is not found and the caretaker relative still refuses to cooperate, the caretaker becomes ineligible for benefits, and assistance is provided to the eligible child in tte form of protective payments, without regard to the needs of the caretaker relative. Therefore, if eligibility is determined and/or payments are made prior to the rejection of a good cause claim, it may become necessary . to re...

We derive an expectation maximization algorithm for maximum-likelihood training of substitution rate matrices from multiple sequence alignments. The algorithm can be used to train hidden substitution models, where the structural context of a residue is treated as a hidden variable that can evolve over time. We used the algorithm to train hidden substitution matrices on protein alignments in the...

One of the most abundant and widely distributed groups of Helix-turn-helix (HTH) transcription factors is the metabolite-responsive GntR family of regulators (>8500 members in the Pfam database; Jan 2009). These proteins contain a DNA-binding HTH domain at the N terminus of the protein and an effector-binding and/or oligomerisation domain at the C terminus, where upon on binding an effector mol...

Policymakers have long hoped to find ways to buffer children from the ravages of poverty without excusing parents from the responsibility of providing for their offspring. For 60 years, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program guaranteed cash assistance for poor single-parent families, allowing the mothers to remain home with their children. In 1993, federal and state governme...

PURPOSE To present the clinical profiles and inheritance patterns of familial childhood epilepsy in the highly consanguineous population of Jordan. METHODS This retrospective study examined children diagnosed with epilepsy and having at least one epileptic parent or sibling. The epilepsy type was classified according to the criteria of the International League Against Epilepsy. Patients were ...

BACKGROUND Germline mutations of the REarranged during Transfection (RET) proto-oncogene cause multiple endocrine neoplasia 2 (MEN2). It is unclear whether the distribution of RET mutations varies among populations. The first nationwide study of the distribution of RET mutations was conducted, and the results were compared to those of other populations. METHODS This retrospective cohort study...

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most prevalent form of leukemia in adults in western countries. A genome scan of CLL-prone families revealed a lod score of one in band 13q22.1. To investigate this finding, we selected 6 CLL families consisting of 63 individuals (CLL affected, n=19; unaffected, n=44) for fine mapping of a 23-megabase region in 13q14.2-q22.2. Interphase fluorescence in ...

BACKGROUND Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) may function as modifiers of the RET proto-oncogene, resulting in the expression of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). We present 2 non-related Italian-American families (Family 1, n = 107; Family 2, n = 31) with the RET V804M mutation. We have correlated the presence of specific SNPs and the rare RET V804M ...

Pleuronectiforme fishes of the Persian Gulf coastlines along Khuzestan, Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces were morphometrically and meristically studied from April 2003 to September 2005, in order to identify species. In this experiment, 1551 fish samples were caught by trawl or collected from fish markets. The sampling was carried out in 27 regions seasonally. Thirty six traits and parameters in...