summary based on the results of the analysis of site effects, mostly those with shear wave velocity and the fundamental period chosen as the basis for classification. in revision of earthquake resistant design regulations for buildings, classification of lands should be subject to the field conditions, geological, geotechnical, geophysical, and laboratory tests.in this context, the average shea...

Methods for expressing a heteromeric taste receptor that responds to umami taste stimuli are provided. These methods comprise the co-expression of T1R1 and T1R3 nucleic acid sequences in a host cell that desirably also expresses a G protein that couples therewith, e.g., G.sub..alpha.15 and G.sub..alpha.16 or gustducin. In preferred embodiments, the host cells will be mammalian cells or Xenopus ...

The obesity epidemic continues to spread throughout the world, and the search for efficient therapies to combat obesity has become a priority for health systems (Stein and Colditz, 2004). However, the lack of drugs capable of reducing body weight gain without inducing adverse effects has led to a situation in which there is almost no available pharmacotherapy for obesity. The failure of the mai...

G cell–derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), a distant relative of transforming growth factor(TGF), was purified as a factor that promotes the survival and differentiation of embryonic mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons (Lin et al., 1993). A closely related protein, neurturin, was purified as a factor that promotes the survival of sympathetic neurons (Kotzbauer et al., 1996). Subsequently, two ad...

Whether the job is waking the brain after a peaceful sleep, initiating gastric secretion when dinner is served or orchestrating the elements of inflammation after a mosquito bite, histamine has been a known biological messenger for decades (Green, 1964; Eichler and Farah, 1966). At the end of the twentieth century, in the midst of the genomics and bioinformatics revolution, researchers in this ...

Caveolins constitute the coat of caveolae, specialized domains of the plasma membrane. A large body of evidence suggests that caveolae are enriched in sphingolipids and cholesterol. Besides a role in signal transduction and in the sorting of membrane components, a diverse range of functions has been assigned to the caveolins in the cellular homeostasis of cholesterol. Cholesterol is essential f...

EP 1683 862 A1 T 2006 Khan et al., “Classification and diagnostic prediction of cancers using gene expression profiling and artificial neural networks', Nature Medicine, 7(6):673-679 (2001). Barrett et al., “Microarrays: the use of oligonucleotides and cDNA for the analysis of gene expression'. Drug Discovery Today, 8(3): 134-141 (2003). Berwanger et al., “Loss of a FYN-regulated Differentiatio...

The goal of the Systems Biology Workbench (SBW) project is to create an open-source, integrated software environment for systems biology that enables sharing of models and resources between simulation and analysis tools. The project grew out of a desire to achieve interoperability between a number of independent software packages used in biochemical network simulation and analysis. The packages...

The young human brain is highly plastic, thus brain lesions occurring during development interfere with the innate development of the architecture, connectivity, and mapping of functions and trigger modifications in structure, wiring, and representations (for review see Payne & Lomber, 2001). In childhood, the motor cortex and/or the corticospinal tract is a common site of brain damage and the ...

Edible mushrooms are rich in dietary fiber, minerals, vitamins and low in fat (Manzi et al., 2001), and have long been used in folk medicines and health foods. Lentinus edodes, also named Xianggu in Chinese and Shiitake in Japanese, is one of the most widely edible mushrooms on the global market due to its taste and nutritional values (Hatvani & Mécs, 2001). Crude polysaccharides are the most a...