Effect of pyridoxine treatment of a homocystinuric patient on the urinary excretion of some sulfur-containing amino acids

The effect of pyridoxine treatment of a homocystinuric patient on the urinary excretion of some sulfur-containing amino acids was studied and the following results were obtained. As a result of pyridoxine treatment, urinary homocystine decreased to a fairly great extent, and its unusual metabolites S.(3-hydroxy-3-carboxyn- propylthio) homocysteine (HCPTHC) and S-C8-carboxyethylthio homocysteine (j3-CETHC) increased to some extent. But its oxidation product (homocysteic acid) showed a tendency to decrease slightly. Urinary methionine and cystine increased to some extent, but cysteinehomocysteine mixed disulfide showed no remarkable change.</p

From Dumpster to Dicta: How the BALCO Investigation Created Incurable Violations of Players' Rights and How to Prevent Them

Baseball is widely regarded as America's pastime. With that designation comes certain expectations from the American public about the integrity of the game. Major League Baseball ("MLB") has faced challenges to that integrity in the past, including gambling and drug use, but its response has generally been timely and adequate. To the extent these controversies involved illegal activity, the government has stepped in accordingly. Presently, the sport is mired in a well-documented controversy regarding player use of performance enhancing drugs. By and large, the government has not had to police the league itself. This time, however, MLB's response was slow and insufficient. As a result, each branch of the government got involved. President George W. Bush directly addressed the issue in his State of the Union Address on January 20, 2004, calling on "team owners, union representatives, coaches and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough and to get rid of steroids now." On March 17-18, 2005, six players and four executives testified before the House Committee on Government Reform regarding drug use in baseball. During that same year, members of Congress introduced at least three bills aimed at curbing the drug problem in professional sports. Each bill required all players in the four major professional sports leagues to submit to mandatory uniform testing for performance enhancing drugs ("PEDs"). Meanwhile, federal investigators began targeting an illegal drug ring in Northern California, which subsequently ballooned into protracted litigation. The origin and resolution of United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc. is the primary focus of this Note

Robustness in artificial life

Finding robust explanations of behaviours in Alife and related fields is made difficult by the lack of any formalised definition of robustness. A concerted effort to develop a framework which allows for robust explanations of those behaviours to be developed is needed, as well as a discussion of what constitutes a potentially useful definition for behavioural robustness. To this end, we describe two senses of robustness: robustness in systems; and robustness in explanation. We then propose a framework for developing robust explanations using linked sets of models, and describe a programme of research incorporating both robotics and chemical experiments which is designed to investigate robustness in systems

Reference gene validation for gene expression studies using quantitative RT-PCR during berry development of ‘Aki Queen’ grapes

In order to understand the gene regulation during berry development and examine the effect of abscisic acid (ABA) on gene expression related to berry maturation, we evaluated the validity of four housekeeping genes, elongation factor 1-α (EF1-α), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme (UBC), and 60S ribosomal protein L40-1 (VvUbiquitin1), as references by using 'Aki Queen' grapes with and without ABA treatment. The main contribution of this study is that a gene expression analysis using GAPDH as a reference gene will help to elucidate the berry development process and the physiological effects of ABA on berry maturation of 'Aki Queen' grapes

Observation of the decay mode K_L -> pi^+ pi^- e^+ e^-

We report on results of an experimental search for the K_L -> pi^+ pi^- e^+ e^- decay mode. We found 13.5 +- 4.0 events and determined its branching ratio to be (4.4 +- 1.3(stat) +- 0.5(syst))*10^{-7}. The result agrees well with the theoretical prediction.Comment: 9 pages, 6 eps-figures, LaTeX2e, graphicx package, submitted to Physics Letters