The GABAA receptor alpha 6 subunit gene (Gabra6) is tightly linked to the alpha 1-gamma 2 subunit cluster on mouse chromosome 11

Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN 1) is inherited as an autosomal dominant disorder, characterized by hyperplasia and neoplasia in several endocrine organs. The MEN 1 gene, which is most probably a tumor suppressor gene, has been localized to a 900-kb region on chromosome 11q13. The human phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C beta 3 (PLC beta 3) gene, which is located within this region, was considered to be a good candidate for the MEN 1 gene. In this study, the structure and expression of the PLC beta 3 gene in MEN 1 patients were investigated in more detail, to determine its potential role in MEN 1 tumorigenesis. Southern blot analysis, using blood and tumor DNA from affected persons from seven different MEN 1 families, did not reveal structural abnormalities in the PLC beta 3 gene. To detect possible point mutations, or other small structural aberrations, direct sequencing of PLC beta 3 cDNAs from two affected persons from two different MEN 1 families was performed, but no MEN 1-specific abnormalities were revealed. Several common nucleotide sequence polymorphisms were detected in these cDNAs, proving that both alleles of the PLC beta 3 gene were expressed and analyzed. In conclusion, these results exclude the PLC beta 3 gene as a candidate gene for MEN 1.     

Changing patterns of infections in patients with AIDS: a study of 279 autopsies of prison inmates and nonincarcerated patients at a university hospital in eastern Texas, 1984-1993

Reports on autopsies of 279 persons infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were reviewed retrospectively to determine changes in survival rates and infections and to identify differences between prison inmates and nonincarcerated patients. The 78 cases from 1984 through 1988 were compared with 201 from 1989 through 1993, on the basis of use of antiretroviral therapy and (after 1988) prophylaxis against Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). Risk factors for HIV infection were homosexuality/bisexuality (30%), injection drug use (IDU; 22%), transfusion (5%), heterosexual contact (4%), and combinations of the above or unknown factors (38%); 95% of patients were males and 41% were state prison inmates in Texas. IDU was more common and homosexuality/ bisexuality was less common among inmates than among nonincarcerated patients. Mean survival time was 12 months in the first period studied and 23 months in the later period (P < .05). Cytomegalovirus infection was the most common type in both periods. The number of cases of PCP declined and the number of cases of bacterial infections increased significantly in the later period. Tuberculosis was significantly more common in inmates than in nonincarcerated patients. Tuberculosis and disseminated histoplasmosis (noted at autopsy) and deaths due to disseminated Mycobacterium avium complex and histoplasmosis were significantly more common among injection drug users than among homosexuals/bisexuals. Invasive candidiasis was more common in homosexuals/ bisexuals and in those who survived > 3 years. Antiretroviral therapy, prophylaxis for PCP, and risk factors for HIV infection appear to influence the mortality rate and prevalence of certain infections found at autopsy.     

Far-field plasmonic resonance enhanced nanoparticle image velocimetry within a microchannel

In this paper, a novel far-field plasmonic resonance enhanced nanoparticle-seeded particle image velocimetry has been demonstrated to measure the velocity profile in a microchannel. Chemically synthesized silver nanoparticles have been used to seed the flow in the microchannel. By using discrete dipole approximation, plasmonic resonance enhanced light scattering has been calculated for spherical silver nanoparticles with diameters ranging from 15 to 200 nm. Optimum scattering wavelength is specified for the nanoparticles in two media: water and air. The diffraction-limited plasmonic resonance enhanced images of silver nanoparticles at different diameters have been recorded and analyzed. By using standard particle image velocimetry techniques, the velocity profile within the microchannel has been determined from the images.     

TermFinder: log-likelihood comparison and phrase-based statistical machine translation models for bilingual terminology extraction

Bilingual termbanks are important for many natural language processing applications, especially in translation workflows in industrial settings. In this paper, we apply a log-likelihood comparison method to extract monolingual terminology from the source and target sides of a parallel corpus. The initial candidate terminology list is prepared by taking all arbitrary n-gram word sequences from the corpus. Then, a well-known statistical measure (the Dice coefficient) is employed in order to remove any multi-word terms with weak associations from the candidate term list. Thereafter, the log-likelihood comparison method is applied to rank the phrasal candidate term list. Then, using a phrase-based statistical machine translation model, we create a bilingual terminology with the extracted monolingual term lists. We integrate an external knowledge source—the Wikipedia cross-language link databases—into the terminology extraction (TE) model to assist two processes: (a) the ranking of the extracted terminology list, and (b) the selection of appropriate target terms for a source term. First, we report the performance of our monolingual TE model compared to a number of the state-of-the-art TE models on English-to-Turkish and English-to-Hindi data sets. Then, we evaluate our novel bilingual TE model on an English-to-Turkish data set, and report the automatic evaluation results. We also manually evaluate our novel TE model on English-to-Spanish and English-to-Hindi data sets, and observe excellent performance for all domains.     

Studies of structural,optical, and electrical properties associated with defects in sodium-doped copper oxide (CuO/Na) nanostructures

In the present paper, we report a detailed study on the sodium (Na) doping-induced modifications in the copper oxide (CuO) nanostructure and its properties. A facile and sustainable sol–gel synthesis approach was employed for the preparation of high-quality pristine CuO- and Na-doped CuO nanostructures(1.0, 3.0, 5.0 and 7.0 mol% doping levels, CuO/Na) with controlled shape and composition. Due to the remarkable difference in the ionic radii of Cu²⁺ (0.73 Å) and Na⁺ (1.02 Å), Na⁺ substitution in place of Cu²⁺ generates strain/distortions in CuO lattice. The XRD analysis reveal the structural alteration from monoclinic to cubic symmetry with increase in doping level and also reveal the phase purity up to 3% doping level, and beyond this (i.e., for 5 and 7% doping level) small amount of impurity phase corresponding to Na₂O was observed. The FTIR results further confirmed the presence of the Na–Cu–O stretching vibrations at higher Na-doped samples. Morphology of the samples indicates that the Na-doped CuO nanostructures exhibit less agglomeration compared to pristine CuO nanoparticles. The presence of Na in CuO lattice were found to greatly enhances optical and electrical properties owing to the formation of defects like copper vacancies and oxygen vacancies at the grain boundaries of the nanoparticles with increased doping of Na.     

A case study and troubleshooting experience of safety power channel of instrumentation and control system of the BAEC TRIGA Research Reactor

Microsystem Technologies - Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission TRIGA Research Reactor (BTRR) is a MK II type nuclear research reactor with a maximum thermal output power of 3&nbsp;MW. Nuclear...     

Stratification and water quality of an abandoned opencast coal pit lake at Raniganj Coalfield Area,West Bengal,India

Stratification and assessment of the limnological conditions of an abandoned opencast coal pit (OCP), locally called Khadan, which is a potential water reserve located at the Raniganj‐Asansol Coalfield Areas of Burdwan, are the main objectives of this study. Water quality changes occurred with increasing depths in the OCP water and suggest a gradual and significant ecological restoration over time, which can create a condition of sustainable pisciculture. The physical and chemical variables of the OCP water changed with changing depths and seasons. The temperature and alkalinity decreased with depth throughout the year. The dissolved oxygen concentration exhibited a mixing characteristic in the summer and winter, but decreased with depth in the monsoon and postmonsoon seasons. The total hardness increased with depth in the monsoon season, being maximum in the winter (196.0 mg L^?1). The biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) increased with depth in the winter. The silicon concentration increased with depths, exhibiting a maximum value of 14.2 mg L^?1 in the winter and a minimum value of 1.24 mg L^?1 in the postmonsoon season. The ammonia‐nitrogen, nitrate‐nitrogen, potassium, chloride and sulphate concentrations only exhibited seasonal variations. The concentration of heavy metals (arsenic, chromium, cadmium, manganese) decreased with increasing depth. The fluoride concentration exhibited high concentrations in each OCP water layer. The results of this study indicated that limnological variables in thermally stratified lakes may be an important measure for better understanding the gradual process of developing an improved ecological conditions in the OCP and which can facilitate the possibility of pisciculture in the near future.