The Fiat-Shamir heuristic (CRYPTO ’86) is used to convert any 3-message public-coin proof or argument system into a non-interactive argument, by hashing the prover’s first message to select the verifier’s challenge. It is known that this heuristic is sound when the hash function is modeled as a random oracle. On the other hand, the surprising result of Goldwasser and Kalai (FOCS ’03) shows that...

The use of virtual reality setups allows sophisticated manipulations of visual and haptic feedback important for the study of grasping movements. On this respect, the absence of feedback is shown to induce different systematic biases in visuomotor tasks, such as underestimation of the target distance and, above all, lack of the target depth constancy. The latter is revealed by a decrease in gri...

We previously identified a cluster of basic spectrin-like repeats in the dystrophin rod domain that binds F-actin through electrostatic interactions (Amann, K. J., Renley, B. A., and Ervasti, J. M. (1998) J. Biol. Chem. 273, 28419-28423). Because of the importance of actin binding to the presumed physiological role of dystrophin, we sought to determine whether the autosomal homologue of dystrop...

Enhanced ethylene production is an early response of plants to pathogen attack and has been associated with both resistance and susceptibility to disease. Tobacco plants were transformed with the mutant etr1-1 gene from Arabidopsis, conferring dominant ethylene insensitivity. Besides lacking known ethylene responses, these transformants (Tetr) did not slow growth when contacting neighboring pla...

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) are ubiquitous plant toxins, many of which, upon oxidation by hepatic mixed-function oxidases, become reactive bifunctional pyrrolic electrophiles that form DNA-DNA and DNA-protein cross-links. The anti-mitotic, toxic, and carcinogenic action of PAs is thought to be caused, at least in part, by these cross-links. We wished to determine whether the activated PA pyrr...

Dysfunctions of MeCP2 protein lead to various neurological disorders such as Rett syndrome and Autism. The exact functions of MeCP2 protein is still far from clear. At a molecular level, there exist contradictory data. MeCP2 protein is considered a single immunoreactive band around 75 kDa by western-blot analysis but several reports have revealed the existence of multiple MeCP2 immunoreactive b...

A simple plausibility argument is given. Let g be a finite-dimensional Lie algebra with generators J a and structure constants f ab c. The brackets are given by [J a , J b ] = f ab c J c. Denote the symmetric Killing metric (proportional to the quadratic Casimir operator) by δ ab = tr J a J b , and let the totally symmetric third Casimir operator be d abc = tr {J a , J b }J c .

" If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. " This familiar expression refers to our common tendency to see the world through our own biased viewpoint. And so it also apparently goes for the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology (AAOMR). We could not help but react with surprise and disappointment upon reading the editorial appearing in the June, 2012 edition...

OBJECTIVES To examine knowledge of chronic kidney disease in the general public. DESIGN Cross-sectional telephone survey. SETTING Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS Community-dwelling adults who spoke Chinese in Hong Kong. RESULTS The response rate was 47.3% (516/1091) out of all subjects who were eligible to participate. The final survey population included 516 adults (55.6% female), of whom over...