Stroke is a tremendous burden to health worldwide both in the developed and developing world. Current levels of research funding do not adequately reflect this burden, particularly when expected increases in stroke rates are considered. Of course, an investment in stroke research is only justified if a return can be expected. The ultimate goal of stroke research is to reduce the burden of disea...

Thermophilic organisms require proteins that maintain their structure and activity in the extreme temperature conditions in which their hosts thrive. In view of evaluating the influence of temperature on the different types of interactions that stabilize protein structures, we developed a new approach based on temperature-dependent mean force potentials. Our results show that the stabilizing we...

Die Gesellschaft für Logische Programmierung e.V. [1], die deutschsprachige Abteilung (für Deutschland, Österreich und die Schweiz) der Association of Logic Programming [2], organisiert seit vielen Jahren den Workshop on (Constraint) Logic Programming (WLP). Auf dem alljährlich stattfindenden WLP treffen sich Wissenschaftler aus den Gebieten der logischen Programmierung, der Constraint-Programm...

This panel will present and discuss how quantitative data analysis can help us to tell stories that bring deeper meaning to our research. In order to tell stories successfully, the researcher must understand the variety of data analysis methods available and know when to apply each kind of method. This panel will focus on these questions: • How can we tell stories about “unreal” phenomena and s...

The 6th German Conference on Multiagent System Technologies (MATES 2008) was hosted, together with the co-located 31th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI2008), by the University of Kaiserslautern and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). From September 23th until Septmeber 26th 2008 mostly European research groups presented their work in six sessions frame...

In recent years the concept of emergence has gained much attention as computer systems have started exhibiting properties usually associated with complex systems. Although emergence creates many problems for engineering complex computerized systems by introducing undesired behaviour, it also offers many possibilities for advancements in the area of adaptive self-organizing systems. However, at ...

In the July 2006 issue of P&T, I discussed the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s (PhRMA’s) annual review, Pharmaceutical Industry Profile, to give readers an appreciation of how the pharmaceutical industry spends its money.1 Profile 2008 provides a straightforward, “by the numbers” overview of the drug industry.2 Similar to the 2006 review, the 2008 report focuses on how fa...

Recent measurements of the branching fraction for D s → ν disagree with the Standard Model expectation, which relies on calculations of f D s from lattice QCD. This paper uses recent preliminary measurements from CLEO and a new preliminary lattice-QCD result from this conference to update the significance of the discrepancy. The " f D s puzzle " stands now at 3.5σ , with σ predominantly from th...

We propose a modelling strategy to determine from a large set of reactions the smallest set necessary to be compatible with a compendium of required properties and experimental data. We applied this strategy to define a model of hepatic fatty acid metabolism integrating both metabolic pathways and the contribution of some major genetic regulators. We considered the fatty acid metabolism in hepa...