Sphingosine Kinase Interacting Protein is an A‐Kinase Anchoring Protein Specific for Type I cAMP‐Dependent Protein Kinase

The compartmentalization of kinases and phosphatases plays an important role in the specificity of second‐messenger‐mediated signaling events. Localization of the cAMP‐dependent protein kinase is mediated by interaction of its regulatory subunit (PKA‐R) with the versatile family of A‐kinase‐anchoring proteins (AKAPs). Most AKAPs bind avidly to PKA‐RII, while some have dual specificity for both PKA‐RI and PKA‐RII; however, no mammalian PKA‐RI‐specific AKAPs have thus far been assigned. This has mainly been attributed to the observation that PKA‐RI is more cytosolic than the more heavily compartmentalized PKA‐RII. Chemical proteomics screens of the cAMP interactome in mammalian heart tissue recently identified sphingosine kinase type 1‐interacting protein (SKIP, SPHKAP) as a putative novel AKAP. Biochemical characterization now shows that SPHKAP can be considered as the first mammalian AKAP that preferentially binds to PKA‐RIα. Recombinant human SPHKAP functions as an RI‐specific AKAP that utilizes the characteristic AKAP amphipathic helix for interaction. Further chemical proteomic screening utilizing differential binding characteristics of specific cAMP resins confirms SPHKAPs endogenous specificity for PKA‐RI directly in mammalian heart and spleen tissue. Immunolocalization studies revealed that recombinant SPHKAP is expressed in the cytoplasm, where PKA‐RIα also mainly resides. Alignment of SPHKAPs' amphipathic helix with peptide models of PKA‐RI‐ or PKA‐RII‐specific anchoring domains shows that it has largely only PKA‐RIα characteristics. Being the first mammalian PKA‐RI‐specific AKAP with cytosolic localization, SPHKAP is a very promising model for studying the function of the less explored cytosolic PKA‐RI signaling nodes.     

The drug abuse problem in Peninsular Malaysia: parent and child differences in knowledge, attitudes and perceptions

Neural crest cell migration in the gut and the growth of the mid- and hindgut of avian embryos was investigated by a combination of whole-mount immunofluorescence of the HNK-1 neural crest marker epitope, chorioallantoic membrane grafting and morphometry. HNK-1-labelled cells advanced rostrocaudally in the gut of quail embryos (to the duodenum by stage HH 21, to the umbilicus by HH 25, to the ceca by HH 27, to the cloaca by HH 33). The timetable in chick embryos appeared to be slightly slower, but neural cells were obscured by background fluorescence in this species. More rostral regions of the gut commenced rapid growth earlier than more caudal regions (preumbilical small intestine after HH 26, postumbilical small intestine after HH 27 and colorectum after HH 28), and the small intestine and ceca grew most rapidly in length while the colorectum grew most rapidly in diameter. The rates of growth of the gut were low prior to the stage when HNK-1-labelled cells normally arrive in the small intestine, ceca and rostral colorectum, but increased dramatically after arrival. In the caudal colorectum rapid growth had commenced at the time of arrival of these cells. These data are consistent with the idea that a delay in arrival of vagal neural crest cells at any point in the intestine could jeopardize the ability of the cells to fully populate the remainder of the gut, due to the normal growth spurt causing the migration end-point to recede faster than the rate of neural crest cell migration. Thus, a mismatch in timing of neural crest cell migration and gut growth could play a role in the etiology of some forms of Hirschsprung's disease.     

Environmentally sustainable development: a life-cycle costing approach for a commercial office building in Melbourne,Australia

A range of property and construction options is analysed using standard life-cycle costing methodology. The options are to renovate the existing building, buy an alternative building and renovate, and buy a development site and construct a new building. The do-nothing option and a hypothetical option to construct a new building on an ideal site are analysed as benchmarks. The results show that the optimum option is to buy a suitable site and construct a new building and that the least sustainable option, in the case study, is to stay in the existing property and renovate the building. Although staying in the existing building and doing nothing carries the lowest financial cost, energy consumption and greenhouse emissions are significantly worse than for the alternative options.     

Performance of SCHT Sequences in Asynchronous CDMA System

In this letter, the performance of a new set of spreading sequences for a direct sequence (DS) code division multiple access (CDMA) system is examined. These new sequences are derived from sequency-ordered complex Hadamard transform (SCHT). Various correlation properties are presented and the performance of the new sequence is analyzed by comparing it with the other well-known existing spreading sequences, such as UCHT, WHT, Gold, small set of Kasami and m-sequences. According to the simulation results, it is shown that the SCHT sequences provide smaller mean square cross correlation values and offer better average bit error rate for an asynchronous CDMA system over the multipath fading channel.     

Supercritical water gasification of Victorian brown coal: Experimental characterisation

Supercritical water gasification is an innovative thermochemical conversion method for converting wet feedstocks into hydrogen-rich gaseous products. The non-catalytic gasification characteristics of Victorian brown coal were investigated in supercritical water by using a novel immersion technique with quartz batch reactors. Various operating parameters such as temperature, feed concentration and reaction time were varied to investigate their effect on the gasification behaviour. Gas yields, carbon gasification efficiency and the total gasification efficiency increased with increasing temperature and reaction time, and decreasing feed concentration. The mole fraction of hydrogen in the product gases was lowest at 600 °C, and increased to over 30 % at a temperature of 800 °C. Varying parameters, especially reaction time, did not improve the coal utilisation for gas production significantly and the measured data showed a large deviation from the equilibrium level.     

Effect of milling and reinforcement on mechanical properties of nanostructured magnesium composite

Recycled Mg chips were used to synthesize nanostructured Mg composite of Mg–5 wt%Al reinforced with x wt% (x = 1, 2 and 5) in-situ formed AlN powder. Mechanical milling was employed to produce the composite powder of crystalline size 30–43 nm. The mechanically milled (MMed) powders were subjected to uniaxial pressing, sintering and hot extrusion processes to produce bulk solid samples. After sintering at 400 °C and hot extrusion at 350 °C, the crystalline size of the composite samples still remains in nanometer range from 52 to 84 nm. The effect of milling and the percentage of reinforced AlN on the mechanical properties such as tensile strength and ductility were discussed with the general explanation of deformation mechanisms involved.     

An automatic parking system using an optimized image-based fuzzy controller by genetic algorithms

An automatic parking system of a car-like mobile robot is an important issue in commercial applications. An image-based fuzzy controller for an automatic parking system of a car-like mobile robot was developed in previous work, where the membership functions were tuned by experimentally. The aim of this paper is to optimize the parameters of the membership functions, which were performed in previous work, using a genetic algorithm against the complicated tuning of the controller. The details of GA implementation, such as the design parameters and choice of fitness function, are described. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the developed schemes.