Autophagy is a highly orchestrated intracellular bulk degradation process that is activated by various environmental stresses. The serine/threonine kinase ULK1, like its yeast homologue Atg1, is a key initiator of autophagy that is negatively regulated by the mTOR kinase. However, the molecular mechanism that controls the inhibitory effect of mTOR on ULK1-mediated autophagy is not fully underst...

Cytokine-dependent renewal of stem cells is a fundamental requisite for tissue homeostasis and regeneration. Spermatogonial progenitor cells (SPCs) including stem cells support life-long spermatogenesis and male fertility, but pivotal phosphorylation events that regulate fate decisions in SPCs remain unresolved. Here, we described a quantitative mass-spectrometry-based proteomic and phosphoprot...

Optical networks form the foundation of today’s information infrastructure. Current generation optical networks consist largely of point-to-point electronically transmitted links which switch between nodes and repeaters. There is a trend in optical networking to move from the current generation opaque networks toward transparent networks. Transparent networks use only optical devices, eliminati...

Rateless codes over a binary erasure channel (BEC) provide successful transmission independent of the erasure probability. Luby Transform (LT) codes and raptor codes are examples of rateless codes over a BEC. For successful decoding, LT codes require either a large overhead at linear complexity, or capacity-approaching overheads with nonlinear complexity. When overhead is low at linear complexi...

Two incremental redundancy hybrid ARQ (IR-HARQ) schemes are proposed, analyzed, and compared: one is based on LDPC code ensembles with random transmission assignments, the other is based on recently introduced Raptor codes. A number of important issues, such as rate and power control, Raptor code design, and error rate performance after each transmission on time varying binary-input, symmetrico...

The Rapid Telescope for Optical Response (RAPTOR) program consists of a network of robotic telescopes dedicated to the search for fast optical transients. The pilot project is composed of three observatories separated by approximately 38 kilometers located near Los Alamos, New Mexico. Each of these observatories is composed of a telescope, mount, enclosure, and weather station, all operating ro...

Although dysregulation of mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) promotes leukemogenesis, how mTORC1 affects established leukemia is unclear. We investigated the role of mTORC1 in mouse hematopoiesis using a mouse model of conditional deletion of Raptor, an essential component of mTORC1. Raptor deficiency impaired granulocyte and B cell development but did not alter survival or proliferation of hematopoietic ...

Mass Rapid Transit using rail is a popular mode of transport employed by millions of people in many urban cities across the world. Typically, these networks are massive, used by many and thus, can be a soft target for criminals. In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling randomised patrols for improving security of such rail networks. Similar to existing work in randomised patrols for...

The q-profile, also known in literature as the safety factor profile, is an important quantity because it determines the stability as well as the performance of a fusion plasma. A strong degree of control over this q-profile makes the operation of a tokamak fusion reactor more stable (avoidance of plasma instabilities) and efficient (optimal q-profile shape). Control of the q-profile can be ach...

During CNS development, oligodendrocytes, the myelinating glia of the CNS, progress through multiple transitory stages before terminating into fully mature cells. Oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelination is a tightly regulated process requiring extracellular signals to converge to elicit specific translational and transcriptional changes. Our lab has previously shown that the protein kin...