Dynamics of ABC Transporter P-glycoprotein in Three Conformational States.

We used hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) to obtain a comprehensive view of transporter dynamics (85.8% sequence coverage) occurring throughout the multidrug efflux transporter P-glycoprotein (P-gp) in three distinct conformational states: predominantly inward-facing apo P-gp, pre-hydrolytic (E552Q/E1197Q) P-gp bound to Mg+2-ATP, and outward-facing P-gp bound to Mg+2-ADP-VO4-3. Nucleotide affinity was measured with bio-layer interferometry (BLI), which yielded kinetics data that fit a two Mg+2-ATP binding-site model. This model has one high affinity site (3.2 ± 0.3 µM) and one low affinity site (209 ± 25 µM). Comparison of deuterium incorporation profiles revealed asymmetry between the changes undergone at the critical interfaces where nucleotide binding domains (NBDs) contact intracellular helices (ICHs). In the pre-hydrolytic state, both interfaces between ICHs and NBDs decreased exchange to similar extents relative to inward-facing P-gp. In the outward-facing state, the ICH-NBD1 interface showed decreased exchange, while the ICH-NBD2 interface showed less of an effect. The extracellular loops (ECLs) showed reduced deuterium uptake in the pre-hydrolytic state, consistent with an occluded conformation. While in the outward-facing state, increased ECL exchange corresponding to EC domain opening was observed. These findings point toward asymmetry between both NBDs, and they suggest that pre-hydrolytic P-gp occupies an occluded conformation

A Survey of RFID Authentication Protocols Based on Hash-Chain Method

Security and privacy are the inherent problems in RFID communications. There are several protocols have been proposed to overcome those problems. Hash chain is commonly employed by the protocols to improve security and privacy for RFID authentication. Although the protocols able to provide specific solution for RFID security and privacy problems, they fail to provide integrated solution. This article is a survey to closely observe those protocols in terms of its focus and limitations.Comment: Third ICCIT 2008 International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technolog

The Religious Employer Exemption Under TItle VII: Should a Church Define Its Own Activities?

Conocer la gestión operativa del Blueberry y su incidencia en el medio ambiente, es fundamental para la Agroindustria Cerro Prieto. Es importante que esta organización demuestre qué tan importante para ellos es realizar buenas prácticas de cultivo y cómo es que con estás practicas se preocupan por el medio ambiente y cómo han ayudado en el desarrollo de su comercialización tanto a nivel local como internacional; la investigación tuvo como objetivo evaluar la incidencia de dicho proceso productivo del Blueberry en el manejo ambiental de la Agroindustria Cerro Prieto

Implications Of Discordances Between Stroke Clinical Diagnoses And Icd-9-Cm Codes – 2013 Data From The Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Program

Background/ Purpose: Epidemiology and health services research often use International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes to translate clinical information contained in administrative databases. Since errors in ICD-9-CM codes can affect the interpretation of results from these studies, we sought to expand upon existing research by determining if there are systematic variations in concordance between stroke patient clinical diagnoses and ICD-9-CM codes by hospital characteristics and degrees of stroke severity. Methods: We used patient records with a discharge date in 2013 from the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Program (PCNASP). Our primary analysis quantified the concordance between the attending physician’s clinical diagnosis and the primary ICD-9-CM billing code. Hospital characteristics data were used to examine concordance by presence/absence of a stroke unit and stroke team, hospital bed size categories, and urban/rural status of the hospital’s location. Furthermore, concordance by stroke severity (NIHSS) categories was compared for ischemic stroke and TIA patients. Results: The overall sensitivity was 93.8% for all stroke and TIA diagnosis groups. Concordance was relatively high for each diagnosis category except “stroke not otherwise specified”. Carotid endarterectomy was a common reason for discordances between the clinical diagnosis and ICD-9-CM code. Concordance was highest for larger metropolitan hospitals with stroke units and teams, and more severe strokes. Conclusions: Systematic variations in the coding accuracy of stroke patients’ diagnoses by hospital and patient characteristics have implications for hospital reimbursements and stroke case identification in epidemiologic studies and quality metrics

Transcriptomic evidence that enigmatic parasites Polypodium hydriforme and Myxozoa are cnidarians

Polypodium hydriforme and Myxozoa, represented in this study by Myxobolus cerebralis, are both enigmatic, intracellular parasites with very unusual life cycles and body plans, which has long made their phylogenetic placement unclear. It has been suggested that Polypodium hydriforme and Myxozoa have an affinity with cnidarians because of the presence of nematocyst-like structures in both organisms. Recently phylogenomic studies have lent support to the hypothesis that Myxozoa is cnidarian. However, the placement of Polypodium hydriforme and Myxozoa within cnidarian and in relation to each other remains unknown, and many questions about their evolution and transition to parasitism still remain. To address these questions, we have generated partial transcriptomes of M. cerebralis and Polypodium hydriforme, and searched within them for important families of developmental regulatory genes and nematocyst-specific genes. The Polypodium hydriforme transcriptome contained a much larger complement of both putative Hox/Parahox genes and Wnt-family genes, which may relate increased body plan complexity as compared with M. cerebralis. Both transcriptomes contained a number of minicollagen sequences, confirming their placement within Cnidaria

Auditory-motor adaptation is reduced in adults who stutter but not in children who stutter

Previous studies have shown that adults who stutter produce smaller corrective motor responses to compensate for unexpected auditory perturbations in comparison to adults who do not stutter, suggesting that stuttering may be associated with deficits in integration of auditory feedback for online speech monitoring. In this study, we examined whether stuttering is also associated with deficiencies in integrating and using discrepancies between expect ed and received auditory feedback to adaptively update motor programs for accurate speech production. Using a sensorimotor adaptation paradigm, we measured adaptive speech responses to auditory formant frequency perturbations in adults and children who stutter and their matched nonstuttering controls. We found that the magnitude of the speech adaptive response for children who stutter did not differ from that of fluent children. However, the adaptation magnitude of adults who stutter in response to formant perturbation was significantly smaller than the adaptation magnitude of adults who do not stutter. Together these results indicate that stuttering is associated with deficits in integrating discrepancies between predicted and received auditory feedback to calibrate the speech production system in adults but not children. This auditory-motor integration deficit thus appears to be a compensatory effect that develops over years of stuttering

Use of anti-terrorism digital ecosystem in the fight against terrorism

In this paper, we propose an Anti-terrorist Digital Ecosystem (ATDES) that enables efficient terrorist identification and protection against terrorist attacks. An Anti-terrorist Digital Environment (ATDE) is designed as being populated by interconnected Anti-terrorist Digital Components (ATDC). ATDC are combined together to support collaboration, cooperation and sharing of available information between various regions, countries and even continents.ATDC may be any useful idea that can be digitalized, transported within the ecosystem and processed by humans or by computers. The key ATDC include ID databases that contain personal records, screening components that read personal records and match them with the available information from the ID databases and machine-readable personal records. The available information is put into one big virtual database and enables matching of personal records.If the available information is to be shared between various ID information resources, standardization of data needs to take place. Ontologies can be used for this purpose. Instantiation of the Ontology concepts result in ID Ontologies that act as personal records. Because Ontology files are machine readable, it is possible to do the matching of personal records with the available ID records from the networked ID databases and to action the results.The significance of this research lies in the unification of the advances of the Ontology technology and Ecosystem paradigm for the purpose of creating a more secure environment in which to fight against terrorism

PP-SDLC The privacy protecting systems development life cycle

Many new Privacy Laws and Regulations have placed an increased importance on the correct design and implementation of information systems. This is an attempt to preserve and protect user and information privacy. Incorporating privacy regulations and guidelines into an active information system is often unsuccessful and ineffective. In addition, systems that have already progressed through the development life cycle can very expensive to change once implemented. We propose the integration of privacy preservation methodologies and techniques into each phase of the system development life cycle (SDLC). This is to preserve the privacy of individuals and to protect PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data. The incorporation of IT Security measures in each SDLC phase is also discussed. This is due to its direct relevance and correlation with information system privacy issues. The proposed methodology involves identifying the privacy and security issues in each phase. From there appropriate privacy protecting and security techniques are applied to address these issues. Special mention is made of the recently proposed Common Criteria. The CC is an international standard for IT Security for Information Systems. Specifically, this paper will analyse the way the Common Criteria currently deals with privacy in information systems, and what is needed to improve its current inadequate handling of information privacy

A method for service quality assessment in a service ecosystem

the increasing proliferation of independent application service providers is making traditional IT infrastructure insufficient when dealing with new issues that appear in a dynamic outsourcing business model. Quality of Service (QoS) gradually becomes an essential benchmark to differentiate diverse service providers during service selection process. In this paper, we argue service selection can be deemed as a decision making process - to decide which services providers should be selected within the specified service provision context during a definitive timeslot. Thus, existing decision support approaches can be leveraged if applicable. Hence, we propose a service selection solution which utilizes the Decision Support Systems Module (DSS Module) to select the most appropriate service. In DSS module we introduce AHP model to carry out the service QoS measurement based on the Context-specific Quality Aspects. The contributions of this paper are two folds. Firstly, we provide a novel and feasible solution for QoS-based service selection and secondly, we apply DSS module into web services, thus opening a new, fertile ground for DSS research in service ecosystem literature

As mind narrates body : Virginia Woolfs aesthetic presentation of being in time

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo