15 research outputs found

    Architecture and hypertext: networks of proliferation, accretion and mutation

    Get PDF
    This thesis originated with the East River Project, a national collection of collaborative studios orchestrated by the Van Alen Institute in New York City. The project addresses the question of how best to energize and rehabilitate the decaying urban fabric on the banks of the East River in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The site which the Iowa State Laboratory for Experimental Design worked on compromises the East River Park (extending over a mile between 14th and Jackson Streets) and the structure that intersects it, the Williamsburg Bridge (spanning the river between Brooklyn and Manhattan at Delancey Street). The L.E.D. overlaid onto the project of proposing rehabilitation of the East River Park and its predominant structure (the bridge) its mission of exploring the interface of digital and physical tools in the design process.;As an integrated media studio, it addressed the problem from the standpoint that integrated media can best serve: design as an accretion of multiple small elements on a conceptual framing apparatus, small elements on a conceptual framing apparatus, small elements that can be constructed piecemeal and over a long period of time (as opposed to design as a process of master planning at the grand scale, which then proceeds to the small elements). Furthermore, this research was situated specifically within an epistemological milieu that is characterized by various possibilities of accretion and proliferation, the way in which these processes are conducted, and what they represent. This milieu compromises the 1851 Crystal Palace in London,;Hieronymous Bosch\u27s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, the model of the garden itself as the ongoing product of such processes (as well as the linear processes of conventional design), Material World (a collection of photographs of average families from many countries, each posed in front of its abode with all of its domestic possessions), James Joyce\u27s Finnegans Wake, and Owen Jones\u27s The Grammar of Ornament, among other nodes that describe this territory of proliferation of the everyday. The first \u27ordering\u27 of this research resulted in four drawings of the design of a Rapid Transit Station on the Williamsburg Bridge, connecting the bridge to the park. This thesis is the second ordering, a written work assisted by the drawings. Katleen Wouters, Six Nodes, Four Baskets

    Architecture and hypertext: networks of proliferation, accretion and mutation

    Get PDF
    This thesis originated with the East River Project, a national collection of collaborative studios orchestrated by the Van Alen Institute in New York City. The project addresses the question of how best to energize and rehabilitate the decaying urban fabric on the banks of the East River in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The site which the Iowa State Laboratory for Experimental Design worked on compromises the East River Park (extending over a mile between 14th and Jackson Streets) and the structure that intersects it, the Williamsburg Bridge (spanning the river between Brooklyn and Manhattan at Delancey Street). The L.E.D. overlaid onto the project of proposing rehabilitation of the East River Park and its predominant structure (the bridge) its mission of exploring the interface of digital and physical tools in the design process.;As an integrated media studio, it addressed the problem from the standpoint that integrated media can best serve: design as an accretion of multiple small elements on a conceptual framing apparatus, small elements on a conceptual framing apparatus, small elements that can be constructed piecemeal and over a long period of time (as opposed to design as a process of master planning at the grand scale, which then proceeds to the small elements). Furthermore, this research was situated specifically within an epistemological milieu that is characterized by various possibilities of accretion and proliferation, the way in which these processes are conducted, and what they represent. This "milieu" compromises the 1851 Crystal Palace in London,;Hieronymous Bosch's painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights," the model of the garden itself as the ongoing product of such processes (as well as the linear processes of conventional design), Material World (a collection of photographs of "average families" from many countries, each posed in front of its abode with all of its domestic possessions), James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and Owen Jones's The Grammar of Ornament, among other "nodes" that describe this territory of proliferation of the everyday. The first 'ordering' of this research resulted in four drawings of the design of a Rapid Transit Station on the Williamsburg Bridge, connecting the bridge to the park. This thesis is the second ordering, a written work assisted by the drawings. Katleen Wouters, Six Nodes, Four Baskets.</p

    The effect of L-PRF membranes on bone healing in rabbit tibiae bone defects: micro-CT and biomarker results

    Get PDF
    More insight into the biological fundamentals of leukocyte platelet-rich fibrin (L-PRF) guided healing is necessary to recommend its application, in particular in deficient bone sites that need to support implants. This study investigated the short-term bone healing effect of L-PRF treatment in cylindrical non-critical sized bone defects with 3 mm diameter and 6 mm depth in tibiae of 18 adult male New Zealand White rabbits. After a randomization process, 96 bone defects were prepared and half of them were filled with a L-PRF membrane, while untreated defects in the opposite tibia served as control group. The rabbits were euthanized after 7, 14 or 28 days of healing. The bone healing of the cortical and medullary areas was investigated by micro-CT, while the expression of molecular markers (RUNX2, VEGFA, COL1A2 and BMP2) was assessed by qRT-PCR. Treatment with L-PRF did not affect the micro-structural bone characteristics of the repaired bone tissue, except for a decrease in the trabecular connectivity at the cortical level after 14 days of healing. At this time, RUNX2 and VEGFA mRNA levels were significantly lower in the treated defects. L-PRF membranes thus had a temporary negative influence on the bone microarchitecture (Tb.Pf) and on the RUNX2 and VEGFA expression during early bone healing. Overall, L-PRF treatment did not enhance bone regeneration in these non-critical size defects after 28 days.status: publishe

    The influence of matrix attachment regions on transgene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana wild type and gene silencing mutants

    No full text
    Many studies in both animal and plant systems have shown that matrix attachment regions (MARs) can increase the expression of flanking transgenes. However, our previous studies revealed no effect of the chicken lysozyme MARs (chiMARs) on transgene expression in the first generation transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants transformed with a beta-glucuronidase gene (uidA) unless gene silencing mutants were used as genetic background for transformation. In the present study, we investigated why chiMARs do not influence transgene expression in transgenic wild-type Arabidopsis plants. We first studied the effect of chiMARs on transgene expression in the progeny of primary transformants harboring chiMAR-flanked T-DNAs. Our data indicate that chiMARs do not affect transgene expression in consecutive generations of wild-type A. thaliana plants. Next, we examined whether these observed results in A. thaliana transformants are influenced by the applied transformation method. The results from in vitro transformed A. thaliana plants are in accordance with those from in planta transformed A. thaliana plants and again reveal no influence of chiMARs on transgene expression in A. thaliana wild-type transformants. The effect of chiMARs on transgene expression is also examined in in vitro transformed Nicotiana tabacum plants, but as for A. thaliana, the transgene expression in tobacco transformants is not altered by the presence of chiMARs. Taken together, our results show that the applied method or the plant species used for transformation does not influence whether and how chiMARs have an effect on transgene expression. Finally, we studied the effect of MARs (tabMARs) of plant origin (tobacco) on the transgene expression in A. thaliana wild-type plants and suppressed gene silencing (sgs2) mutants. Our results clearly show that similar to chiMARs, the tobacco-derived MARs do not enhance transgene expression in a wild-type background but can be used to enhance transgene expression in a mutant impaired in gene silencing

    Assembly of γ-secretase occurs through stable dimers after exit from the endoplasmic reticulum

    No full text
    γ-Secretase affects many physiological processes through targeting >100 substrates; malfunctioning links γ-secretase to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The spatiotemporal regulation of its stoichiometric assembly remains unresolved. Fractionation, biochemical assays, and imaging support prior formation of stable dimers in the ER, which, after ER exit, assemble into full complexes. In vitro ER budding shows that none of the subunits is required for the exit of others. However, knockout of any subunit leads to the accumulation of incomplete subcomplexes in COPII vesicles. Mutating a DPE motif in presenilin 1 (PSEN1) abrogates ER exit of PSEN1 and PEN-2 but not nicastrin. We explain this by the preferential sorting of PSEN1 and nicastrin through Sec24A and Sec24C/D, respectively, arguing against full assembly before ER exit. Thus, dimeric subcomplexes aided by Sec24 paralog selectivity support a stepwise assembly of γ-secretase, controlling final levels in postGolgi compartments

    Assembly of γ-secretase occurs through stable dimers after exit from the endoplasmic reticulum

    Get PDF
    γ-Secretase affects many physiological processes through targeting >100 substrates; malfunctioning links γ-secretase to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The spatiotemporal regulation of its stoichiometric assembly remains unresolved. Fractionation, biochemical assays, and imaging support prior formation of stable dimers in the ER, which, after ER exit, assemble into full complexes. In vitro ER budding shows that none of the subunits is required for the exit of others. However, knockout of any subunit leads to the accumulation of incomplete subcomplexes in COPII vesicles. Mutating a DPE motif in presenilin 1 (PSEN1) abrogates ER exit of PSEN1 and PEN-2 but not nicastrin. We explain this by the preferential sorting of PSEN1 and nicastrin through Sec24A and Sec24C/D, respectively, arguing against full assembly before ER exit. Thus, dimeric subcomplexes aided by Sec24 paralog selectivity support a stepwise assembly of γ-secretase, controlling final levels in postGolgi compartments

    Stable high-level transgene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana using gene silencing mutants and matrix attachment regions

    No full text
    Basic and applied research involving transgenic plants often requires consistent high-level expression of transgenes. However, high inter-transformant variability of transgene expression caused by various phenomena, including gene silencing, is frequently observed. Here, we show that stable, high-level transgene expression is obtained using Arabidopsis thaliana post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) sgs2 and sgs3 mutants. In populations of first generation (T1) A. thaliana plants transformed with a beta-glucuronidase (GUS) gene (uidA) driven by the 35S cauliflower mosaic virus promoter (p35S), the incidence of highly expressing transformants shifted from 20% in wild type background to 100% in sgs2 and sgs3 backgrounds. Likewise, when sgs2 mutants were transformed with a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 6 gene under control of p35S, all transformants showed a clear phenotype typified by serrated leaves, whereas such phenotype was only observed in about one of five wild type transformants. p35S-driven uidA expression remained high and steady in T2 sgs2 and sgs3 transformants, in marked contrast to the variable expression patterns observed in wild type T2 populations. We further show that T-DNA constructs flanked by matrix attachment regions of the chicken lysozyme gene (chiMARs) cause a boost in GUS activity by fivefold in sgs2 and 12-fold in sgs3 plants, reaching up to 10% of the total soluble proteins, whereas no such boost is observed in the wild type background. MAR-based plant transformation vectors used in a PTGS mutant background might be of high value for efficient high-throughput screening of transgene-based phenotypes as well as for obtaining extremely high transgene expression in plants

    Reducing compounds equivocally influence oxidation during digestion of a high-fat beef product, which promotes cytotoxicity colorectal carcinoma cell lines

    No full text
    We studied the formation of malondialdehyde, 4-hydroxy-nonenal, and hexanal (lipid oxidation products, LOP) during in vitro digestion of a cooked low-fat and high-fat beef product in response to the addition of reducing compounds. We also investigated whether higher LOP in the digests resulted in a higher cyto- and genotoxicity in Caco-2, HT-29 and HCT-116 cell lines. High-fat compared to low-fat beef digests contained approximately 10-fold higher LOP concentrations (all P < 0.001), and induced higher cytotoxicity (P < 0.001). During digestion of the high-fat product, phenolic acids (gallic, ferulic, chlorogenic, and caffeic acid) displayed either pro-oxidant or antioxidant behavior at lower and higher doses respectively, whereas ascorbic acid was pro-oxidant at all doses, and the lipophilic reducing compounds (α-tocopherol, quercetin, and silibinin) all exerted a clear antioxidant effect. During digestion of the low-fat product, the hydrophilic compounds and quercetin were antioxidant. Decreases or increases in LOP concentrations amounted to 100% change versus controls
    corecore