Lethality of the covalent linkage between mislocalized major outer membrane lipoprotein and the peptidoglycan of Escherichia coli

The major outer membrane lipoprotein (Lpp) of Escherichia coli possesses serine at position 2, which is thought to function as the outer membrane sorting signal, and lysine at the C terminus, through which Lpp covalently associates with peptidoglycan. Arginine (R) is present before the C-terminal lysine in the wild-type Lpp (LppSK). By replacing serine (S) at position 2 with aspartate (D), the putative inner membrane sorting signal, and by deleting lysine (K) at the C terminus, Lpp mutants with a different residue at either position 2 (LppDK) or the C terminus (LppSR) or both (LppDR) were constructed. Expression of LppSR and LppDR little affected the growth of E. coli. In contrast, the number of viable cells immediately decreased when LppDK was expressed. Prolonged expression of LppDK inhibited separation of the inner and outer membranes by sucrose density gradient centrifugation, whereas short-term expression did not. Pulse-labeled LppDK and LppDR were localized in the inner membrane, indicating that the amino acid residue at position 2 functions as a sorting signal for the membrane localization of Lpp. LppDK accumulated in the inner membrane covalently associated with the peptidoglycan and thus prevented the separation of the two membranes. Globomycin, an inhibitor of lipoprotein-specific signal peptidase II, was lethal for E. coli only when Lpp possessed the C-terminal lysine. Taken together, these results indicate that the inner membrane accumulation of Lpp per se is not lethal for E. coli. Instead, a covalent linkage between the inner membrane Lpp having the C-terminal lysine and the peptidoglycan is lethal for E. coli, presumably due to the disruption of the cell surface integrity.     

Fuzzy inference and fuzzy inference processor

Fuzzy inference, a data processing method based on the fuzzy theory that has found wide use in the control field, is reviewed. Consumer electronics, which accounts for most current applications of this concept, does not require very high speeds. Although software running on a conventional microprocessor can perform these inferences, high-speed control applications require much greater speeds. A fuzzy inference date processor that operates at 200000 fuzzy logic inferences per second and features 12-b input and 16-b output resolution is described     

Correlations Among Maximum Likelihood and Weighted/Unweighted Least Squares Estimators in Factor Analysis

The asymptotic correlations among maximum likelihood (ML) and various least squares (LS) estimators in factor analysis are derived. The LS estimators include the unweighted (ULS) and weighted estimators for unstandardized variables and the ULS estimators for standardized variables. The derived formulas cover the cases with restrictions on parameters. Numerical examples with simulations are provided to confirm the accuracy of the formulas and the influence of scales on the asymptotic correlations.

     

Pixel design of pulsed CMOS image sensor for retinal prosthesis with digital photosensitivity control

A newly designed pulse frequency modulation photosensor for use in retinal prosthesis is proposed and demonstrated. The pixel converts the intensity of incident light into biphasic current pulses at frequencies suitable for the electrical stimulation of retinal neurons. Experimental results showed that the device was sensitive over a dynamic range of input light of about 120 dB, and that photosensitivity could be varied from 0 dB to around -40 dB.     

Stability analysis of regional and national voting schemes by a continuous model

The previous discrete-model-based stability analysis of regional and national voting has been extended to a continuous-model-based analysis in the simultaneous presence of white and concentrated components of noise, reconfirming the previous conclusion that regional voting with smaller sized regions always demonstrates an improved stability over those with larger sized regions, including the national voting in its limiting case in particular. The conclusion remains valid as long as the weak distribution assumption is valid.     

Software‐processed edge‐ and level‐adaptive overdrive (SELAO) method for high‐quality motion pictures

Abstract— In this paper, a software‐processed edge‐ and level‐adaptive overdrive (SELAO) method, which is a novel overdrive technique that utilizes not only a temporal change of gray levels but also a spatial edge intensity of motion pictures, is proposed. The SELAO method is a software video‐processing technology to improve motion‐picture quality rendered on LCDs more than is possible with a conventional SLAO method without edge‐adaptive overdrive, and it works in real time on commonly used personal computers (PCs).     

Involvement of specific mechanism in plasmid DNA uptake by mouse peritoneal macrophages

Lamina-associated polypeptide (LAP)2, which directly interacts with B-type lamins and chromosomes, is an integral membrane protein specifically distributed along the inner nuclear membrane of the nuclear envelope. Multiple regions of its large nucleoplasmic domain promote this localization, including the first (residues 1-296) and the second (residues 298-409) halves of the LAP2 N terminus. The second half is involved in LAP2 association with the nuclear lamina [Furukawa, K., Panté, N., Aebi, U. & Gerace, L. (1995) EMBO J. 14, 1626-1636]. In this study to further define its role, we examined which domain of B-type lamin interacts with LAP2 by means of a binding assay with bacterially expressed proteins and a yeast two-hybrid system. We found that amino acids in the region of residues 78-258 of the lamin B1 rod domain directly bound with LAP2. The data suggest that LAP2 may modulate the assembly of nuclear lamins.     

Expectation-maximization algorithms for inference in Dirichlet processes mixture

Mixture models are ubiquitous in applied science. In many real-world applications, the number of mixture components needs to be estimated from the data. A popular approach consists of using information criteria to perform model selection. Another approach which has become very popular over the past few years consists of using Dirichlet processes mixture (DPM) models. Both approaches are computationally intensive. The use of information criteria requires computing the maximum likelihood parameter estimates for each candidate model whereas DPM are usually trained using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) or variational Bayes (VB) methods. We propose here original batch and recursive expectation-maximization algorithms to estimate the parameters of DPM. The performance of our algorithms is demonstrated on several applications including image segmentation and image classification tasks. Our algorithms are computationally much more efficient than MCMC and VB and outperform VB on an example.     

Stochastic Resonance in Recurrent Neural Network with Hopfield-Type Memory

Stochastic resonance (SR) is known as a phenomenon in which the presence of noise helps a nonlinear system in amplifying a weak (under barrier) signal. In this paper, we investigate how SR behavior can be observed in practical autoassociative neural networks with the Hopfield-type memory under the stochastic dynamics. We focus on SR responses in two systems which consist of three and 156 neurons. These cases are considered as effective double-well and multi-well models. It is demonstrated that the neural network can enhance weak subthreshold signals composed of the stored pattern trains and have higher coherence abilities between stimulus and response.     

Evidence for a Jahn-Teller distortion of Cs2NaHoCl6 at 150 mK observed by X-ray diffractometry

By means of SR X-ray diffractometry, cooperative Jahn-Teller distortion as a structural phase transformation of the first kind is directly confirmed by a splitting of Laue spots. It is understood that the degenerate ground state of a nonmagnetic doublet (₃) of Ho³⁺ in a cubic Ho-elpasolite, Fm3m(O _h ⁵ ), at least above 600 mK, is lifted up by a distortion below 150 mK, which was predicted by a splitting of the NQR spectrum and anomalies in the specific heat and magnetic susceptibility. This structural transformation shows not only the lowest transition temperature up to now, but also the greatest hysteresis specified by a Schottky-type excitation. The magnitude of the relative distortion (1/1) has been roughly estimated to be on the 2.0 · 10^–3 order of magnitude, which is much larger than the predicted value obtained from a point charge approximation. The pecularities of this transition are discussed from the viewpoint that the general theory of a structural transformation, established convincingly at high temperatures could not be easily applied.