SWAN – a Semantic Web Application in Neuromedicine – is a project to develop an effective, integrated scientific knowledge infrastructure for Alzheimer Disease (AD) researchers, enabled by Semantic Web technology and deployed on Alzforum (www.alzforum.org), a scientific web community for AD research. This infrastructure may later be deployed for research communities in other neuromedical disorders. SWAN incorporates the full biomedical research knowledge lifecycle in its ontological model, including support for personal data organization, hypothesis generation, experimentation, lab data organization, and digital pre-publication collaboration. Community, laboratory, and personal digital resources may all be organized and interconnected using SWAN's common semantic framework. 相似文献
Inspired by recent algorithms for electing a leader in a distributed system, we study the following game in a directed graph: each vertex selects one of its outgoing arcs (if any) and eliminates the other endpoint of this arc; the remaining vertices play on until no arcs remain. We call a directed graph lethal if the game must end with all vertices eliminated and mortal if it is possible that the game ends with all vertices eliminated. We show that lethal graphs are precisely collections of vertex-disjoint cycles, and that the problem of deciding whether or not a given directed graph is mortal is NP-complete (and hence it is likely that no “nice” characterization of mortal graphs exists). 相似文献
Interleukin-1 (IL-1) blockade by IL-1 receptor antagonist benefits some arthritis patients by reducing joint damage. This fact inspired us to develop antagonist human therapeutic antibodies against IL-1R(I) using phage libraries that display single-chain variable fragment (scFv) antibody fragments. Panning libraries against human IL-1R(I) generated 39 unique scFv-phage whose binding to IL-1R(I) was competed by IL-1 ligands. Fifteen of these scFv-phage, identified using IL-1R(I)-binding assays and dissociation rate ranking, were reformatted as scFv-Fc and IgG(4) molecules. The ease of producing antibodies in the scFv-Fc format permitted rapid identification of four lead clones (C10, C13, C14, C15) that inhibit NF-kappaB nuclear translocation induced by IL-1. Reformatting these clones as IgG(4) molecules increased their inhibition potency by =24-fold. C10 IgG(4) is the most potent antagonist of IL-1alpha (26 nM IC(50)) and IL-1beta (18 nM IC(50)) in the NF-kappaB bioassay, although less potent than IL-1ra ( approximately 0.4 nM IC(50)). C10 is the highest affinity clone for human IL-1R(I) (K(D) approximately 60 nM). Flow cytometry indicates that several lead clones bind cell-surface cynomolgus or murine IL-1R(I), characteristics advantageous for preclinical toxicology and efficacy studies. This study demonstrates the utility of scFv-Fc fusion proteins for rapid screening of clones derived from phage libraries to identify antibody leads with therapeutic potential. 相似文献
We describe a new method for the chemical separation and analysis of Pa in silicate rock samples by isotope dilution. Our new technique has the following advantages over previous methods: (a) The initial separation of Pa from the rock matrix is carried out using anionic exchange resin and HCl-HF mixtures, avoiding the need to remove F(-) quantitatively from the sample solution prior to this step, (b) Efficient ionization of Pa is achieved using a multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, so that smaller sample sizes and shorter measurement times are required, compared to previous methods using thermal ionization mass spectrometry or alpha spectrometry. (c) Plasma ionization requires less efficient separation of the high field strength elements from Pa, thus reducing reagent volumes, blanks, and sample preparation times. Instrumental mass fractionation can be corrected for using admixed U of known isotopic composition. Using this method, Pa concentrations can be measured to a precision of approximately 0.5% and an accuracy of approximately 1% using only a few tens of femtograms of Pa. 相似文献
The effects of an ultrasonic humidification system were assessed during retail display of unwrapped chilled fruit and vegetable produce. Produce and equipment factors were compared during two consecutive 7-day trials, one with fogging (termed ‘wet’) and one without (termed ‘dry’).
No appreciable differences in mean product temperatures were found (4.6 °C for wet, 4.3 °C for dry), but there were slight differences in cabinet performance in terms of air temperatures and refrigeration effect. Despite a considerable increase in drainage water from the cabinet (53 l per day for wet, 30 for dry), no change to the cabinet's defrost schedule was required.
Humidification reduced weight loss with all products. After 7 days of display the highest reduction, almost 50%, was achieved with mushrooms. Humidification also reduced the rate of deterioration in the appearance of the produce on display.
No adverse effects on the microbial quality of samples of produce were found. Slightly higher numbers of airborne microbes were sampled from the air circulating in the cabinet during the wet trial, but there was no significant increase in numbers of microbes landing on settle plates on the display shelves. Numbers of bacteria in the water sterilisation system were low and no Legionella species were isolated from either the wet or the dry trial water samples. 相似文献
Navigation in virtual environments can be difficult. One contributing factor is user disorientation. Two major causes of this are the lack of navigation cues in the environment and problems with navigating too close to or through virtual world objects. Previous work has developed guidelines, informed by cinematography conventions, for the construction of virtual environments to aid user comprehension of virtual space to reduce user disorientation. To validate these guidelines, two user studies have been performed where users of a desktop virtual environment are to complete a navigation task in a virtual maze. In an initial study [12], collision detection with the maze walls was not enabled and the results indicated that the guidelines were effective for reducing disorientation but not for developing the users awareness of the environment space. A second study has been performed where collision detection was enabled. Results suggest that the use of the guidelines can help reduce the incidences of user disorientation and aid navigation tasks. However, the guidelines have little impact on users ability to construct cognitive maps of the desktop virtual environment.
Pseudovoltammetry was used to evaluate the actual Pb complexation occurring in natural water samples of varying oxygen and sulfide concentration. In pseudovoltammetry, the potential at which metal-ligand complexes are broken up to form the metal amalgam is used to determine the complexes' thermodynamic stability constants (KTHERM; corrected for metal and ligand side reaction coefficients) via the Nernst expression. This methodology removes the need for any metal additions and for subsequent modeling using fitting criteria, which provide only conditional stability constant data (KCOND). Using known organic ligands, a chelate scale ranging from log KTHERM = 4 to log KTHERM = 20 was developed as a template for comparison with samples collected from two stations of different salinities and at several depths in the Chesapeake Bay. These samples were observed to contain up to five different ligand compounds of unknown structural composition (log KTHERM > 8) with the strongest ligand fraction exceeding log KTHERM > 39 (the maximum observable thermodynamic stability constant due to the reduction of Na+). One possible explanation for the observed complexation is the existence of lead sulfide clusters. This was supported by laboratory experiments using electrochemistry and ICR-FTMS, which confirmed the formation of electrochemically inert multinuclear clusters with high stability constants (e.g., M3S3, log KTHERM = 62.9). However, in all field samples, (sub)nanomolar levels of acid-leachable sulfide were recovered at pH 5.0-6.2, which could be attributed to dissociation of lead sulfide complexes with moderate acidity. Recovery of sulfide increased from < 10% of the total dissolved Pb concentration (Pbdiss) in surface waters to 100% of the Pbdiss in the sulfide-rich bottom waters at the higher salinity location. 相似文献
Exploratory data analysis requires the ability to issue ad hoc queries to filter and summarise data sets. As the sizes of health data sets grow, traditional methods of processing data have difficulty in providing acceptable response times for such queries. An alternative method is described which combines complete vertical partitioning of data with set operations on ordinal mappings (SOOM). An initial implementation of the technique provides significantly better performance than a conventional SQL database on typical exploratory data analysis queries. The use of parallel, distributed computation to further increase the performance of the technique appears to be feasible. 相似文献