclusions or prediction of new phenomena. Traditional database technology is not suitable for accomplishing the task, and new techniques need to be developed. In this dissertation, we propose several new techniques for discovering patterns in sequence databases. Our techniques incorporate pattern matching algorithms and novel heuristics for discovery and optimization. Experimental results of applying the techniques to both generated data and DNA/proteins show the effectiveness of the proposed techniques. We then develop several classifiers using our pattern discovery algorithms and a previously published fingerprint technique. When we apply the classifiers to classify DNA and protein sequences, they give information that is complementary to the best classifiers available today

Critical Phenomena In Nonaqueous Microemulsions

The pseudo ternary phase diagrams of the four-component system glycerol, sodium dodecyl sulfate, hexanol and decane with the weight ratio of hexanol to decane equal to 100/0, 90/10, 75/25, 50/50, and 25/75 were determined at 30°C. The systems gave only isotropic solutions and no liquid crystalline phases. The nonaqueous regions corresponding to the W/O microemulsion region in aqueous systems suggested critical behavior as demonstrated by the convergence of tie lines and by light scattering intensity which gave a pronounced maximum at the point of converging tie lines. This maximum was transferred to higher glycerol/hexanol ratios with added surfactant and to smaller ratios with added decane. Viscosity measurements were made for the solutions on the demixing line. There were no anomalous viscosity values around the points of converging tie lines. © 1987

Refractory cardiopulmonary failure after glyphosate surfactant intoxication: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Glyphosate is an herbicide considered to be of low toxicity to humans because its effects are specific to plants. However, fatal reactions to glyphosate have been reported after the ingestion of large amounts. Pulmonary edema, shock, and arrhythmia were the reported causes of mortality.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We present the case of a 57-year-old woman who was admitted to the emergency department unconsciousness after ingestion of glyphosate surfactant in a suicide attempt. Metabolic acidosis, refractory respiratory failure, and shock developed during hospitalization. Despite aggressive supportive care, the patient died in the hospital.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The toxicokinetics of glyphosate surfactant is complicated. Respiratory failure, metabolic acidosis, tachycardia, elevated creatinine, and hyperkalemia are poor prognostic factors if presented. Physicians should consider using hemodialysis early to improve the outcome of patients with glyphosate surfactant intoxication.</p

Open and Hidden Charm Production in dAA Collisions at RHIC and LHC

We discuss aspects of open and hidden charm production in deuterium-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. We describe calculations of the total $c \bar c$ cross section and the charm quark transverse momentum distributions. We next explain how shadowing and moderate nuclear absorption can explain the PHENIX $J/\psi$ dAu/$pp$ ratios and predict the combined effect of shadowing and absorption in 6.2 TeV d+Pb collisions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, European Physics Journal conference proceedings style files included, in proceedings of Hard Probes, 2004 Ericeira, Portuga

A Non-aqueous Lamellar Liquid Crystal With An Ionic Surfactant-long Chain Alcohol Combination

A non-aqueous lamellar liquid crystal of sodium dodecyl sulfate, decanol and glycerol was prepared and compared with its aqueous counterpart. The results show that the stability of the liquid crystal with glycerol is critically dependent on the surfactant/alcohol ratio, whereas the liquid cry. The interlayer spacing was smaller for the glycerol system than for the water system at finite amount of solvent, but the value extrapolated to zero so. © 1986

Clustering protein sequences with a novel metric transformed from sequence similarity scores and sequence alignments with neural networks

BACKGROUND: The sequencing of the human genome has enabled us to access a comprehensive list of genes (both experimental and predicted) for further analysis. While a majority of the approximately 30000 known and predicted human coding genes are characterized and have been assigned at least one function, there remains a fair number of genes (about 12000) for which no annotation has been made. The recent sequencing of other genomes has provided us with a huge amount of auxiliary sequence data which could help in the characterization of the human genes. Clustering these sequences into families is one of the first steps to perform comparative studies across several genomes. RESULTS: Here we report a novel clustering algorithm (CLUGEN) that has been used to cluster sequences of experimentally verified and predicted proteins from all sequenced genomes using a novel distance metric which is a neural network score between a pair of protein sequences. This distance metric is based on the pairwise sequence similarity score and the similarity between their domain structures. The distance metric is the probability that a pair of protein sequences are of the same Interpro family/domain, which facilitates the modelling of transitive homology closure to detect remote homologues. The hierarchical average clustering method is applied with the new distance metric. CONCLUSION: Benchmarking studies of our algorithm versus those reported in the literature shows that our algorithm provides clustering results with lower false positive and false negative rates. The clustering algorithm is applied to cluster several eukaryotic genomes and several dozens of prokaryotic genomes

A Case for Leveraging 802.11p for Direct Phone-to-Phone Communications

WiFi cannot effectively handle the demands of device-to-device communication between phones, due to insufficient range and poor reliability. We make the case for using IEEE 802.11p DSRC instead, which has been adopted for vehicle-to-vehicle communications, providing lower latency and longer range. We demonstrate a prototype motivated by a novel fabrication process that deposits both III-V and CMOS devices on the same die. In our system prototype, the designed RF front-end is interfaced with a baseband processor on an FPGA, connected to Android phones. It consumes 0.02uJ/bit across 100m assuming free space. Application-level power control dramatically reduces power consumption by 47-56%.Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and TechnologyAmerican Society for Engineering Education. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowshi

Self-esteem, extraversion personality, and academic achievement among children from intact family and orphans

The aim of this study is to determine the differences of self-esteem, extraversion personality, and academic achievement among the children from intact families and children who are orphans, and to determine the relationship between self-esteem and extraversion personality with academic achievement among children from intact family and children who are orphans. Data was collected from 70 children, which consisted of 36 children from intact family and 34 orphans, with a mean age 14.47 years old. This study was carried out in Sabah, Malaysia. Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) was used to measure the variables in the study. The result showed that there was a significant difference of total self-esteem and its subscales (general self and School – Academic), extraversion personality, and academic achievement between children from intact family and children who are orphans. The result also showed that there was no significant relationship between self-esteems and extraversion personality with academic achievement