The structure and management of service level agreements innetworks

The paper proposes a structure for quality-of-service (QoS)-centered service level agreements (SLA), and a framework for their real-time management in multiservice packet networks. The SLA is structured to be fair to both parties, the service provider and their customer. The SLA considered here are for QoS assured delivery of aggregate bandwidth from ingress to egress nodes; however, the control and signaling is for the more granular flows or calls. A SLA monitoring scheme is presented in which revenue is generated by the admission of flows into the network, and penalty incurred when flows are lost in periods when the service provider is not SLA compliant. In the SLA management scheme proposed, the results of a prior off-line design are used, in conjunction with measurements taken locally at ingress nodes, to classify the loading status of routes. The routing and resource management are based on virtual partitioning and its supporting mechanism of bandwidth protection. The effectiveness of SLA management is measured by the robustness in performance in the presence of substantial diversity in actual traffic conditions. A simulation testbed called D'ARTAGNAN has been built from which we report numerical results for a case study. The results show that the SLA management scheme is robust, fair and efficient over a broad range of traffic conditions     

Fabrication of 1.55 μm VCSELs on Si using metallic bonding

Using AuGeNiCr multilayered metals as the wafer bonding medium, long-wavelength GaInAsP/InP vertical cavity surface emitting lasers employing Al-oxide/Si as the upper and lower distributed Bragg reflectors were fabricated on Si substrate with the bonding interface formed outside the vertical cavity surface emitting laser cavity. Laser emission at 1.545 μm was measured under pulsed operations near room temperature. The low-temperature metallic bonding process demonstrates a great potential in device fabrication     

Direct evidence of high DNA binding activity of transcription factor AP-1 in rheumatoid arthritis synovium

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is increasingly being used in plant biology from the cellular level to whole plant level. At the cellular level, GFP is being used as an in vivo reporter to assess frequency of transient and stable transformation. GFP has also proven to be an invaluable tool in monitoring trafficking and subcellular localization of protein. At the organ level and up, many exciting applications are rapidly emerging. The development of brighter GFP mutants with more robust folding properties has enabled better macroscopic visualization of GFP in whole leaves and plants. One interesting example has been the use of GFP to monitor virus movement in and among whole plants. GFP is also emerging as a powerful tool to monitor transgene movement and transgenic plants in the field. In a proof-of-concept study, tobacco was transformed with a modified version of the GFP gene controlled by a constitutive (35S) promoter. GFP expression in progeny plants ranged from 0% to 0.5%, and approximately 0.1% GFP was the minimal amount needed for unambiguous macroscopic detection. GFP is the first truly in vivo reporter system useful in whole plants, and we project its usefulness will increase even further as better forms of GFP genes become available.     

Neurochemical studies of schizophrenia in Japan

Neurobiological research in schizophrenia has been hampered by several confounding factors such as the heterogeneity of the illness and the paucity of biological markers. Recent progress in research methods, however, has enabled the improvement in our understanding its pathophysiology. This paper reviews recent neurochemical investigations of schizophrenia and its animal models which were conducted in Japan in the last decade. The research areas reviewed are (i) monoamine and their metabolites in body fluids, (ii) phospholipids and prostaglandins, (iii) neurochemistry in autopsy brains, (iv) immunological measures, (v) magnetic resonance spectroscopy, (vi) regional cerebral blood flows (rCBF), (vii) molecular genetics, and (viii) animal models. It is worth noting that there exist abnormalities of amino acidergic (glutamatergic and GABAergic) neurotransmission as well as monoaminergic (dopaminergic and serotonergic) one in postmortem schizophrenic brains. These abnormalities and also the findings of altered rCBF indicate the existence of disturbed neuronal circuits that contribute to the diverse symptoms of schizophrenia. Also, dysfunction of membrane phospholipids derived from studies on magnetic resonance spectroscopy may underlie negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Given that schizophrenia is considered to comprise a group of disorders with a diverse heterogeneity of etiologies, research in the next decade is expected to identify putative genes that are involved in vulnerability to schizophrenic phenotype.     

Molecular medicine and population control

As we uncover the physiological and molecular mechanisms behind human reproduction, we gain the potential to exert more control over our reproductive capabilities. In the past two decades, the prospects for 'infertile' women to bear children, or 'sterile' men to father them, have improved dramatically; recently, women have given birth in their sixties, well beyond their natural menopause. Thanks to developments in contraception, couples can now enjoy an active sex-life without a significant risk of pregnancy, and more accurately control the size and timing of their families. But these new freedoms have a price: they also have the potential to cause demographic distortions, medical harm to individuals and abuse of human rights.     

Glial development in the Drosophila CNS requires concomitant activation of glial and repression of neuronal differentiation genes

Two classes of glial cells are found in the embryonic Drosophila CNS, midline glial cells and lateral glial cells. Midline glial development is triggered by EGF-receptor signalling, whereas lateral glial development is controlled by the gcm gene. Subsequent glial cell differentiation depends partly on the pointed gene. Here we describe a novel component required for all CNS glia development. The tramtrack gene encodes two zinc-finger proteins, one of which, ttkp69, is expressed in all non-neuronal CNS cells. We show that ttkp69 is downstream of gcm and can repress neuronal differentiation. Double mutant analysis and coexpression experiments indicate that glial cell differentiation may depend on a dual process, requiring the activation of glial differentiation by pointed and the concomitant repression of neuronal development by tramtrack.