Effects of dietary fiber in Vervet monkeys fed “Western” diets

Male Vervet monkeys (7/treatment) were fed a “Western” diet containing 46.2% calories as fat, 39.8% as carbohydrate and 14.0% as protein. The diet was augmented with 10% cellulose or 10% pectin. A third (control) group of seven monkeys was fed a commercial ration augmented with fruit and bread. After 34 weeks, serum cholesterol levels were elevated significantly in the two test groups compared with the controls but there was no difference between the two fiber-fed groups. Serum triglycerides were unaffected. Liver cholesterol levels were the same in all three groups but liver triglyceride levels were lower in the monkeys fed cellulose. Biliary lipids were similar in all three groups as were the calculated lithogenic indices. The average aortic sudanophilia (percent of total area) in the three groups was cellulose, 10.6±2.5; pectin, 8.1±2.5; and control, 1.1±0.4. One animal in each of the groups fed “Western” diet exhibited an atherosclerotic plaque. The results indicate that there is no difference between pectin and cellulose with regard to their effects on either lipidemia or aortic sudanophilia in Vervet monkeys fed a Western-type diet.     

Molecular recognition in the sphingosine 1-phosphate receptor family

Computational modeling and its application in ligand screening and ligand receptor interaction studies play important roles in structure-based drug design. A series of sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) receptor ligands with varying potencies and receptor selectivities were docked into homology models of the S1P(1-5) receptors. These studies provided molecular insights into pharmacological trends both across the receptor family as well as at single receptors. This study identifies ligand recognition features that generalize across the S1P receptor family, features unique to the S1P(4) and S1P(5) receptors, and suggests significant structural differences of the S1P(2) receptor. Docking results reveal a previously unknown sulfur-aromatic interaction between the S1P(4) C5.44 sulfur atom and the phenyl ring of benzimidazole as well as pi-pi interaction between F3.33 of S1P(1,4,5) and aromatic ligands. The findings not only confirm the importance of a cation-pi interaction between W4.64 and the ammonium of S1P at S1P(4) but also predict the same interaction at S1P(5). S1P receptor models are validated for pharmacophore development including database mining and new ligand discovery and serve as tools for ligand optimization to improve potency and selectivity.     

Representing temporal knowledge in conceptual graphs

This study was motivated by some difficulties encountered by the authors when trying to express temporal knowledge using Sowa's conceptual graph (CG) approach. An overview of Sowa's approach is given and the difficulties encountered when trying to model temporal knowledge are outlined: the disparity of notations allowed by CG theory for expressing temporal information; the ambiguity and incompleteness of tense sspecification; the difficulty of harmonizing tenses and intergraph temporal relations. Various approaches suggested for representing time both in artificial intelligence and linguistics are presented, and an extension to Sowa's approach is proposed in which temporal and nontemporal knowledge are differentiated. In this model points in time are represented as well as time intervals. A semantic interpretation of verbs is provided based on an extension of Reichenbach's model of temporal markers. The authors show how their approach enables the representation of tenses as well as the aspectual properties of natural language sentences.     

Interlingua-based English–Korean Two-way Speech Translation of Doctor–Patient Dialogues with CCLINC

Development of a robust two-way real-time speech translationsystem exposes researchers and system developers to various challenges of machine translation(MT) and spoken language dialogues. The need for communicating in at least two differentlanguages poses problems not present for a monolingual spoken language dialogue system,where no MT engine is embedded within the process flow. Integration of various componentmodules for real-time operation poses challenges not present for text translation. In this paper,we present the CCLINC (Common Coalition Language System at Lincoln Laboratory) English–Koreantwo-way speech translation system prototype trained on doctor–patient dialogues,which integrates various techniques to tackle the challenges of automatic real-time speechtranslation. Key features of the system include (i) language–independent meaning representation which preserves the hierarchicalpredicate–argument structure of an input utterance, providing a powerful mechanism for discourse understanding of utterances originating from different languages,word-sense disambiguation and generation of various word orders of many languages, (ii) adoptionof the DARPA Communicator architecture, a plug-and-play distributed system architecturewhich facilitates integration of component modules and system operation in real time, and (iii)automatic acquisition of grammar rules and lexicons for easy porting of the system to differentlanguages and domains. We describe these features in detail and present experimental results.     

An improved method for magnetic identification and localization of cracks in conductors

A SQUID magnetometer can be used to measure the magnetic field produced by flaws in a two-dimensional, conducting plate carrying a current. Identification of the flaw-induced magnetic field is difficult because of the large magnetic field associated with the edges of the plate and the current in the leads that connect the plate to the power supply. We have developed a technique by which the wire and edge fields can be cancelled prior to mapping the magnetic field. In this technique, a similar unflawed conducting sheet is placed adjacent to the flawed plate, with a connection between the sheet and the plate at one edge, and with the opposite edges of the sheet and of the plate connected to the two conductors of a coaxial cable. Thus, an applied current will flow along one conductor of the cable, across the cancelling sheet, cross into the flawed plate, return along the plate, and then return to the power supply along the other conductor of the coaxial cable. As a result of this geometry, there is no magnetic field from the lead-in wires because they are coaxial, and the magnetic field due to the edges of the plate is cancelled by the opposing magnetic field of the edges in the adjacent sheet. The extent of cancellation is determined primarily by the separation between the plate and the cancelling sheet, by the thickness of the plate, and by macroscopic inhomogeneities in their electrical conductivities.     

Metabolomic Evidence for Peroxisomal Dysfunction in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a chronic and debilitating disease characterized by unexplained physical fatigue, cognitive and sensory dysfunction, sleeping disturbances, orthostatic intolerance, and gastrointestinal problems. People with ME/CFS often report a prodrome consistent with infections. Using regression, Bayesian and enrichment analyses, we conducted targeted and untargeted metabolomic analysis of plasma from 106 ME/CFS cases and 91 frequency-matched healthy controls. Subjects in the ME/CFS group had significantly decreased levels of plasmalogens and phospholipid ethers (p < 0.001), phosphatidylcholines (p < 0.001) and sphingomyelins (p < 0.001), and elevated levels of dicarboxylic acids (p = 0.013). Using machine learning algorithms, we were able to differentiate ME/CFS or subgroups of ME/CFS from controls with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values up to 0.873. Our findings provide the first metabolomic evidence of peroxisomal dysfunction, and are consistent with dysregulation of lipid remodeling and the tricarboxylic acid cycle. These findings, if validated in other cohorts, could provide new insights into the pathogenesis of ME/CFS and highlight the potential use of the plasma metabolome as a source of biomarkers for the disease.     

Color tracking with contextual switching: real-time implementation on CPU

Journal of Real-Time Image Processing - The paper proposes contributions for mean-shift (MS) and covariance tracking (CT), and makes these two complementary methods cooperate. While MS runs fast...