During 1996 and 1997, several chemical issues that arise in the early stages of preinitiation complex (PIC) formation were resolved. Kinetics experiments indicated that both TBP dimerization and DNA bending influence the rate of TBP-TATA box assembly. Affinity cleavage experiments indicated that TBP lacks the specificity to nucleate assembly of a properly oriented PIC. Finally, high-resolution ...

Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation techniques have been wildly successful in the firstprinciples simulation of plasma dynamics. However, the fundamental algorithmic underpinnings of standard PIC algorithms have not changed in decades. Classical PIC employs an explicit approach (leap-frog) to advance the Vlasov-Poisson system using particles coupled to a grid. Explicit PIC is subject to both temp...

XY-pic is a package for typesetting graphs and diagrams using Knuth’s TEX typesetting system. XY-pic works with most of the many formats available; e.g., plain TEX, LTEX, and AMS-TEX. Several styles of input for various diagram types are supported; they all share a mnemonic notation based on the logical composition of visual components. This guide concentrates on how to typeset “matrix-like” di...

The Lexical Substitution task involves selecting and ranking lexical paraphrases for a target word in a given sentential context. We present PIC, a simple measure for estimating the appropriateness of substitutes in a given context. PIC outperforms another simple, comparable model proposed in recent work, especially when selecting substitutes from the entire vocabulary. Analysis shows that PIC ...

The UCLA Parallel PIC Framework (UPIC) has been developed to provide trusted components for the rapid construction of new, parallel Particle-in-Cell (PIC) codes. The Framework uses object-based ideas in Fortran95, and is designed to provide support for various kinds of PIC codes on various kinds of hardware. The focus is on student programmers. The Framework supports multiple numerical methods,...

Neonates are highly susceptible to infectious diseases and, in general, respond poorly to conventional vaccines due to immaturity of the immune system. In the present study, we hypothesized that the anti-tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccine response of neonatal mice could be enhanced by retinoic acid (RA), a bioactive retinoid, and polyriboinosinic:polyribocytidylic acid (PIC), an inducer of IFN. Early-...

OBJECTIVE To develop a convenient screening method that can predict perioperative venous thromboembolism (VTE) and identify patients at risk of fatal perioperative pulmonary embolism (PE). METHODS Patients hospitalized for gynecological abdominal surgery (n = 183) underwent hematology tests and multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) to detect VTE. All statistical analyses were carried out u...

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is the first and rate-limiting enzyme in the kynurenine pathway of tryptophan catabolism and has been implicated in neurotoxicity and suppression of the antiviral T-cell response in HIV encephalitis (HIVE). Here we show that the Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) ligand poly(I:C) (PIC) induces the expression of IDO in human astrocytes. PIC was less potent than gamma i...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Our group reported that cinnamaldehyde derivative, (E)-4-((2-(3-oxopop-1-enyl)phenoxy)methyl)pyridinium malonic acid (CB-PIC) induced apoptosis in hypoxic SW620 colorectal cancer cells via activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK). Herein, sensitizing effect of CB-PIC was investigated in resistant cancer cells such as pacli...

Phenoxyl-imidazolyl radical complex (PIC) is a novel photochromic compound, which generates two nonequivalent radicals upon UV light irradiation. While the color fading speed of PIC can be tuned from tens of nanoseconds to seconds, the low visible sensitivity has limited their potential applications. Herein, we developed novel thiophene-substituted PIC derivatives. The visible sensitivity and t...