8,749 research outputs found

    Excursions of the integral of the Brownian motion

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    The integrated Brownian motion is sometimes known as the Langevin process. Lachal studied several excursion laws induced by the latter. Here we follow a different point of view developed by Pitman for general stationary processes. We first construct a stationary Langevin process and then determine explicitly its stationary excursion measure. This is then used to provide new descriptions of Ito's excursion measure of the Langevin process reflected at a completely inelastic boundary, which has been introduced recently by Bertoin.Comment: In this second version, some consequent changes of notations and presentation. The space we work on for Proposition 2 and Theorem 2 changed a bit (the proofs are unchanged

    siRNA Versus miRNA as Therapeutics for Gene Silencing

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    Discovered a little over two decades ago, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) are noncoding RNAs with important roles in gene regulation. They have recently been investigated as novel classes of therapeutic agents for the treatment of a wide range of disorders including cancers and infections. Clinical trials of siRNA- and miRNA-based drugs have already been initiated. siRNAs and miRNAs share many similarities, both are short duplex RNA molecules that exert gene silencing effects at the post-transcriptional level by targeting messenger RNA (mRNA), yet their mechanisms of action and clinical applications are distinct. The major difference between siRNAs and miRNAs is that the former are highly specific with only one mRNA target, whereas the latter have multiple targets. The therapeutic approaches of siRNAs and miRNAs are therefore very different. Hence, this review provides a comparison between therapeutic siRNAs and miRNAs in terms of their mechanisms of action, physicochemical properties, delivery, and clinical applications. Moreover, the challenges in developing both classes of RNA as therapeutics are also discussed.published_or_final_versio

    Is XML-based test case prioritization for validating WS-BPEL evolution effective in both average and adverse scenarios?

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    In real life, a tester can only afford to apply one test case prioritization technique to one test suite against a service-oriented workflow application once in the regression testing of the application, even if it results in an adverse scenario such that the actual performance in the test session is far below the average. It is unclear whether the factors of test case prioritization techniques known to be significant in terms of average performance can be extrapolated to adverse scenarios. In this paper, we examine whether such a factor or technique may consistently affect the rate of fault detection in both the average and adverse scenarios. The factors studied include prioritization strategy, artifacts to provide coverage data, ordering direction of a strategy, and the use of executable and non-executable artifacts. The results show that only a minor portion of the 10 studied techniques, most of which are based on the iterative strategy, are consistently effective in both average and adverse scenarios. To the best of our know-ledge, this paper presents the first piece of empirical evidence regarding the consistency in the effectiveness of test case prioritization techniques and factors of service-oriented workflow applications between average and adverse scenarios.published_or_final_versio

    Biomineralization mediated by anaerobic methane-consuming cell consortia

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    Clot retrieval and acute stroke care.

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    Resource distribution in stroke care must be rational and evidence-based, not driven by media coverag

    Selective interaction of Hpn-like protein with nickel, zinc and bismuth in vitro and in cells by FRET

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    Hpn-like (Hpnl) is a unique histidine- and glutamine-rich protein found only in Helicobacter pylori and plays a role on nickel homeostasis.Weconstructed the fluorescent sensor proteins CYHpnl and CYHpnl_1-48 (C-terminal glutamine-rich region truncated) using enhanced cyan and yellow fluorescent proteins (eCFP and eYFP) as the donor–acceptor pair to monitor the interactions of Hpnl with metal ions and to elucidate the role of conserved Glu-rich sequence in Hpnl by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). CYHpnl and CYHpnl_1-48 exhibited largest responses towards Ni(II) and Zn(II) over other metals studied and the binding of Bi(III) to CYHpnl was observed in the presence of an excess amount of Bi(III) ions (Kd =115±4.8 μM). Moreover, both CYHpnl and CYHpnl_1-48 showed positive FRET responses towards the binding to Ni(II) and Zn(II) in Escherichia coli cells overexpressing CYHpnl and CYHpnl_1-48, whereas a decrease in FRET upon Bi(III)-binding in E. coli cells overexpressing the latter. Our study provides clear evidence on Hpnl binding to nickel in cells, and intracellular interaction of Hpnl with Bi(III) could disrupt the protein function, thus probably contributing to the efficacy of Bi(III) drugs against H. pylori.postprin

    Immunogenicity of Pluripotent Stem Cells and Their Derivatives

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