Extracellular polysaccharides production by Arthrobacter viscosus

In this study the production of extracellular polysaccharides by the non-pathogenic soil bacteria Arthrobacter viscosus has been investigated. Different variables affecting extracellular polysaccharide production such as the carbon source (glucose or xylose), the agitation speed and the pH have been analysed.

In a first stage, experiments in shaken conical flasks (250 ml), containing 50 ml of culture medium, were carried out. Using xylose (25 g/l) as the carbon source at an initial pH 8 improved the extracellular polysaccharides levels obtained.

In a second stage, the experiments were scaling in bioreactors. Cultivation was carried out in discontinuous mode and with/without pH control. Polysaccharide production reached a maximum of 10 g of crude product per litre of growth medium after 14 days and the relationship between product formation and cell growth of A. viscosus is 2.7 g polysaccharide per gram biomass. This production was obtained at the optimal conditions determined with pH control at pH 7, xylose as carbon source (25 g/l) and an agitation rate of 800 rpm.     

Truthful Approximation Mechanisms for Scheduling Selfish Related Machines

We consider the problem of scheduling jobs on related machines owned by selfish agents. We provide a 5-approximation deterministic truthful mechanism, the first deterministic truthful result for the problem. Previously, Archer and Tardos showed a 2-approximation randomized mechanism which is truthful in expectation only (a weaker notion of truthfulness). In case the number of machines is constant, we provide a deterministic Fully Polynomial-Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS) and a suitable payment scheme that yields a truthful mechanism for the problem. This result, which is based on converting FPTAS to monotone FPTAS, improves a previous result of Auletta et al., who showed a (4 + ε)-approximation truthful mechanism.     

Hepatic and splenic sarcoidosis: ultrasound and MR imaging

Two polypeptide antigens with molecular sizes of 34,000 daltons (34 kDa) and 38 kDa were separated from heated cells of a human clinical treponeme strain G7201 and Treponema denticola ATCC 35404, respectively. The rabbit polyclonal antisera against these antigens were produced and examined for their immunological reactions with the two heated antigens or intact spirochetal cells. Immunoblot analysis showed that the 34-kDa protein was also detected in T. denticola ATCC 35404 and ATCC 33520, and the 38-kDa protein was detected only in the two ATCC strains. Immunoelectron microscopy using the two rabbit antisera and protein A-gold complexes demonstrated that the 38-kDa protein antigen was present on the axial flagella of two T. denticola strains, and that the 34-kDa protein was located in the axial flagella of the G7201 cell, but neither in axial flagella nor on outer envelopes of the two ATCC strains cells, suggesting that the native 34-kDa axial flagellar protein of the G7201 strain may be different from that of T. denticola in terms of immunological reactivity.     

From abandonment to symbiosis: A developmental reversal in suicidal adolescents.

This article presents the abandonment-symbiosis hypothesis. This hypothesis pertains to the dynamics of suicide in youngsters who experience difficulties in separation from their symbiotic families. It is suggested that such youngsters have experienced various types of rejection and abandonment in early childhood and have developed insecure attachment styles and insufficient ego functions in order to cope with difficulties. It is also suggested that these youngsters have become scapegoats by their dysfunctional families and that they are held in a symbiotic grip in order to continue to bear the negative projections of their families. As such, they are prevented from developing a proper sense of individuation and autonomy. The sequence that begins with abandonment and continues with symbiosis is a reversal of normal development is critical for the emergence of suicidal behavior. The various aspects of the abandonment-symbiosis hypothesis are demonstrated by case studies and empirical data. A combination of individual and family treatment is recommended as the best approach for the treatment of such youngsters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teaching severely self-abusive and aggressive autistic residents to exit to fire alarms

Fifty-two case-hardened, severely self-abusive and aggressive autistic and retarded students, living in six different community residences, were trained to exit their residences, without the presence or assistance of staff, when a fire alarm sounded at night. On a pretest, prior to an 11-week period of intensive environmental and behavioral interventions, only 25% of the students exited within 2 1/2 minutes and independent of staff assistance. At posttest, 100% exited successfully, in a mean evacuation time of 60 seconds. The study was conducted at the Behavior Research Institute (BRI).     

External and internal electrostatic potentials of cholinesterase models

The electrostatic potentials for the three-dimensional structures of cholinesterases from various species were calculated, using the Delphi algorithm, on the basis of the Poisson–Boltzmann equation. We used structures for Torpedo californica and mouse acetylcholinesterase, and built homology models of the human, Bungarus fasciatus, and Drosophila melanogaster acetylcholinesterases and human butyrylcholinesterase. All these structures reveal a negative external surface potential, in the area around the entrance to the active-site gorge, that becomes more negative as the rim of the gorge is approached. Moreover, in all cases, the potential becomes increasingly more negative along the central axis running down the gorge, and is largest at the base of the gorge, near the active site. Ten key acidic residues conserved in the sequence alignments of AChE from various species, both in the surface area near the entrance of the active-site gorge and at its base, appear to be primarily responsible for these potentials. The potentials are highly correlated among the structures examined, down to sequence identities as low as 35%. This indicates that they are a conserved property of the cholinesterase family, could serve to attract the positively charged substrate into and down the gorge to the active site, and may play other roles important for cholinesterase function.     

Time jitter analysis of 1-bit sigma-delta synthesizer

This letter presents a general analysis of time jitter in sigma-delta synthesizer. One of the practical applications of 1-bit sigma-delta systems is a generation of high-resolution local oscillator (LO) signals. In order to generate LO signals, one may use a single-bit sigma-delta technique to encode sine waves. Today, direct generation of high-frequency sine wave using a clock with higher frequency, is possible. In this letter, we will analyze different LO signal generators and develop a practical way of computation to decide how to choose the best configuration under minimum degradation of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the output.     

Equi-affine Invariant Geometry for Shape Analysis

Traditional models of bendable surfaces are based on the exact or approximate invariance to deformations that do not tear or stretch the shape, leaving intact an intrinsic geometry associated with it. These geometries are typically defined using either the shortest path length (geodesic distance), or properties of heat diffusion (diffusion distance) on the surface. Both measures are implicitly derived from the metric induced by the ambient Euclidean space. In this paper, we depart from this restrictive assumption by observing that a different choice of the metric results in a richer set of geometric invariants. We apply equi-affine geometry for analyzing arbitrary shapes with positive Gaussian curvature. The potential of the proposed framework is explored in a range of applications such as shape matching and retrieval, symmetry detection, and computation of Voroni tessellation. We show that in some shape analysis tasks, equi-affine-invariant intrinsic geometries often outperform their Euclidean-based counterparts. We further explore the potential of this metric in facial anthropometry of newborns. We show that intrinsic properties of this homogeneous group are better captured using the equi-affine metric.