Conditional and Unconditional Simulation of Healthy Patients' Visual Fields

This paper describes a simulation problem, motivated by the study of glaucoma, a very serious and widespread ocular illness. To ascertain whether a patient suffers from glaucoma, a perimetric test is done, but the evolution of the disease is very slow, and large longitudinal sets of tests taken on the same patient are needed to study its evolution, to analyze the efficiency of existing methods to detect the progression of glaucoma and to develop new ones. Simulation can be a very useful procedure to get appropriate data sets to work with. Our aim in this work is to simulate several VFs in a healthy patient to reflect his evolution in time. We use a spatio‐temporal model to simulate from, taking into account the correlation existing between the observed (or simulated) values in space and time. Two different simulation procedures (unconditional and conditional) are studied, and applied to obtain the simulations we are interested in. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Presence of haemocyte-like cells in coccinellid reflex blood

Abstract.  Contrary to current assumptions, the reflex blood of two-spot ladybirds, Adalia bipunctata , and seven-spot ladybirds, Coccinella septempunctata , contains haemocyte-like cells. Furthermore, DNA can be extracted and amplified from coccinellid reflex blood, confirming the presence of haemocyte-like cells and demonstrating a nondestructive method of DNA extraction.     

Don C. Ohadike: The Man, his Intellectual Legacy and African Historiography

It is difficult to completely understand the life history of an intellectual excluding an understanding of his family upbringing and formative years. Family upbringing and childhood environment, often the less known part of a life history, play crucial roles in shaping the ideas and values individuals espouse in their adult life. Notwithstanding, this paper is not concerned with Don C. Ohadike’s childhood. It rather focuses on the professional career of our able historian – that is the part of his life as revealed by his most outstanding published writings. Ohadike’s published works contain a wellspring of idioms that tell much about his values, quality of mind, and his mission as an African historian. Ohadike was a humanist, an African patriot, and a nationalist crusader. His entire philosophy centered on safeguarding his African identity in an emergent world of cultural imperialism. The funds for this research were provided by a NEH-funded fellowship at the Schomburg Center, New York in the Spring of 2007. I owe a lot of gratitude to Professor John McLeod and Dean Blaine Hudson for granting me the extra incentives to pursue my research in New York. While all errors and misinterpretations are mine, I wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for Journal of Dialectical Anthropology for their perspective comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Activation of fatty acids by non-glyoxysomal peroxisomes

Ethylene treatment (approx. 20 l ·1^-1 in air for 2 d) of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L. cv. Havana 425) plants markedly increases the endo--1,3-glucanase (EC 3.2.1.39) content of leaves. The antigenic form of the enzyme induced is the same one whose production is blocked by treating cultured cells with combinations of auxin (1.1 · 10^-5 M -naphthaleneacetic acid) and cytokinin (1.4 · 10^-6 M kinetin). Evidence is presented that cultured tobacco cells require ethylene for -1,3-glucanase accumulation: i) ethylene treatment increased the accumulation of \-1,3-glucanase in callus tissues >10 d after subculturing and in cell-suspension cultures; ii) callus tissues can produce ethylene; iii) conditions known to inhibit ethylene production (1 mM CoCl₂; 33° C treatment) or ethylene action (approx. 1.6 mmol · 1^-1 norbornadiene in air) inhibited -1,3-glucanase accumulation by callus tissues treated for 4 d following subculturing; and, these inhibitory effects were prevented by exogenous ethylene. Combinations of auxin and cytokinin blocked ethylene-induced accumulation of -1,3-glucanase by cell-suspension cultures. The results favor a model in which ethylene induces results favor a model in which ethylene induces 1,3-glucanase accumulation, and auxin and cytokinin inhibit this induction process.Abbreviations NAA -naphthaleneacetic acid - NDE norbornadiene     

In vitro acetylation of the liver HMG non-histone proteins and its modulation by spermine and dexamethasone during aging of rats

The in vitro acetylation of HMG proteins was studied using liver slices of young (18-week) and old (138-week) male rats. Acetylation of total HMG proteins is lower in old age. The incorporation of (¹⁴C) acetate into individual HMG proteins varies remarkably with advancing age. Whereas acetylation of high mol. wt. proteins (HMG 1 and 2) is higher, that of low mol. wt. proteins (HMG 14 and 17) is lower in the liver of young rats as compared to the old ones. Spermine stimulates the acetylation of HMG 1 and 14 in young and HMG 1, 2 and 14 in old age. It inhibits the acetylation of HMG 17 in both ages. Dexamethasone decreases the level of incorporation of (¹⁴C) into HMG 1 and 17 in young and HMG 14 and 17 in old rats. On the other hand, it stimulates the acetylation of HMG 14 by two-fold in young and that of HMG 1 and 2 by more than three-fold in old rats. Such alteration in the acetylation of HMG proteins may account for age-related changes in the structure and function of chromatin.     

Asymmetric incorporation of [14C]cyanate and of fluorescein isothiocyanate in mamillary body of conditioned rats

A marked decrease in overall learning capacity has been observed in rats injected with cyanate. Therefore it was of interest to test whether learning influenced carbamylation of brain proteins. Incorporation of [¹⁴C]cyanate into proteins of the mamillary body was selectively modified following operant conditioning of the rat, so that trained rats showed an asymmetric image with higher levels of incorporation in the right side than in the left side, as compared to control rats. These results were confirmed using fluorescein isothiocyanate. The asymmetry persisted once the learning had been well established.     

Killing of Escherichia coli cells modulated by components of the stability system ParD of plasmid R1

Summary The proteins P10 and P12 have been shown to be gene products of a new stability system, ParD, of plasmid R1. It is now shown that an R1 miniplasmid, pAB112, carrying a trans-complementable amber mutation in the gene of the P10 protein, is lethal for the host in the absence of suppression. This lethal effect is suppressed in a supF background and also by deletions in pAB112 that affect the gene of the P12 protein. These data indicate that the P12 protein has a lethal effect on the host and that this effect is neutralized by the P10 protein. The possibility that the stabilization conferred by the ParD system could be due to a counterselection, mediated by P12, of cells that lose the plasmid at cell division, is discussed.