E x p e r i e n c e w i t h t h e MYCIN [ 1 ] t h e r a p y s e l e c t o r shows t h a t a c l e a n l y s t r u c t u r e d a l g o r i t h m makes p o s s i b l e a s i . -np le , b u t u s e f u l e x p l a n a t i o n c a p a b i l i t y . The a l g o r i t h m uses t h e g e n e r a t e and t e s t method t o s e l e c t a s m a l l s e t o f d r u g s f o r a d m i n i s t r a t i o n t ...

Medical software tools began to emerge during the 1980's, some became known as 'expert systems'. In contrast to conventional software which process data, expert systems process 'knowledge'. For this reason, expert systems are also called ‘Knowledge Based Systems' (KBS). The most well known medical example is MYCIN.' This expert system was developed at Stanford University in 1976 to aid physicia...

Tumor growth is fueled by the use of glycolysis, which normal cells use only in the scarcity of oxygen. Glycolysis makes tumor cells resistant to normal death processes. Targeting this unique tumor metabolism can provide an alternative strategy to selectively destroy the tumor, leaving normal tissue unharmed. The orphan drug dichloroacetate (DCA) is a mitochondrial kinase inhibitor that has the...

Activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) is an integral component of the wound-healing process in liver injury/inflammation. However, uncontrolled activation of HSCs leads to constant secretion of collagen-rich extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, resulting in liver fibrosis. The enhanced ECM synthesis/secretion demands an uninterrupted supply of intracellular energy; however, there is a pau...

Cancer cells are long known to exhibit increased aerobic glycolysis, but glycolytic inhibition has not offered a viable chemotherapeutic strategy in part because of the systemic toxicity of antiglycolytic agents. However, recent studies suggest that a combined inhibition of glycolysis and mitochondrial function may help overcome this issue. In this study, we investigated the chemotherapeutic ef...

mechanical stress and maximum superconducting current have been calculated for a superconductor subjected to uniform plastic deformation. The training effect due to strain hardening o f the material is discussed. These results are compared with an analogous case when the normal transition is caused by the thermo-magnetomechanical instability. The quenching current is shown to depend on the hist...

A number of constraints influenced the design of the MYCIN system. In order to be useful, the system had to be easy to use and had to provide consistently reliable advice. It needed to be able to accommodate the large body of task-specific knowledge required for high performance, a knowledge base that is subject to change over time. The system also had to be able to use inexact or incomplete in...

A general framework for the thermodynamics of open systems is presented. The theory is fundamentally based on the generalized balance of mass, which is enhanced by additional surface-°ux and volume-source terms. The presentation highlights the in°uence of the enhanced mass balance on the remaining balance equations. To clarify the impact of the variable reference density, we introduce the notio...

Approximately 15% of human couples are affected by infertility, and about half of these cases of infertility can be attributed to men, through low sperm motility (asthenozoospermia) or/and numbers (oligospermia). Because mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) mutations are identified in patients with fertility problems, there is a possibility that mitochondrial respiration defects contribute to male infe...

Mitochondrial interactions with the nuclear genome represent one of life's most important co-evolved mutualisms. In many organisms, mitochondria are maternally inherited, and in these cases, co-transmission between the mitochondrial and nuclear genes differs across different parts of the nuclear genome, with genes on the X chromosome having two-third probability of co-transmission, compared wit...