Sam is a life-sized on-screen character who shares a physical castle and a plastic figurine with children, and takes turns with children to tell stories using the figurine. In this thesis, the original Sam system is improved. Now Sam shares two figurines with the user, and tells fantasy stories from the narrator's perspective. When Sam takes turn to tell story, Sam identifies the toys in the vi...

We have investigated the effect of mixing an alcohol-soluble C60 derivative into a self-assembled monolayer (SAM), which consisted of a redox-active Ru-complex with multipoint anchoring groups, on an indium tin oxide surface. Angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the mixed SAM revealed that the C60 derivative was well incorporated into the redox-active Ru-complex SAM. In addition, ...

We use surface x-ray diffraction to study the structure of organic-organic heterojunctions grown by organic molecular-beam deposition. In particular, we study films of 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride ~PTCDA! grown on a decanethiol self-assembled monolayer ~SAM! on a Au~111! surface. The deposition of several ('16) monolayers of PTCDA results in unstrained crystalline films whose ~0...

Micromachining allows the formation of micrometer-sized regions of bare gold on the surface of a gold film supporting a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of alkanethiolate. A second SAM forms on the micromachined surfaces when the entire system-the remaining undisturbed gold-supported SAM and the micromachined features of bare gold-is exposed to a solution of dialkyl disulfide. By preparing an ini...

Background: The relative changes in plasma and intracellular concentrations of S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) and S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH) may be important predictors of cellular methylation potential and metabolic alterations associated with specific genetic polymorphisms and/or nutritional deficiencies. Because these metabolites are present in nanomolar concentrations in plasma, methods of de...

The focus of analyzing data from microarray experiments has shifted from the identification of associated individual genes to that of associated biological pathways or gene sets. In bioinformatics, a feature selection algorithm is usually used to cope with the high dimensionality of microarray data. In addition to those algorithms that use the biological information contained within a gene set ...

Production of an experimental preparation of systolic anterior motion (SAM) of the mitral valve was attempted for the purpose of clarifying its causal factors. Fourteen thoracotomized dogs under pentobarbital anesthesia were administered dobutamine, and the echocardiogram, left ventricular pressure, and aortic pressure of each were simultaneously recorded. In two of the dogs in which SAM was pr...

Asymmetric septal hypertrophy (ASH) is considered the unifying link in the spectrum of hypertrophic cardiomyopathies. ASH and mitral valve systolic anterior motion (SAM) are the two most important echocardiographic criteria for the diagnosis of idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis (IHSS). Ten patients found have SAM without ASH were studied. Septal thickness, thickening, and excursion wer...

BACKGROUND We have developed an assay that uses stable-isotope-dilution liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to assess S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) and S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH) in body fluids to investigate the relationship of these metabolites to hyperhomocysteinemia. METHODS Commercially obtained SAM (D(3) methyl) and (13)C(5)-SAH uniformly labeled in the adenosyl moiety, which was syn...

All above-ground plant organs are derived from shoot apical meristems (SAMs). Global analyses of gene expression were conducted on maize (Zea mays L.) SAMs to identify genes preferentially expressed in the SAM. The SAMs were collected from 14-day-old B73 seedlings via laser capture microdissection (LCM). The RNA samples extracted from LCM-collected SAMs and from seedlings were hybridized to mic...