Animal and plant cell lysates share a conserved chaperone system that assembles the glucocorticoid receptor into a functional heterocomplex with hsp90

The hormone-binding domain of the glucocorticoid receptor must be bound to heat shock protein (hsp) 90 for it to have a high-affinity steroid-binding conformation. Cell-free assembly of a glucocorticoid receptor-hsp90 heterocomplex is brought about in reticulocyte lysate by a preformed protein-folding complex containing hsp90, hsp70, and other proteins [Hutchison, K.A., Dittmar, K. D., & Pratt, W.B. (1994) J. Biol. Chem. 269, 27894-27899]. In this "foldosome" system, hsp70 is required for assembly of the receptor-hsp90 complex and concomitant activation of steroid-binding activity [Hutchison, K.A., Dittmar, K.D., Czar, M.J., & Pratt, W.B. (1994) J. Biol. Chem. 269, 22157-22161]. All previous experiments involving cell-free assembly of both receptor-hsp90 and protein kinase-hsp90 heterocomplexes have been carried out with the protein-folding system in rabbit reticulocyte lysate. In this work, we show that concentrated lysates of receptor-free mouse (L cells) and insect (Sf9) cells and also a plant (wheat germ) lysate fold the immunopurified glucocorticoid receptor into a functional (i.e., steroid binding) heterocomplex with hsp90. Receptor heterocomplex formation in animal lysates and in the plant lysate are not identical in that the dynamics of complex assembly are different, but both systems produce a functional complex that binds steroid. Also, in contrast to animal and insect complexes, receptor-plant hsp90 complexes are not stabilized by molybdate. When added to the other lysate, purified plant and animal hsp90s show partial complementarity, in that a receptor-hsp90 complex is formed but the receptor is not converted to the steroid-binding conformation. When added to rabbit reticulocyte lysate that has been depleted of endogenous hsp70, purified wheat germ and mouse hsp70's are equally active in promoting both assembly of receptor-hsp90 heterocomplexes and conversion of receptor to the steroid-binding conformation. Thus, hsp70 from the plant kingdom has conserved the ability to interact functionally with chaperone proteins of the animal kingdom to cooperate in protein folding as evidenced by formation of a functional receptor-hsp90 heterocomplex.     

An MDD-based generalized arc consistency algorithm for positive and negative table constraints and some global constraints

A table constraint is explicitly represented as its set of solutions or non-solutions. This ad hoc (or extensional) representation may require space exponential to the arity of the constraint, making enforcing GAC expensive. In this paper, we address the space and time inefficiencies simultaneously by presenting the mddc constraint. mddc is a global constraint that represents its (non-)solutions with a multi-valued decision diagram (MDD). The MDD-based representation has the advantage that it can be exponentially smaller than a table. The associated GAC algorithm (called mddc) has time complexity linear to the size of the MDD, and achieves full incrementality in constant time. In addition, we show how to convert a positive or negative table constraint into an mddc constraint in time linear to the size of the table. Our experiments on structured problems, car sequencing and still-life, show that mddc is also a fast GAC algorithm for some global constraints such as sequence and regular. We also show that mddc is faster than the state-of-the-art generic GAC algorithms in Gent et al. (2007), Lecoutre and Szymanek (2006), Lhomme and Régin (2005) for table constraint.     

Formulating efficient software solution for digital image processing system

Digital image processing systems are complex, being usually composed of different computer vision libraries. Algorithm implementations cannot be directly used in conjunction with algorithms developed using other computer vision libraries. This paper formulates a software solution by proposing a processor with the capability of handling different types of image processing algorithms, which allow the end users to install new image processing algorithms from any library. This approach has other functionalities like capability to process one or more images, manage multiple processing jobs simultaneously and maintain the manner in which an image was processed for later use. It is a computational efficient and promising technique to handle variety of image processing algorithms. To promote the reusability and adaptation of the package for new types of analysis, a feature of sustainability is established. The framework is integrated and tested on a medical imaging application, and the software is made freely available for the reader. Future work involves introducing the capability to connect to another instance of processing service with better performance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating functional,social, and psychological determinants to explain online social networking usage

People involved in business are increasingly aware of the online social phenomenon and its potential as a marketing tool. Building upon the marketing, social psychology, and information system literature, this study empirically examines a set of functional determinants derived from the technology acceptance model and socio-psychological determinants drawn from the theory of reasoned action and social cognitive theory that may be responsible for the motivations of participants in online social networks. We propose a model by integrating functional, social, and psychological factors in predicting attitude and online social network usage. The survey outcomes from a cross-sectional study among 387 Facebook users in Malaysia support the hypothesised model. This study contributes by extending the cognitive learning theories in predicting online social networking usage. Particularly, this research presents a different perspective on online social networking by exploring the mediating effect of attitude and the moderating role of individual characteristics. This study demonstrates that desirable changes in the perception of functional benefits, self-efficacy, and need for cognition as well as perceptions of social pressure from significant others might lead to corresponding changes in attitude towards online social networking. Results of the study support the model efficacy and predictive ability of the proposed integrative model which may serve as a theoretical foundation for future researchers interested in examining other virtual community engagements such as blogging, online advertising, and online public relations activities.     

Parametric Sequence Alignment with Constraints

Approximate matching techniques based on string alignment are important tools for investigating similarities between strings, such as those representing DNA and protein sequences. We propose a constraint based approach for parametric sequence alignment which allows for more general string alignment queries where the alignment cost can itself be parameterized as a query with some initial constraints. Thus, the costs need not be fixed in a parametric alignment query unlike the case in normal alignment. The basic dynamic programming string edit distance algorithm is generalized to a naive algorithm which uses inequalities to represent the alignment score. The naive algorithm is rather costly and the remainder of the paper develops an improvement which prunes alternatives where it can and approximates the alternatives otherwise. This reduces the number of inequalities significantly and strengthens the constraint representation with equalities. We present some preliminary results using parametric alignment on some general alignment queries.     

A Simultaneous Search Problem

We introduce a new search problem motivated by computational metrology. The problem is as follows: we would like to locate two unknown numbers x,y ∈ [0,1] with as little uncertainty as possible, using some given number k of probes. Each probe is specified by a real number r∈ [0,1] . After a probe at r , we are told whether x≤ r or x \geq r , and whether y≤ r or y\geq r . We derive the optimal strategy and prove that the asymptotic behavior of the total uncertainty after k probes is 13/7 2 ^-(k+1)/2 for odd k and 13/10 2 ^-k/2 for even k . Received November 11, 1996; revised October 2, 1997, and July 13, 1998.     

An Effective Technique for Subpixel Image Registration Under Noisy Conditions

This paper proposes an effective higher order statistics method to address subpixel image registration. Conventional power spectrum-based techniques employ second-order statistics to estimate subpixel translation between two images. They are, however, susceptible to noise, thereby leading to significant performance deterioration in low signal-to-noise ratio environments or in the presence of cross-correlated channel noise. In view of this, we propose a bispectrum-based approach to alleviate this difficulty. The new method utilizes the characteristics of bispectrum to suppress Gaussian noise. It develops a phase relationship between the image pair and estimates the subpixel translation by solving a set of nonlinear equations. Experimental results show that the proposed technique provides performance improvement over conventional power-spectrum-based methods under different noise levels and conditions.     

Subband Synthesis for Color Filter Array Demosaicking

This paper presents a new algorithm for demosaicking images captured through a color filter array (CFA). The objective of the CFA demosaicking is to render a full color image from the mosaicked image. This is commonly achieved by estimating the missing color information from the surrounding observed pixels. In this paper, we integrate the observation that color images have a strong intrachannel spatial correlation in low-frequency components and a dominant interchannel correlation in the high- frequency components. A new framework is proposed to utilize this information where the missing pixels in each color channel are estimated from the wavelet subbands. A modified median-filtering operation is then applied in the subband domain. The algorithm is adaptive and produces superior full-resolution images when compared with other methods.     

The Australian Incident Monitoring Study. Oesophageal intubation: an analysis of 2000 incident reports

There were 35 oesophageal intubations in the first 2000 incidents reported to the Australian Incident Monitoring Study (AIMS). These reports confirm existing impressions that misplacement of the endotracheal tube can occur in trained as well as untrained hands, and that auscultation is an unreliable test. On the other hand, the value of capnography is emphasised, with no false positives in the 16 cases in which the instrument was used. There was one false negative. Over the 4 years of the AIMS study, reports have declined in frequency. It is possible that the early detection of oesophageal intubation by capnography has altered its status to the extent that anaesthetists no longer regard it as a "critical" incident. It is highly recommended that the presence of the expected concentration of carbon dioxide in expired air be confirmed by capnography immediately after any endotracheal intubation.     

Projecting CLPR constraints

The presentation of constraints in a usable form is an essential aspect of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) systems. It is needed both in the output of constraints, as well as in the production of an internal representation of constraints for meta-level manipulation. Typically, only a small subset \(\tilde x\) of the variables in constraints is of interest, and so an informal statement of the problem at hand is: given a conjunction \(c(\tilde x,\tilde y)\) of constraints, express the projection \(\exists \tilde y c(\tilde x,\tilde y)\) ofc onto \(\tilde x\) in the simplest form. In this paper, we consider the constraints of the CLP(R) system and describe the essential features of its projection module. One main part focuses on the well-known problem of projection inlinear arithmetic constraints. We start with a classical algorithm and augment it with a procedure for eliminating redundant constraints generated by the algorithm. A second part discusses projection of the other object-level constraints: equations over trees and nonlinear equations. The final part deals with producing a manipulable form of the constraints, which complicates the projection problem.